Meet-the-Author Recording with Andrea Wang
Watercress |
Andrea Wang introduces and shares some of the backstory for creating Watercress.
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Andrea Wang: Hello, my name is Andrea Wang and I'm the author of Watercress. The story is semi-autobiographical. My parents really did make me collect watercress from the side of the road when I was a child and it was not my favorite activity.
When the memory would first pop up, here and there, at random moments, I would just roll my eyes and be like, this is just something my Chinese immigrant parents made me do and it became kind of a funny anecdote that I would share with friends or relatives. But it came up so often that I felt that I had to write about it to understand it and that has always been my process, to write about things that I'm trying to figure out on a personal level, like journaling, but in a deeper way.
When I sat down to really think about watercress and this memory of picking it, I realized that food was such a huge part, not just of my family, but of my culture and my parents' relationship to food was very different. So, I took the memory of my mother telling me the story of her younger brother who died when he was quite young and put that together with my memory of collecting watercress to illustrate a larger point about cultural and generational misunderstanding and miscommunication.
I would love for kids to just realize that everyone has a story, even their parents. Hopefully the book inspires them to ask more about their own family histories and then I hope parents will realize the importance of passing those family histories down to their children. Because I did not know so much about my parents' lives before they came to the United States. I felt sort of at loose ends as a child and I feel that knowing more about their lives really grounded me. So, I hope that the book also fosters more empathy for immigrants and for children of immigrants, especially now with the rise in anti-Asian sentiment.
I'd love to read a little bit of Watercress to you:
We are in the old Pontiac, the red paint faded by years of glinting Ohio sun, pelting rain, and biting snow. The tops of the cornstalks make lines that zigzag across, uneven. Mom's shouts, "Look," and the car comes to an abrupt, jerking stop. Mom's eyes are as sharp as the tip of a dragon's claw. Dad's eyes grow wide. "Watercress," they exclaim, two voices, heavy with memories.
From the depths of the trunk, they unearth, a brown paper bag, rusty scissors, and a longing for China. They haul us out of the backseat. We are told to untie our sneakers, peel off our socks, and roll up our jeans. We have to help them gather it. The water in the ditch is cold. It stings my ankles and the mud squelches up between my toes. A car passes by and I duck my head, hoping it's no one I know.
This Meet-the-Author Recording with Andrea Wang was exclusively created in by TeachingBooks with thanks to Holiday House.