Juan Pablo Villalobos On Writing Tough Non-Fiction For Teens

Mindy:             Today's guest is Juan Pablo Villalobos, author of The Other side: Stories of Central American Teen Refugees Who Dream of Crossing the Border. Juan Pablo joined me today to talk about the experiences of young refugees and his approach to compiling their stories. Your upcoming title, The Other side: Stories of Central American Teen Refugees Who Dream of Crossing the Border is very timely, of course, and it's sure to be a conversation starter. So could you talk a little bit about what you see as the goal for a piece of young adult nonfiction like this?

Juan Pablo:       Well, first of all, I have to say that actually in Spanish, this book was published by my regular publisher in a Chronicle collection. And it's not exactly addressed to young readers. I mean it's, it's a direct address to the general public. And I think that maybe this book is actually to be written, not just for teenagers. And I thought that it was very important to tell these stories about these teenagers who are fighting for having a future and that their stories can be read exactly by equals in the United States who don't have these problems. I hope that maybe this can contribute to a better understanding of the situation and hopefully this could help to have a better situation for these kids and teenagers in the future.

Mindy:             Stories like this hopefully work to build empathy in their minds.

Juan Pablo:       Yes, empathy is exactly the word for my book. I was thinking the whole time about how to create not just a sensation of sorrow, of fear, but also a more profound and deep understanding of what is the motivation and origin of the stories of these kids. So first of all, I as a, as a writer, and then the readers can just for these maybe couple of hours can feel and understand what is to live like that. To have or not, not to have any hope in the future. You have to run away from your home because you have no options. Because actually one of the important decisions about the book, uh, was to talk about refugees and not immigrants. Because actually these kids are refugees. I mean, they don't have an option to stay in their countries because they are at risk, risk of death, risk of having a whole life. I mean, they don't have an option. So they have to run away. And that's why they decide to make this terrible and very dangerous journey through Mexico. Knowing that in that journey they will be at risk too. But at least they have a choice, a choice to survive. Some of them, sadly, not all of them, some of them succeed. These are their testimonies.

Mindy:             So tell us a little bit about the research that was involved. How did you find these refugees and how did you get them to open up to you about their lives?

Juan Pablo:       Well, obviously I, it had to work hard with NGOs and lawyers that defend and help these kids. This is something that you can't do on your own. I mean, and not just because you can't identify and go directly to these kids, but mainly because you have to take care of them. I mean working through these NGOs and through these lawyers was important not just to have access and select the kids, but also because they know who is prepared to tell their story and who isn't prepared. I mean in a way that when you are interviewing these kids, you can notice that sometimes they are suffering while they are telling their stories because obviously there is some traumatic situations in the past of these kids that are terrible and it's not easy to share with an unknown, a writer with all the good intentions will try to tell their stories. So in the first stage, there's this very careful process through NGOs and lawyers and that I went to the, to the United States, to New York and Los Angeles to interview them. You have to create a safe space, try to connect emotionally and try to make them feel that they can trust in you. Happily, that happened with these eleven kids that opened up to me and shared with me their stories.

Mindy:             And sitting and talking with them, doing this research. I'm sure it's very harrowing for them obviously, but also for you because you're interacting with them and obviously as a writer, empathy must be in your toolbox. And so I'm sure it's difficult. What was it like to have these conversations to learn about their lives and their decisions and then see them go along their way to, you know, their eventual fate. Are you in contact with them?

Juan Pablo:       Well, there's two things that were really interesting. I mean in theory were very interesting. There was a lot of confusion in the way they were telling the stories. Obviously they can't remember things exactly as they happen, not just because it was, as I said before, a traumatic experience. But also because they are kids and learning to tell your story. It's an important part of growing up. But when you have nine years or 11 years or 13, you still don't have all the strategies to tell your own story. So it was very interesting to notice that they still don't have the knowledge to tell their stories in a very structured way. And at the first moment, I mean the first interviews I had an approach similar to being a journalist. I was very worried about details. For example, trying to understand exactly what happened after the first interviews when I noticed this that they have these confusions in their stories.

Juan Pablo:       I came out to the conclusion that this was part of their stories. I mean that I had to respect that, that I couldn't push them to try to remember the things exactly as they happened because actually they don't know. They don't remember and that maybe it was very interesting literarily to reflect that on the book. To respect the original version, not to correct, not to make the work that a journalist would do. Trying to put the pieces together and trying to fact checking the the kids, but to share with the readers these confusions. I thought that that was interesting and actually I had some funny experiences with the translations of the book. Obviously I, I interviewed the kids in Spanish and I work after that with my translators into English and into German. My German publisher wrote to me with some corrections suggested for the book and he was like trying exactly to do what I couldn't do.

Juan Pablo:       And I decided not to do with the stories of this kid saying like, there are some mistakes in the stories, we should take care of this. And I said, no, it's like that. You know what kind of mistakes they were. for example, geographic mistakes. Like when we crossed the border, we arrived to Monterey and it's not Monterey, it's not in the border with Guatemala. Monterey, it's in the North of Mexico. But they are so afraid and so confused when they made this journey that obviously they are not aware of the names of the cities, the dates, the chronology of the facts that happened, et cetera. So that was very interesting. And I decided that this was a book of literature and that this wasn't a journalistic book, that it wasn't necessary to make the fact checking of the stories. And that takes me to the second part of my response that is about not to push them because at some points of their stories they still suffer when they remember.

Juan Pablo:       So if they are telling you, for example, a teenager from Honduras, the last story of the book was telling me about how she was raped in Honduras and she was crying. Well while she was telling me the story, and obviously she was talking about this in fragments, like with a lot of confusion, it wasn't important to get all the details because as I said, it wasn't my intention to make a journalistic work, but it was also like a, like a moral or ethic commitment from my, my point of view, not to push her to make her suffer more because it wasn't necessary to get more details and about my, my emotional implication on that. Yeah, it's true that it's difficult and, and that is hard to talk with them. But at the same time I had all the, I had it very, very clear that my position was very privileged and that I couldn't compare my suffering or my problems or my conflict with the situation that they were living. So for me that suffering or that conflict wasn't important. I mean, it was insignificant. Who am I? Who am I? I'm, I'm an, I'm also an immigrant. I'm a Mexico living in Spain from a long time, but I'm a a privileged, privileged one. I came here to study a PhD. I always had a legal residency, so I can't compare my situation to them.

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Mindy:             You also write short stories and you have several adult novels published. So when you are writing fiction or something different from The Other Side, do you approach the craft differently when you're a genre is changing like that?

Juan Pablo:       First of all, this is nonfiction. It's my first book of nonfiction. I worked a lot on articles and papers that are nonfiction, but this is my first book of nonfiction and this is my first book for young readers. So it was different. Yeah, because when I write fiction I had this total freedom to make the decisions, the creative decisions. And when you're working with, with these kinds of books, like The Other Side, you have like a frame. And obviously I make a lot of decisions as similar to those that I take when I write a fiction book. Because actually my idea was to take the testimonies just like a base to build something using strategies from fiction. And I should say that maybe you can read the book as nonfiction in the content. I mean the stories are real, but it's fiction in the form and actually it's almost like a short story book.

Juan Pablo:       And when I say that is fiction, it's like fiction in the form. I can put as a very simple example in one of the stories, the one called, uh, It Was Like A Current, But When I Touched it, It Was Just Ice. That story. It's a diary. This kid, he didn't write a diary, so I organized the information of his story, like a diary and I mean all, all the things that you read in that diary are true. But I decided to tell them as a diary. The decision of what to put first and the days are similar to those of the origin story, but the form is fiction. There's no diary. This kid, he didn't write a diary, so I organize the information as a diary, but all you read on that story is true. It happened.

Mindy:             What made you decide to approach that particular story in that form?

Juan Pablo:       I had to make that kind of decisions the whole time. And actually that happened because I had a huge crisis when I came back to Barcelona, after I made the interviews. I had all the testimonials recorded and I hear over and over the testimonials as I write them. I noticed that if I just make a book of testimonies, and I mean if I respect 100% the version and the way the kids were telling their stories, I felt that maybe the book would be maybe repetitive, that it can lose some of his power to create empathy. I remember that I wrote it to my publisher at FSG to Grace Kendall, and I asked her to give me permission to work with the material and I said, I need some kind of freedom to work with this. If we really want this to work, I need to use some strategies from fiction, but it will be a nonfiction book.

Juan Pablo:       She liked the idea and she wrote to me and to enthusiastically to tell me, yeah, please go on. So I then went back to the material and I selected some excerpts, some fragments, and I decided the point of view, I decided whether in each story to select some fragments and even to decide not to tell the whole story of each kid, but to select a fragment that the reader can feel like the, like the whole book was like a puzzle. Like if you read one, one of the stories is happening back in El Salvador or Honduras or Guatemala. Another story is in the border between Mexico and Guatemala and other stories in Mexico. Another one is in the border between Mexico and the United States. And then you have stories that happened in the freezers in the States or in New York, et cetera. And so reading the whole book, complete the whole picture.

Mindy:             I like that. I love that blending of the fiction approach to nonfiction. I think that's really interesting. So you mentioned that this was your first time writing something for young adults, but at the same time you believe that this, anyone can read this and relate and benefit from it. So when you went about putting together the book, were you specifically framing it for teens or were you just telling the story?

Juan Pablo:       I wasn't worried about being inappropriate, first of all, because I believe that you can't be condescending with the readers in general, not just with young readers, but in general. You can't think like, Oh, I maybe put this in a different way because my reader is not that smart. He won't understand right? No. Not just young readers in general. After this books, I wrote a children's book, my first children's book, and uh, and I remember that I had this profound feeling that I have to make the same work that I make when I write a novel for adults, but that I had to be very conscious of who was the reader, not for to decide not to talk about something because it can be inappropriate. No. Just because you have to find an adequate tone, a point of view strategy to get the attention of the readers, et cetera. But at the end, I remember that, that a friend of mine, a writer who has a lot of experience writing for children, he told me something like books for children are the same. Just don't use bad words and don't talk about sex and drugs, but the rest is the same. I mean existential conflict, all the feelings that you have, all the intellectual problems that you can put in the novel. It's the same. Just be aware not to talk about drugs and sex and everything will be fine. Wonderful. It was a very useful recommendation.

Tracy Chevalier on Writing Historical Fiction

Mindy:                         Today's guest is Tracy Chevalier author of Girl with a Pearl Earring. Her 10th novel, A Single Thread released recently. Tracy joined me today to talk about the plight of "excess women" in England post World War One, how writing leads her to hobbies - not the other way around, -and how a writer needs something in their lives that isn't word-based.

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Mindy:                         A Single Thread is your newest title and it deals with the concept of surplus women, women who are unable to marry in the aftermath of World War One. So how did you become aware of this phenomenon and what made you want to write about it?

Tracy:                           I approached the story from a different angle and I started with cathedrals. I've always loved them and I wanted to set a book in a cathedral. And so I was looking at various cathedrals I could write about. And I went to Winchester cathedral, which is about an hour south of London where I live. And when I was looking around, I noticed these cushions and kneelers that had been embroidered like a needle point and read that they were made in the 1930s by a volunteer group of women. And that was what started me, thought I wanna write about that volunteer group and those women making the, the kneelers and cushions. And once I started research, that's when I came across this idea of the surplus woman, which was a, a label given by the newspapers for all these women who were unable to marry. And that's when I started to get more interest in this concept of the, of the woman who is outside of society.

Tracy:                           Because the world at that time was set up expecting women to marry and there weren't many other opportunities open for them. A woman at that time, at least in England, she might work for a bit. So she could be a teacher or a nurse or a clerk or a secretary or typist. But the moment she marries, she stops working. Really what she's meant to do in the world is become a wife and mother. I think the press at any rate, were kind of horrified by the thought that there were almost 2 million more women than men after World War One. So what were we going to do with this problem women? These surplus women? And I thought, I want to create a surplus woman who manages to make a life for herself despite what society throws at her, or keeps from her ,that she manages to find some sort of independence. So that's how that came about.

Mindy:                         Even in today's world where we've come somewhat farther, I feel this like sense of hopelessness and doom when you're talking about it. These women who had no chance of finding a husband simply because there weren't any men, uh, that's, it's a horrible thought that the women were entirely dependent upon a man for any type of status or role in society.

Tracy:                           Yeah, exactly. And I have to say that we've come a long way obviously since, since those days. Um, so women have more opportunities to higher education, which they didn't so much then. And, and many more careers are open to us. But you know, the funny thing is I, and I didn't really, really understand this until I was in the middle of writing the book. That and also since I've been hearing reactions from people who've read it, single women who've read it have said, you know, it's not so different from then, um, because we're still looked down on because we're not married. And one of them told me, Oh, you know, if I go to a dinner party, it's all coupled up. And then there's me, I feel like I'm not listened to with as much intent as others. She was pointing out at one point in A Single Thread, Violet Speedwell, the heroine, says she notices that she's sitting in this group of embroiderers and mostly the married women talk and the single women remain silent because nobody really wants to pay attention to them.

Tracy:                           The marriage gives you status and a voice. The friend now was saying it's not as different as all that. And I thought that really pained me. And the other thing is there's a, there's a scene in the book, Violet strikes out on this independent life. She leaves her family behind and, or she has been living with our mother and one of the things she does differently is she goes on her summer holiday or summer vacation, not with her family. She goes on her own and she goes on this walking trip across the countryside from Winchester to Salisbury, which is about 26 miles. And there's a path you could do along there. And she takes it and she gets into some trouble because she's on her own. And when I was doing research, I decided to walk that I wanted to walk that route to make sure that I was getting things right and my husband and I were going to do it one weekend and then for, for one reason or other we couldn't go.

Tracy:                           And then a couple of weekends later I thought, well, I can go. He's away. I maybe I'll just do it on my own. And then I thought, no, I don't really want to walk through fields on my own because as a woman, I'm still a little nervous being so isolated. And it really surprised me that even after all this time, you know, women can walk on their own, they're not stared at quite so much in the same way. But nonetheless, there is still that fear, that underlying fear that you're going to run into a man in a cornfield on your own and then what do you do? And that's exactly what happens to her. And so I thought, wow, maybe things haven't changed that much.

Mindy:                         No, unfortunately you do have to think about those things. I'm an avid hiker and I've always wanted to do, not necessarily the whole Appalachian trail, but you know, a leg. And I'd love to do the Appalachian trail, but I'm, I wouldn't do it on my own.

Tracy:                           No, of course not. And you'd never get a man saying that. They might say, Oh, you know, I don't want to do it on my own because I get bored. Or suddenly, but they wouldn't say because I feel unsafe. Right.

Mindy:                         Because I would be in danger. The world is different. It's a different point of view when you're a woman. Sometimes men lose sight of that because they've never had to experience it.

Tracy:                           Yeah, yeah. Very true.

Mindy:                         So you mentioned the embroidered cushions, the kneeling pillows in the novel. Violet becomes a volunteer embroiderer and I was reading up on your own hobbies and you do some quilting. So do elements of your own life sometimes become peppered in throughout your novels?

Tracy:                           Well, it actually weirdly works the other way around. I quilt because I wrote a book about a quilter and I learned to quilt so that I could describe it. It isn't that I quilted first and I thought, Oh, I'd like to write about that. Oddly enough, my books are leading me into my hobbies. And for this, for A Single Thread, I learned how to do needlepoint. It's a canvas embroidery is the term in England in the 30s but I learned how to do it myself so that I could write about it more accurately in the book. But I do like making things. I'm not very good at making things, but I like making them anyway. You know, our ancestors all made their clothes, they made their food, they made their tools. And it's kind of nice to reconnect with that more practical side of us because so much of my life is about words, you know, I'm either talking or writing or reading and it's feels so good to make something. It's a, it's a nonverbal activity and it's wonderful to hold it in your hands afterwards. That kind of tactile, Hey, I made this feeling is really great.

Mindy:                         Yes, I agree. And it's interesting you're talking about your whole life being words. I am similar. I also am an author and obviously I run this podcast, but, and of course read constantly. Uh, and I too have found that I'm at a point where I need to go do something else sometimes. Even watching TV doesn't work for me because you're still absorbing words. I, in order to actually break out of that and go do something not related to words, I have to knit or garden, I do cross-stitch the something like that. So that I'm not surrounded by story because you can become a little, I don't know what's the word I'm looking for

Tracy:                           Oversaturated.

Mindy:                         There you go. That's perfect.

Tracy:                           Yeah. I think what happens too is when, when you're just so absorbed in so many stories all the time, everything becomes a story. Everything becomes a kind of fiction and we have the danger of kind of anecdotally using our our lives so that they become this, it's in the structure of them becomes all about the story and that I don't think that's always healthy. I mean, I love, I love story like the next person, otherwise I wouldn't be in this business. But I do think sometimes it's like when you go on a vacation and you come back and people ask you how it went, how was your vacation in Hawaii? And you say, Oh, you know, we went, we went on this hike and we lost our way and we had to do this, that and the other. So you have a beginning, middle and end and you shaped it for, you know, what you're shaping your vacation into stories and then you tend to forget about all the rest of this stuff that went on because the reality is that our lives are not stories. They go, they just sort of go and then sometimes they go off on tangents and they come back. But we can end up ignoring a lot of it if we're just shaping it and it into stories. Does that, does that make sense?

Mindy:                         It makes absolute perfect sense to me because that's exactly how I operate as well. And even within my family unit whenever someone goes and does something even, you know, when I still lived at home, getting home from school and speaking at the dinner table, how was your day? Well I've got a story. Everything was a story and that is very, was very useful to me. Obviously helped shape who I am as a writer. But yeah, there is a, there is a little smudgy area there between reality and, and uh, trying to craft your own story. Yeah. It's an interesting conundrum for an author when you are trying to lead your life and not storify it I guess.

Tracy:                           Yeah, exactly. And it can affect the writing as well because one of the hardest parts about writing a novel is getting the ending, right. That's where the pressure to shape a story really comes into sharp relief. And you think, okay, I got to end this and, and we're all like this. I mean I, I often judge a book by its ending because readers want, they want the impossible. They want to be surprised, but they also want to be satisfied and satisfaction is usually - the writer got that right. That's the ending I would have thought that's what I thought would happen, but, and yet if you think it's going to happen, then you're not going to be surprised by it. So it's quite a, it's quite a balancing act. And what I don't like are endings that are too pat that are too kind of, everything's tied up.

Tracy:                           All the loose ends are tied up because you, and yet you don't want it to open ended because, um, it then it doesn't feel satisfying either. So it's, it's a really tough to get it right. And, and I think there's, the danger is going too much in the direction of, of the pat ending of the storifying of the story, so to speak and, and trying to, you know, maintain a little bit more looseness would be good. I think. So, that's why I'm fascinated - I don't know if you've heard about this book by Lucy Ellman, which is called Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellman. It's up for the Booker prize and it's a thousand page novel, that's I think three sentences long, three long sentences with no, uh, no punctuation. So I think it's got three periods in it. And um, it's the inner life of a, an Ohio housewife.

Tracy:                           And I just love the thought of that because that's clearly not your average story. It's not like a story with a beginning, middle, and end. It tells, it tells it in a very different way. I wouldn't want every novel out there to be like that. But I think it's a really great to have this kind of experimentation, have a different way of storytelling so that maybe you... the way the, quote unquote story creeps up on you in a book like that is, is more to weave a tapestry around you of different stuff that you feel like you're in a, you know, a stream of consciousness. And I admire that though. I'm not sure I'd ever be able to do it myself.

Mindy:                         I'm very fascinated by this and I have to go pick it up now for sure. I agree with you about the endings being too pat. Often that's the exit point for readers from a character's life, but the character's life, if you've created a real human being is going to continue. It's going to keep going. And so tying everything off, giving them that happily ever after, or at least content ever after, isn't necessarily a reflection of reality. And if we're... Fiction's job is to create an alternate reality. I love what you're saying and I think it is an interesting conundrum that we face as, as writers when we want to give us satisfying ending. But we're aware that that world that we created still exists and things are still continuing to happen in it, whether we are transcribing them or not.

Tracy:                           Yeah, absolutely. I guess if you get it right then people say, I, and I've had this with A Single Thread. Lots of people have already said to me, are you going to write a sequel? Cause I really want to know what happens to her after this. And I really hesitate to write.. I mean I tend to say, look, I think that she lives on in your head and you can work out what she does next rather than me. But I take it as a compliment that people want to know what happens to the character like that they, that they are so vividly alive that they're still alive and even after the book is ended. And, uh, I love that.

Mindy:                         Absolutely. Coming up the pressure of an expectant audience and learning your own rhythms as a writer.

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Mindy:                         A Single Thread is your 10th published book. When you're working that much, is it difficult to maintain a life and work balance? Not necessarily with the workload, but because now that you are published, you have an expected audience.

Tracy:                           It's wonderful to have an expectant audience. Um, I'd sort of rather have one than not, so I'm very glad about that. I've managed to settle into a pattern, I guess after 10 my publishers know that I tend to write a book every three years or so, sometimes less, sometimes more. I think in an ideal world, they'd love that to be every two years. But the fact is, I write historical novels and they take a lot of research. So it's not just writing it, it's also doing all the research and it, it, it takes the time it takes. I feel like I've managed to get the rhythm of that right. Both for myself and my readership. Do I always get readers saying, when's the next one? I can't wait! I've just finished this and now I want, I want another one and I sort of had to say, look, I, if you want the kind of thing I write, you're gonna, going to have to wait for it because it takes time.

Tracy:                           And people get that. I think the, we all have our favorite, you know, the kind of writers we like to read. And they have a rhythm to them. So, you know, somebody like Donna Tartt publishes a book every eight years or something. So she takes a long time. And then there are thriller writers who, especially if they're in a series and they have the same detectives, so they have, they don't have to come up with new characters. They might write a book a year. Everybody has a different rhythm. I've worked out my rhythm and we all seem to be good with it. So that balance of the life of writing with what's expected of me, I think, um, it took a little while to get there. But we're, we're there now.

Mindy:                         It's lovely to know yourself, isn't it?

Tracy:                           Yeah. Well, I'm 56 damn better know myself by now!

Mindy:                         You maintain dual citizenship. You tour in both England and America. I ask this question because earlier I had a guest who is also internationally published and she felt that her works were looked upon as literature for women in America, but were read more broadly overseas by men. So do you find differences between your American audience and your British or international audiences?

Tracy:                           Certainly not gender, no. I mean, I, I definitely am read more by women all over. I think that that's not surprising because I think that women read 70% of fiction in general. Women tend to read more fiction, men, nonfiction, of course there are exceptions to that. But so it's likely that I'm going to have more women reading me. And I think that's across the board. I don't think that, I think that doesn't matter about nationality. So I'm very curious about this other writer, like why that's happened. I'm trying to think of like the difference between the American and UK audiences. So I've just been in the States on a book tour and I'm back in the UK now. So I've done events and I've done some events here. The difference probably comes more in, um, knowledge of history. So, so this is a very English book, hence an English audiences is going to respond to it in a different way just because they know more of this history.

Tracy:                           And they, they have... it's set in the 1930s and in a Southern English city, a lot of people who reading it, they'll have grandparents who lived during this time or even parents. And so they'll just sort of know the feeling of it. Whereas an American audience might have grandparents who lived during that time in the 1930s but America in the 1930s was very different from England in 1930. So it's um, the American audience comes at it with without that prior cultural knowledge and so they have more to learn. What they focus on is going to be so slightly different. But I wouldn't say that the response has been all that different I think it has been similar. I wouldn't differentiate my audiences too much.

Mindy:                         I think what you're saying about literature of place is very true when you're reading something. You mentioned the book to me that is set in Ohio and of course that is where I am from. And when I read the Midwest, if the author is not from or did not have a very tight connection to the Midwest, they usually don't get it right cause the Midwest by, by being almost, it has very few iconic things about it other than cornfields. It's, it's a very subtle type of life and you can't capture it unless you've lived it. And so often when I read anything set in the Midwest, if they don't have jello salad with pieces of vegetables floating in it, I know they don't know what they're talking about.

Tracy:                           Marshmallows. That's what you got to have in it.

Mindy:                         There you go. You know exactly what I'm talking about.

Tracy:                           Well, the thing is though, you can't lump the Midwest altogether because Midwest, Ohio is very different from Midwest, Minnesota is very different from Midwest, Missouri. They have a really different feel. I mean I'm particularly fascinated by Ohio. I only lived there four years. I went to Oberlin college and I went to Ohio. One of the reasons I wrote about it in some of my previous books, especially in The Last Runaway, is that it seemed to me that it's a state that is defined by all the States around it and by its place it's like the gateway to um, for pioneers going West. It was the gateway to the West and uh, there was a lot of traffic from East to West through it. And then I wrote about the underground railroad and there's a lot of traffic South and North with all the runaway slaves going up to Canada through Ohio.

Tracy:                           So there's this weird transient feeling of being defined by the people who are passing through it and why they're passing through it. They're passing through it to get somewhere else. Not necessarily to stay in Ohio, but, but Ohio is a funny old place cause it's like it's also the state that you have to win if you want to win the presidential election. Why is that? I don't know. I don't know. It's just, but it has a certain, something that I definitely sense. You know, I'm from Washington D C but when I, when I went to Ohio to Oberlin in Ohio, I definitely sensed, Oh yeah, this has got its own personality for sure. And it's different from all the other Midwest States as well.

Mindy:                         Why don't you tell my listeners where they can find you online?

Tracy:                           I have a website, it's tchevailer.com And it has, it's designed by my sister who is a website designer and it's beautiful and there is lots of information about events and um, bits of news and bits of thoughts and what I'm reading. So do have a look!

Manuela Velasco of Tessera Editorial On Inclusivity & Diversity Throughout Publishing

Mindy:             Today's guest is Manuela Velasco, the marketing and publicity director, as well as an editor for Tessera Editorial, which was founded on the idea that publishing can and should be an accessible industry to all people. Through myriad diverse voices in the profession, Tessera Editorial hopes to open the world of books to as many readers as possible. Manuela joined me today to talk about the services that Tessera offers as well as why getting people of color into all aspects of publishing, not just as authors, is important for true diversity and inclusivity in the industry.

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Mindy:             You're the marketing and publicity director as well as an editor for Tessera Editorial. Why don't you start by telling us about what Tessera is and what some of the goals of the company are?

Manuela:          Well, it's a remote editing company with a free mentorship for people of color Christa Desir began in early 2019 and she's still the mentor for our new groups. So all our editors actually started as mentees, including myself. We do sensitivity reading, copy editing, developmental editing and proofreading. We want to help diversify the publishing industry. There are so many barriers to entry right now and those barriers don't need to be there. Publishing tends to concentrate in NYC and other big cities, so it excludes a lot of talented, often marginalized people. All our mentees are people of color and a lot of them far away from publishing hubs. A lot are neuro atypical or have disabilities and a lot are part of the LGBTQ plus community. So there are people with interesting varied life experiences that publishing was missing out on before. Not every great potential editor has moving to New York money. So we want to show that remote work is a perfect fit for the industry. We've been doing that. We've done sensitivity reads and edits for instance for four out of the five big publishers. We've helped secure internships for five of our mentees and had 24 professional webinars for over 50 people of color. We also work with amazing independent authors who have been super supportive of the mentorship. And we haven't been around for very long, so I'm pretty hopeful for the future.

Mindy:             It sounds like you're doing really well if you were established in 2019 and you've already worked with four of the big publishing houses in New York. You bring up a really great point about publishing being very New York centric. It is, and everyone knows that New York is a terribly expensive place to live and that publishing can be very, very hard to break into. That's kind of part of the struggle that everyone faces. Anybody that wants to break into publishing has to face that, but then of course you have the double barrier if you're a person of color or if you have a disability of any type. I want to bring up, I'm pulling up an article. Here we go. There was just an editorial letter in Publishers Weekly by Kacen Callendar. Yeah. Yeah. I'm pulling it up right now.

Manuela:          Yes, I know exactly which one you're talking about.

Mindy:             It was a letter, an editorial letter from Kacen Callendar who is an award winning author. They were also an editor for some time. I forget which house they were at. But Kacen made a really good point in the editorial letter about people of color not being present in the higher echelons of publishing, so that when a manuscript comes in from a person of color or a disabled person or someone that has had struggles in life that your typical white person is not going to have. And they don't connect with the manuscripts simply because they don't have anything in their life that has ever been like that. They just don't connect with the main character or the story. So therefore a manuscript that might be very representative of many people and reach people and illustrate to others who don't have that experience, what it can be like. Those manuscripts sometimes aren't finding a home in a larger publishing house and therefore achieving larger distribution simply because they aren't landing with people that perceive the value. So that was a great point, that Kacen made in that editorial letter. So I read that and I thought it was great. And I wanted to talk about that here in this podcast because the two issues are connected. So if you could talk a little bit about that particular issue about Kacen's letter, whatever you think is appropriate for you to add to that thought.

Manuela:          So we kind of have to look at it as inclusivity rather than reaching a certain amount of quote unquote diversity. You know, I don't want publishers to be putting out one queer book, one Latin X book, one black book, one book with a disabled protagonist, et cetera. You know, I want a bunch of books about queer, black, Latin X disabled people written by authors with those same intersecting identities along with tons of other books, with diverse characters. And the way to do that is to open up the industry to marginalized people at every level. You know, a cis het white editor won't fully understand an Asian nonbinary person's perspective. They won't see that. It's an amazing story that other people will connect with. They kind of see it from their point of view and they're like, I mean, it didn't grab me. You know, I didn't understand the person's motivation or whatever, because a lot of times those are rooted in the person's identity.

Manuela:          A lot of marginalized people. We grew up with cis het white protagonists. Some of us didn't even know that we could be protagonists like I, I didn't until I was like, well into my teens. I was like, wait, I thought that, you know, we weren't allowed. I just, I don't know what it was that clicked for me. When I first got a book that had a nonwhite protagonist. I was like, wait a minute, why didn't I have this before? Like what changed? It's kind of crushing because it's hard for us to even imagine ourselves as protagonists in our own stories when we don't see that published. When we don't see that in the wider world by hiring more inclusively and investing in marginalized people in all aspects of the industry will inevitably end up publishing more varied, interesting stories that enrich our lives and our books.

Manuela:          Even if a book by a marginalized person is acquired, it might not get the attention that it needs. The publishing house might publish it, leave it at that, you know, they'll, they'll do a little bit of promo for it and I know all of that stuff is really complicated. That in the marketing department always takes care to to do what they can for each book, but if they don't understand the book, if the marketing department is all cis het white people and the book is about a black protagonist who is queer, like they're not going to have the same connection to the book. They're not going to know how to market the book as well to the audience that needs it. They don't have any of that perspective and we need to have marginalized people at every level from the marketing department to editors to the upper echelon of publishing houses. That's the way that will really change the books that we're getting out there.

Mindy:             When we're talking about publishing, of course at the end it's a business and they want to make money. When a manuscript goes up in front of an editorial board and they are thinking, bottom line, is this book going to make money? Unfortunately, I think they often do believe that a book about, you know, a queer disabled Latin X LGBT character is only going to be for that sliver of community or only that that percentage of, of the reading public is going to want that. And, and I don't believe that's true. I was a librarian in a extremely rural, pretty much a hundred percent white community. My teens didn't care, they just wanted to read books. And I think we're not seeing that level of open-mindedness in the upper levels where they think, you know, a white person, a white straight person isn't going to want to read this book. I don't think that's true anymore. That might've been true 30 years ago, but I don't think that's true now.

Manuela:          And I mean it's also kind of like you said, a lack of imagination because if people only wanted to read about protagonists that were exactly like them, they wouldn't be picking up fantasy. They wouldn't read books about aliens and things like that. And we all need things that we connect with for a protagonist. But that doesn't mean that they have to be the same gender or sexuality or race or ethnicity as us. So certain groups are expected to have a much broader reading list than other groups. I would say disabled people are expected to read books about abled people. We're, all of us are expected to read books with white protagonists and we're supposed to connect with them.

Manuela:          It's what we're taught in school. You know, I only had books with non white protagonists for summer reading. Never like during the school year, uh, it was just like we would have a test about that book on the first day and that's it. And they were always issue books. So they, they were always books where the person was going through a struggle or, or something related to their marginalization. It was, I would say demoralizing. It made me kind of think that those kinds of books were, were boring. The cool books were the ones with the white people on the cover. They were able to have fun, you know, they got to do cool things. While we had to like suffer through racism and I get enough in real life, I don't need it in my books, you know, all the time. At least. It's really important for us to show marginalized people having fun and being happy. And I think publishing at the moment is really focused on issue books and yeah, issue books are super important and we should have them, but we also need fun romcoms or happy books where an ACE protagonist gets to like have a really awesome friendship and it's like not an issue. You know what I mean?

Mindy:             Yeah, absolutely. You can have a book that is about a gay person or a black person or a disabled person and the plot isn't about them being those things.

Manuela:          Exactly. And then they get a happy ending.

Mindy:             Yeah, that would be great.

Mindy:             Coming up, what a sensitivity read is and what it isn't.

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Mindy:             Tessera offers many different editorial packages as well as sensitivity reads, which is something that is come up quite a bit in the past five or six years in publishing. So can you talk a little bit about what a sensitivity read is and also what it isn't?

Manuela:          Yeah, it's a look at harmful tropes and stereotypes typically for people writing outside their experience. Some people dislike sensitivity reeds because of the misconception that they're censorship, but it's really just about getting the perspective of someone with direct knowledge about being a certain identity. And the purpose is to get accurate representation that doesn't hurt readers. Ultimately the author decides what stays and what goes and sensitivity readers can't speak for their entire community, but they do a great job pointing out insensitive content.

Manuela:          And I mean it's something that even when I'm not doing a sensitivity read, when I'm just editing a book regularly, I tend to still point out sensitivity issues because I know that the author would rather I say something that you know, Oh, I think that this might come off as a little bit hurtful rather than the book be published. And then other people be like, this is really hurtful and I don't think that it should have been published. And how did no one catch this? That's always something that people tend to tweet. How did several editors not catch such and such issue about sensitivity? And it really makes me feel like a duty to make sure that the books that I help edit are as sensitive as possible.

Mindy:             Authors, especially white authors have to be aware of that. A sensitivity read also isn't a blanket thumbs up. A lot of people use that as a defense like, well, but I got a sensitivity read and it's like, well you, yes, but that doesn't, it's not a plate of armor that you have on now.

Manuela:          Like I said, you know, sensitivity readers can't speak for their entire community and they might miss stuff, especially if there's like a lot of stuff to clean up. And even then, like sometimes they'll, the sensitivity reader might point something out and then the author decides to STET it and well they could say like, Oh, I got a sensitivity to read for it. But it's like, yeah, but did you listen? There's a lot of different angles there. It's important to be open to criticism.

Mindy:             Writers in general struggle... I mean, every writer I know and that's across the board... struggles with criticism, criticism, criticism is difficult. Um, but especially if you're writing outside of your familiarity zone, I mean, you've definitely gotta be open and you've gotta be listening. The other thing that comes up for me with sensitivity reads is just accuracy beyond sensitivity. So in my book, Heroine, I have a supporting character that is Puerto Rican. I tried of course, to put language in her mouth that was not just Spanish, it was Puerto Rican. And so it was like, I looked up, you know, Puerto Rican slang and like specific Puerto Rican insults and things like that. And I specifically asked my sensitivity reader, please double check me on these things. And she did and she did wonderfully. And she was like, well no, you know, this one isn't quite, you know, right.

Mindy:             And so she helped me out and was really, really, really thorough and did a great job of making this character seem truly, you know, Puerto Rican. And I had the cool experience of Skyping with a book club in Puerto Rico and it was so neat because they were so excited. My, my sensitivity reader even told me, she's like, this thing that you used here, this is like the worst thing you can say to someone. And when I was Skyping with this Puerto Rican book club, the kids were just like, that was awesome. Like they were so, they were so excited to see their slang, to see it like represented correctly. And I was like, well, I can't take full credit for that. I had someone that actually knew what they were doing, but it was really cool for me to see that that just a very small amount of effort on my part, it really mattered. It really mattered and it made this character seem authentic to the kids that needed to see her and that was so cool for me.

Manuela:          Seeing yourself is really great, especially when you usually don't get the chance to. I know that sometimes when, at least for me, when I see a Brazilian character in a TV show or something, I'm always like, Oh my God, that's awesome. But then like 10 minutes in and I'm like, Oh no, I wish that this was like, I wish that they just hadn't. I would rather they hadn't because instead of making the character realistic, they often end up just reinforcing stereotypes or being completely inaccurate. Like I've seen a lot of times where they're like, Oh, such and such characters Brazilian, and then they start speaking Spanish and I'm like, Oh no, that's wrong.

Manuela:          And so specifically for me, I grew up in a largely Hispanic community. A lot of times people would assume that I spoke Spanish and so that's like a childhood trauma. So every time it happens on like TV, I'm like, no, no, no. Uh, you know, that's why you need a sensitivity reader for things.

Mindy:             No, that's absolutely right. Especially when you're dealing with a largely white, largely urban... the entertainment industry is both of those things. Um, on my end, just being a rural person, a person from the Midwest, they never get farming right. Farming's always wrong. It's not about, it's not a sensitive thing for me, but it's frustrating cause it's like, you know, you could just, just ask. Ask a farmer. Like we could have told you.

Mindy:             Lastly, diversity as a hot topic in publishing. Is it a double edged sword?

Mindy:             Diversity is a hot topic in publishing as we know. But even using the phrase hot topic makes it sound like a trend. And the goal is the opposite. Establishing diversity as the norm, should be the end game. So do you feel like having a spotlight on it is helpful in terms of bringing about awareness? Because that is a good thing, but does it also possibly make it sound like a trend or, or make diversity seem transitory?

Manuela:          Framing it as a hot topic or trend does make it seem like something that'll go out of style, but diversity in publishing is a movement. More and more people want accurate representation of our world or good representation of diverse people in fantasy worlds. Fantasy has largely been a very white cis het man's territory. At least a popular ones have been there. There's always been, you know, women and and disabled people, people of color. Everyone has always been writing these things, but they haven't been the ones that have been like lifted up as the, the great voices of fantasy until recently. We all want to open a book and see a world that isn't homogenous and so the more that we have diversity, the more will come to expect it. You know, things like Rick Riordan Presents wouldn't have been possible without the We Need Diverse Books hashtag.

Manuela:          We need diverse books. Just having the books out there will start to normalize them and will make readers demand them. If publishing suddenly decides like 2021, they'll just be publishing mostly white says cis men, books. Readers are gonna notice and they're gonna say something. Readers notice. And they will ask. If you take a look at a kid who grew up with books that represented them and they get to adulthood and there are suddenly no more, they're obviously gonna complain. And so it's important for us to be putting in the work to put out diverse books and to, like I said before, you know, put people in every level of the industry that know what that feels like, that know what it's like to want to be represented accurately. There is a double edged sword in terms of the spotlight, because I've seen people say like, it's so hard to be published nowadays as a cis het white man. It's like--

Mindy:             It's not.

Manuela:          It's about as hard as it was before. A lot of people see things as a competition when they shouldn't be. Um, the publishing industry doesn't need to be a competition. It's not like one person is only going to buy one book. If we bring readers in, they're gonna read more books. It's not about competition. It's about bringing each other up together. It's not like a diverse author is stealing a white man's spot. That's not how it is.

Manuela:          Not only is no one owed a spot, but also it's much, much harder for marginalized people to even get to the point of publishing their book. There's so many different barriers. Like I've mentioned, you know, there's lack of access, there's lack of education. Sometimes there's lack of money and time. I work a lot. I'm trying to apply for an MFA and I haven't really had time to edit my story for my, my MFA yet 'cause I've been working a lot and so I can't even imagine working on a whole book right now. I just wouldn't have the time. It's important for for people to recognize that other people having success is not taking away from anything that they might do. You know? It's not a competition.

Mindy:             Absolutely. I agree with that 100% When someone buys a book, it's not the last book they're ever going to buy. When you buy a book, all it does is feed you for a small amount of time and then you want another one and you want something new. And I've always felt, whenever I see I guess infighting or I see jealousy or bitterness among authors, it does not make sense to me because if there is a writer whose books are doing really well, and even if you don't like them, and of course I come from this as a librarian, there are books that would just go crazy, wild, popular.

Mindy:             And I would be like, I don't see the value in this book, but this reluctant reader, this kid here that I can never give a book to them that they like, they loved it and now they've read 12 books by that author. So great. You know, this author just created a reader that's a benefit to all of us. I mean, books create readers. So any book that does well is a benefit to every single one of us. It doesn't matter who wrote it or what it's about. So let's talk about how can people, how can people, just like my listeners today, how can they contribute to diversity in publishing? How can you contribute from inside and outside of the industry?

Manuela:          if you want to support the movement from inside the industry the things you can do differ based on your position. For example, authors can ask that marginalized people work on their books. We've gotten several jobs because of this. Those people in positions of power can look at lowering barriers to entry, partly by actively seeking marginalized people for work and by creating remote paying jobs. People in lower level positions can push for more marginalized people working in their department and speak up when they see unfair barriers being set. And it's also important to invest in people. Companies should be bringing inexperienced people with the express purpose of teaching them.

Manuela:          Unpaid internships, especially ones that are in person, keep out a lot of marginalized people who can't afford them. So it's best to try to have remote and paying internships. But if the internship can't be paid, it should at least be remote to give people a little bit more flexibility from outside the industry. You can support people who are diversifying publishing by mentioning them on social media and boosting their stuff. There are tons of great accounts out there like Latin X in publishing and POC in publishing and engaging with their content really helps. You can also donate to diversity efforts. For example, our mentorship program has a Ko-Fi as Tessera Editorial. So with that you'd be directly helping people of color get into the industry.

Mindy:             Talk to me a little bit about, just for my own clarity as well, can writers hire Tessera themselves? Like if you are an aspiring author who would like to hire a sensitivity read before querying? Is that something that Tessera is a, does do they offer?

Manuela:          Yes. Yeah. We work with a lot of independent authors and sometimes they want something, um, before they start querying. Sometimes they want something because they're self publishing. Authors are 100% welcome to go on our website and ask about our services.

Mindy:             Fantastic. And in that vein, then how can people find you? Where can listeners find Tessera online?

Manuela:        Our website, TesseraEditorial.com or Twitter is at Tessera Edits and our Instagram is at Tessera Editorial and you know, if you have any questions at all, you can ask them on our social media and I'll be sure to answer them as quickly as possible. I am pretty much always online.

Mindy:             Yeah, me too.