In Conversation: On Pinkie Promises

Elizabeth Warren is the senior senator from Massachusetts and a former presidential candidate. She is the author of a dozen books, including A Fighting Chance and This Fight Is Our Fight: The Battle to Save America’s Middle Class, both of which were national bestsellers. Polly, the protagonist of Warren and illustrator Charlene Chua’s Pinkie Promises (Henry Holt and Co./BYR), knows she’s strong and capable. But whenever she offers to help her uncle or brother or neighbor, they tell her: “That’s not what girls do.” Then Polly goes to a rally to meet a woman running for president, and they make a pinkie promise to remember all the things that girls do. The story is based on Warren’s real-life experience as a presidential candidate. In an interview with People, she mentioned that whenever she’d meet a young girl on the campaign trail, “I’d drop down to my knees and ask her name and then say, ‘My name is Elizabeth, and I’m running for president because that’s what girls do.’ And then we do pinky promises. … It’s a reminder that for a long time women have been shut out of the process, devalued, told to be quiet. We’re just not doing that anymore.”