Kao Kalia Yang, author of The Diamond Explorer
Middle Grade Literature Category, sponsored by Education Minnesota
Each week leading up to the 37th annual Minnesota Book Awards, we are featuring exclusive interviews with our finalists. You can also watch the authors in conversation with their fellow category finalists here.
What inspired you to write this book – or inspired you while writing it?
The moment I became a writer and started visiting middle schools, the students asked, “When are you going to write for us? And can you make it scary?” Of all of my books, this one took the longest because I wanted to write for the middle schoolers who live in our world, who must navigate its conditions, and somehow choose to live on, to grow forth, to inspire and to conspire to build a more friendly, a more just, a more equitable world knowing its imperfections. I allowed the realities of our world, school shootings, the murders in our community, the sicknesses that threaten our relationships, all of it come into play. This book is entirely inspired by our middle schoolers, who asked for a book that reckons with their fears.
What is one detail you wanted to include in this book, but couldn’t find a place for?
I wrote so many pages in order to get to this book. Among one of the things scenes that I wrote and loved is one in which Malcolm meets his long-deceased grandfather, the man his father has never known. It was emotional for me to write, and necessary for me to understand more keenly the relationship that Malcolm has to his ancestors, but it isn’t in the book.
Tell us about someone (whose name isn’t on the cover!) who proved instrumental to the creation of this book.
Andrew Karre, my editor, who shepherded this book into being, who understood I was entering a different genre and a new landscape of readers, who allowed me so much room to do the messy work of entering into fiction, and then letting it sway me–never once imposing or limiting the range of my adventure on the page. His sheer confidence inspired my own at many moments in the seven year process.
Please tell us something about yourself that is not widely known. (It doesn’t have to be about the book in question – or even about your writing at all!)
Every spring, I plant a variety of annuals. I love the beauty and the humility of tending a seasonal garden in Minnesota. My garden, mostly potted, brings me such color and such joy.
Share your thoughts about the role and value of libraries.
The strength of our libraries is a measure of our community’s ability to tend to its citizens. I believe deeply in the public library as a vestige of democracy and an act of goodwill toward humanity.
Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American writer and author of A Map into the World, From the Tops of the Trees, The Song Poet, and Where Rivers Part. Much of Yang’s work is inspired by the people in her life, individuals who have gifted her with the strength of their stories. She is a four-time Minnesota Book Award winner, and this is her middle-grade debut novel.