About Me
Beginnings
Hi! I'm Suzanne Saturday. I wasn't born with this name. I chose it. When I stopped living by society's rules and started trusting my own, a new me was born. Taking a new name felt like the only thing to do.
I've been a writer since the day my grandmother, Nana, handed me a little red diary and told me to write about my life. "Just a few sentences every day," she said. "You'll be amazed at the memories that come back." She often regretted not keeping a diary herself. "I could write a book!" she'd exclaim, frustrated, hands thrown in the air. I took her advice, and journaling became a lifelong habit.
That diary became the one place I could always tell the truth. I was born into foster care, later reclaimed by the teenage parents who'd given me away, and grew up tossed between families, marriages, divorces, violence, rage, new schools, constant upheaval. I always knew I was a burden, always aware my very existence was shameful. I had to keep secrets from my peers-- but not from my diary. Writing made me treat my life as if it mattered.
Between worlds
Sharing stories is my favorite thing to do. Our personal stories do indeed matter --they connect us. Friends say I can "talk to anyone," and they're right. Because I've been everyone.
I was born in the Bronx, in a Catholic home for unwed mothers; I've also lived like a princess at a country club on the Long Island Sound. I vacuumed floors with my mom as a housekeeper; other times, we had housekeepers of our own. I quit violin when we were broke and my new school didn't offer it free; later I took private flute and tennis lessons when we were flush. My ancestors include both immigrants and blue bloods - which I like to think is the essence of being American. More recently, I've flown on private jets and vacationed in St. Bart's. But during the pandemic, I carried my weight in groceries to the top floor of Manhattan walkups as a bike courier -sometimes in the rain or snow.
By the time I graduated high school, I'd seen more ups and downs than many people twice my age. As an adult, I'm grateful for that range of experience. I learned resilience, self-reliance.
I grew up in a home where there was never a newspaper. I was the only kid on the college campus tours who came alone, without a parent. When I was told, "you can be anything you want," I believed it. But when I was told, "that's not for you, that's for rich people, " well, I never absorbed that mindset.
Wait, what?
Some people think it's strange that after waitressing my way through Columbia as a math major, I spent decades as a stripper. I used to wonder about this too. Where did I go wrong? But truth is, I never wanted to study math. I was interested in sociology. I picked math because it sounded impressive. I knew I had no one to rely on. So I'd need a "serious" degree to secure a good job.
It's only recently that I can see how my choices actually made sense. The club blended two worlds I already knew: single moms and strivers alongside the wealthy elite. But what really made it feel like home is that as a stripper, I was wanted. I wasn't a burden. I wasn't an inconvenience.
Stripping is one of the few jobs with both high earning potential and full control over how I lived my days. Stripping was always a part time job that let me take weeks or months off to travel or study. Along the way, I kept earning credentials, always viewing the world through sociologist glasses.
I'd already had my midlife crisis in college. Math drained me; I was overworked and miserable. My heart pounded frantically all the time. Eventually, I stopped caring if I looked "acceptable." I just wanted to live with freedom, abundance, and curiosity. The club gave me that.
The Bottom Line
Society is broken if someone has to become a stripper just to breathe freely. I wasn't alone in this truth. I worked together with women escaping collapse of the Soviet Union, extreme poverty in Brazil or Venezuela. One woman's country was so corrupt she left home to give birth in a hospital where the staff wouldn't sell her baby. For them, far more than me, dancing was not a fall from grace. It was survival. It was heroic.
My work -- whatever the medium: book, podcast, film or beyond -- isn't just about me. It's about how our private stories illuminate the systems we live in, and how reimagining those systems (out loud!) can free us.