Kao Kalia Yang, author of The Rock in My Throat, illustrated by Jiemei Lin
Children’s Literature Category, sponsored by Beret Publishing
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?
I grew up as a selective mute in English. I didn’t speak all the way through my K-12 experience. In college, I learned how to whisper. All those silent and lonely years, I was asked, “Why?” I couldn’t answer. Finally, in this book, I was able to answer – not only the children who asked all those years ago or my teachers, but especially my mother. I wrote the book for young Kalia and everyone else who was afraid to talk, unable to find the words, to let them know that those who will listen will wait.
What is one detail you wanted to include in this book, but couldn’t find a place for?
I wanted to include more about the copious letters Julia Chang and I wrote to each other in place of the conversations we couldn’t have. But I knew the story had to end on that playground, with young Kalia yearning for a friend, unsure of how to proceed. The ending in the book is true to the story I was telling, the uncertainty.
Tell us about someone (whose name isn’t on the cover!) who proved instrumental to the creation of this book.
Carol Hinz, my editor at Lerner, is the reason why this book exists. She knew I’d been a selective mute growing up. Until she asked for the possibility of a manuscript, I didn’t know if I was ready to write the story about the rock in my throat. The moment she did, the story came pouring out of me.
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!)
I make really good Hmong eggrolls. It is a specialty of mine. The trick is lots of onions so the eggrolls have a natural sweetness to them, and then a wide assortment of vegetables: shredded carrots and cabbages, green onions, bean sprouts, and finely chopped wood ear mushrooms. Of course: the peanut sauce is also key, sour, spicy, and tangy goodness.
Share your thoughts about the role and value of libraries.
The value of a good library is its offer of friendship via a diverse array of characters, of faraway places that can and cannot be found in our world, and connections to our community, anchors to our experiences of life and love, those who came before and those who will come after, an assurance that to be human is to be part of something valuable and worthwhile.
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.