 |
| Kathy MacMillan |
Kathy MacMillan and Manuela Bernardi are the authors of the new children's book She Spoke: 14 Women Who Raised Their Voices and Changed the World. MacMillan's other books include Nita's First Signs and Sword and Verse. She is a nationally certified American Sign Language interpreter, and she lives near Baltimore, Maryland. Bernardi is a film and TV writer who has written for shows on TV Globo, TBS, and others. She lives in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for She Spoke,
and how did you choose the women to include?
Kathy: This was the first time in my writing career
where a publisher pitched a book to me instead of the other way around! David
Miles, who was the publishing director at Familius Press at the time, had the
idea of using the sound book format, usually only seen in books for very young
children, to highlight the inspirational words of trailblazing women.
 |
| Manuela Bernardi |
I had worked with Familius Press before, with Nita’s
First Signs, and David knew my research background as a librarian would be a
good fit for the book. When Familius presented me with the idea, I immediately
knew that I wanted to work on this book and who I wanted my co-author to be!
Manuela: Kathy and I have been long-distance friends
for more than a decade. We met writing Harry Potter fanfiction online - I was a
Brazilian teenager in Rio de Janeiro who was trying to write in English for the
first time, and she was an awesome librarian and American Sign Language
interpreter near Baltimore, Maryland. We fell in immediate "writerly
love" and began writing together and giving feedback on each other's
stories and screenplays (as I became a screenwriter here in Brazil).
Kathy and I have always worked together with
incredible sync, but this was the first time we got to write together officially
for the world, and I was so excited. Especially about the subject matter.
Speaking out as a woman is still something I struggle with every day, and
having so much inspiration has made me much bolder.
Kathy: When I told Familius about Manuela and her
screenwriting accomplishments, they quickly agreed to bring her on board. Then
began the long process of research. We started by looking for appropriate audio
clips, so the availability of the sound clips narrowed the field somewhat. Even
so, there was a lot of back and forth before settled on the final list.
Manuela: It was so hard. Especially because we wanted
to reflect the fact that there are so many inspiring women speaking out about
so many important causes, and they are all so different - but the clips had to
be in English. That narrowed the field even more.
That, and the availability factor, kept me from adding
amazing Brazilian women such as Marielle Franco, Lota de Macedo Soares, Marta
Silva or Maria da Penha. Even so, we were left with more wonderful women than
could fit in the book.
Kathy: We also wanted to make sure we included some
women that the reader would have heard of, but also some that everyone should
have heard of.
Q: The book also includes the original voices of the
women in the book. How did you select those excerpts?
Kathy: We had to find appropriate clips, in English,
that were either public domain or that we could get permission to use. We found
some wonderful historical clips that we would have loved to use, from figures
like Mother Jones and Amelia Earhart, but some were so old that we couldn’t
even identify who owned the rights to them, and some we were not able to get
permission to use.
Manuela: And then came the problem of cutting such
poignant full speeches into bit-sized clips that had to stand on their own and
drive home their message. They had to be inspirational - but they also had to
relate somehow to the “She Spoke” theme of the book: defending women's rights
to speak, or a group's right to be heard, or these women's journey to be heard,
or a cause that they were passionate enough to be outspoken about.
Q: How did the two of you collaborate on the project?
Manuela: Long distance! The two of us have been
friends for such a long time, but we've actually only spent time together in
person a few times over the years, when I was living in the U.S. while in my
Writing for Screen and Television MFA program at the University of Southern
California, and when I visited for the launch of Kathy’s debut YA novel, Sword
and Verse.
So for the book, we used a lot of the same
technologies we have always used to chat and give each other feedback: email,
instant messages, and videochat.
Kathy: We also used shared documents, electronic
databases, and international text messaging apps. It required a lot of planning
and communication. Once we had identified the subjects for the profiles, we
divided the research and drafting work, and then edited each profile together
in a shared online document while discussing them via videochat.
When I read the book now, I can’t actually identify
who wrote what, because so much collaboration went into it!
Q: What do you hope kids take away from the book?
Manuela: I hope they can understand that speaking out
about what you believe in is the most generous thing you can do for the people
around you, especially the ones that, like yourself, might be afraid to express
themselves. Especially, of course, women and girls, for historical reasons.
Speak out! Don’t be afraid of sharing your voice and
your views. And listen to other women and girls when they speak. If we support
each other, we can do so much more together. Anyone, no matter their gender,
can learn to listen more so that everyone has a voice.
Kathy: I hope that hearing these powerful words right
from the source will inspire readers not to give up, no matter what. Girls are
often given the message that they must tone down their passions or that they
will only be heard if they express themselves in soft, “polite” ways. But if
girls and women - and allies of any gender - become aware of this and challenge
those expectations, we can quite literally change the world.
Q: What are you working on now?
Manuela: I'm still writing screenplays here in Brazil,
and I'm currently working on two projects that I'm very excited about.
One is a Brazilian feature titled Primetime
Villain, about a woman who finds out that the villain of Brazil's most
popular soap opera is based on her. It's going to be distributed by Fox/Disney
and (hopefully) filmed this year. The other project is a TV show I created,
which I still can't say much about, but I hope it's announced soon.
And of course, Kathy and I are hoping to collaborate
on more books about inspiring women, either sequels to She Spoke or new
concepts. We’ve already played around with lots of ideas.
Kathy: I am working on a middle grade fantasy series
about centaurs, unicorns, pegasus, and kelpies, and preparing for the release
of two more books from Familius Press: the newest board book in the Little
Hands Signing series, Nita’s Day, in Fall 2019, followed by a picture book
titled The Lady and the Laundry in January 2020. I’ve also got a YA fantasy
novel I’m dying to get back to working on!
Q: Anything else we should know?
Kathy: We’re so excited for this book to be out in the
world! So many wonderful books have been published in the last few years
highlighting amazing women and their accomplishments, but we feel the audio
clips really set this book apart. There is nothing like hearing the passionate
words directly from the source.
Manuela: Women have been silenced for so long. It's
powerful and poignant to hear their actual voices speaking out on important
issues. The book is geared to ages 8-12, but I wholeheartedly recommend it to
everyone. The audio clips make it accessible and fun for younger readers, and
they add so much for teen and adult readers as well - of any gender.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
No comments:
Post a Comment