Episode #318: Writing as a Way to Champion People and Causes
Episode #318: Writing as a Way to Champion People and Causes
Featuring Maggie Tokuda-Hall
Hello truth-tellers, risk-takers, champions, and badasses!
This week’s Write-minded is a thoughtful conversation about where writers’ values meet public persona and the writing life. Guest Maggie Tokuda-Hall treats us to her thinking about career, ambition, and why she writes what subjects and characters she writes, and why she doesn’t write for adults. We get into the important topic of what’s at stake when writers speak up and out—touching upon the tensions that exist between standing up for what you believe in and a literary world that doesn’t always make those choices easy. Substackin’ this week takes a look at Brooke’s post about genre and category, “Your Story Is More Important Than Your Category.”
A lived-experience book list that showcases the power of storytelling:
Becoming Little Shell by Chris La Tray
Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H
We Will Be Jaguars by Nemonte Nequimo
Legacy by Uché Blackstock, MD
Cactus Country by Zoë Bossiere
We’re Alone by Edwidge Danticat
American Negra by Natasha S. Alford
The Afterlife Is Letting Go by Brandon Shimoda
Partial transcript from the show
Brooke: I’m Brooke Warner, here on this write-minded show, on this write-minded journey, and this write-minded life with my cohost Grant Faulkner. Today we’re going to talk about how our lived experience informs not just our writing, but how we show up in the world. So you ready, Grant?
Grant: What’s the saying, Brooke? 90% of life is about showing up. 90% of writing a book is definitely about showing up. So, yes I’m ready to show up today. I hope.
Brooke: Today’s guest, Maggie Tokuda-Hall, made headlines last year, Grant, and we covered it in one of our trends, for calling out Scholastic Books because they offered her a publishing contract for her book, Love in the Library, if she would agree to take out the parts in which she talked about racism. The problem was that this section was core to the message she was wanting to share—since the book was based on her maternal grandparents, who lived through the internment of Japanese and Japanese Americans in World War II. What Maggie did was really brave because it’s not easy to stand up to an institution, especially a big publisher with a strong reputation, and particularly not easy to issue publicly that you have been offended, or wronged. In Maggie’s case, going public with what Scholastic did to her, and her subsequent turning down of the contract, got a lot of attention. But, you know, it could have gone another way. And I’m sure she worried about the backlash, and about being labeled uppity, or disgruntled, or ungrateful. And yet, speaking out for our beliefs and standing in our moral clarity is such an admirable quality. And particularly since 2020, we have been in the thick of it, with publishing offering up so many opportunities for us to take stock of what we believe, what we stand for, what we’re willing to voice and on behalf of whom. Grant, I'm curious if you have a personal story or a story of someone you admire who did something particularly courageous to stand up for themselves or their own book project, similar to what Maggie did when she turned down Scholastic and wrote about it?
Grant: You know, I want to pause just a moment to think about what it takes to publicly stand up for yourself in cases like this. It’s not like individual authors have a team of press people who put out a statement and then answer questions. They wake up and it’s just another day, and they have to wake up, walk the dog, get their kids ready for school, whatever it is. So to have to take a moment, make a statement, worry about how it will be received, worry about how the forces of social media will treat your story, whether people will understand you, wondering whether you’ll get another book contract. This is intense stuff. Most of us didn’t anticipate anything like this when we became writers. We really just want to write our stories. So I just want to say how much I admire writers like Maggie who take that big risk. The story in my mind is our recent guest Amanda Jones, who wrote That Librarian, about being attacked and ostracized by the book banners. She fought back, both in court and in life. That’s not easy. If I were her, honestly, I would have considered leaving my profession, moving away and dropping out, but she did the opposite—because she knew she was right and she wasn’t going to have other people steal her life, and steal books from others. It’s a scary world out there, and it’s so often tough to fight back, or just stand up for yourself, even when you’re clearly being wronged. How about you, Brooke? I’m sure you have a memory for some stories like these that have broken through over the years?
Brooke: One story that comes to mind is when Roxane Gay canceled her publishing contract with Simon & Schuster when they offered a contract to alt-right figure Milo Yiannopoulos. So that guy was certifiably an asshole, and a pedophile, but sadly not even all that unique in light of what we’ve seen in the 8 years since he sprung onto the scene. But Roxane was like—yeah, no. I’m not publishing under the same imprint that’s willing to publish this guy. She got a lot of props, but also a lot of pushback. There’s been so much talk, as we all know, about the Left censoring language, censoring ideas. But there is a line, and I think we should all be in agreement that pedophilia and other sex crimes should be one of those big bright ones. But cancel culture is very real‚ and it’s on both sides as it were. The Right is calling for book bans and canceling authors and books that it deems to be “too woke.” The Left cancels ideas and discourse that it views to be out of alignment with its values. We haven’t talked about cancel culture in ages, Grant, and it does feel like it’s died down a bit in terms of coverage, but it’s lurking out there, and I think when authors take a stand, as Maggie has actually done now a couple different times in very public ways, there’s such a legitimate fear that you’ll be canceled, and it’s a calculated risk to stand for what you believe in.
Grant: Right, Brooke, the other instance you’re referring to here with Maggie is that she wrote an article in November of last year called “Justifying the Unjustifiable: Why Japanese Americans Must Stand with Palestine” on Densho, an organization and site that documents the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II. For Maggie, these people who were incarcerated were her grandparents who fell in love at Minidoka Concentration Camp. But Maggie’s piece was early to condemn what she was witnessing in Gaza. She wrote in her piece about the Jewish side of her identity, too, noting that she comes to her understanding of what’s happening as the daughter of a Japanese mother and a Jewish father: “It is with these two facets of my own identity in harmony that I feel a deep sense of obligation to speak clearly about what is happening in Gaza right now.” I will save what she writes next for all of you to go and read, but how this matters for today’s conversation is that Maggie took a risk here. She risked expressing a controversial belief, risked blowback, risked being told to stay in her lane, undoubtedly. I think a lot of writers fear alienating their readerships, Brooke, and probably for good reason. Being canceled is likely one of the scariest things that can happen to a writer, especially one who’s ascending in their career, who is finally experiencing some success. And I think that fear of speaking up for what you believe in keeps people silent on what matters. And of course people pushing back will say things like—fill in the blank person, athletes, authors, singers—should focus on what they know and what they do and stay out of politically fraught issues. I can’t remember who it was who told LeBron James to “just dribble,” which was completely offensive. We are all so deeply impacted by the choices that get made, that that kind of insistence that people stay in their lane is ringing increasingly hollow these days.
Brooke: Yes, I agree. We are living in a world where too much is at stake not to take a stand. And if you’re personally impacted by something, especially so. I recently announced my engagement on Facebook, Grant, as you know, and I wrote some thoughts about same-sex marriage, basically saying that one side embraced my freedom to love who I want to love, while the other side will do away with marriage equality given the opportunity. Fascinatingly, someone I know from high school, who’s of the right-leaning persuasion, direct messaged me and asked me why in the world I suggested that an entire “side” was anti gay marriage. She’s going to vote differently than I am, she said, but she was celebrating me and telling me I looked so happy, etc. I’m just going to say that the cognitive dissonance was strong. And it really makes me wonder about compartmentalization, and the power of privilege. Or maybe I should say the blindness of privilege. I think what we’re talking about here is what’s at stake. What’s at stake for me as a person who’s in love with a woman I want to marry, who’s facing the reality that my rights are not secured. What’s at stake for Maggie when she’s thinking or writing about racism given her lived experience as an Asian American woman, and the war in Gaza in the context of her ancestral lineage of being Japanese and Jewish. As much pushback as we’re living through, our individual testimonials are everything, and we can and do change hearts and minds when we have the courage to share how we’re impacted. So I’ve been quite moved reading up on Maggie and her courage, and the trajectory of her career as she’s made bolder and bolder choices in her writing.
Grant: Yeah, I agree—and, by the way, congratulations on your engagement, Brooke. It’s also a good reminder to think about and remember how all the things a given person is living through and experiencing impact their creative choices. And of course this is the case. It’s a given, really. But in Maggie’s work you see a clear progression, and real courageous literary choices coming from seeming to be more daring about what she wants to do and how she wants to show up. She is centering queer characters, and female characters in nontraditional roles, like werewolf killers in Squad, and as in her latest book, The Worst Ronin, whose protagonists are two young female samurais. She’s also daring in terms of being consciously genre-defying. And she’s young, Brooke, so Maggie is an exciting author to be watching. Just to see where she’s going next is a bit of a thrill. I say that as one who first met her when she worked at a bookstore in San Francisco and was a NaNoWriMo writer.
Brooke: I agree. I recently saw Maggie perform live in Berkeley, and she wrote a very cool piece about pigeons. The story was an homage to East Bay Booksellers, which recently burned down in a fire. And honestly I loved the piece so much. I loved Maggie’s performance. It was quirky and fascinating and loving. She’d written the piece specifically for this performance, but I really hope she’ll publish it or put it online in some capacity because it was brilliant, and shows the nimbleness of her mind and is a good template for how to tell a great story. So I agree that Maggie’s someone to watch—who already has six books you can go check out.
Grant: Yes, so whether you’re already a fan of Maggie’s work or you’re just being introduced to it today, there’s something for all the curious readers in your life who are looking for stories of outsiders seeking to make their own belonging. And that’s something that Maggie knows something about, as she’s writing as a form of championing. A powerful way to show up in the world. And we’ll get to hear more from Maggie—after this short break.
This week’s Substackin’:
This time around on Substackin’ I'm resurfacing a post I wrote called “Your Story Is More Important Than Your Category.” I wrote this because I want authors to write the books they want to write, and not to worry too much about whether it’s this or that. Authors oftentimes get unnecessarily hung up on their categories—to a degree I find puzzling at times, and I want to to encourage any one of us to think about genre more broadly. As a publisher, I’m happy to double-categorize books where necessary. I’m always willing to look at a book that defies genre. For writers who have these kinds of books, it’s often anxiety-inducing because they worry about whether they’ll be able to place their work, or how the work will be received. Again, I encourage those writers to focus on the story. Is it a good story? If it is, I promise that will be of much more importance than the question of whether your book needs to be sci-fi versus speculative fiction, or self-help versus inspiration. When in doubt, just lean into the big umbrella category, like fiction, or memoir. And leave it at that.
Read Brooke’s full Substack post linked here.
ABOUT MAGGIE TOKUDA-HALL
Maggie Tokuda-Hall is the author Also an Octopus, illustrated by Benji Davies, The Mermaid, The Witch and The Sea, Squad, illustrated by Lisa Sterle, and Love in the Library, illustrated by Yas Imamura with more books forthcoming. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband, son, and their objectively perfect dog.