Q&A with J. Anderson Coats

 

 

J. Anderson Coats is the author of the new middle grade novel The Unexpected Lives of Ordinary Girls. Her other books include A Season Most Unfair. 

 

Q: What inspired you to write The Unexpected Lives of Ordinary Girls, and how did you create your character Stanislava/Sylvia?

A: This book was inspired by the life of my grandmother, who I spent a lot of time with when I was growing up. Since my parents both worked, she took care of my brother and me before and after school, and during the summers. She never was keen to share stories about what it was like when she was a kid, even though I was always curious.

 

After she died, I learned that she’d graduated from high school when she was in her mid-teens, but her family didn’t support her going to college and her father refused to let her get a job outside the home. Instead, she had to help her mother with household chores and child care.

So when she was in her 20s, she eloped with my grandfather and barely spoke to her parents ever again. What struck me was how stifling and unfair it must have felt to her, to be really good at school but refused any opportunities to have a career with those skills.

 

That’s where I started with Unexpected Lives – that feeling of wanting something for yourself when your parents demanded something completely different from that.

Q: How was the novel’s title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

A: This title came from feedback on an early draft that gently pointed out places where the story was falling back on convention and squinting at cliché – things that were expected from books with similar themes.

 

This was one of the most profoundly helpful observations I received, and it helped me to shift the plot in a more meaningful, engaging direction.

 

When the time came to choose a title, I wanted to incorporate the idea of turning the expected on its head and honor the feedback that helped the book move in a direction I might not have otherwise chosen.

Q: How did you research the book, and what do you hope readers take away from it?

A: One thing I discovered early in the research process was how rare it was to hear directly from immigrants from Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century about their early days in America or why they might have chosen to leave their homelands.

 

I had to do a lot of reading between the lines of newspaper articles that were written about them, and fill in remaining gaps with different types of sources, particularly reminiscences from their children and grandchildren.

 

It’s also particularly challenging to find out about women’s lives, since the sources are even more thin on the ground. There’s a lot of heavy lifting that my storyteller brain has to fill in when these challenges exist.

This is where the reader comes in. What I love best about sending a book into the world is knowing that every reader will bring with them their own experiences that will shape their interactions with the story.

 

Of course I hope people will like the book, but I hope it encourages my young readers to be curious about the lives of the elders they know, especially their grandparents, and to connect with them over things they have in common.

Q: The Publishers Weekly review of the book says, “Coats portrays the challenging family dynamics that immigrant children sometimes navigate while celebrating free-thinking librarians, teachers, and other women who support Stanislava in following her dreams.” What do you think of that description?

A: I like how it captures something essential about the narrative heart of the story, how families of origin don’t always respond well when a young person has ideas about what they want their life to look like that go against what the family has decided is acceptable.

While I wrote about immigrant families because my grandmother’s parents were both immigrants, this kind of disconnect happens in all kinds of families, past and present, usually when there is an overemphasis on control instead of a recognition that children are people and all people deserve dignity and autonomy, even while they’re growing up. Perhaps especially while they’re growing up.

Unfortunately, this means that some of my young readers come from families where interacting with their grandparents would do them more harm than good. While I wish peace and healing for these families, I hope these kids are able to connect with elders who will uplift and support them.

Finding a chosen family who does support you and recognizes your dreams as possible and your identity as authentic and valid, without conditions or strings, can open up the world to someone who has only ever heard a drumbeat of an authority figure’s ideas of who and what you should be.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Right now I’m finishing up a middle-grade historical that I hope my agent likes, and tinkering with a YA that I hope will gain traction. I also just re-released my debut YA, The Wicked and the Just, after it went out of print and I got the rights back. The learning curve on that front has been both fascinating and steep. 😊

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with J. Anderson Coats.