Posts Tagged interview

STEM Tuesday– Celebrating Diversity in STEM– Interview with author Tonya Bolden

By on February 23, 2021   /   Diversity in STEM, STEM Tuesday  

Welcome to STEM Tuesday: Author Interview & Book Giveaway, a repeating feature for the last Tuesday of every month. Go Science-Tech-Engineering-Math!

Today we’re interviewing Tonya Bolden , author of Changing the Equation: 50+ Black Women in STEM. This game changing compilation profiles more than fifty women whose significant contributions to science often go unsung. School and Library Journal writes, “Bolden, a master of the collective biography, presents an impeccably-researched call to action, imploring black girls to fight the racial and gender imbalance that plagues the STEM field.”

One of the things that impressed me about our guest author is her passion for children and willingness to light the way for future generations. Her work breathes life into nonfiction subjects, providing young people (and the adults in their lives) with vivid examples to follow. In 2016, Tonya received the Nonfiction Award for Body of Work from the Children’s Book Guild of Washington, DC. for significantly contributing to the quality of nonfiction for children. I am frequently quoted for advocating we provide positive, uplifting books for young people of color. Tonya Bolden is an outstanding example of that in practice. Many of today’s diverse writers, including myself, walk along the path she blazed.

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Christine Taylor-Butler: Tonya, with more than 40 publishing credits to your name you’ve had an amazing career in children’s literature. You once said you were surrounded by books as a child.

Tonya: I did. My parents didn’t complete their education but they had ambitions for me and my sister. They raised us to reach high. To dream big. We didn’t have a lot of money but they knew the value education would play in our lives and made sure we were surrounded by books.

CTB: Was there a particular book that stood out to you as a child?

Tonya Bolden: Yes. The Borrowers, by Mary Norton is one that comes to mind. It’s about little people who secretly live in a house and borrowed things they needed from the owners. There was just something magical about the story and it resonated.

CTB: You were originally uninterested in writing history or nonfiction, or even writing books for children. And yet you are known for writing insightful works in this genre. What changed your mind?

Tonya: While reviewing books for Black Enterprise, I realized that history could be told with passion and heart. If you added soul, nuance, texture and complexity those books could be as fascinating as fiction. I realized there was nothing wrong with history. What had been wrong was how it had been taught when I was a kid.

“I find that historical figures are more fascinating than things people conjure up.” – Tonya Bolden, Indian Express

CTB: In various interviews you  talk about writing for children who don’t otherwise see themselves in literature. Who aren’t shown as belonging in the world. 

Tonya: Yes. I wondered, where are the books for children who are aspirational? The kids who want to travel? I wanted to say – especially to girls – so much is possible! A lot of children don’t dream big. After I wrote And Not Afraid to Dare: The Stories of Ten African American Women, that’s when I found my passion for writing for children.

CTB: You hold a Bachelors degree from Princeton and a Master’s degree from Columbia. It might surprise people to know that both degrees are not in history or literature, but in Slavic Languages and Literatures with an emphasis on Russian.  I’ve been advocating for children to learn more than one language. My daughters, for instance, studied Latin, Italian and Japanese. But there is often push back, especially in urban communities. Where did your interest come from?

Tonya: I was 17 when I made that decision. In high school, I fell in love with works by Anton Chekov. It might have had something to do with the fact that I grew up during the Cold War. I’ve always loved languages. I was the first in my family to go to college. Back then, there wasn’t as much pressure on young people because of college costs. You could dabble and follow your bliss. My parents didn’t pressure me to follow a certain career. Their philosophy was “Do whatever you want, but find a way to make a living at it.”

It’s so much harder today for young people to explore their interests in the same way. The stakes are higher because of the high cost of education. But it’s still important for young people to learn languages outside of their own culture and learn about the broader world around them.

Changing The EquationCTB: Your book, Changing the Equation: 50+ US Black Women in STEM is such an important addition to children’s literature. You cover an enormous amount of information. What did the research process look like? Were you able to speak with any of the women you included?

Tonya: It started when I wrote Pathfinders: The Journeys of 16 Extraordinary Black Souls. My research included a profile of Katherine Johnson. Most people know her as one of the original “Hidden Figures.”  After I wrote that profile I was curious to know more about black women in STEM so my research grew out of that curiosity.

PathfindersThere’s a saying, “When a student is ready the ‘teacher appears’.” I read newspapers, books, oral histories and conducted web research to identify people to profile. I was surprised by how much I was able to find when I searched for specific professions. I discovered so many women, I didn’t have room to profile them all.  There were a lot of outtakes. If I had the opportunity, this book would have featured more than one hundred woman but it would have been too big a volume for the industry.

“We still have this stereotype that STEM is for boys and men and that’s not true,” – Tonya Bolden, Amsterdam News

Rebecca Crumpler

Rebecca Crumpler

One thought behind the book – I wanted girls to see how wide the world is. Even in science. Not everyone is in a lab coat. I liked the idea of presenting a Black woman who is an astrophysicist. Or a robotics engineer. I wanted girls to know that if they were going towards something that is tough, that there were people who have done it before them. For example, the first woman in the book, Rebecca Crumpler, was a physician. If this woman could go to Medical school before slavery was abolished then anything is possible.

I was lucky to be able to communicate with a number of the women. They were all very generous with their time. Those women included Mamie Parker (Biologist), Aprille Joy Ericsson (NASA Aerospace Engineer), Pamela McCauley (Industrial Engineer), Ayanna Howard (Roboticist), Treena Livingston Arinzeh (Biomedical Engineer), Paula T. Hammond (Chemical Engineer), Lisa D. White (Geologist), Emma Garrison-Alexander (Cybersecurity), Aomawa Shields (Astronomer and Astrobiologist), and Donna Auguste (Computer Scientist–and more!).

CTB: What advice do you have for young people who might want to follow in your path one day.

Tonya: Read. Read. Read. Master the language in which you want to write. Knowing other languages also helps a writer. Know your own culture and other cultures. If you want to write professionally, be prepared for lean days. It’s hard to get into publishing. I started writing under “write for hire” contracts. That means I wrote books other people wanted done and I took the work I was offered. It was helpful because it kept me flexible and nimble. In the industry it became clear I was open to other people’s ideas and I was offered additional work. It’s harder to get published now. Back in the day, publishers nurtured “house authors”. You would write several books and be given time to find an audience. Now books have a shorter shelf life. If you don’t hit it out the park with that first or second book it may be Game Over! There was a time when publishers focused on helping to build a long-term careers. Having said that, perseverance is key. Follow your passion and don’t give up. A young woman once wrote me to say, “You may not know me, but you have paved a path for me in this industry, and I wanted to personally thank you.”

CTB: So in a way, you’re passing on the dream through your writing.

Tonya: Yes. Doors started to open for many of us in the 1960’s. We grew up hearing about giving back. The work that I do is my way of saying “Thank you” to those people who opened the doors for us. People like Fannie Lou Hamer, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Katherine Johnson, for example.

I always wanted to be useful. In elementary school, I thought I wanted to be a classroom teacher. But in a way that’s what I’m doing now. Teaching young people through the books I’m writing.

Dovey Johnson Roundtree

Dovey Johnson Roundtree

CTB: So what’s next for Tonya Bolden. Are there any books we should be looking for in the future?

Tonya: I have a new book coming out in June 2021: Dovey Undaunted. It’s the biography of Dovey Johnson Roundtree, civil rights attorney. She lived a life of service and was one of the first Black women to enter the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC). Dovey was born in Charlotte, North Caroline which is where my father was born. When I was a kid, our family would go down south to visit. I have so many vivid memories of Charlotte. This book seemed like a natural fit for me to write.

How to Build a MuseumAuthor’s note. Tonya Bolden is featured twice on our list this month. Her other book, How to Build A Museum: Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture is a must read, featuring little known details about African American history. For those unable to make a visit to Washington, DC, this book is an important addition to your collection.

Changing The Equation

Win a FREE copy of Changing the Equation: 50+ US Black Women in STEM.

Enter the giveaway by leaving a comment below. The randomly-chosen winner will be contacted via email and asked to provide a mailing address (within the U.S. only) to receive the book.

Good luck!

Tonya Bolden

photo by Hayden Celestin

Tonya Bolden has authored and collaborated on more than forty books. Holding degrees from Princeton and Columbia Universities, she originally intended to complete a PhD and teach Russian literature. But her path lead elsewhere. Her first book for young people, an adaptation of the musical, Mama I want to Sing, lead to more contracts to write books for children. The rest is history. Her book, 33 things Every Girl Should Know was praised by Hillary Rodham Clinton in a speech on the 150th anniversary of the first Women’s Rights Convention. Her awards and recognition are too numerous to list in their entirety but include, the Childrens Book Guild Nonfiction award for her body of work, the James Madison Book Award, ALA’s Coretta Scott King Honor Award, NCTE’s Orbis Pictus Award, ALSC Notable Book and multiple nominations for the NAACP Image Award. To learn more about Tonya, please visit www.tonyaboldenbooks.com

Christine Taylor-Butler headshot

photo by Kecia Stovall

Your host is Christine Taylor-Butler, MIT educated STEAM nerd and author of Bathroom Science, Sacred Mountain: Everest, Genetics, and many other nonfiction books for kids. She is also the author of the middle grade sci-fi series The Lost Tribes. Follow @ChristineTB on Twitter and/or @ChristineTaylorButler on Instagram

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Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour — Interview with Honor Book Award-winner Tziporah Cohen and a GIVEAWAY

By on February 12, 2021   /   Articles, Author Interviews, Giveaways  

The Mixed-Up Files is thrilled to be a part of the 2021 Sydney Taylor Book Award Blog Tour! (For the full schedule click here.)

The Sydney Taylor Book Award is presented annually to outstanding books for children and teens that authentically portray the Jewish experience. As someone who has followed the award closely for many years (and was honored to be a past winner of their manuscript award which recognizes unpublished manuscripts) as well as a member of the review team for the Sydney Taylor Shmooze, a ‘mock’ version of the awards, I am especially thrilled and delighted to welcome author Tziporah Cohen, whose debut novel No Vacancy —about an 11-year-old Jewish girl who, with her Catholic friend, creates a Virgin Mary apparition at a drive-in movie theater to save her family’s failing motel—is a 2021 Sydney Taylor Award Honor Book in the middle grade category.

SEE BELOW for a chance to WIN A COPY of NO VACANCY by Tziporah Cohen!

 

About the book:

SYDNEY TAYLOR BOOK AWARD HONOREE!
Shortlisted for THE NATIONAL JEWISH BOOK AWARD FOR CHILDREN’S LITERATURE! 

 

“With effortless mastery, Cohen weaves the opposing forces of innocence and corruption, right and wrong, love and hate.”—Inderjit Deogun, Quill & Quire starred review

Buying and moving into the run-down Jewel Motor Inn in upstate New York wasn’t eleven-year-old Miriam Brockman’s dream, but at least it’s an adventure. Miriam befriends Kate, whose grandmother owns the diner next door, and finds comfort in the company of Maria, the motel’s housekeeper, and her Uncle Mordy, who comes to help out for the summer. She spends her free time helping Kate’s grandmother make her famous grape pies and begins to face her fears by taking swimming lessons in the motel’s pool.

But when it becomes clear that only a miracle is going to save the Jewel from bankruptcy, Jewish Miriam and Catholic Kate decide to create their own. Otherwise, the No Vacancy sign will come down for good, and Miriam will lose the life she’s worked so hard to build.

 

 

Author Interview:

And now, here’s No Vacancy author Tziporah Cohen joining us here on the Mixed-Up Files!: 

MD: Hi Tzippy, what inspired you to write this story?

TC: The whole idea began while on a mini-vacation in Hershey, PA, where we stayed a couple of nights in a tired motel one summer while I was working on my MFA degree. There was a boy hanging around—maybe 7 or 8 years old—and it turned out he had moved there with his family and they were running the place. I thought it made a great, unique premise for a middle grade novel—a kid living in a motel that her parents were managing. (Kelly Yang’s fantastic novel, Front Desk, hadn’t come out yet.) The boy we met was South Asian, and Hershey is a pretty white town, and I wondered what that was like for him and his family. I had been thinking of writing something from my own Jewish experience, so the boy became an eleven-year-old Jewish girl named Miriam. I wrote the first chapters in that hotel room after my kids went to sleep!

MD: As a debut author, can you tell us about your journey to publication?

TC: It was a long one, as they usually are! I had an idea for a picture book back in 2006 and took an adult education course on writing picture books, which led to some online writing courses, which eventually led to an MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts. I never saw myself writing a novel, but since you can’t do a two-year MFA just writing picture books, I wrote the first draft of No Vacancy over three semesters there. It took several more years of work after graduation before it was ready to submit. I had started looking for an agent but had also submitted the manuscript to Groundwood Books in Toronto, where I now live. When Groundwood sent me an offer of publication, after screaming with excitement, I approached the agents I was interested in with the offer in hand. So my road was a bit backwards at the end.

(The irony is that I never did write that picture book idea that started this whole journey!)

MD: I loved your interview on the Book of Life podcast where you talk about mentor texts—can you briefly explain what a mentor text is, and how you used them when writing NO VACANCY?

TC: Mentor texts are books (in this case) that a writer studies to learn how another author tackles a topic or how they use their craft to form a story. In my case, I wanted to see how other writers tackled the topic of religion and faith in their middle grade novels. There weren’t many out there, but I went back to a childhood favorite, Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret. and the more recent Confessions of a Closet Catholic by Sarah Darer Littman, both of which feature girls struggling to sort out their religious identity and what role they want Judaism to play in their lives.

MD: How did you choose the setting of upstate New York?

TC: I love upstate New York. I spent four years at Cornell University, in Ithaca, and while that’s not a small town, it was certainly very different from where I grew up on Long Island, about an hour’s drive from Manhattan. I’ve done many drives through upstate New York since then, going back and forth from Toronto to Long Island, and so it all felt very familiar and easy to picture in my mind.

MD: Are any of these events true to your own life?

TC: Unfortunately, the only event in the book that’s true to my life (outside of the religious observance) is the anti-Semitic experience that Miriam’s mother had. While I was never assaulted like she was, I had the experience of having pennies thrown at me in the halls of my junior high school. Like Miriam’s mom, I remember feeling ashamed. I wish I could redo that moment by confronting the person and—best case scenario—educating them about the hateful origins of that stereotype. And I would have liked to have felt proud rather than ashamed.

MD: I really love how you show both interfaith and interdenominational cooperation between Jews and Christians, as well as how even within Judaism that there are differences of observance such as between Miriam’s immediate family and her Uncle Mordy. Can you talk a little about that?

TC: It was important to me to show some of the diversity of Judaism—how differently people who identify as Jewish see their relationship to Judaism and how many different ways people practice it. I wanted Jewish children from a variety of religious backgrounds to see themselves and their families in the book, and I wanted non-Jewish children reading it to understand that there isn’t just one Jewish experience. So it was very intentional that the different members of Miriam’s family observed Judaism in different ways. My extended family’s Judaism is just as diverse as Miriam’s!

In the book, Miriam’s Christian neighbors support them after an act of anti-Semitism. My favorite stories, in real life and in fiction, are when different communities come together to fight hatred, because we are so much stronger when we are there for each other.

MD: What does it mean to you to win the Sydney Taylor Honor Award?

TC: I grew up reading Sydney Taylor’s All-of-A-Kind-Family books, which were probably the first books I read that were about a Jewish family, if you don’t count The Carp in the Bathtub! I grew up reading books with the Sydney Taylor Book Award stickers on them, and I’ve read innumerable winners to my children. I never even imagined I would write a book for kids, let alone one that would have its own Sydney Taylor Award sticker. It’s mind-blowing and humbling to me that I’m part of this club. I’m still pinching myself!

MD: Wow—congratulations and Mazal Tov, Tzippy! Thanks so much for these thoughtful responses and for sharing your journey with us here on The Mixed-Up Files! Readers can find Tzippy on Twitter at @tzippymfa and on her website http://www.tziporahcohen.com.

Giveaway! Enter! Win!

To enter for a chance to be the lucky winner of a copy of Sydney Taylor Honor Book NO VACANCY by Tziporah Cohen, click the link below and you can: comment on this blog post, tweet it out and tag us at @MixedUpFiles, or like our post on Instagram at @mixedupfilesmg. (US and Canada winners receive a hard copy, international winners receive an e-book and signed bookmark.)

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Ready to Rumble! with Matt Wallace, Author of BUMP—Plus a Book Giveaway!

By on February 5, 2021   /   Author Interviews  

The middle-grade fanbase for pro wrestling is off the charts, and BUMP takes readers on a thrilling and heartfelt tour of the sport—in and out of the ring. This MG novel tells the tale of 12-year-old MJ, a girl who finds meaning, healing, family, and joy in learning the craft of a “luchadora,” including the all-important BUMP. 

And there can be no more qualified guide than Matt Wallace, a former pro wrestler who also happens to be a screenwriter, podcaster, and Hugo-winning author. (You can check out his website here.) Thanks for joining MUF, Matt!

My pro wrestling fandom dates WAY back to Mad Dog Vachon, Baron von Raschke (the Claw!), The Crusher, et al. How has pro wrestling evolved, and what makes the luchadores tradition unique?

American wrestling has evolved in a lot of ways, but one of the most important, in my opinion, is how it has and is becoming a much more inclusive industry and hobby, for wrestlers and fans. When I was coming up, it was still very much a thing for and performed by straight, largely white guys of a certain physical type. Now we have women wrestling who are as famous as the men at the highest levels, and we’re seeing it open up in a lot of other ways.

There is still a lot of work to do when it comes to that inclusivity, and the problems wrestling has had with that in the past it definitely still has, but it is lightyears ahead of where it was even ten years ago. A lot of that is down to the work of those women and wrestlers of color and LGBT+ wrestlers, often putting on their own shows to be able to showcase their talent and passion.

Lucha is unique in many ways, but one of the most central is how it has been embraced and elevated by and integral to the culture and society to which it belongs. Whereas American pro-wrestling has often been seen as a niche thing, lucha libre is a part of Mexican identity. Luchadores became heroes and celebrities outside of the ring, starring in movies (in their masks, as their wrestling personas) and appearing on TV and in comic books. They became influential in politics. It’s a much more nationally revered form than wrestling is in America.

A reader doesn’t have to know a lot about wrestling to love this book, I’m thinking. It’s so well written with the wrestling scenes clearly described, and the themes are way bigger than the sport. Still, young people especially gravitate to pro wrestling, it seems. Why does it have such a powerful appeal to young fans?

BUMP author Matt Wallace

Speaking for me, when I was a kid I viewed wrestlers as real-life superheroes. They weren’t products of a comic book panel or movie special effects, they were really performing these incredible, even godlike feats of strength and endurance and athleticism, telling these fantastical stories.

When you look at how dominant the Marvel Cinematic Universe has become in entertainment, I think you can draw a straight line between the appeal of that and the appeal of professional wrestling and lucha libre. It’s something in which kids can believe and escape and on which they can project their own desires and dreams of taking charge of their fate and being in control. That’s all powerful stuff when you’re young.

Tell us about your own wrestling career! Were you a hero or a heel? Did you have a signature look and move?

I was almost always a heel, being a very large guy who looked kind of scary. When I started I wore ripped jeans and cut-up t-shirts and called myself The One Man Riot, and then later I was in a tag team called The Legion Knights with a very good friend of mine. We did kind of a holy roller gimmick. He was the evangelist, and I was his enforcer, Deacon Riot. I had a lot of finishes (finishing moves) during my career, but my favorite was the flying head butt off the top rope I stole from one my favorite wrestlers growing up, Bam Bam Bigelow.

The main character, twelve-year-old MJ, learns so much about life by joining the wrestling school. What did being a pro wrestler teach you?

So much. I spent most of my teens in pro-wrestling school, and my twenties in the business, so wrestling really formed the core of who I am. It taught me self-confidence and self-discipline and about belonging to something. That wasn’t always perfect, though. There was plenty of bad behavior and toxic lessons I had to unlearn later in life, too. But that was also part of what wrest

ling taught me. All communities and professions and cultures have dysfunction and toxic thinking, and overcoming that and establishing boundaries and being a positive force in your community is a huge lesson in itself. I take the good with the bad, and I’m grateful for the time I spent in the business.

In my experience, every story has a seed—that moment when an idea comes forward and says, “Write me!” Was there a seed for Bump?

My agent, DongWon Song, was really the person who encouraged me to write a middle-grade novel. I’d never considered trying to write a book for kids before. But I’d written some sample chapters in an effort to get hired for this contract gig writing a middle-grade book based on someone else’s concept/IP, and found I had a good voice for it. At the same time, my agent had also been encouraging me to write more personal fiction, wanting to see more of “me” in my stories. Those two elements really collided to inspire BUMP. If I was going to write a personal story for kids, making it about a kid in wrestling school just made the most sense to me.

Did you need to do a lot of extra research for this book? Or do you just know the history, the moves, and terminology in your bones?

Matt Wallace applying the heel in his very first match!

I’d say 99.9% of it came straight from the hip, and was just me pulling from my own experiences in wrestling school and my knowledge of the business. I did have to think a little bit about how the industry has changed since I was a wrestler, which is creeping up on twenty years ago at this point. Which is where references to things like Lucha Underground came from, which is a type of wrestling show that didn’t exist when I was wrestling. It’s also a big reason I chose to make the protagonist a young girl. I wanted to reinforce, especially for young kids, that women have a prominent place in this business and should pursue it if wrestling is their passion.

MJ is such a great character, complex and admirable with a super arc. Is she based on anyone in particular? Or is she an amalgamation of people you’ve known?

She’s really an amalgamation of my nieces. I have four, all my cousins’ kids, all around MJ’s age or younger. And I think some of me and my wife, Nikki, is mixed in there too.

The experience and working through grief is a main theme in the book. And I’ve come to think of grief as coming in many forms and not just related to the death of loved ones. MJ seems to get a handle on processing her heavy feelings when she starts pursuing her passion. Could you share a bit about that?

I think it’s very much about coping. When you go through something like that, losing someone or something central to who you are, it’s very easy for your everyday life to lose its flavor, and even its meaning. You stopped feeling like the things you do matter. You start to lose the joy you felt before. So when you find something, like MJ does in BUMP, that reignites that spark in you, it helps you reconnect with the life you had before that loss, and helps you get to the other side of your grief. Wrestling helped me deal with a rough period of my childhood and figure out who I am and how to be happy.

One of my fave aspects of the book was the sense of family MJ developed with Papí, Tika, Zina, et al. Was that your experience with the people you performed with during your time as a wrestler? Can you give a specific example from your own life or career?

Oh, absolutely, my wrestling crew became my family, and I still keep up with many of them today through social media, even though most of them live on the east coast and I’m all the way across the country in southern California. One of the other students who started at my pro-wrestling school, the Doghouse, at the same time I did is still wrestling and going strong to this day, and whenever he is (or was, before the pandemic) booked on a show near my town, we reconnect and it’s like no time has passed. Those are the kind of connections you form in the wrestling business.

Thanks SO much, Matt (aka One Man Riot) for taking the time to share your story, and the story behind the story. MG readers are going to love BUMP! To keep up with Matt Wallace, check him out on Twitter and Instagram, as well as his website .

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