by Tana Tymesen

Despite what the reviews and the summary descriptions say, Lab Girl is a love story.  Lab Girl is, categorically, a memoir, and Hope Jahren is, categorically, a scientist. However, she’s possessed with the linguistic dexterity to make the lifespan of a tree and its family history sound like poetry. Her frustrated descriptions of the trials of federal funding sizzle. Jahren’s clear, wry voice is explicitly feminist, and she’s brutally honest about her journey as a woman in science, while reinforcing her passion for the field and for her work. And through it all, by her side stands a character so loyal the reader begins to question whether he could be real. Every single word of Lab Girl is imbued with tenderness and humor, and a deep appreciation for two things bigger than ourselves: trees and friendship.

In an email interview, Hope Jahren answered a few of TheRefresh’s questions about Lab Girl, the status of science today, and about what brought her to writing.

Tana Tymesen: The NYT review of Lab Girl mentions up-front the sheer magnitude of the numbers you include, from information about tree seeds to the dollars allotted to various sciences by government funding. Why was it important to you to document and enumerate the funding process?

Hope Jahren: I get the impression that most people don’t know how strapped research scientists are for the cash that they need to conduct their experiments. People tend to think of scientist jobs as safe and steady jobs — and that has hardly been the case for us. Of most importance is the fact that the U.S. budget for non-defense-related scientific research has been stagnant for 35 years — no increase relative to the total budget — during those 35 years we’ve educated more and more scientists who are now unable to find work — and if they can find work, they cannot buy the materials (i.e., the beakers, the chemicals, etc.) that they need to perform the experiments that they were trained to do.

TT: Has your work, or the focus of your work, been changed by the new presidential administration? Do you expect major changes in your government funding with the new administration?

HJ: The deterioration in funding and workplace quality was a long-term trend in science, across 35 years of different administrations. I expect the new U.S. administration to accelerate this deterioration, but it’s important to remember that the support structure for American science was in decline long before Donald Trump took office.

I have left the United States and taken a position at the University of Oslo, in the country of Norway.  

TT: How will that affect your work?

HJ: Our work will be more collaborative, and more securely funded. We will have the opportunity to perform longer-term experiments, on the order of ten years instead of three.  I think we will flourish.

TT: President Obama recently said that reading fiction helped him empathize with people and communities very different from his own. What role does literature play in your life — in your work?

HJ: The great books that I have read have furnished me with the tools that I use to understand my life, similar to how the math and chemistry courses that I took furnished me with approaches for solving problems in the lab.  When you read a great book, it stays with you, though you may not understand the import of some of its messages until later in life.

TT: How long have you been writing? How did you hone those skills?

HJ: I remember writing stories and poems and comic strips for my teachers and parents and friends from very young, from before I had been formally taught the alphabet in first grade. I remember writing plays in third grade, and trying to get my girlfriends to perform them. I wrote copious letters to pen pals through school, and still keep up written correspondence with many people who are very dear to me. And research science is all about grants and publications, both of which require nonstop writing and revision.

TT: Who is the author, or what is the work, that has been most influential to you?

HJ: There are so many. I think Kurt Vonnegut is the voice that most rings in my memory — a clear direct voice, with a long-sounding tenor of ache, simply confessed — that is a voice that spoke to me most deeply when I read it, the one which I aspire to recreate as best I can.

TT: Based on the feedback you got for your article on farming in the NYT last Nov., where do you think the disconnect is between farmers and their votes, or the government?

HJ: In many ways, the economic bottom dropped out of farming in the 1970s and 1980s (remember Farm Aid?). At present, the majority of farmers must keep a second job from which they earn most of their income, and thus they may not define themselves as primarily “farmers.”  This means that the “farm vote” of the past was cast by a person who no longer exists, thus it is no longer politically expedient to directly message to him/her.  

TT: Is there hope for the Midwest? (The Iowa/Minnesota/Wisconsin part of the Midwest, at least).

HJ: Of course there is hope for the Midwest; it is the most beautiful and fertile portion of the North American continent, and is filled with people willing to work extremely hard towards a common good. If I move back to the U.S., I am sure it will be to Minnesota.

TT: What would you tell a woman considering, or preparing for, her first cross-country move?

HJ: Be open-minded.  Every part of the country has much to offer — you can hate a place for what it isn’t — or love it for what it is — it’s your choice.

Main photo courtesy of: Nikola Jovanovic

Tana Tymesen is a writer and editor from the Midwest and both coasts. Her self-care includes long drives through rural Wisconsin, Instagrams of piglets, cheeses, and Bob’s Burgers. You can find more of her writing at tangentsandangles.com