Renée Watson

Growing up in Portland was so fun. I loved my neighborhood. I grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood, and all my friends, we would see each other at church, at school, we’d play together on the weekends. So it was a very close-knit community, and I just have so many fond memories of playing outside of neighbors, being able to chime in and maybe chastise you if you were doing something wrong. It was a beautiful, loving, vibrant Black community. And then when I went to middle school, things changed. My middle school was in a predominantly white neighborhood across town, and so I didn’t have that same kind of nurturing and seeing my friends all the time. So middle school was hard in Portland. But then in high school, I went back to my neighborhood at high school and again, just felt loved and nurtured by that vibrant community and just learned about the different areas of New Portland. 

And they’ve all kind of shaped me and informed what I write about, how I write, how I think about friendship and storytelling. And I think a lot about the Ramona Series. When I was a kid, I read that book, that series, and I loved that. I knew where Klickitat Street was, and I knew the library and the store that Ramona was going to. And so seeing my city in a book was liberating and so encouraging, and it is definitely what has inspired me to write my city and put my story and the story of Brown and Black girls in Portland on the page. 

So the things that I loved about the Ramona series as a child was that Ramona was complicated and messy, and she threw tantrums and she wasn’t afraid of showing her emotions. She could be angry and sad and happy and mischievous, all the things. She was a full nuanced character. And I related to the messiness of Ramona. I loved the sibling relationships, her feelings about school, all of that I could identify with very much the girl in me identified with Ramona and being a portlander and understanding what it’s like to have to play outside in the rain and then splash around in puddles in your little rain boots. But the Black girl in me was not seen. There were no Black characters in that series, and I don’t say this necessarily as a critique against Beverly Cleary, I just saw that as an invitation to write myself into the canon. 

And so this idea of intersectionality and what can we bring to the page was something that as I got older and started reading House on Mango Street and saw how Sandra Cisneros was writing about home, I think both of those writers and those books were kind of in conversation in a way to help me find my story and find the types of stories that I wanted to put out into the world about the Pacific Northwest and very much about what it is like to be marginalized in a place that sometimes you feel like the center of your own story. You don’t feel like you’re on the margin at all, but you know that when you start interacting with other folks, you get the sense that, oh, everyone doesn’t see me the way I see me, or the way my family sees and loves me. And that theme comes up a lot in my work. And I think that is very much in conversation with Beverly Cleary and Sandra Cisneros and how those writers chose to write about home. 

When I think about being shaped as a storyteller and the things that kind of nurtured me to become a writer, my first memories are about poetry and how poetry is a way of storytelling. And I grew up listening to poetry, listening to poets recite poems. I grew up in a Black Baptist church where folks would get up and recite scripture and poems. And so my first love is poetry and the idea that language can take you places, that language can put on record your family’s history, your family’s story, all of that was nurtured in me as a child. And music I grew up with always a record spinning in the background. Saturday was for cleaning, and there was always music on. There was always music in the car. So music was a big part of my life. And the storytelling through poetry was a big part of my life, especially childhood. 

And so I gravitated to music and to poems. I recited them, I wrote them. I had journals full of poems when I was a kid. And I think that’s when I first started to find my voice and think about what I wanted to say and what I wanted to write about. So the poems of Langston Hughes, Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Lucille Clifton, those are the poets who I always say, they nurtured me and mothered me and anchored me. It was it. Those are the books and the poets where I first saw my reflection, it wasn’t so much literature like books, novels, but poetry was when I felt like, oh, they’re speaking to me. They’re speaking about me. They’re speaking about my family and my neighborhood. So I felt completely seen reading those poets, and that has absolutely influenced the way that I write. 

One of my earliest memories of a poem that really touched me deeply was Mother to Son by Langston Hughes. I really felt like I was that child. I was the daughter that was listening to a mother say those things. And that idea, that concept of life is not easy, life is hard, but we’re still going to climb, we’re still going to make it. All of that is such a foundational concept of my life. I just remember my family struggling deeply financially, really trying to figure out my mother, trying to figure out how she was going to raise these children after leaving my father. 

So this idea of what you passed down to your children and the things that she would tell us about our personal family history and then also our history as a people as being black children in this world. I definitely remembered reading that poem. I think it was in the fourth or fifth grade, and I remember thinking, whoa, this sounds exactly like something my mom would say. And it texted me so deeply to have her voice, to have a witness something was bearing witness. I didn’t have the language to say that back then, but when I look back at that, it felt like someone was saying, yeah, I see you. I know I got you, and you’re not alone in this. And we’re all kind of having this conversation together. 

In the second grade, I wrote a 21 page story, and this was not for a class assignment. This was just me at home writing this, I believe over the weekend. And then I show up to school and I’m showing it to my teacher, and she’s so graciously read the story. And I always joke about, my goodness, 21 pages of second grade handwriting probably was so hard to get through, but she read the story, gave me feedback, and said, wow, Renee, I think maybe you’re going to be a writer one day. And she was the first person who got me a notebook it just a regular spiral notebook and said, this is a journal. I want you to write your poems and your stories in here. If there’s anything you want to share with me, you can share with me, but you don’t have to. And so I started writing in journals in the second grade and wrote in journals since, and was always sharing my stories with my mom. 

I remember sitting on the kitchen floor reading out of my journal to her while she was cooking dinner. And so that was a teacher who I’m so thankful that she just kind of started to plant the seed in me that this is something I could maybe do. And then through middle school, I had a teacher who saw the gift in me Too and was like, you know, wrote a really good play for, I think it was for an assignment. And so he suggested that my play would be the spring production, that we would actually cast it and that I could be like co-director and put on this show for the whole community. And that was a turning point for me too, that, oh, my writing isn’t just for me. Up until then, I was really writing for myself and my journal didn’t share it a whole lot, but middle school was when I started speaking up and sharing my voice a little bit more and directing the play was so cool, and having his leadership to do that. 

And then by high school, it was a wrap. I completely identified as a writer, I often sing the praises of my high school teacher, Linda Christensen, who just was the best teacher that I’ve had. She really saw me. She was always encouraging me to push beyond my natural gift, but to actually think about craft and to make choices in my writing, not just do the easy thing. So when I was a senior in high school, she would have me do the lesson that she was teaching the freshman class, and then go to the freshman class and share and help her co-teach workshops. And so that was my first time thinking about poetry, teaching my voice, working with other folks. All of that was I think the groundwork of what became my career, which was for so many years I was writing and being a teaching artist and going into schools, working with young people and teaching them poetry. 

So I am very, very grateful that I had so many teachers that saw a gift in me, fan, the flame nurtured, the seed, watered, it kept me going. And there’s still a lot of them are still in my life to this day. I’ve been able to go back and thank them and give them signed books or visit the schools that they’re still teaching at. So I feel very fortunate that I’ve had not just my family support, but that I’ve had teachers who really saw a gift and taught outside of their curriculum. So even if it wasn’t something they were planning to teach, they saw something in me and they were willing to go above and beyond as educators. And I real, I’m so grateful for that. 

My earliest memories of becoming a reader was watching my mother read. She inspired reading in me because I would often see her reading her Bible, and she would often highlight scripture. I would see her writing in a journal as she was reading, and sometimes I would hear her reading out loud or memorizing the scripture. And so I learned very early that the reading is sacred and that there’s something intimate that’s happening with you and the page and that you can interact with it. It wasn’t, books were not so precious in our household that we couldn’t actually hold it and be with it. And so I wrote in my books, I highlighted if they were mine, I wrote in them, highlighted them, earmarked them, all of that, and really was in conversation with the text. And so I became an avid reader and a reader that read deeply. 

So I read very slow because I really want to take the story in. Sometimes I’ll go back and reread a chapter if I get to the end and I’m like, wait, wait, what’s happening here? I will go back and reread it. And I was that way as a child too. So by middle school though, I think I just was frustrated. I didn’t know how to articulate that frustration, but my teachers were not giving me a lot of books that I related to. And so though I loved reading, I didn’t enjoy what we were reading as a class, so I read a lot on my own. I would go to the library, especially in the summer and spend the day at the library reading books on my own that I would just find. But it was rare that I was excited about what we were learning in school from the book that the teacher had given the whole class to kind of read and do a book report on. 

But high school was when I think my reading went to another level of, I started reading Zelle Hurston and Tony Morrison, Bebe Moore Campbell. I am forever grateful for the teachers who brought those writers into my life. And I remember reading a Raisin in the Sun, a play, and with one of my favorite plays, and we read plays by August Wilson. So in high school I read so widely, we read poetry, novels, short stories and plays. And so all of that kind of opened my world into not just what I could read, but what I could write. I always was reading in order to tell my own story that those two things were always kind of in conversation with each other. For me, reading was only so that I could respond. It was always something to make me want to create. So I would read something and try to write maybe something like it, or I would read and write what I felt was missing. And that is how I kind of learned how to write plays and poetry and fiction and non-fiction was by reading all this great literature. 

When I go to the page to start a story, I’m always thinking about how can I make this character nuanced and layered, and how can she surprise the reader? So if she starts off one way, I’m always thinking about turning the moment at some point in the story where if she’s such a goody, goody girl, we see her mess up or we see her have to kind of falter and figure something out. And vice versa, if she’s kind of a mess in the beginning, we see moments where she is strong and is figuring out who she is. So I just think that that’s good writing because it’s also who we really are as humans. So when I’m writing, I’m trying to just reflect reality on the page. And reality is we are messy and complicated, and sometimes we get it right, and sometimes we really, really don’t. 

And we’re full of questions and we think we know the answer. We think we know what we want. And sometimes that changes. So I’m always asking my character, what do you want? And what’s in the way of what you want? Who loves you? Who do you love back? Who do you miss? When is the last time you cried? And by asking my character these questions, I get to know her and I get to create obstacles for her that get in the way of what she wants, or we realize maybe you don’t really want what you thought you wanted and that’s the journey. So I think that is why my characters feel real and feel like friends or people that, because I am trying to just replicate the amazing, brilliant, complicated, messy women and girls that I know in real life, and I think those are the best stories where I can actually relate to what’s happening on the page. 

Yes, I want to write characters that young people can aspire to, but I think that there’s a danger in writing the perfect character and someone who always gets it right and never makes a mistake. And I also think there’s a danger in writing the character that is so flawed that there’s never a moment where we really see their humanity and see them as a person who can change. So I want a young person to read a book and feel if they are the person who maybe is really flawed and having a lot of challenges, that there is a chance for them to be better and do better. And when they see that that character has that moment, I think that speaks to them. And for the characters who are the people who are perfectionists and always aiming and striving to do things just right, I want them to see that there’s grace for mistakes and that there is forgiveness and that you can get up and try again. So I’m trying to create nuanced, layered characters because I think that we are nuanced people. 

I think that it’s necessary and important — actually crucial — to include joy when writing, especially when writing for young people. And I don’t equate joy with happy endings or everything works out just fine because that’s not life. And I write mostly realistic fiction. So I do have the responsibility to be honest and to keep it real, but I think that joy is a part of our lives and that even on the worst day, even the worst week you’re having, there is a moment of grace. There are moments of calm and of peace. And so I try to make sure that my work is balanced with that one because I just believe it’s true. And I think it’s important to help young people find the joy. It might not be the obvious thing right away of what you could be grateful for or where the grace is in a moment, but if you look for, you will find it. 

And I think that’s important, especially if young people are dealing with trauma or something really hard, then it’s important to say, you are not what happened to you. You can move past this moment. And that there is a way forward. And so I think often I say this quote so many times, one of my favorite quotes that keeps me anchored and keeps me going by Maya Angelou that says, my greatest hope is to laugh as much as I cry. So she does not hope that there will be no tears. In fact, it sounds like she knows there’s like this guaranteed resolution in her that I know that there will be tears. I just also hope I get to laugh along the way too. And so that’s something I think about a lot in my books is how can I help young people see the balance of their lives, find the things to be grateful for, and also how joy can be resistance, how you can say, yeah, life is hard. 

And I’ve been through a lot. I’m going through a lot, and the fact that I still get up and choose to laugh and smile and choose to do something kind for someone else, that is my way of resisting and saying, I’m still here. This will not destroy me. This will not take me down. And I think that that is a great strength, and I think young people need that skill to practice the muscle of using joy as a weapon, also against hate and against sadness, against despair. I come from a people who sang in the fields while they were picking cotton, and yes, they sang to give messages about where to meet up and things like that, but they were also singing, I think, to keep themselves from despair. And so I think that helping young people tap into that kind of strength and that kind of joy is a powerful thing to give them. 

Just after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, I went down and volunteered and was working at an arts camp, a performing arts camp at theater, dance music, and also poetry. And I was there as the poetry person to help young people cope with what had just happened that originally we had planned to just do a performing arts workshop and camp, but because of Hurricane Katrina, we realized we cannot just carry on as usual. We really need to address what’s happening. And I was taking creative arts therapy courses at the new school and was thinking about and learning how the arts can help young people cope with trauma and how some of our young people may never go to therapy or get counseling, so how can we bring that to them through art making? And so this camp was powerful and heartbreaking and everything in between, I have fell in love with these young people who were sharing their stories, not just about what happened during the hurricane, but who they were before and what their neighborhoods were like before. 

So I got to really know them and came back the next year. So I went back three times and worked with young people and they wrote these amazing poems. And when I was in class writing and working on a picture book for a class assignment actually that was about, whoa, write a story about an issue that might bring a child to therapy, so maybe a divorce or death of a loved one, something like that. And these stories were on my mind. And so I began what now is A Place Where Hurricanes Happen, but that was first a class assignment that I was just writing to think about how do you deal with heavy topics in picture books? So their voices were still with me, their stories were with me. I wanted to honor my time with them. And in that class, my professor and a classmate encouraged me to send that out. 

And so the long story is that that’s the first book that got published, but the inspiration behind it was the real work that I did with young people. And I’m really proud that I got to go back and once the book was published, Shadra Stickland and I, who I love and adore, and she did the illustrations for that book. The two of us went on a book tour, we went to New Orleans, gave books to the kids who inspired the story and got to see them in a better place. This was five years later, a lot of restoration have begun. And so it was nice to come back and see them and honor their stories, give them the book and spend more time with them when they weren’t so deep in the hurt and in the trauma of it all. 

So it can be so cliche to say things like stories matter, stories bring us together. The human experience is what ignites us and unites us, but it’s really true that stories matter and that they do bring us together. And I have been blown away and sweetly surprised by the amount of young people who reach out to me or who in the signing line or at an author visit say things to me about relating to my characters when they are opposite of the main character. I’m mostly right about dark skin, Black girls as my main characters. And I have had so many people of all walks of life come to me and say that they identify and relate to those characters. 

And one that stands out to me and that I remember so deeply is a young boy in New Zealand who’s white stood up and he’s in the seventh grade and he is standing in front of there were about 800 young people in this auditorium. So he’s being very brave to ask this question and to say this in front of his peers. He says to me, I just finished reading, Watch Us Rise. And I love that that book is about girls standing up for theirselves and finding their voice. I have a sister and my best friend is a girl, and I want to know if you can give me advice on how to be a better feminist. And I was like, what? You were in the seventh grade and you’re asking, how can you be a better feminist? So of course, I told him, the fact that you’re asking that question means you are absolutely on the right track that you’re aware, that you want to know that you’re thinking about these things. I was so moved by him. I’ve been moved by the quiet student who oftentimes identifies with a side character or with a character who is the unlikely hero or the person who gets the crush or becomes popular. 

And a lot of my books poets are popular, and it’s not about the sports and the basketball stars. So I’ll get a lot of young people who come up to me and whisper that they appreciate that the artist is the one who’s the cool kid, and that they identify a lot with those characters. And it always makes me feel good because I think sometimes when I’m writing, there’s the pressure of, well, this is ya, so you’re supposed to include a dating relationship and this and that, and friendship, drama and all the things. And sometimes I lean into that. But other times with piecing me together, I chose not to give Jade a romantic interest. And I felt like that might be a risk. I wasn’t sure how teenagers were going to respond to that. And overwhelmingly, they appreciate that Jade could just focus on herself and loving herself and loving her friends, and that it wasn’t about the romantic love. And so I love that kind of push and pull of what are the tropes of YA? What are we supposed to do? What makes a story YA? And then how can I mess with that a little bit and offer something else for young people who are reading? 

I think one of the most profound and powerful writing prompt for a young person is to just ask them, what do you see and how does that make you feel? Those are powerful questions to actually allow time for reflection. Just what do you see? What is happening in your neighborhood, what’s happening in your home, what do you notice about this world? And then asking how does that make you feel? And you could even push it further and what do you want to do about it? Or what do you want to do about those feelings? As young people share their findings, I think you realize I’m not the only one who sees this. I’m not the only one who feels this. And I am learning how to articulate and put into words this feeling that sometimes feels overwhelming. And I think that that’s important to help young people find the tools to name what is happening in their world, and then to realize that is not just happening to them. 

And that is not just something that’s happening now, but most of what’s happening now has already happened and that people survived that. So we allow young people to tell their stories and then connect them to other stories that have been told. It’s a strengthening that happens that if those folks could survive, if our ancestors and former activists and poets and musicians could survive it all and put their stories down, then they have left an inheritance for us. And so I think that that can be powerful for a young person to first just name what’s happening, articulate their truth, and then connect with someone else living or not living in their classroom, in their neighborhood or not. I say to young people, often, you might not have someone up close and personal that you feel can be a mentor to you that you feel like you could look up to. 

I hope you do. I hope that there’s someone in your family, someone in your school, someone in your local community. But if there’s not, there are so many activists and artists who’ve come before you who loved you and were praying for you, and they didn’t even know your name. They were seeing the future and thinking about what the future was going to be, and they were trying to leave the world a better place for me, for you. And I want to connect them to James Baldwin and Toni Morrison and [Lucille] Clifton and all these folks who came and used their voices and used their art to speak up, to speak out, to put on record. I think that that’s important. And I also think that in asking young people to name what they see, sometimes that question can maybe lean into things you want to change about your community. What are the negative things that are happening? How are you going to make change young people? But I also think it’s worth asking, what do you see that brings you joy? What do you see that makes you smile? Because again, it’s important that there’s both yes and yes, there’s a lot to change, and yes, there’s things we want more of. So what do you want more of? What is already working that we can talk about, write about, sing about, and praise. 

So I had never heard about Florence Mills. I did not know about her until I was having a conversation with my editor and I was saying, I’d love to do maybe a picture book about a black woman activist or something that maybe is a little unsung unknown. And she was like, oh, I have the perfect person for you. I just read this book about Florence Mills. And I was like, who? And so she gave me this book that was, I mean like an encyclopedia, a very thick, very adult, very dry book. And I was like, this is overwhelming for me as an adultery. How am I going to distill this to a picture book? And thank God for the Schomburg Center in Harlem in New York City. 

They have collections where families have donated or given the papers of their loved ones to the Schomberg Center, so you can go, it’s a research library, and they have a collection on Florence Mill. So I got to go and read letters and see her passport and just her play bills, things that were her original works. And then I got a little bit more of what her story was. And so because of my editor, I was thinking about, yeah, I think I can do this. And I did a lot of research at the Schomberg Center, and I really wanted to focus on this idea of how else can we show up in the world and bring change? Do we have to be an activist that makes speeches? Do we have to march and protest? Are those the only ways to be involved in bringing change? No. Right? 

So Florence, even as a child, had a very, she was very strong and very opinionated about justice and what was fair. Young people understand those words. Fairness, cooperation, love, family. So she was a child when she stood up to white manager who refused to let her friends in, she’s performing. She is opening up the night and she brings her friends and family with her and they won’t let them in because it is a white only space. And she is like, well, if they can’t come in, then I’m not coming in. I’m not singing if they can’t be in here with me. She was a child when she did this. And that just motivated me so much to get her story out that she was using her actual voice of singing to bring change. A lot of her songs were about change, but also her actual voice and standing up to people to fight for what was right and that she wasn’t waiting until she was a grown adult to do that. 

So I just felt like, yeah, there’s a story there for young people to see how can they also stand up for what’s right in small and in big ways? And so I loved working on the, it was hard. Picture books are the hardest thing to write. You’re telling this huge story in the less amount of words. And I’m always thinking of, well, what does the child care about versus what does the adult care about? And so this idea of her voice being powerful and being able to change the world was the thing that I tried to keep coming back to. And then encouraging young people to find their voices and change the world. 

I think it is important that we keep on record what has happened in our world so that we can learn from it, be better. I think it’s important that black folks, black Americans, that we see ourselves as crucial and in integral to this nation’s history. And that our origin story is important too. And so many times as a child, I remember that assignment that the child gets in the book, and Nicole also was that kid who gets the assignment to draw a flag or to talk about your ancestors. And that’s a hard assignment for a lot of people in this country who did not immigrate here, but who were brought here against their will. 

And so I was proud of this book because it also helps black Americans think about what we helped create once we got here, and that our legacy is so much about making America live up to us promise of democracy, and that we can be proud of this country in the sense of we worked hard and we tilled the ground and our ancestors planted actual seeds, but also seeds of faith for us to be here as a people. And that that’s a powerful legacy to come from. And so the joy, the vibrant life that they lived pre enslavement and then the joy and the vibrant life that they fought so hard to get and to strive for, it was something that was a common thread throughout the whole book. Even though this big, tragic, horrific thing happened to them, they survived and they kept living and kept surviving and kept dreaming. And so yeah, it was a powerful project and I’m forever grateful that Nicole invited me to be a part of it. 

Including William Tucker was so important for both Nicole and I mean based on a lot of the research that she was doing, we realize, yes, this is an important name and how come we don’t know this name? We should know that this is the first black child born here, and we should know that the name of the ship that our people were brought over on is the White Lion. All of that was so important to put a name and to be able to trace back some history of where you come from and some concrete place in person was important for us. And so when I learned that history, which I did not know until researching for the book with Nicole, I knew that that had to be in there. That this idea also that with so much strife and pain and horrificness that was happening, folks decided to still have children means to me that they also saw a future and wanted a future and wanted this world to continue and keep going. And that says something about faith and perseverance that we wanted that to be present on the page. 

So the educator part of me, I’m always asking for the publisher to create teaching tools, discussion guides for young people and for teachers and parents to be able to make these books very practical things that you’re using in the classroom or in your home, and not just something to read as entertainment or to read and maybe learn something and then just kind of push it away. I am writing for there to be discussion and debate and art making in response to what young people read. So I was so thrilled when our publisher came to us already with Ideas for a teacher’s guide. There is a very detailed teacher’s guide from all the way from elementary to high school of activities that young people can do and questions to ask and ways to get young people thinking about this history. And I have seen firsthand, so powerful art making around folks and their identities and their families. 

And so they’re asking that question of their grandparents, where do we come from? Who are we? What’s our story? They’re writing poems about where they come from making art and then talking about what this history feels like and means to them. Nicole and I visited a school in Harlem and there was this beautiful precious moment where a young girl who was Asian said, I think that would be very hard to go through what they went through. And you could just see the wheels kind of turning in her mind of like, wow, people went through that and survived that and that that’s not fair, but I’m so glad that they kept going and right. She’s just having all these thoughts and kind of thinking out loud and processing out loud and exercising the muscle of empathy. And like I mentioned, our young people understand fairness. They understand kindness. 

And so when we talk about social justice, sometimes it can feel maybe so heavy or so big, but that’s social justice, kindness, fairness, cooperating, listening, sharing all of that is a part of teaching young people how to be good citizens of this world. And so I think there are moments in the book and in so much literature that’s out where you can pull that out and ask young people not only to talk about what happened, but what is happening and then where are they in the story? How are they going to continue the story of change and democracy in our world? What do they want to do? How do they want to add on to what’s already been done to make this world a better place? 

It was very important for Nicole and I to make sure that in the poem legacy, we talked not just about folks who do the big things that are seen and maybe acknowledge a little bit more. So being doctors, being lawyers, being activists, writers, right singers. But we also know that being a mother is important and being a good neighbor is important, and being a teacher is important. All of those things. We wanted to make sure that young people felt like it’s not about being the loudest or the most visible person to make change, but you just existing in your everyday life, whatever that’s going to look like, that you can continue this legacy of fighting for freedom and being a change maker and making sure that you are being kind and listening and standing up for what’s right in your world. I say a lot to young people that I think that it’s a lot of pressure when adults say, go change the world. We want you to do something big. And changing the world is a lot. That is a hard task to give to someone, but I think it’s possible to change your world, so your family, your neighborhood, your school, your community, what can you do to bring small and big change into the world, meaning your world. And so that page is about that, the legacy that you come from and also the legacy you are going to leave. 

The story about Maya Angelou and writing Maya’s Song is that Brian Collier, the illustrator, came to me and said, I am under contract and I’m illustrating a book about Maya Angelo. He was going to write it. And then he thought, why am I writing this? I should get a poet. I should get a writer to write this. I want us to create something together. And I was like, okay, let’s make it happen. And so many years later, we have Maya song and it just so happened she’s one of my favorite poets. I felt like I needed to fact check, but I didn’t have to really research because I knew so much about her already. I grew up on her poetry, heard her speak several times, had seen the documentary several times. 

So it was an easy yes, and I knew that I to honor the poet by writing poetry about her life. And also I feel like these big stories that span decades, it’s hard sometimes I think for a young person to take in that big story. And so bite size pieces, like poetry verse vignettes, can help a child just kind of take the story moment by moment and not feel so overwhelmed by this big life. And I think educators can also, we’re just going to read these three and stop here and talk about this can be a little easier to navigate. But I mean, the real reason is because she’s a poet and I wanted to write in the form that she is known mostly for. But then I was also thinking of how can the poems hold all of the emotion and be kind of a container for that, for those emotions? 

Because her childhood was traumatic. She had sexual abuse that happened, and I knew that I was not going to sanitize her story, so I needed to think about how to best tell it. And poetry softens the telling. It also creates a container for those emotions that are sometimes uneasy and heavy to feel. So I felt like poetry would be the best way to go for Maya song. And again, I just was so honored to have Brian ask me to be a part of this. I love his work. I love collage. And so what he did with the illustrations I thought was bringing my words to life in a way that I could not have imagined. 

So Maya lost her voice. She stopped speaking for five years due to this abuse that happened to her and her fear that her voice had somehow caused the death of this person who hurt her. So she stopped speaking, but she read a lot and was taking in all these words. And Ms. Flowers was someone that she speaks of and interviews and in telling her story of a woman who would have poetry books for her to read and realize that Maya was gravitating to those poems, that her eyes would kind of light up, and that she was really loving those books. And so as a way to encourage her to speak, she would say to Maya, it seems like you really love poetry, but I don’t know. Cause poets say their poems out loud. Poems are meant to be heard. You got to say the poem if you really love the poem. And that is kind of what pushed Maya to open her mouth and start talking and speaking again. And she did it in private. She had to go try it out a little bit before she was speaking publicly. But yeah, Ms. Flowers and her books of poems were what kind of ignited Maya to start speaking again. 

Poetry is Meant to Be Spoken. Ms. Flowers, a family friend had Maya over for tea, cookies and lemonade. You going to talk to me today? She asked Maya didn’t say a word. Well, if you won’t talk, let’s see what the poets have to say. Ms. Flowers read poetry out loud to Maya. Every time they read poetry together, Ms. Flowers noticed Maya smile the light in her eyes. Maya sweetheart, you seem to really love poetry, but you know can’t really love poetry unless you say it out loud. Ms. Flowers told Maya you can’t really love poetry till you speak it, till you let the words in you out. 

Even in writing nonfiction, there are elements from fiction that I apply to the work and my work in general. There are themes that show up in every single book, and one of those themes is how women love each other and nurture each other and anchor each other. And so I’m always looking for that moment in someone’s life. If I’m researching them and telling their story, I’m looking for who loved them, who was an anchor for them, how did they survive what they went through? And I’m doing that for my character, and I’m doing that for a real person. And so with Oprah, when asking that question of her life, one of the answers was May Angelou and this amazing mentorship friendship that they had. And I knew that I wanted to include that. I know that she’s such an important person to Oprah, so I definitely thought that that should be a part of the book. 

I also want young people to realize that these folks that we look up to who’ve done such amazing big things, went through hard stuff and also had help and support. And so no one can do anything all alone. And so I wanted to make sure that young people saw that even someone like Oprah who struggled and came from some tragic things that happened was able through a lot of healing and through poetry and through the nurturing of women in her life, she was able to then go and do all the things that she’s doing and that you need someone in your life. So who is that person for you? It will not be Maya, but who can you look to for support? And that she found her through literature, right? So she first read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and she realized, whoa, this someone else has my story and has gone through what I’ve been through. 

Oh goodness. I have loved every minute of writing the Ryan Hart series and sharing it with readers. That story came to me at a time where I needed to take a break from writing about this more serious heavy topics. And so it’s been very refreshing to spend time with her and to shine a light on that community, that part of my community that I know so well, that nurtures you and loves you and pushes you to be your best self. So Ryan heard the inspiration for the Ryan Heart series is twofold. It came to me because of the Ramona series and my desire to make sure that black folks are not erased from the Pacific Northwest. I think it’s important that when Oregon is written about that, when the city of Portland is written about that we remember that there are black people there. Black people helped make the city what it is, literally build it with the railroads and all of that and the shipyard. 

So yes, I wanted to make sure that I’m putting black Portland on the page and the joy and the strength and the perseverance of that community. It’s such a throwback to how I grew up. And so many of the scenes remind me of the church I went to, and I oftentimes will change the names of real places, but in the Ryan Heart Series, for the most part, I leave names as they are. So she goes to Vernon Elementary School. I went to Vernon Elementary School. She plays at Alberta Park. Alberta Park is a real place right across the street from Vernon. So I wanted to have those anchors in there like Beverly Cleary did for Click Attach Street and other places in Portland. Ryan is also based off of my goddaughter, Ryan, who when she was Ryan’s age, she’s now in high school, but when she was Ryan’s age, she loved to cook and do all the concoctions that Ryan does in the series. 

She was always asking me to taste something or can we play? And she would have this feast that she would make. And so I remember one day just looking at her being so joyful and being so free to be herself. And I just wanted a book for her. I wanted something that she could read and see herself in. She does not have a story of struggle and of strife, and those books are important. I don’t think it should be either or. I think we need all stories. And so I just wanted something that would honor the real Ryan in my life. And so it’s been, again, such a joy to be with this character, put her in situations where she surprises me sometimes as a writer, you think I’m going to do this. This is the outline, this is the story. 

My name is Renée Watson and this is an excerpt from Ways to Make Sunshine when it’s time to go out for recess. Brandon Marcus and the boy with glasses who I never talked to are splashing around in the puddles and stomping in mud. Then they race each other up the monkey bars. I walk over to join in on the climbing, but before I can get there, the substitute teacher says to me, why don’t you go over there sweetheart, and points to the swings and slide. I’d rather stay here pretending to climb a mountain. So I say, no thank you and keep walking to the monkey bars. 

The substitute teacher follows me, and that’s when I realized it wasn’t a suggestion or question, it was a demand. I really think it’d be safer if you stay off the monkey bars. Besides, you and Brandon might need a break from each other. I’ll stay out of Brandon’s way. I say, and I don’t think it’s dangerous. I play on them all the time. I bet I can climb faster than all those boys. Just then Brandon shouts out, you can’t beat me, and he jumps down, showing off. I bet you a pack of green apple jolly ranchers that you can’t beat me. Let’s race. Race. Yeah. Last one to that pole has to buy the winner candy. He points to the tetherball pole across the playground. I think about it, there’s a small crowd forming, and now I feel like I have to say yes. I have to prove to the substitute teacher that I can play whatever I want with whoever I want. 

I don’t like Jolly Ranchers. I tell Brandon when I win, you have to buy me a Twix. I look over at Kiki, one of my best friends, she smiles and gives us our countdown on your mark. Get set, go. I hear our friends all cheering, but mostly I hear the sound of my breath huffing and puffing in out in, out my feet, slap the pavement and I run as fast as I can. Brandon is beating me, but not by much. I move my arms through the air, forcing myself to go faster. I catch up and then just like I knew I could, I started running faster than Brandon by a lot. I am winning. I am winning. The pole is close, and if I reach my arm out far enough, I’ll reach it. I run a few more steps and then when I go to put my right foot down, something happens. 

My right foot doesn’t touch the pavement the way a running foot usually touches the pavement. Instead, it stumbles and hiccups its way to the cold ground. I have fallen blood is trickling out of my knee and there’s a stinging and pounding filling all throughout my leg. Instead of stopping the race and seeing if I’m okay, Brandon runs right past me, tags the pole and says, yes, beat you. You owe me a pack of Jolly Ranchers. No fair. Kiki yells she was at the pole first. It’s not her fault. Her shoe was untied. I didn’t even realize that’s what happened. My shoe was untied. I tripped over my shoelace. Don’t be a sore loser. Brandon says he’s right. I tell Kiki, I never touched the pole. On our way home from school, I asked my brother, do you have $2? He answers why, and this means he has $2. He’s just not sure if he wants to give them to me. What happened to your jeans? Ray asks, looking at the whole, it’s a long story. I tell him, I hold out my hand, I’ll pay you back. He gives me $2 and when we get to the corner store, I go straight to the candy aisle, buy a pack of green apple jolly ranches for Brandon and a Twix for me. 

Nope, I don’t feel bad about this. I’m going to pull this prank on my brother and then I’m going to go in my room and laugh about it. I’m not going to be sad. So she has surprised me and making sure that I don’t make her too good and too kind and too thoughtful. But then I keep her right at that age of figuring herself out and playing with the idea that you can grow into a better self. She’s always being pushed to live up to her name, which means king to be a leader. And so what are qualities that good leaders should have? They should be, should be thoughtful. And so she’s trying to do that. But it’s hard to do that when you have a brother who sometimes isn’t his best self to you. You have this boy in class who’s teasing you about your name. So it’s been fun to put her in situations that test her, where sometimes she rises to the occasion and she is her best self. And then other times not so much. And to let young people know that is exactly where you’re supposed to be in the fifth grade. You should be figuring it out and you don’t have to be perfect. 

When the first two books came out, we were still in the pandemic, and so there were no author visits in person. It was sad to put a book out in the world and then not be able to be with the folks you’re writing for. So I just now have started to tour for the book and be out in classrooms. And now since we’re on book three, had some kind of staying power. Young people have read all the books. And so it’s very different going out when a book is brand new and not that many people know the character versus going out now. And so many young people have devoured the books and have so many thoughts about Brandon, so much to say about the friendships and Amanda and Red and all of that. So it’s been lovely going out and talking to young people about their responses to Ryan and to what she’s going through. 

As a writer, oftentimes the advice is to write what, and I think the very beginning of my career, I was very much writing from a place of, I know Portland, I know this city, my stories take place there. I can close my eyes and immediately tell you where things are located and remember the taste of Marion berries and all the things that I don’t see or have when I’m in York, but it’s all right there because that’s where I grew up. It’s so much of who I am. I would never write a character who lived in New York. I just felt like, I don’t know, I feel like I’m still learning. I still have to figure out what I want to say about New York. It wasn’t as easy to write characters in New York, and I had tried before, but it just wasn’t feeling the same. But then when I approached the book, some places more than others, as this girl who’s visiting New York and who’s seen New York through the eyes of not someone who knows it and who’s lived there and was raised there, but as an outsider coming in, I was like, oh, I have this story now I know how I can write about New York. 

I can write about it as an outsider, as a visitor. And I had lived in New York for many years by the time I wrote some places more than others, but still, I still was having more questions about the city than answers. And so I think that is what influenced so much of Amara is my younger self. When I first came as a college student first and then left and went back to Oregon, moved back as an adult, and just the awe and the fear and the excitement, all of it, you’re feeling that. And I wanted her to have that experience. I also wanted Amara to have a daddy-daughter moment. I have written books where fathers are not so great. You know what, mama left me. The father is horrible. And I do know that that guy, I know that dad, but I also know the dad that’s in some places more than others. 

And so I just wanted to make sure that not just within the story, but within my body of work that I am, I’m not just telling the same story over and over, that I’m showing a wide range of people, of folks of my community. So I went back to my questions, what does Amara want? What’s in the way of what she wants? Who loves her? Who does she love? All those things, what does she need? And then I realized, oh, she wants to get to know her dad. 

She wants to know his side of the family. She wants to know her family history. And then the plot kind of unfolded in that way. But yeah, I enjoyed even thinking about some of my favorite places in Harlem and where I would take her was fun to think about as a setting as character. I like to write my settings as if they’re people, they’re characters, they’re influencing the story. There can be no wasted word. The poet in me is like every word matters, even in prose, even in novels. And so if I’m describing the city or the landscape, it’s for a reason. It’s impacting my character in some kind of way. And so I was always asking myself, what is Amara learning about herself by being in New York? What can she teach her cousins who are so used to this black culture, the richness of Harlem, they take it for granted. 

What can she teach them? And what is that exchange like for city girl, city girls, her cousins learning something from her. So yeah, I was asking all of those questions. 

We need diverse books because our world is diverse.