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.