(Writing Through Grief in Children’s Books.)

But in childhood lies the unfortunate truth—this precious time, with all of its wonder-filled, bubble-popping, tree-climbing adventures, is also the exact place where our confidence (or lack of) begins to take shape. There’s a reason why us adults—with all of our insecurities, fears, and mental-health issues, look to our childhoods to form an understanding of where our issues ‘came from.’ It’s why our childhood is usually the first thing a psychiatrist will ask about.

At the time, I didn’t perhaps realize the extent of how the racist comments were shaping me: a scared, little 8-year-old being told ‘get back on your banana boat.’ I knew these words hurt. I knew I was scared to step out of our house in case these neighbors saw me (they could never pass me by silently—it was always an opportunity for them to mumble insults). But I never noticed how this fear turned slowly into shame, which grew and grew until I hid anything and everything about me that was even remotely Guyanese.

Today—as someone who has struggled with mental health issues for years but worked hard to find a healthier way forward—I can finally piece together all the broken bits of my own childhood and understand where things could have been done differently. I have experienced first-hand what it was like to be ashamed of my culture, to feel like the odd one out because everywhere around me were visions and stories about children, families, lives that didn’t look like mine. I turned my back on my Indo-Caribbean culture because the shame of it far outweighed any pride I might have felt—in fact, I can only remember one moment in my childhood where I felt proud of our South American background (and the food that went along with this). This was at a school fete one year—when Hawaiian-shirt-wearing-me saw the long queue for the cups of tropical fruits at my mum’s stall—How proud I felt to be ‘tropical.’ Understandably, this single moment didn’t counterbalance all the years of being called ‘Paki.’

In The Beautiful Layers of Me, Ameena’s journey is about her learning to take pride in wearing her salwar kameez after her confidence is shaken by an innocent comment from the little girl next door. And of course, being able to take pride in our clothing is a gentle nod towards a much bigger picture: being proud of our culture in whole, and everything that comes with it. The clothing, the music, the food, the language. Piece by piece, step by step, this is exactly how confidence is grown. You can’t just simply tell a child to be confident. It’s something we need to see and feel. Confidence should be subtly nurtured over time, growing and strengthening the more we find our place in the world.

In writing this story it was important to me that children recognize themselves in it—whether it be by the setting, the clothing, the food, or perhaps the family. It might just be a line or two in the text that really resonates deeply, or a small detail in the gorgeous illustrations by Ruchi Mhasane that make you think ‘that’s just like me!’—I believe that being able to relate to the world around you is one of the first steps to discovering pride. But I also wanted that moment of worry—an authentic snapshot that recognizes that childhood isn’t all rainbows and pom-poms! And this is of course why children’s literature plays such an important role in shaping us. Books aren’t just a fantasy world where we can all escape. They also provide comfort in this world—the real one.

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The Beautiful Layers of Me was always intended to be the comforting hug that tells you ‘It’s OK’—being mixed-race is something to be proud of.  It is much more than simply a picture book for young readers. This story is a gentle reminder that childhood isn’t just about climbing trees and riding bikes with handlebar-tassels. It’s about nurturing strength and resilience, pride and confidence, connection and happiness. It is also about being kind and understanding towards a culture that might feel different to our own. I believe that the importance of childhood is how we handle these scary moments—such as when someone makes a comment that hurts us (intentionally or not). Ruchi has perfectly captured the hurt and worry that Ameena feels in these heartfelt illustrations, but I hope that the strongest message is how Ameena learns to find her confidence and resilience.

Of course, let’s not forget that no one can control what other people say or do. We do not live in a perfect world where everyone only shows kindness. All we can do is focus on how best to respond to those negatives and model this response for our children. I truly believe in the importance of these childhood experiences, just like in Ameena’s journey, and hope that together we can nurture stronger, more confident, accepting, and proud children.

Check out Sophia Payne’s The Beautiful Layers of Me here:

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Amber Oliver is a writer and book editor. Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, she currently resides in Harlem. When the Music Hits is her first novel.

Here’s Amber’s query:

MAAME meets BLACK BUCK in this debut novel about a young, Black recent college graduate who, inspired by the music that saved her when money issues and her mother’s arguments with her boyfriend proved deafening, lands her dream job in the A&R department at a major music label – only to find the dream is far more complicated than she could have imagined.

Growing up, Billie Willis sought solace in music, finding herself in pulsing beats, striking lyrics, and mesmerizing voices. Billie decided she would work in the music industry and eventually become a music mogul who would find and build the careers of artists who could impact listeners around the world. 

When Billie lands a coveted A&R assistant role at Lit Music Productions, one of the largest music labels in the country, she is initially excited by all things music and A&R—the beautiful offices, access to exclusive industry parties, learning the particulars of closing deals—and she can’t wait until it’s her turn to start finding new talent and create space for meaningful diversity instead of the commodification of Black talent.

But, as she continues to work at Lit, she learns that the music industry of reality is far different than the one of her dreams. The hours are long, the workload is heavy and never-ending, the pay is abysmally low, and there aren’t many people of color around, except for Nina, who takes her under her wing and shows her the ropes but is also battling with her own issues in the department as the only Latinx A&R executive. Creative corporate is full of biases, microagressions, sexism, and flat-out racism – and Billie learns that the label that preys on and undervalues marginalized voices.  

Just as Billie learns what it takes to survive in the industry, while also trying to financially support her struggling mother and her own idealistic artist boyfriend, rumors of a merger with another music label are confirmed. Hype Records will merge with Lit in a matter of months. To secure her place at the changing company, Billie is determined to sign an artist they can’t say no to before Hype Records moves in.

As Billie trades her passion and energy for a shot at a career that doesn’t always love her back, she is forced to decide if the career of her dreams is really worth all of the trouble and heartbreak.

Weaving in timely themes like family, race, class, cultural appropriation, and art, WHEN THE MUSIC HITS is a satirical workplace coming-of-age novel that offers sharp, incisive commentary on contemporary issues in creative corporate America.

Amber Oliver is a writer and an editor of award-winning and bestselling books. She has held roles at HarperCollins and Penguin Random House, and currently works at Bloomsbury Publishing. She has been published in GUMBO magazine and studied under NAACP-nominated author, Morowa Yejide at the Hurston/Wright Weekend Writers Workshop in 2018. Born and raised in the Bronx, New York, she currently resides in Harlem.

Check out Amber Oliver’s When the Music Hits here:

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What Angeline Rodriguez liked about the query:

I knew Amber from her stellar work as an editor, which for anyone else might be bona fides enough. But Amber is not one to rest on her laurels, and delivered a phenomenally dialed-in pitch that immediately set her query apart. 

Right off the bat she names two excellent novels I loved reading, which always helps grab attention but is additionally helpful here for their recency and direct relevance to the subject matter, demonstrating Amber’s keen knowledge of the marketplace and situating her work within a wider literary conversation. She then wastes no time establishing the concrete stakes of this story and how it’s relevant to both my list and the comp titles she’s cited.

As a woman of color in a creative industry, I’m naturally drawn to stories of people carving out a place for themselves where there wasn’t before. Amber writes the sort of künstlerroman we are not often afforded, and I was also impressed by her query noting the kind of true-to-life complications inherent to chasing a lifelong dream as someone not born to it—breaking into her dream job isn’t the end of Billie’s story, it’s just the beginning.

From there, she fleshes out the story in a number of ways that highlight both the specific and universal appeal of her novel; taking the time to introduce the character of Nina and referencing the Black talent Billie seeks to platform demonstrated this wouldn’t be a story of a single protagonist of color in a vacuum but that the novel was prepared to take on the nuances of multiple characters across the diaspora and how they interact.

The themes Amber outlines here—personal ambition vs. familial responsibility, the fraught intersection of art and commerce—underscore the authenticity and urgency of this novel, and promised a level of narrative depth that her pages then delivered on tenfold. That follow-through is key, but knowing what the unique strengths of your book are and emphasizing them accordingly is what will ultimately get readers—and agents—to take the plunge and discover their next favorite novel. It’s a gift to work with someone who knows stories inside and out the way Amber does, and I can’t wait for readers to fall in love with When The Music Hits the way I did!

*****

Angeline Rodriguez joined WME after an editorial career at Penguin Random House and Hachette Book Group, where she published multiple bestsellers and award-winners. She represents writers across genres, with an emphasis on high-concept stories that push the boundaries between categories, and is particularly passionate about highlighting underrepresented voices in new ways. A native of Houston, TX, she now lives in Brooklyn.

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(A Book Shower for the Single Woman.)

My father’s stories played in the background of my mind as I wrote my debut novel, The Gardins of Edin. It’s a tale of a loving but dysfunctional family that owns a multimillion-dollar peanut empire in the fictional rural town of Edin, Georgia. The Gardin family lives on an idyllic estate, as the book imagines what life might be like for a Black Southern family if towns founded by previously enslaved people—like Eatonville, Florida, and Roberts Settlement, Indiana—had been allowed to thrive. The book features themes around physical health and mental health. My father’s stories are connected to that decision too.

I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face the first time he held my book in his hands. Rosey Lee is my pen name. So, if I ever wondered if my father would have been prouder seeing the last name he passed on to me at the bottom of my book cover instead of my pseudonym, I had my answer. His grin, an incandescent mix of pride and glee, told me that he would not. When I graduated from medical school, my parents chartered a bus to bring about 50 family members and friends across three states to attend the ceremony. My father, the man who is so proud of my medical career that he calls me “Doctor” whenever we talk, beamed brightly during the festivities. But it didn’t compare to his smile as he held my book.

I didn’t have to ask my father to explain his reaction. For years I’d heard the stories of his kindergarten teacher’s surprise on the first day of school when she discovered that he could already read. I developed a love for collecting old books because I spent many hours of my childhood thumbing through the Black history textbooks he and my mother used in college. Books paved my father’s path from the cotton fields to the public school classrooms where he taught English and history. Holding my debut novel in his hands, my father’s face reflected the same thing his stories had instilled in me over the years—books are a symbol of freedom and a tool for healing.

My interest in health is fueled by the stories I heard about family members as well as the need I saw with my own eyes growing up in the New Orleans area. Many people were disproportionately affected by medical conditions compared to others in neighboring areas who were wealthier, who had more education, and who had better access to health services. I wanted everyone to have the health information and resources needed to live their lives to the fullest extent, so they could avoid having higher rates of illnesses, suffering from worse health outcomes, and dying prematurely. That’s what health equity is all about—everyone having a fair and just opportunity to attain their highest level of health.

We didn’t use the phrase “health equity” when I began my pre-medicine studies more than three decades ago. But looking back, I can see that I still picked up on the powerful connection between health literacy and health equity. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services defines personal health literacy as “the degree to which individuals have the ability to find, understand, and use information and services to inform health-related decisions and actions for themselves and others.” Health literacy plays a critical role in advancing health equity.

I’ve dedicated my medical career to health equity, using strategies aimed at both individuals and groups of people. I’ve provided primary care services in health centers where most of the patients do not have health insurance. I’ve also worked on activities designed to help large populations—from projects that sought to strengthen the health infrastructure in communities impacted by hurricanes and oil spills to initiatives that addressed hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and stroke in communities that have higher rates than the national average. These experiences have taught me that advancing health equity is a long game.  

In this time when resources are increasingly scarce and priorities shifted, we must continue the charge to advance health equity. It is imperative that we become more creative in leveraging the assets we control. History offers guidance in how stories and writers can play a pivotal role in this way. Enslaved people used oral stories to provide hope and directions for their journeys to freedom. Their narratives also shed light on the medicinal traditions they used to stay alive. Using health themes in fiction can serve a similar function.

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For my Gardins of Edin series, I selected health conditions that disproportionately impact Black families but are also broadly relatable because they affect so many people in our country, regardless of their race or ethnicity. The Gardins of Edin highlights cardiovascular health, mental health, and the link between them. Since heart attacks are so common and Black adults die from heart attacks at higher rates that others, I included a scene in which a character recognizes the signs and symptoms of a heart attack in another character and intervenes, providing readers with easy tips they could implement in their own lives. Readers learn that the Gardin women’s food choices are tied to their interest in preventing heart disease, with a range of approaches in the book—from one character who is working to increase vegetable intake to another who exclusively eats a plant-based diet.

Readers also go along with a character on her mental health journey, first discovering that her busy work schedule has caused her to fall out of therapy. The character’s health crisis provides insight into her condition that readers can apply to prevent experiencing similar consequences. The story gives readers a peek into the character’s mental health counseling sessions, highlighting the significance of both individual and family sessions. Black adults are 20% more likely to experience serious mental health issues, but only 1 in 3 Black adults with mental health issues get care. The Gardins of Edin seeks to address stigma and normalize talking about mental health, which are key strategies tied to promoting mental well-being. My upcoming novel, A Gardin Wedding, continues in this vein. It explores mental health, couple’s counseling, and the connection between vascular health and dementia.

I used the health themes in the Gardins of Edin series as tools for character development, both in how a character with an illness evolved over the course of the story and how other characters responded to the illness and interacted with each other around it. My book club kit features discussion questions and resources around the health themes in the book. While I don’t provide medical advice during author talks and interviews, I enjoy discussing the health themes that appear in my stories. 

My writing career is a complement to my clinical and community work. I see my novels as an instrument in my health equity tool box. But attending medical school, residency training, and public health school are not requirements to be a literary champion for health equity. I believe that fiction writers who aren’t health professionals can do it too. It just takes a little creativity and effort. A health theme can be the main focus of a book or an issue a character deals with on a smaller level. When it comes to author talks, fiction writers who don’t feel comfortable discussing the health themes in their books on their own might consider inviting a health professional to join for a portion of the conversation.

Public libraries also play a powerful role in health literacy. They have an interest in books with health themes, and they may serve as an ideal site to host author talks that integrate health themes. For example, the Network of the National Library of Medicine (NNLM) Reading Club provides a model of success. From 2018 to 2022, a team of consumer health librarians selected books to align with selected health topics. The NNLM Reading Club Toolkit includes the health topics, book titles, and discussion guides. Libraries need support now more than ever, so writing new books with health themes is one way that we can help them.

There are many topics vying for writers’ attention these days, so it’s understandable if integrating health themes into fiction doesn’t appeal to every writer. But for those who are willing, this moment in time is filled with potential, if we choose to see it that way.

Check out Rosey Lee’s A Gardin Wedding here:

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(I Got 8 Agent Offers; Then, My Book Died on Sub.)

See, I’ve always known I wanted to be an author. But what I didn’t know was what would be my first “big break.” From eighth grade to when I got my agent shortly after college graduation, I wrote everything from dark, paranormal fantasies about angels and demons to bittersweet contemporary romances about teens in a garage band. Back then, I naively thought getting an agent meant a guaranteed “happily ever after.” But when my agent and I submitted various projects for two years without much luck, I grew desperate. I wrote more books, even trying my hand at writing thrillers and historical fantasies. I was blindly throwing darts, working on book idea after book idea and hoping one would find the bull’s eye. But none struck true until 2018, when my agent, Penny Moore, suggested I try writing a chapter book.

If you told teenaged me that my first book deal would consist of not one but four books, she wouldn’t have believed you. And if you told her that the books would blow up into a twelve-book-long chapter book series inspired by her own spunky kid self, the very same individual who started her on this long, convoluted journey in the first place, she’d have laughed in your face. And yet, that’s exactly what happened, and my very first book deal was for the first four books of the Mindy Kim series, which is based on my own experiences of living in the Orlando, Florida, area in elementary school.

What’s funny about the Mindy Kim series is the fact that when I started writing the series, I never expected to write so much about myself or my own family. Sure, the first book, Mindy Kim and the Yummy Seaweed Business, is loosely based on my own experiences of being one of the only Asian American kids in my school (disclaimer, this was back in the early 2000s, I have no idea what the demographics of that area is like now). But other than that, well, I was a 24-year-old with some broad ideas. I knew I wanted to write about my own Korean culture, since I grew up with little or no books featuring Korean American protagonists. And I had a list of the things I wanted to happen in the series (her getting a dog at some point was a must!). But I had no idea that in the seven years that I would work on the books, I would be essentially writing a series about me and my family.

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Don’t get me wrong. Mindy is definitely not me, and Mindy’s family is not mine. Unlike Mindy, who was born in California, I was born in South Korea and am a proud immigrant. Both my mother and father are still alive, and I do not have any siblings. But while writing this series, I somehow ended up incorporating everything from small details like how my father struggles to cook (Mindy Kim and the Yummy Seaweed Business) to priceless memories like the ones I have of various family vacations (Mindy Kim and the Trip to Korea and Mindy Kim and the Fun, Family Vacation). I even ended up incorporating my own grief and loss into the series, like when I transmuted my own painful experiences of losing family members, both as a kid and as an adult (Mindy Kim and the Yummy Seaweed Business and Mindy Kim and the Mid-Autumn Festival). Bits and pieces of my family enmeshed themselves into every book in the series, making every installment all the more precious to me.

And perhaps what was the most shocking (to me, at least), was how this very personal series ended up resonating with thousands of readers around the world. For the last five years, since the first two Mindy Kim books came out in January 2020, I’ve received emails from kids, parents, teachers, and librarians who told me how Mindy helped them (and/or someone they knew) feel seen. How kids can’t stop reading the books because they reminded them of themselves. I’ve written other books besides this series, but Mindy Kim is still by far my most successful writing venture, definitively outselling the rest.

One of my favorite quotes is by a psychologist named Carl Rogers, who stated that “what is most personal is most universal.” When I first encountered this quote as an AP Psychology student in high school, I remember scoffing in disbelief. What do you mean, the most personal is the most universal, I’d thought back then. No one can relate with the x-y-z stuff I have going on right now! Which was hilariously a very stereotypically-angsty-teenager-thing to think.

But now, I think I’m starting to get it. Because even though I’ve tried writing pretty much everything under the sun for the last 20 or so years, the books that ended up resonating with the greatest number of people have been the stories closest to home.

Check out Lyla Lee’s Mindy Kim and the Fun Family Vacation here:

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(5 Things Writers Should Know About Epilepsy.)

My first introduction to autism came 12 years before my son’s diagnosis through a story, through the groundbreaking movie Rain Man. It brought autism into the public consciousness and helped foster early awareness. However, after Christian’s diagnosis, I found myself conflicted. Though the portrayal of Raymond Babbit inspired an emergent level of awe and admiration, it still left me with an overwhelming impression of disability, strangeness, and disconnection.

The overwhelming impression of “disability” and baffling autistic behaviors caused me to recoil when I associated it with my four-year-old son.

Much has changed in the years since. Diagnosis has become more prevalent and refined, awareness has grown, and media representation has expanded. Despite this progress, autism is still widely viewed through a deficit lens. The language we use—of disability, disorder, and dysfunction—reinforces a narrative that reduces autistic individuals to their challenges. It’s time for a new story, one that portrays autistic individuals for all that they are versus all that they are not.

I outline four aspects of autism that can help you see autism through a different lens when writing about an autistic character.

Autism Is an Inherent Part of the Human Condition

We begin with rejecting the notion that autism is an external affliction—a disorder that afflicts people in the way an illness might. I want to explore a more accurate understanding: Autism has always existed as part of the human condition.

Let’s take a look at Sir Isaac Newton, who is believed to have been autistic. Newton’s brilliance was unmatched—but so too were his differences. He was socially isolated, rigid in his routines, intensely focused, highly literal, struggled with social interaction, was exceptionally detail oriented, and had an extraordinary memory. 

Were Newton among us today, he would likely express many of the traits of autistic people: direct, perhaps blunt, enigmatic—descriptors those familiar with autism would immediately recognize. History has erased all of that; what we’re left with is simply one of the greatest minds of all time.

You Must Reject “Normal” to Build an Authentic World

The moment I fully internalized this was during a camping trip with Christian’s scout troop.

I arrived after dark and made my way through the forest to our scout troop’s campsite; two tents glowed with lantern lights. I poked my head under a tent flap, “Do you know where Christian is?” I asked. “We don’t know,” they replied.

Panic began to set in. Every year, I read stories of autistic adolescents who’d gone missing in the mountains. I checked the other tent—also chock full of boys. “Do you know where Christian is?” I asked again. One boy pointed toward the edge of the campsite. “I think he’s in that tent.”

I pulled back the flap and found Christian alone in the center of the dark, empty space. His eyes lit up. “Hey, Dad!” he said with a cracked voice full of relief. I hugged him tightly.

I was angry and disappointed. I expected better—from the boys, and from the leaders. I wanted to confront them. But I didn’t. Something shifted.

Up to that point, we had turned ourselves inside and out trying to make Christian fit into a world that wasn’t built for him. I was done.

Once Christian was asleep, my hurt turned into determination. We didn’t have to worry about what other people thought of Christian. There was no need to fix him—no need to make him fit into some notion of “normal.” Let them have their world—we had ours. We would create all the warmth he needed.

This was the first early realization that rather than try to make Christian fit into a world that wasn’t designed for him, it was better to create a world that is designed for him, and invite others into it (at least those who are willing to come).

Click to continue.

Autistic People Experience the World Very Differently

I once watched a BBC series presented by Chris Packham, an autistic conservationist. The series opened with Packham standing in a forest. He then describes what he sees as an autistic person. Instead of a general view, he sees every detail: every trunk, every branch, individual leaves with slight anomalies of color and shape.

Packham explains that as a naturalist, “seeing everything” is enormously beneficial, but then he explains how processing this quantity of data can become overwhelming. It’s no wonder that to cope with this torrent of sensory and cognitive input, autistic individuals seek solitude, develop a singular focus, or come across as being somewhat self-contained.

As a father, trying to understand how my son experiences the world has been both eye-opening and deeply rewarding.

One key realization was that my son experiences friendships differently than the normal conception of friendship. My wife and I tirelessly attempted to engineer friendships for Christian—with very little success. It was difficult—at times excruciating—to see our son not be accepted, and to be denied the life-affirming experience of friendships. Early on, I focused my pain and disappointment toward others and was left to conclude that few people are capable of befriending individuals with differences.

Looking back, however, I began to realize that the desire for connection seemed somewhat absent in Christian. Despite our continual attempts to draw him into interaction with others, his tendency was to avoid interactions, to wander away from them—physically and mentally. He has always sought solitude, and when he does engage, it is more indirect; it’s a certain kind of communion in which simply being together in the same space (watching TV, going on a hike) punctuated with occasional interactions is what brings him peace.

Once I began to realize this, our interactions became relaxing and enjoyable, rather than fretful. This wouldn’t have happened had I not stepped away from my expectations of what friendship was supposed to look like.

Recognizing and Growing Spectrum Strengths Is the Key to Rebranding Autism

In Rain Man, Raymond Babbit begins to come into view as a person when a waitress spills a box of toothpicks onto the floor. Raymond glances at them and states, “246.” The waitress looks at the remaining (four) toothpicks in the box and confirms that there were originally 250 total. In this moment, the perception of who Raymond was changed. It’s a microcosm of the transformation that happens when the strengths on the autism spectrum come into view.

The challenge, and the reason autistic strengths are hidden, stems largely from communication limitations that impact individuals on the spectrum, to one degree or another, as well as the disinclination (sometimes disinterest) for self-promotion.

Additionally, many of the signature strengths of autism are quieter by nature, such as attention to detail, exceptional memory, analytical thinking, honesty, reliability, and authenticity. In fact, many of these strengths would be easily overlooked, as are the people who possess them. Yet these strong individuals are responsible for most of the innovations that have occurred throughout history.

Seeing strength changes everything. It builds a self-identity anchored in strength.

​Coming full circle, if you had asked me in 2000 whether I wanted my son to grow up like Charlie Babbitt—charismatic, successful—or Raymond, the enigmatic man in the margins, I would have chosen Charlie. Today, I wouldn’t give the person my son has become for anything in the world. In truth, exceptional doesn’t reside in the ordinary. It lives in the extraordinary.

Autism is not a tragedy. It’s not a puzzle to solve. It’s a perspective to understand, a set of strengths to recognize, and a world of potential waiting to be unlocked.

It’s time to rebrand autism.

Check out Clain Udy’s Rebranding Autism here:

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(How Dyslexia Made Me a Better Writer.)

In honor of Purple Day, I’d like to explain a few things about epilepsy that my fellow authors can use when creating characters who have epilepsy.

Triggers vary from person to person.

The most commonly known trigger for seizures is flashing lights. That is a trigger for a lot of people, but only one of many. Sleep deprivation is another common one, as well as exhaustion and stress. My seizures can be triggered by strong emotions, whether positive or negative. Staying emotionally balanced and peaceful is crucial to keeping the seizures at bay. I also get into sensory overload easily, so loud noises, strong smells or tastes, and large crowds can trigger them too.

It’s important to know that many people with epilepsy, including myself, get a warning right before a seizure called an aura. My auras can range from my lips tingling to feeling like I’m floating. It can give me two to five minutes between triggers and the seizure to get somewhere safe and quiet.

There are multiple types of seizures.

When most people think of seizures, usually they have a specific image in mind: Somebody loses consciousness, convulses, and vomits. A large percentage of people with epilepsy do experience these seizures, which are called tonic-clonic seizures, (or grand mal).

Tonic-clonic seizures are generalized, meaning both sides of the brain are involved. There’s a different classification of seizures called focal onset, which means it starts in one specific part of the brain. Depending on the area, some seizures don’t cause loss of consciousness. Absence seizures can look like a blank stare, something others may not pick up on.

I have focal seizures that originate in the temporal lobe and am fully aware and communicative during them. My seizures can look like a panic attack, as most of the symptoms are internal sensations. I often feel confused, have anxiety out of nowhere, and have visual and sensory hallucinations. I also experience repetitive movements like shaking, nodding my head, and licking my lips.

Not every seizure is an emergency.

It’s nearly every day that I deal with seizures, but it’s not every day that the general public witnesses a seizure. What is a part of my day-to-day life, is seen as an emergency to other people. People can get scared and want to call 911. I’m able to explain that I don’t need to go to the hospital, I just need them to be present and talk to me during it.

However, those that can’t talk during their seizures can’t advocate for themselves. In that case, they could end up being billed for an ambulance ride, just for the seizure to already be over by the time they get to the hospital. Most of us carry our emergency medicine with us, and only need to go to the hospital if it doesn’t work.

Finding the right treatment can be a journey.

There are so many options out there for treating epilepsy. The difficult thing is that it’s not always a single medicine that can control all of the seizures, and some medications interact with each other. It’s not a quick process and in my case has never been set in stone. Sometimes one medicine will work wonders at first, and then will become less effective the longer I’m on it.

Thankfully there are options for people whose seizures aren’t controllable by medication alone. Lifestyle changes can make a big difference. I have to prioritize sleep and avoid too much activity and stress. Personally, adding on VNS Therapy has been a game-changer in managing my condition and improving my quality of life.

People with epilepsy often lead a pretty normal life, just with some limitations.

I think most people who have seizures would agree that it’s just one aspect of their life. One major area that it impacts is transportation. It is against the law to drive a car if you’ve had a seizure anywhere from 3 months to a year, depending on the state. So a support system is essential. I’m able to live in a tiny house on my parents’ property, and they check in with me daily and are happy to drive me around. Besides transportation and some medication side effects, I’d consider my day-to-day life fairly normal. While I’m not able to work a 9-5 office job, I do freelance video editing work, social media management, and just recently wrote a book called Pearls: A Memoir on Brain Cancer and Hope.

Now you know enough details about epilepsy to incorporate into your characters and storyline. But you might be asking, why even give your character epilepsy? Seizures are an obstacle that can often derail your plans, something you have no control over, and can add tension to a storyline. Despite this, one thing I’ve learned about people who have epilepsy is that we are resilient. Our own brains knock us down on a daily basis, but we find a way to bounce back and live our lives. Just a few influential authors who were diagnosed with or thought to have epilepsy include: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens, Agatha Christie, Lewis Carroll, and Edgar Allan Poe.

Check out Maggie Bushway’s Pearls here:

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(The Art of Writing Deceptive and Unreliable Narrators in Thrillers.)

Plot must happen for stories to entertain, but plot is simply a test of identity. No matter how exciting the plot point, readers need a human element—a character’s response—to care. A tree falling in a forest certainly makes a sound, but it needs a character to turn that sound into story. A plot falling onto a page needs a character with identity issues, a character who ideally faces those issues and changes. Because of this, I believe every story at its heart is an identity story.

Identity is often a signaling term in fiction, referring to the realm of other. As an Indo-Caribbean immigrant woman in America, I will always be “othered,” which forces me to micro-analyze myself within our societal framework and keeps me attuned to overt markers of identity, such as race and ethnicity. My debut novel, A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl, deals with identity on this explicit level as my main character inhabits multiple selves to survive her difficult childhood. But I believe everyone everywhere grapples with the question, “Who am I, really?” And by extension, every writer grapples with the question, “Who is this character, really?”

In exploring identity in fiction, it’s important to understand how your character sees herself, what she hides, and how the world sees her. To start, map out your character’s visible, invisible, and buried defining traits. You could also do this exercise with yourself or famous fictional characters, as demonstrated below.

Visible Defining Traits: How the world sees the character or how your character presents.

Brainstorm words and phrases to reflect first glance and outward characterizations. How would the character answer small-talk questions such as: “What do you do?” and “Where are you from?” Does she code-switch at times, changing speech and behavior according to audience? Does she lie?

Examples:

• Maya, the main character in my novel: dental hygienist, wife and mother, of Indian descent, “Americanized,” has a deaf son, honest. These words represent how she is seen and how she wants to be seen. But she harbors a secret that contradicts this public front.
• Popular fictional characters: Harry Potter—visibly scarred, often bullied, orphan, unaware of abilities, vendetta against Voldemort. Katniss Everdeen—hunter, family caretaker, eschews feminine traits, sacrifices herself to save her sister. But these characters are more than they seem.

Invisible Defining Traits: How the character’s inner circle sees her.

Consider the character’s close friends and family—what do they know that not everyone knows? Start just below the layer of visible and delve deeper by considering events that shaped the character’s life. They’re usually true, but at this level, the character can still be lying.

Click to continue.

Examples:

• Maya: fluent in sign language; has tattoos that quote favorite books; former foster child; former alcoholic; former smoker; once stripped for money; avoids discussing the past.
• Harry and Katniss: Harry—suffers from self-doubt, was abused by his aunt and uncle, scar sometimes hurts. Katniss—resents her mother’s crippling grief, hates being used, is a rule breaker, would rather starve than beg.

Buried Defining Traits: Things only the character knows about herself that she might deny or even fail to recall.

Here, dig into the character’s “original damage,” those experiences that shaped them, creating their realm of secrets, fantasies, and regrets. Consider parenting, bullying, breakups, abuses and traumas, and past mistakes. What might be so shameful your character doesn’t tell anyone? Is anything buried so deep she can’t recall them, even as those events shape her behavior?

Examples:

• Maya: Was born Sunny; lived in Guyana; arrived to Miami without papers; was called Neena when she moved, then chose to be called Cindy; finally reinvented herself after an incident she has kept secret and tries to suppress.
• Harry and Katniss: Harry—visits Voldemort in nightmares and visions, feels a connection when he’s angered. Katniss—resists intimate relationships, afraid of courting love and having a family under the dystopian government.

The Interaction of Identity With Plot

When characters interact with plot, these visible, invisible, and hidden characteristics affect their behaviors. Harry Potter’s secret connection to Voldemort causes him to sic a snake onto his cousin, Dudley, and nearly kill his rival, Draco; he resists and fights these manifestations because he does not want to identify with Voldemort who exerts more power over him as the story progresses. In the Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen must face her fear of intimacy when she is pitted against Peeta, who loves her; to win the games and stoke revolution, she confronts her identity as an unemotional stoic and opens herself to Peeta. In my novel, my character, Maya, must own up to her hidden past to save her marriage and reunite with her long-lost sister. These characters are forced to deal with their buried truths as the plot unfolds; in this way, plot can be seen as a vehicle for character change.

As you sketch a story’s plot, it’s important to understand that your characters’ layered identities will interact with it in interesting ways. This is what makes writing so much fun.

We writers are armed with endless possibilities because identity is complicated. To paraphrase George Saunders: readers are drawn to stories as a way to glimpse into the “black boxes” of each other’s minds. Being equipped with complicated “black boxes” of our own, writers hold enough raw material to craft a world of fascinating identities. 

Mining the truths, fictions, interpretations, and baggage we often cannot untangle within ourselves is a great starting point. Simply add a little imagination and test the created identity with a plot, and a messy and honest story will certainly emerge. With a little work, it can become one that connects to the messy, honest identities of readers everywhere.

Check out Nanda Reddy’s A Girl Within a Girl Within a Girl here:

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In the mid-80s, I was left in the care of my long-widowed grandmother every evening, freeing my parents to attend “Night University”—a chance to reclaim the education stolen from them during the decade-long Cultural Revolution. My father, a stubbornly avid reader even when books were supremely dangerous, chose Chinese Literature as his major. Post-graduation, he dedicated years to crafting stories worthy of publication. He’d take long walks and compose tales in his head. He’d return to his writing desk hollow-eyed and in a trance, pouring the brewing sentences out onto the page. He tried submitting his stories too, but quickly learned that whatever pieces he thought worthy could never pass the censors. By the time I was nearing graduation from high school, my father had all but abandoned his writerly dream. Xia Bei Zi Ba, he’d murmur to himself, boxing up his manuscripts. Wait until the next life.

(How Asian Americans Can Stitch Ancestral Stories Into Personal Narrative.)

I was due to choose a university field, and Dad realized what a bad influence he had been on me. I had ploughed through tomes of Chinese and Western classics, and written and rewritten multiple short stories, clutching my portfolio and harboring the same foolish, futile ambition. To undo the damage, he took me to visit a friend from his literature program, the only one who had succeeded as a full-time writer. Not so subtly, Dad asked his friend how he made his living. The answer was a snicker and a sigh, followed by his secret formula—toiling in advertisement and writing the occasional soul-sucking scripts for the nascent rom-com TV industry. At the end of the visit, he showed us his closet-sized office and pulled open a bottom desk drawer overflowing with paper.

“My reject drawer,” he announced. “Though, truthfully, most were never submitted; I already knew the verdict.”

“So what’s the point…” I blurted out thoughtlessly.

“Of writing them? Ha, your dad understands.” He clapped my father on the back. “Once in a while, you’ve got to let your instincts take flight, or you’ll burst, right?”

Dad nodded: “Xia Bei Zi Ba.” Then they both let out a quiet chuckle.

Six months later, I entered a sensible STEM major at a Shanghai university.

The sensible major landed me on a straight and narrow path that pleased my parents. It led me to North America and eventually to a busy but stable job that paid the bills. Caught in the fast-paced daily grind, I was put on autopilot, the unceasing demands extinguishing my once-burning itch to read and write again.

Ten years ago, after I became a Canadian citizen, a non-profit organization founded by a former Governor General contacted me. Their mission was to engage new Canadians in their political rights and responsibilities, and they wanted to do a focus-group study to find out why naturalized Chinese Canadians had one of the lowest voting rates compared to other ethnic groups. Twelve of us were ushered into a small, faintly smoky conference room in the heart of Chinatown to discuss our voting experiences. I was the only one at the table who had ever voted.

“What made you all want to come here today?” a young intern shadowing the group facilitator piped up, a touch of frustration in her voice.

A beat of collective silence.

“I heard you give out Canadian Tire gift cards,” one replied finally, prompting nods from several others. The facilitator, undeterred, cleared her throat and posed her next question: “What factors have prevented you from voting?”

Busy raising kids. Juggling two jobs. An ailing parent.

As the young intern, herself a Canadian-born Chinese, smiled and poured chrysanthemum tea around the table, the participants began to relax. “It’s best not to get involved in those things beyond our control,” a woman of my parents’ age whispered. “You never know who’s watching you.”

“What do you mean by that?” the facilitator pressed.

“You don’t want to be seen as political in any way,” a middle-aged man added. “Puts a target on your back.”

“But we are talking about Canadian politics,” I interjected. “Why would that put us in danger?”

Several shook their heads at my naivety. “Politics is politics. You pick a party to vote for here, but maybe someone on the mainland don’t like the party, and you end up in the crosshair. You never know.”

“Anyone can take a picture of you and send it through WeChat. I have a friend who went to a protest with her white boyfriend; she found her pictures online. Weird calls and email hacking followed. Canadian police won’t lift a finger to help.”

“Politics can get ugly so fast.”

“Best keep our heads down.”

“Haven’t we seen it all before we came here?”

But you DID come here! Escaped! We can’t all live in fear forever! I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue. The facilitator nodded nonstop, scribbling notes in a blur. She posed a few more questions, but nothing she said swayed the participants’ opinions. Time passed, marked by yawns, darted eyes, more conspiratorial remarks, and a few quiet scoffs commonly directed at well-meaning but clueless white folks. Finally, Canadian Tire gift cards were distributed, and the focus group was dismissed to everyone’s relief.

On the Chinese National Day that year, I was returning to my downtown office during lunch break when I suddenly found myself thrust into a jungle of opposing colors. On my left, an ocean of blazing red; on my right—a deep black sea that swallowed all light. My anxiety kicked into high gears, months of media onslaught reeling through my mind: the apologist Chinese mainlanders vs. the heroic Hong Kong protestors. Caught in between and caught off guard, I was ready to flee. But it was the national day after all; my urge to belong, somewhere, was overwhelming. I wanted to embrace the red and the black, each soul a should-have-been fellow tribesman. Give their cause a listen, I imagined saying to the red, we are all fighting for the same ideals. Turning to the black: Respect their rights to mark the day, to celebrate their birth identity as normal human beings; don’t fight the wrong enemy. I pivoted to the left, “Communist pig,” someone’s shouting. I pivoted to the right, “Don’t be a traitor,” a stern voice hurting my ear. Then I saw the Union Jack carving into the sky, clashing with a five-star red flag. I felt an ancient, primordial heat rising in my blood. I turned around to take a big gulp of air, only to have a large mic shoved in my face. A reporter’s blue eyes sparkled with anticipation. A loud expletive leapt out of me like a lightning strike. “I can’t wrap my head around this!” It must have sounded like a wail. And that was it, the reporter had moved on, leaving me with my five seconds of infamy.

Click to continue.

Shortly after, I enrolled in a part-time humanities graduate program. I spent the year immersing myself in Franz Fanon, colonialism, multiculturalism, and above all, Chinese history and politics. Growing up in Shanghai in the 80s and 90s, I was often puzzled by the adults around me, by their hidden ire and pain, their daily debates that unveiled old grudges from a tumultuous time barely traceable in my history books. Now I had access to the tabooed past of my birth country, but it wasn’t easy to understand. In Chinese politics class, the avuncular white professor struggled to piece together a cogent narrative about a country that was full of contradictions. A country that lifted billions of people out of poverty. A country that targets its own flesh and blood, quashing those who demand more freedom and rights. A country that still brands itself “communist.” A country’s powerful state capitalism and years of free wheeling and dealing has helicoptered some to the top of the world and sent others down the chute. A country whose name conjures up a Party and an autocrat, but also a land, a people, a culture, foods, sounds, and smells that, like Proust’s madeleine, could instantly resurrect the vivid world of a past life, sending waves of nostalgia through the diaspora.

During office hours, the same professor confided that he was barred from conducting fieldwork in mainland China. His attempts at remote research faltered too, as friends in China grew silent. “Luckily I secured tenure before they tightened the controls,” he lamented, weary. “I don’t know what the kids in the pipeline could do, if they’d ever have any kind of academic career.”

Xia Bei Zi Ba. I heard my father’s voice, traveling from my youth.

I developed a depression whose intensity ebbed and flowed, accompanied by a physical ache each morning. I tried psychotherapy but only made my roster of therapists sigh and shake their heads. But one beneficial outcome emerged: I began to journal. Later, reviewing my entries, I saw the incongruence, the prevailing fears, the lack of a coherent narrative of who I am and where I came from. Humans possess an innate drive to make sense of their history and experiences, and the ongoing collective amnesia had, piece by piece, taken away my humanity.

Then, on July 13, 2017, Liu Xiaobo died. I recalled my ignorance about the man when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize seven years earlier. I had never heard of him in China. I did some digging on the outside of the Great Firewall then. I learned he was one of the “Four Gentlemen” of the 1989 protests, who risked their lives negotiating with the Army to prevent a larger bloodshed. He was in and out of prison numerous times for political “crimes” and yet repeatedly refused the asylum offered by Western governments. I read his prolific writings on political reform in China—his love for his country palpable on every page—and how, with a few sick twists, those words could be used against him.

Above all, I learned that he belonged to a near-extinct breed, those few men and women in the entire history of humanity who were willing to give up everything just to be able to live truthfully. In Xiaobo’s case, he had so much to lose—a promising academic career, his first marriage, contact with his only son, friendships and reputation, and the freedom of himself and his loved ones. And yet, in an interview he gave shortly before his arrest in 2008, he told the reporter that he felt freer than ever—unlike his subservient and thus successful former colleagues, he was living entirely by his conscience.

I called my father in China the day after Xiaobo died a political prisoner. Dad was unaware of the death. After listening to my ramblings about the man, Dad sounded stricken with worry. “Don’t get yourself worked up about this,” he cautioned. “There’s nothing you or I could do. Give it time. Be patient and focus on your own life.” His raspy voice scraped my insides. I could see the blank look on his grooved face, the aged man who once taught me the importance of free speech, who had wasted his writerly talents and waited in vain for the tides to shift. I heard defeat and utter resignation in his voice when he hung up.

Unwisely, I called a Chinese friend in my sorry state and told him about a vigil for Xiaobo that night. The conversation quickly went off rails. “Why does this matter to you? To us?” he asked. I lost it. Like an idiot, I yelled on the phone, about our generation’s indifference to our history and future, how easily we were dazzled by materialism and subdued by censorship. “We’ve lived in fear for too long! It hisses in our ears and follows us wherever we go—even a passport change won’t stop it from inflicting on our minds. Is this dignity?” My friend mumbled a few words of sympathy and a lame excuse to get off the phone.

That evening, I stood among dozens of mourners in a candlelit vigil. As pink streaks of clouds turned to a bruised purple, we paid tribute to Xiaobo before a banner depicting the now-iconic “empty chair.” Tears obscured our vision, but a rare clarity struck me. Merely a month earlier, I had stood at a breathtakingly futuristic intersection in downtown Shanghai, wondering aloud why I had to live a self-exiling life in a foreign land.

Write, I heard a firm voice in my head now. No more Xia Bei Zi Ba.

Check out Su Chang’s The Immortal Woman here:

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I commonly hear this among my Asian American communities and my Pacific Islander cousins.

A piece of me is missing because I will never know—these stories were never passed down.

I wonder why there is such a low representation of Asian American and Pacific Islander authors in narrative nonfiction. Or at least I used to wonder.

(How My Historical Fiction Novel Has Become Real Again.)

Being able to trace your genealogy is a privilege. Speaking your ancestor’s native tongue is a privilege. Knowing your family’s stories is a privilege. A privilege that many of us don’t have because of trauma. Trauma from war. Trauma from colonization. Trauma from immigration. Trauma from parents who experienced their own trauma, therefore, could only be a fragment of the parents they could’ve been. We children only got “they tried their best.” Parts of our parents were left behind in their homelands and those parts were buried in the soil of their countries.

I work at a community college. Anecdotally, I have heard that English Language Learners departments in our community college system are dominated by white women who have studied another language through formal education or study abroad. I remember shaking my head sadly when I heard this. Because this is a privilege; a privilege that many in my Asian American and Pacific Islander communities cannot afford. We didn’t have the financial resources or we had to care for family members instead of intensely studying the language of our home countries. I have heard the same about religious evangelicals, who go to school to learn the languages of our countries to effectively convert us. White women and white evangelicals, it would appear, would have more understanding of our ancestral languages than we do. I can’t explain it well, but it feels stolen. Maybe because as long as these languages are not sitting with their rightful owners, it doesn’t belong to them.

I recently wrote a book about feeling misplaced as a Korean American woman in this country. And through it, I accidentally found myself. A girl who didn’t grow up hearing any of her ancestor’s stories somehow found a personal narrative to fill a book. And more. By looking into the void, leaning into the absence of story, I found an interpretation of what that silence meant. Silence meant trauma. Silence meant loss. Silence meant death. Silence meant paying the high price of immigrating to a country that penalizes Perpetual Foreigners who don’t fit into what it means to be American or more accurately, as white as possible. My mother lost her dignity when she came to this country. And that is how indignance became my permanent state of being.

Once I started researching the history of my land, I found that Japan colonized Korea between 1910 and 1945. Our language was banned, our books were burned, and hundreds of our women were stolen by Japanese soldiers to become sex slaves. “Comfort women,” as they called it. These are my ancestors.

Now, a skeptic could look at this example and ask, “How do you know one of your direct ancestors was taken?” My answer? It doesn’t matter. What happens to one happens to us all. To my fellow Asian Americans, this part is important: We belong to a group identity. I encourage you to put down the idea that we don’t have any of our ancestral stories. What happened on our land is our stories. Because we are all so profoundly interconnected. Adopt the stories of our land and take ownership of it.

I know that Korean American Day, a holiday celebrating the first wave of immigrants arriving in Hawaii, occurs annually on January 13. The Korean government had an agreement with the sovereign nation of Hawaii to help Koreans escape a war-torn country. For that, Hawaii always has a special place in my heart. When I used to visit regularly, I would pray thanks to the ‘Āina for being a place of refuge for my ancestors. I don’t know if my direct descendants ever touched the shore that day in 1903. And it doesn’t matter. They were my family.

Click to continue.

I also wonder if this openness in my heart invites in a different kind of interaction with my Hawaiian cousins. It has gotten to the point of phenomenal; the number of times a native Hawaiian I have never met, would gaze adoringly at my face and say, “I feel like I know you.” They recognize something in me. And I recognize something in them as well. And I believe it is because our ancestors intersected at some point in history.

I know you.

Invisible String Theory states that we are connected to those we love—outside the confines of time and space. It is not bound by the literal understanding of “to know a person.” And this can also be the start of building a personal narrative around our group experiences. Because of the great injustice many of our families experienced—unable to carry over our ancestors’ stories as a result of trauma and colonization—it is up to us to fill in the space.

There is a poem called “Oral Traditions,” by Travis Kaululā‘au Thompson and William Nu‘utupu Giles. They write, “…in ancient Polynesia, children with the best memory skills were chosen to be the culture keepers, storytellers, handpicked to be poets weaving today’s events into yesterday’s lore practicing immortality in breath.” This is a common practice amongst other Indigenous groups outside of Polynesia. Do you think the children were “assigned” to learn only their own direct ancestors? Unlikely. These children carried the stories of their community; it was shared ownership.

If you are ready to write your personal narrative, begin researching your land. And most importantly, listen to how your body reacts; listen to what your body is trying to tell you. The first time I read about genetic memory was in Stephanie Foo’s book, What My Bones Know. And it set me off into a revelation. Genetic memory is when an individual experiences trauma and their genetic makeup is forever altered as a result. And they pass that trauma onto their offspring, and so on and so forth. We also understand this to be “intergenerational trauma.” However, it reveals a deeper implication: That even without our ancestral stories, we would still be passing on trauma. That our bodies store the stories. This makes me think of adoptees, who perhaps were never told a single story of their families, but would still carry past events in their genetic makeup. I wonder, how many stories we could regain if we listened to our bodies.

There is a well-known book titled The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk. Kolk explains how trauma lives in your body from a more scientific perspective. How we physically react when we are triggered is indicative of how trauma manifests in the body; other physical manifestations like heart palpitations, tremors, sweating, etc. By this science, we could perhaps read events or accounts of what occurred in our home countries and hopefully gain something if our bodies react. From personal experience, I have witnessed my own body react in this way, such as when I read about the Korean sex slaves taken by the Japanese. I felt my body click into place in understanding.

When it comes to memory, ancestral stories, even family…I encourage Asian American writers to embrace holistic knowledge. Trust our connections to one another. To my fellow Asian Americans, we carry the stories of our communities—of our people. And these stories survive outside the confines of time and space. And to my fellow Koreans: The stories that I know with certainty are my direct ancestors? I welcome you to use them as your own to fill in the blank spaces in your own stories. They are yours just as much as they are mine. Because I don’t know where I end and where you begin. Because…

I feel like I know you. 

Check out Joan Sung’s Kinda Korean here:

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(Where Are the Toxic Families in Children’s Books?)

But this wasn’t just a pithy response that my parents leveled at a couple of kids who demanded the latest toys and gadgets. My dad worked a hard physical job for the New York City transit system. My mom stayed home until we started school, and then she worked part-time for a doctor’s office during those early years. My parents were teenagers when they had me, and not much older than that when my sister was born. 

We rented the apartment we lived in and drove clunkers. Once, our car was stolen in the middle of the night (I was supposed to go on my first-ever early morning fishing trip with Dad that same day). We lost another car in an accident. Our apartment building was broken into and our bikes—our primary source of summer entertainment—were stolen.

While my parents worked hard to shield us from our family’s financial difficulties, Dad would openly complain about “living paycheck to paycheck.” Our precarious economic reality was, like many families, the baseline, and narrated our day-to-day life; this was regardless of whether a specific setback, like a broken-down car or an unexpected bill, had occurred. When my parents eventually split, my mother struggled to stay on her feet until she remarried 10 years later. Household bills doubled, as they tend to do when parents no longer live together. As time went on, that old, childhood mantra grew legs and teeth: Money absolutely doesn’t grow on trees.

In all of this, my sister and I always had books, and we’d sprawl out on our bunkbeds or bedroom floor and read, read, read. I loved when book fairs came to my classrooms. There was nothing like those days when fulfilled book orders arrived, and for just a few bucks, I went home with a fresh short stack of brand-new stories.

Decades later, I was given the opportunity of a lifetime to become a writer for children. Just before I began writing my debut novel, Jawbreaker, I taught children’s literature at the college level. It was here that I, alongside my students, examined classic and contemporary books for themes and messages that were present—and absent. Realistic stories for children highlighting the space between poverty and having everything were hard, if not impossible, to come by.

It seems trite and obvious to point out that there is tremendous distance between poverty and having everything. As a child, some of my favorite books featured economically privileged characters who lived and formed a successful babysitting business in one of the most expensive states in the US—even more expensive than my home state of New York. And when I wasn’t reading about the babysitting adventures of young girls my own age, I indulged in Nancy Drew’s detective chops and her skillful navigation of one mystery to the next—all while driving her blue convertible from witness to witness, suspect to suspect.

The books I had access to as a child represented one kind of socioeconomic experience. When I attended school in the 80s and 90s, my peers’ dads—many of them, anyway—were accountants and executives. Some were business owners (this is an understatement—I attended junior high school with one of the heirs to the Arizona Iced Tea fortune). Some of their families had vacation homes in the mountains or on the beach. 

Such is the reality of life in our nation’s major cities: It’s normal (and perplexing) to observe how extreme wealth exists alongside middle, working class, and poor families. As a matter of geography, our children often wind up in the same public school classrooms. What I didn’t know then, but can assume now as a teacher and writer for children, is that many of my more well-off peers easily saw their lives reflected back at them in the literature that populated our teachers’ bookshelves.

But I also had classmates who I suspected came from families like my own—parents scraping by to make ends meet. And I’m sure there were children in my classes whose families struggled even harder than anything I’d ever personally known. But if it’s taken this long for realistic depictions of poverty to finally begin showing up in contemporary children’s literature—such as Matt de la Peña’s Last Stop On Market Street and The Benefits of Being an Octopus, by Ann Braden—stories that fall somewhere between poverty and economic privilege still remain relatively few and far between.

For this reason, writing books featuring nuanced main characters who have everything they need, but whose parents simultaneously struggle to make ends meet is one of my main goals. In my debut novel Jawbreaker, and also my upcoming novel Slouch, the middle schoolers I feature deal with the same things most adolescents deal with in life and literature: friendship, complicated family dynamics, building self-esteem and overcoming various obstacles. However, the young characters I create also navigate the nuances of how their parents have to make ends meet, such as when Max’s parents pick up extra shift-work in Jawbreaker. Or it might come in the form of lamenting over a car that’s on its last legs, or struggling to pay rent, as with Stevie’s parents in my forthcoming novel, Slouch. 

As a result of watching their parents struggle, the school-age characters I create contend with extreme guilt over expressing their own needs, all the while enjoying the occasional take-out meal or gift from their parents. For families that live in the in-between, it’s never only about financial struggle. They occasionally find ways to indulge, too, like so many families in real life.

My hope for all of my books is that they speak to children who may not otherwise see their socioeconomic realities reflected in the literature they read and to help build empathy in children who’ve not had those experiences. My hope for the industry is that we continue to create stories for and about children with families who oscillate between having everything they need one minute, and struggling to pay bills the next. Such economic realities exist not only across many families today, but also within them. All children deserve to have their lives reflected back at them in literature – for some, it can make all the difference. 

Check out Christina Wyman’s Slouch here:

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