Our children need to talk and learn about scary stuff going on in our world today, even if the conversation is difficult for adults, whether it’s the death of a child or the Earth without humans.
That’s the message from award-winning Minnesota writers Kao Kalia Yang and John Coy, who will talk about their new picture books in a virtual conversation this week.
Yang, one of the country’s first published Hmong-American writers, honors a Hmong family who lost a child in “The Shared Room.” Coy celebrates the 50th anniversary of Earth Day in “If We Were Gone: Imagining the World Without People,” a story of good things that will happen to the Earth if humans no longer inhabit it.
“We need authors willing to write hard books with compassion,” says Yang, born in a refugee camp in Thailand. She lives on the East Side of St. Paul with her husband, Aaron Hokanson, their 6-year-old daughter and their 4-year-old twin boys.
“I want to prepare my children for all of life, how to sit with sadness as well as happiness and joy,” Yang says.
John Coy is struck by how many children are being taken to the Minneapolis memorial for George Floyd, whose death sparked protests around the world.
“Watching kids walk down that street with its powerful list of names of those killed by police, I think parents are having that conversation with their kids,” he says. “We all know that kids are able to understand things in different ways than adults assume and it happens at a younger age than some adults wish. Seeing kids go through this COVID crisis with their lives turned upside down, no way we should ever say the best thing is not to talk about that. That makes no sense. The kids are there already.”
HONORING GHIA
Kalia Yang’s “The Shared Room” (University of Minnesota Press), illustrated with cultural authenticity by Hmong American artist Xee Reiter, tells of how a family comes to terms with the death of a daughter/sister in the depths of winter “in a little house on St. Paul’s east side.” Only warmth of the fire in the fireplace draws them together in their sorrow. When the parents ask the girl’s brother if he wants to move into his sister’s room, he cries for the first time, realizing she is never coming back. But as the boy goes to sleep in the bedroom he’s calmed by the quiet and comforted by knowing he sees what his sister saw.
Yang wrote “The Shared Room” for the family of Ghia Nah, who was 6 when she drowned three years ago in the Lake Elmo swimming pond.
“I met that little girl many times. She came to my readings from the beginning,” Yang recalls. “One evening after a reading at Metro State we took a photo together. She said: ‘When I grow up I want to be a writer. Not just any writer, but one like you.’ That stayed in my heart. I tried to tell her story tenderly and well so she lives on. All children need to learn to sit comfortably in a place that’s hard and dark and survive together. Sometimes the warm fire (that drew the fictional family together) has to be enough.”
Yang, newly appointed Edelstein-Keller writer-in-residence at the University of Minnesota, also writes memoir for adults, including “The Song Poet,” currently being turned into an opera, and “The Latehomecomer,” which was widely praised. Her previous picture book “A Map Into the World” won a 2020 Minnesota Book Award.
Yang acknowledges that “The Shared Room” has elicited powerful responses. “Some love it and others think it’s way too sad and depressing,” she said calmly. “At this point in my career everybody has a different aesthetic about my work. This book goes beyond aesthetics to the mental health approach to feelings of sadness and loss in our society. We live in a grief-averse society. All the more reason for this book to enter into the world.”
Coy, who considers Yang “a treasure” and an “extraordinary writer, thinker and speaker,” understands her book because he was a year old when his 2-month-old sister died.
“At that time people believed it was best not to talk to kids. Nobody talked with me about what happened,” he recalled. “The absence of talking didn’t make it easier, or go away. I admire Kalia for writing a book that provides an opportunity for parents to talk with kids who have gone through something difficult. She is so willing to lead people to discuss these things in a kind of welcoming, inviting way. That’s exactly what we need more of in picture books.”
THE EARTH DOESN’T NEED US
When Yang was asked by the Loft to do a webinar about writing for children for hard times, she invited Coy to join her because she admires his work.
Coy lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Fiona McCrae, publisher/director of Minneapolis-based Graywolf Press. A Minnesota Book Award-winner, he writes books for children and young adults, including picture books such as such as “Two Old Potatoes and Me” and sports-oriented stories with basketball themes like “Hoop Genius.”
Interest in the environment began early for Coy. When he was 11 he attended events celebrating the first Earth Day in 1970 and he was strongly affected by Alan Weisman’s 2007 book “The World Without Us.”
In “If We Were Gone” (Millbrooke Press) Coy writes in a nonthreatening way about how things would change if humans disappeared: “Pipes would burst/and pavement buckle…The air would become cleaner/with each rainfall…” New York-based illustrator Natalie Capanelli’s colorful illustrations show a world at peace where everything thrives without people.
The book was born when Coy was talking with his friend, poet Juliet Patterson, about climate change and what was going to happen to the world. Coy’s thought: “Well, the world is going to be here. It’s us we need to be worrying about.”
When Coy was working on his book he couldn’t have known how his vision would be playing out now as people stay indoors because of the virus. News stories tell of smog-free skies around the world. Creatures are swimming in Venice’s newly clear canal waters. Lions lounge on quiet roads in Africa, and bears are having a ball in America’s national parks.
“It’s extraordinary how quickly things can change,” Coy marvels. “It’s such a reminder of how, when we change our behavior, the Earth responds quickly. If anybody needed evidence, we are getting it regularly right now.”
Coy’s book has met some of the same criticisms as Yang’s in terms of age appropriateness. Some wonder whether kids will be able to handle the idea of humans vanishing.
“I never had a single kid raise that point,” says Coy, who spends a lot of time visiting classrooms. “In some ways kids are more able to handle a big idea than adults, who get too specific, asking questions like, ‘How would that happen?’ To kids it’s the idea. Kids have a strong sense of fairness. They don’t have such a strong belief that humans are superior to everything else. That openness allows them to consider the possibility of what would happen.”
Coy sees our unpredictable times as an opportunity for humans to reset, changing our habits because climate changes are happening now.
“There is something about the idea of exploring the possibility we might not be here that can help us look differently at how we are here, what we do and where we go,” he says. “There is no guarantee we are going to stay here doing what we want to do. If you look at what percent of species has gone extinct (since life first appeared on Earth) it’s 99.9. What makes us assume we are in that one-tenth of 1 percent that will survive?”
Coy and Yang have written very different books, but they are united in their belief that children’s picture books can illuminate hard times with hope.
IF YOU GO
WHAT: Kao Kalia Yang and John Coy discuss Writing the Hard Books for Hard Times, based on their new children’s picture books.
WHEN: 2 p.m. Thursday, June 25, presented by the Loft Literary Center.
ADMISSION/REGISTRATION: Meeting link at loft.org/events/upcoming-events. Suggested $10 admission, but pay what you can or free.
About the illustrator
When Xee Reiter got a call from Kalia Yang inviting her to illustrate “The Shared Room,” Reiter was amazed at this chance to make her debut in children’s books.
“I can’t believe it’s been two years since the day Kalia reached out to me,” Reiter says. “As an artist you start to lose hope. I thought, ‘is this for real?’ ”
Kalia didn’t know of any Hmong illustrators of literary children’s books, and she was able to do something about that by reaching out to Reiter. “My personal mission is to open options to facilitate new voices,” she says. “I didn’t want to be the only Hmong in children’s literature. It would be lonely.”
Reiter, who grew up in North Carolina, is a perfect partner for Yang. Both women had refugee parents, live on the East Side of St. Paul, and have three children. Reiter and her husband, Nate, are parents of 14- and 13-year-old daughters and a 9-year-old son.
“I was a very quiet kid,” Reiter recalls. “I didn’t know about (American) society, so I started to discover I could get my voice out and connect by drawing pictures. I make art to tell stories.”
After talking about “The Shared Room” in detail, Yang and the editors at University of Minnesota Press gave Reiter complete freedom to bring the Hmong family in Yang’s story to life and put them in an authentic setting.
“I didn’t go to school for art. I didn’t know where to begin and I was a bit nervous,” Reiter says of accepting Yang’s invitation. “I started by looking at the heart of the book. It’s crucial for the artist to pay respects to what’s in the pages.”
Reiter admits there were times when she had to stop work on the illustrations for a while.
“It was a very personal and lonely journey to be surrounded by my family while I was working on the book sitting in my dining room where there is the most light,” she recalls. “I had to step away from it because I got too emotional. It’s easy to get lost when you start to empathize with the subject you are illustrating, when you have to fit in their shoes. I have not lost anyone but I know how I would feel if something happened to my kids. I wouldn’t know how to deal with it.”
It was also important to Reiter that her illustrations “tell a universal story while being true to experience as a Hmong American. I did that with details specifically relatable to Hmong families.”
That’s why she included pictures of a little stool, an important element in Hmong homes, as well as mismatched furniture and sheets, and a fly swatter hanging on the living room wall.
Now that “The Shared Room” is published, Reiter has received book deal offers from two independent publishers. She’s also working on a graphic novel about her grandmother, who was a shaman.
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June 21, 2020 at 08:00PM
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