Author Interview:Sherry Garland

Author Sherry Garland has written several excellent children and teen books about Vietnames themes, Song of the buffalo boy, Shadow of the Dragon, The Lotus Seed and Children of the Dragon. I am very pleased to welcome Sherry on the blog for an author interview about her books.

What inspired you to write books about Vietnamese themes and did you travel to Vietnam for research?
I lived in Houston, Texas for twenty-three years. In the late 1970s, many thousands of Vietnamese refugees relocated to the Houston and Texas Gulf Coast area. Several families moved into my neighborhood and we became good friends. I helped them with problems any immigrant might have and soon I was helping Vietnamese all over town. I became fascinated with their culture and their individual stories of hardship and survival. I was already an author, so I knew I wanted to tell stories from the Vietnamese perspective.

Many of my books were inspired by real people I met. For example, my picture book, My Father's Boat, is about Vietnamese fisherman and shrimpers along the Gulf Coast. I was inspired to write it after meeting a Vietnamese shrimper and his family which included four little boys who were eagerly anticipating the day they were big enough to help out on their father's boat.

Yes, I did travel to Vietnam for research. Of course, I had read dozens of books about Vietnam and had interviewed dozens of Vietnamese people, but there is no substitute for actually seeing the land and people I had read and heard so much about. It was the most exciting travel trip I have ever made.

In Song of the Buffalo Boy, we meet Loi, a young Amerasian girl in search for her American father, how did you research for this and was it difficult?
This YA novel took me three years to write -- two years of research and one year of actual writing. I was inspired to write this novel when I read an article in Parade Magazine in 1989 about the plight of the Amerasian children in Vietnam, the offspring of American soldiers and Vietnamese women. I was appalled to learn how they were ostracized in society because they were illegitimate and because they were of mixed blood. Frankly, there was not too much literature out there about this topic. Most of my research centered on the Vietnamese culture and the Operation Homecoming Program. Since the novel is set in a small farming village in Vietnam and in the large city of Saigon, I also had to do a lot of research on rice farming, village life and the actual layout of Saigon, as well as marriage customs, foods and so forth. Luckily for me, I had many Vietnamese friends from all walks of life who were more than willing to tell me what life was like in those places. They also helped me with the Vietnamese words sprinkled throughout the story.

I loved the character of Danny in Shadow of the Dragon, caught between two cultures and trouble, he stays very brave and strong, how did the character of Danny started?Many of my Vietnamese friends had children, from young all the way up to teenagers. I became friends with many of these children and saw first hand some of the difficulties they had in adjusting home life with school life. Danny Vo is a conglomerate of several of the boys I knew. The character Sang Le is very much like one of the teens I met. He came to America as an older teen -- very artistically talented but struggled to learn English and had a hard time fitting into school. I have received letters from Vietnamese who tell me the characters and home life all ring true; they seem to especially like the grandmother. A few years ago a Vietnamese-American girl came up to me after a school presentation in Houston and claimed that the grocery store in the book was her Uncle's. In fact, I had made up that store, but I felt it was a great compliment that someone thought it was realistic enough to be a real place. One of the honors this novel won was the California Young Reader's Medal, which is determined by student votes.

Can you tell us a little bit about your books The Lotus Seed and Children of the Dragon?
The Lotus Seed is a picture book that tells the story of a Vietnamese woman, from the time she is a child witnessing the abdication of the last emperor of Vietnam (in 1945) until she is an older woman in a large American city. She plucks a lotus seed from the imperial garden and carries it with her through all her life's experiences -- marriage, children, war, leaving Vietnam, coming to a new country. Even though this book is about a Vietnamese refugee, it has been used in schools to signify the experience of many other nationalities. I'm very proud to say that this book was an ALA Notable Book and a main selection on the PBS TV Reading Rainbow program. It was also selected by the National Endowment of the Humanities as one of two picture books that best represent the immigrant experience in America.

Children of the Dragon is a collection of six Vietnamese folk tales, illustrated by the Caldecott Medalist Trina Schart Hyman. It was actually the first picture book I ever sold, but it was not released until 2001 -- a wait of eleven years--because of the illustrator's schedule. I collected these stories when I was writing a non-fiction book about Vietnam. My Vietnamese friends helped me translate some of the tales.

What do you like most about writing for young readers?
Before I became an author for young readers, I wrote novels for adults using a pen name. I think the main difference is the excitement of your readers. When I wrote for adults, I had a book on the bestseller list, yet no one ever asked me to speak at events. As an author for young readers I speak at schools and conferences for teachers and librarians all the time. The children and teens are nearly always thrilled to meet a real live author. Everything is still new to them. I love teaching readers something in my books and my presentations, whether its about another culture or about a historical event.

If you could be a character from your books for one day, who would it be and why?
Loi at the end of Song of the Buffalo Boy, because she has just discovered who she is and has her whole life ahead of her. She loves a young man and he loves her -- there is a lot of hope there.

When did you know you wanted to write professionally?
At the age of seventeen, when I was a senior in high school, I won an essay writing contest. I was on local TV, in the newspaper, in a magazine and won some money. All this fame and glory made me think I would like to be a writer. That dream didn't come true for many more years, but it was always there lurking in my heart.

Can we expect more books by you in the future?
Absolutely! My 27th book was just released (May, 2010). It is a picture book called VOICES OF GETTYSBURG. I love American History and have several historical books published, with several more in the production stage. I have now written seven books about the Vietnamese culture from picture books to YA novels. I have one more that I'm working on, a YA novel set during the Vietnam War, then I will probably retire that topic.

For more about Sherry Garland, visit her site here