Jennifer Longo is the author of the new young adult novel What I Carry, which focuses on a teenage girl in the foster care system. She also has written the YA novels Up to This Pointe and Six Feet Over It. She lives on an island near Seattle, Washington.
Q: You note that your daughter, who had spent time in the
foster care system before you met her, encouraged you to write this book. Can
you say more about that, and about how you created your character Muiriel?
A: My daughter is a big reader, and like every reader, she
sometimes likes stories she can recognize herself in. My husband and I were her
fourth and last foster placement, and she was only a little over a year old
when we brought her home.
She has no memories of her first placements, and her
experience with the foster families she’s grown up with (our cousins and family
friends) were different than how foster families are portrayed in many of the
fiction books she read that involved foster care.
She understands, like anyone involved in the foster care
system, that every child’s experience in foster care is unique.
What she was looking for was not a false, idealized
narrative of how great and happy foster care is, but by the same token, not
every birth family or foster placement is dark and violent.
She said she just wanted a story involving a kid living in
foster care that was maybe “a little less…molest-y? Less yell-y and with like,
not as much arson?”
Obviously, those events and themes are (sadly) are true, and
thankfully there are many excellent middle grade and YA books involving foster
care that explore those brutal realities.
The thing is, there is room in the canon for as many
explorations of the facets of human experience as there are readers, and What I
Carry is just one more.
My daughter likes internal conflict, and quiet, contemporary
stories involving daily life and descriptions of food and weather. (Same) She
likes a hopeful ending.
The character of Muir grew from me trying to make a story my
daughter could see herself and her birth and adoptive and foster family members
in.
So, I listened to her, and to stories told to me by current
and former foster youth. I translated the very real emotions they described
into fictional events, an imagined life, and that life became Muir’s.
Muir’s experience in foster care is not meant to be a
factual representation of how all foster care works – this is just one story,
about a white girl, who has lived in foster care since birth, and those things
inform specificity - but it is a story imbued with the truths of a lot of
really brave kids form varied circumstances in foster care who deserve to be
listened to.
Sometimes Muir gets a little soapbox-y – that’s because kids
in foster care are rarely listened to.
Adults drive the myopic narrative of the state of foster
care in America, so in this book, I wanted the kids I was honored to listen to
have their say through Muir – and no adult is allowed to interrupt.
If readers are looking for non-fiction books about life in
foster care, one truly invaluable voice I hope people pay attention to is the
author Kenisha E. Anthony.
She lived in foster care for 13 years, and is now an
advocate for change, dependence case worker, and holds a master’s degree in
Public Administration and a BS in Social work. Her memoir Labeled: Ward of the
State published Dec. 17.
Q: The novel takes place on an island near Seattle. How
important is setting to you in your writing?
A: My favorite question! Every book and play I’ve written
always, always, begins with a place – never characters, or a central
conflict – those are built in as I write, around the setting.
I get obsessed with different places I live in or visit or
read about and I get all Who lives here, and Why would they, and What the
hell happens to them?
My first novel (Six Feet Over It) began with exploring the
details of a life lived in a cemetery. Then (Up to This Pointe) I could not
stop thinking about and researching modern day human life in Antarctica.
What I Carry is set on an island in the Pacific Northwest
that has been the setting for many books – and what fascinates me most about
it, is its very complex existence and representation, for many different
people, as Home; who is allowed to claim it as theirs, who gets to decide
who stays or is forced away, and amidst the conflict, who is taking care of the
island, or is it being abused and neglected?
The life of this island expressed the themes of home and
family and belonging and caring for vulnerable lives that my daughter was
wanting to read about, and so the story took shape here, in the waters of the
Puget Sound.
Q: How was the book's title chosen, and what does it signify
for you?
A: My editors chose the title, and I think it perfectly
signifies the literal notion of how Muir’s life is made by expertly carrying
physical necessities from house to house.
It indicates how Muir is influenced by learning what John
Muir carried with him as he lived outside in nature, how carrying the lightest
load, learning to survive on minimal food and shelter, and without the burden
of companions or heavy objects on one’s back, keeps a person free.
Then, the title also refers to the lessons of survival Muir
carries with her to each placement year after year, it is about the sadness and
fear longing and regret she carries, and how those things keep her detached
from vulnerable relationships, which Muir thinks keep her free – when truly,
carrying those things so tightly may keep her trapped in isolation and
loneliness.
Q: What do you hope readers take away from the story?
A: Oh man. There’s kind of a lot I hope readers take away!
Maybe I’ll bullet point it and try to be brief:
* Families come in an endless variety and can be a wonderful
source of comfort and safety and love, and every child deserves to have a
family.
* Kids living in foster care are human beings, exactly the
same way kids growing up in birth families are human beings. I am shocked by
how many people do not understand this. Kids living in foster care did NOTHING
to be put there. Kids are in care because of the actions of an adult or several
adults in the kid’s life. End of story.
* The purpose of adoption is NOT to “find a child” for an
adult to have. The purpose of adoption is to find suitable parents for
kids who need them. Children are not prizes or commodities to fulfil an adult’s
wishes.
* Children living in good foster care homes or who have been
adopted are not “lucky.” Every person born is entitled to at least one decent
parent. Kids being cared for by decent adults do not owe the world never-ending
gratitude for the fulfilment of this most basic of human needs. Human beings,
children, are not burdens. And adults who care for them are not “saints.”
* Most of us, when we are scared and especially when we are
young, are braver and stronger than some adults give us credit for, and more
than we give ourselves credit for. Learned helplessness is a thing -
people will try to convince you not to try, that you aren’t enough of a person,
that you aren’t smart or strong enough or worthy of a fulfilling and
independent life. That is a lie. You are, and you can.
* Learning to ask for help is brave, it demonstrates
strength, not weakness.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am having the best time revising a contemporary Lit.
Fiction drama about a family having a super ridiculous Thanksgiving.
I want it to be a book that Oprah tells everyone to take
with them if they have to spend Thanksgiving with their in-laws and they need a
funny, smart, dramatic novel to distract them. That is my dream. Oprah! Call
me!
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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