Hello and good morning, Joanna. How are you. I'm great, how
are you? Absolutely fantastic and very proud of your brand new book. This
is not just a great story, this book is a work of art.
Thank you so much. I mean, I mean you as an adult.
I go from page to page and I'm just blown away. I want to
see this in a live gallery scene is what I want to do with your
physical words written on the pages. I would love that so much. Amanda
Pumoapakis art is just stunningly gorgeous. How did you guys even team up?
Yeah, that's that's a great question. It's actually a really unique story for
most picture books. So the idea for this book really came from my editor,
who, in the middle of the pandemic, at the height of you
know, very modern day anti Asian violence and reveretic she said, you know,
I think we need a book that kind of tells our his and just
something that's really powerful in this way. And she didn't give me any direction
than that, but she said, I'd love you to write it, and
I would like amand up home Goo to pocket and illustrate it. And up
until that point, a man I had never done a picture book she's a
multidisciplinary artist. She does murals and installations and like public works campaigns all over
the world. And so I met up with Amanda's in New York and I'm
in California, and she happened to be in Oakland painting a mural. So
I went up and I had lunch with her and sort of talked to her
through the idea of the book. And she was very smart, like,
that sounds like a great idea, But why don't you show me the man
you script for her before I commit to a project. So after a year,
at like a year and some change later, after I finished the book,
I sent it to her and just I'm so grateful that she was moved
by the words and decided to take on the project, because she just adds
such symbolism and layers and intentionality in her art that I don't think anyone else
could have for this specific project. And isn't it strange in the way that
you know, because so many children and young readers judge a book by how
thick the book is, and you're saying that it took over a year to
put this book together, and yet it's like, whoa, it takes us
ten or fifteen minutes to read it, but it took you over a year
to bring it to us. Yeah, it's true. I mean I researched
the book for a big majority of that year. It was just researching all
of the history that inspired the way that I wrote the book, and so
much of which is captured in the words of the book and included in the
back matter. I actually not so much. There's like a fraction of the
history I learned that's included in the back matter, but it's there, hopefully
as an invitation for people to continue learning about the history, so much of
which has really been erased and just made invisible in our history books. But
that inspires every word and all of the art on these pages. Being a
martial artist, one thing that my taekwondo instructor made us do. He says,
before you even learn this art, you have got to learn the history
of Korea and and that and that's the one thing that has always been so
heavy on my heart, because I mean, you're doing that exactly here.
You are showing people the history before we got to this moment of right now,
right And I think it's so important to learn that. I love that
that's what your taekwondo teacher taught. Because I the more I learned, Because
I feel almost unrooted up until I wrote research and wrote this book, I
feel like I've gained roots and a connection to shoulders that I stand on,
that all of us really stand on, and just a deeper understanding of who
we are as Asians but as humans and who we always have been, and
also who we can be and must be in the future. Being an educator
that's helped you out when it comes to making that connection with readers, hasn't
it. I think it has. I mean in this book in particular,
the educator part of me really comes too strong in that back matter, where
it's like several pages of lots of for every single page of the book,
there are guiding questions to help readers continue their learning, and then bullet points
of things quite literally that were included in my draft that I sent to my
editor, that sent to manage to show this is all the history that inspired
each word or each line, so that they would know the significance. And
I just matter for me, like the majority of readers probably also don't know
the history because we don't learn it. I don't know the history. So
my hope is that people will flip through the back to look at that history
and then to go back into the text and see what all the deeper meaning
in the layers in the text are. And I think that back matter really
comes from my experience as an educator and my desire to have people continue to
learn. Can you imagine if you would have walked in the library and spotted
this book as a child, Oh gosh, I can't. I mean,
even just the pictures alone, the way Amanda drew such a diversity of Asian
people and the way that they look, but also the expressions, the strength
and the power and the softness on their faces. They're not It's just so
different than the ways that Asian people are typically depicted in the media and in
Hollywood, And so just that the images alone, I think would have been
game changing for me as a kid. Probably one of the biggest ones that
touched me the stories when they came. Oh my god, my heart continues
to swell on this one. Yeah, when they came for that which was
not there as that page I think really speaks to so much of the history
of imperialism and colonialism, of the ways that the West has gone into Asian
countries and you know, really done a lot of things and taken things and
effective systems. They are such that many people were either literally forced in Chaine
to come or forced by circumstance to come here because of the pillaging and ramaging
of the homes and cultures and ways of life that they knew. And I
think that that connection was also really new for me and understanding even my own
personal history of why my family came and how connected that is to the systems
and the histories and patterns in the world. One thing that listeners need to
understand, especially the YA readers that want to be writers as well, and
that is is that you said something a few minutes ago that was very important
the research that you put into this product. And the thing is is that
that for and readers need to understand. This isn't just going to Google or
Yahoo. You physically went out there and dug in to get the stories.
Yeah, I really did. I mean I read. I mean it's like
the pandemic, so I couldn't go anywhere and physically interview people. But I've
read tons of books. I reread some books and just took notes. I
watched documentaries, I did do interviews, and I try to visit as much
as I could historical sites that were accessible to me, and I just for
me as an author, I owe and even in a fictional silly book,
I always do research. It just helps to ground me and help me find
the through line and the heart of the story that I want to tell.
I mean, because you give them an identity, but it's in your words.
There's no cut and paste here. These are your words, and you're
giving them an identity. That's right, right. I think it's loss about
me giving an identity and me trying to capture, yes, like the community
and who we are and who we always have been, but in ways that
speak from our hearts instead of ways that other people want to portray us.
Is this a book of declaration? Yeah? Absolutely, I mean it's I
think it's a call to action. It's a declaration. It's a call to
unity and solidarity. It's a call to just use our voices and rise up
together in our community, but also in connection with other communities as well.
My hope is that you know that this does speak to the Asian community,
but also that as other people outside that community read it, they can find
also shared points of history, of experience, of feeling and just recognize like
a greater common humanity and need for all of us to be more united.
I wonder how many elders are going to pick this book up and are going
to be blown away by it because because of your truth and your transparency in
it. Yeah, I think that's such an interesting question. I find that
because of the ways that other generations have processed, or have been raised,
or have found ways to survive, something that feels so distinctly like a call
to action and change and revolution and resistance is sometimes dying in a way that
has shaken, you know, out of a space of assimilation and fitting in
and climbing the ladder. My hope is that it's drying in a good way
that helps people rethink the ways they've always thought and will shift the ways that
they act so that you know, we can all feel that greater light together.
Yeah, where can people go to find out more about you and to
give you lots of love? Because you've got so many books out there that
need to be in people's personal libraries. Oh, thanks so much. I
mean, my website is Joanna Horight dot com. You can find all of
my books on there. You can find most of my books in almost any
anywhere you find books, And I would always support people to check out their
local indie bookstores and if they're not there or at the library, you can
always request and then people will know that there's interest. Oh man, you
got to come back to this show anytime in the future that you know,
the door is always going to be open for you. Thank you so much.
It's such a pleasure to be here today. Will you'd be brilliant today?
Okay, okay, you too.