Ritu! We are so happy to finally be able to introduce you, all the way from Hong Kong!
It's an honor to be part of this wonderful group!
Inquiring minds want to know. How did you find your way to becoming a kidlit author?
I have always loved to write, just for the joy of creating with words. As a child, I kept a secret diary and wrote letters to pen-pals, but what I loved most was writing poems whenever I took public transport. One day, I won a poetry competition in high school with a poem that I’d scribbled from the top deck of a moving double-decker bus and won a cash prize! I entered every writing competition I could after that and, to date, my poems have won me money, tickets to Paris, tickets to the cinema, furniture vouchers, and even a Kindle! Though I always seemed to find myself in bookstores and even asked for a typewriter for my twelfth birthday, it didn’t occur to me that writing was written in my future. Then one day, many years after I had become a high school English and Drama teacher…my 8-year-old daughter asked me a homework question...
You’ve piqued our interest! What did she ask you, and how did her question lead to you writing Lion of the Sky, your debut MG novel-in-verse?
It was a homework question she needed help answering.
Why do people migrate?
I decided it was time to share with her our family's history. No matter how tragic, I believed she needed to know it.
Please, share your family’s history with us.
In 1947, as India became independent from British rule, the subcontinent was divided into two countries—a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan. The divide left millions of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims living in the "wrong" country. Hostilities grew. Mass killings ensued. Millions had to flee to safety, including my grandparents and parents, who survived the largest mass migration in world history.
To help my daughter understand that dark, chaotic, and tumultuous time, I took her to the library. Though we found books about the Holocaust and the World Wars, we couldn’t find one children’s book about the Partition of India. My daughter accused me of making the whole thing up. It broke my heart.
For days after our library visit, I thought about the fourteen million people who lost their homes and the one million who died. I decided to write the children’s book I couldn’t find for my daughter. I joined the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and in 2017 self-published a picture book about our family’s history, Gope and Meera–A Migration Story.
That's an incredible story, a sad slice of history, one many living in the United States may know little about. It's understandable you wanted your daughter to know about it. What does she think of her family history now?
Now all three of my children feel like they’re experts on the Partition! They are very proud of their elders for the determination and resilience they showed in adapting to new cultures and languages, whilst making sacrifices so their children could thrive. My kids also feel empowered with a new understanding that adversity of all kinds can be overcome with courage and the right mindset.
True this! Though the setting of Lion of the Sky is based on your family’s history, did you still have to do a lot of research?
I did years of research focusing particularly on what happened in Sindh. Unlike the provinces of Punjab and Bengal which were split in two, Sindh was given intact to the newly created nation of Pakistan, where both my maternal and paternal grandparents lived. Like my grandparents, many Sindhis were forced to leave their homeland and rebuilt their lives in Hong Kong as immigrants. I dug deep into the research and unearthed many treasures. It was important for my family’s narrative to be historically accurate because it’s an inheritance worth sharing. (You can read more about what I discovered in an article I published in the South China Morning Post (HERE), and in a talk I presented on the TEDx stage (HERE).)
Why did you decide to use the novel-in-verse format for Lion of the Sky?
I fell in love with novels-in-verse after reading Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhha Lai. I marvel at how each poem captures a concept, scene, or feeling in a few crafted words using language that’s distilled and powerful. I also appreciate how the format uses blank space to give room for the reader’s discovery of meaning and interpretation. I knew that a novel-in-verse would be the perfect vehicle for telling the story of Raj, my main character, and as I explored this format, the seed of Lion of the Sky was born.
It sounds like a tug-at-heart read. Despite its setting, does Lion of the Sky include rays of hope?
Hope is at the heart of this book. It is my hope that this will be what my readers are left with.
So, who acquired your book, and why are you glad your book found its home at that publishing house?
Being a big fan of Jasmine Warga’s Other Words for Home, it’s no surprise that I was keen to work with the very same editor as Warga's, Alessandra Balzer at HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray. It was one of those dreams you hope for, but don’t really think you’re going to get. But…with my extraordinary agent, Rubin Pfeffer by my side…my dream came true!
Alessandra said she fell in love with my characters and the story from the very first page! She was so enthusiastic about working with me that I couldn’t quite believe it! I am so incredibly grateful to be working with such a brilliant and insightful editor and am truly honored to join the fantastic list of authors and titles at Harper Collins/Balzer & Bray.
We're sure! Well, thanks for sharing the story behind your story. It will no doubt inspire many young readers and shine the spotlight on a slice of history that should be learned from and not forgotten.
The pleasure is mine.