Hi everybody, it's Karah from Belletrist.
>> And it's Ebony from Epic Reads, and welcome to another episode of Why Not YA,
where we interview some of our powerhouse authors and get the story behind the book.
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>> We're here again with Akwaeke Emezi, author of Pet.
>> So let's talk about this phenomenal book.
So for those who don't know, Pet is the story of Jam, who's a young
trans teenager, who's been taught that she lives in sort of this utopian society
where monsters don't exist, until she comes face to face with one.
And I feel like this book tackles so many powerful topics.
It's very smart, it's nuanced, there's this like play on magical realism.
And it's sort of like a play on the obvious and the not so
obvious monsters that we deal with everyday.
>> In your book, the protagonist, Jam,
realizes that there all these terrifying monsters within her community.
I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more
about sort of how you came up with these monsters?
Who they are to you, and sort of where they come from?
How did you conceive of them?
>> Well, the monsters in the book are people.
And I had decided to write about it because I was seeing all these
conversations where people are like, no, this person I know could never do that,
they're not a monster, only monsters do stuff like that.
And creating this binary of person and monster.
Real men don't do this, only monsters would do that,
and I wanted to collapse that a little bit.
So early on in the book, in the first chapter, Jam is talking to her mom about
it, and her question is, how do you know what a monster looks like?
How can you tell?
Do monsters look scary?
And so her mom talks to her to try and challenge that a little bit and
be like, well, it's people.
It's people doing difficult things, or it's people doing hard things,
or it's people doing bad things, but you can't tell just from looking.
So I think that was really the point I was trying to push with the story,
is that no one really knows what a monster looks like.
>> I sort of wonder from your perspective, why do you think we still have such
a problem in society understanding that people are layered?
>> I think a lot of it is fear and control.
We want to think that we can control outcomes.
We want to think that we can avoid bad things happening,
by identifying the person who could cause it and reacting beforehand.
We want to think that these things are preventable because if they are not
preventable.
If you can't predict that then it means that you have no control.
It means that you can't control what happens to you.
You can't control the outcomes, and we don't want to believe that because I think
that makes a lot of us feel helpless.
And it makes us feel like, what's the word, scared.
Even the idea of bad people looking good, or good people looking bad,
if you accept that no one looks like anything.
Then that takes away a lot of the power and control that people get from labeling,
from categorizing, from being able to feel like
the world is in these discrete boxes that help us make sense of it.
>> Did you intend for
the character of Pet to really question what a monster actually looks like?
>> Absolutely, so the conversation that Jam has with her mom before
Pet shows up is very much about that.
What does a monster look like?
And then Pet shows up, and it's been really interesting since the book came out
because people have been like, yeah, Pet is a monster.
And I'm just like, Pet would take great offense to you saying that.
And so then it starts asking these questions, right?
So Pet looks scary.
Is that what makes a monster a monster?
Is that the person, or the thing, or whatever look scary?
And this ties into so much that's happening in the world now because, for
example, a lot.
I mean just to go dark, a lot of the reasons that cops give for
shooting black people is that, they were scared, they looked scary.
>> Exactly.
>> So are you a monster because you look scary, and
therefore deserve everything that happens to a monster?
And then Pet ends up actually helping Jam, and Pet's job is to serve justice.
And so if you're looking at that criteria, okay,
this is a creature who showed up to help someone to make the world a better place.
So what about Pet actually makes it a monster?
It took some unlearning, even when I was writing it, to remember, no, no, no,
creature.
>> Creature, yes.
>> Just because Pet looks like this way, that's the whole point of it,
is that we are challenging, what is a monster?
And maybe it's, not to get very binary, but leaning more towards,
what are the actions versus what is the presentation?
One of the other things with presentation stuff, for example, is gender.
And people have all these boxes where it's like,
well, if you look like this, and if you wear this that means your gender's this.
And to explode it all and say, well, for example,
clothes have absolutely no gender.
Makeup has absolutely no gender.
You can absolutely not tell the person's gender based on any way that they're
presenting.
It is completely irrelevant.
>> Yeah.
>> And it's a very simple concept, but for people it's like, what?
>> Yeah.
>> [LAUGH] >> So you said in an interview that,
I want to cast a spell where a black trans girl is never hurt.
So in addition to sort of normalizing trans characters,
was it also important for you to paint this character as a hero rather than
sort of like that sassy black girl?
Those certain characters that we're used to seeing in film and
TV, that it's not the case?
>> Yeah, the sidekick.
>> Yes, exactly, it's not the case here.
>> Yeah, I very much wanted her to be centered.
I was like, she is the focus of this.
She is the main character, she’s the hero.
I wanted her to be the center of that.
Because I don't know if I've ever seen that in mainstream YA,
at least with a black trans girl.
And even her name points to that.
So her name is actually Igbo, and it translates to praise me.
And I was like, I wanted this little girl whose name means praise me, and
she's loved, and she's the center of everything.
And really just to amplify her in that way because I want black trans
kids to know that you are worthy of being amplified.
I feel like so many people relegate black trans people to the sidelines.
Or it's like, you're only relevant when you're dead and you're a hashtag,
and then people can get performance points for being like, so sad.
And I wanted to push back against that.
>> One of the things I found really interesting about her character is you
don't focus too much on the fact that she is a trans character.
It's just sort of as it is, did you do this on purpose?
[LAUGH] Did you sort of make her identity an afterthought on purpose,
as to say this is just who she is?
>> I don't know if I would say it's an afterthought, I think it's just, like
I said, another detail of her life because this story wasn't about her gender.
The story's about monsters in this town.
And it's not really talked about much throughout the book because
the book happens, I think, in three or four days.
And I was just like, she's got bigger problems.
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] A creature just came out of her
mom’s painting and is telling her there’s a monster in her best friend’s house.
Whatever personal stuff she has going on really fades-
>> [LAUGH]
>> In this moment.
And so yeah, I did want to just make it a regular part of her life.
I don't think in the book the word trans is even used, and
it's just kind of given as background to her and her family.
And I did want to show a trans character who lives in
a world where she is supported, and
where she's cherished by her family, by her community.
Her parents support all her decisions.
And because I thought that was important, I feel with books I'm often
thinking about what function I want them to have in the world, to the readers.
And one of my interests is that I'm not particularly interested in writing
books where the character, especially if it's a young black character
who's like marginalized in whatever way, is basically just gonna have to
deal with crappiness because my thing is, that's your life already.
>> Yeah, exactly.
>> I don't go to books, personally,
to read about how crappy the world is now because I'm already living it.
>> [LAUGH] >> [LAUGH] So I'm like,
I want this book to have a different function.
I do very much believe in the importance of books that do show
what's happening now.
But one of the things in writing stories about underrepresented
characters is that I often think about, okay,
it's not just who the story is about, but it's also who the story is for.
So you can absolutely write a book about a black trans girl that's not actually for
black trans kids, that's for everyone else to learn about them.
And look at it and be like, my goodness, your life it's just so tragic.
And I know a lot of people think this is how you build empathy.
I personally don't believe in courting empathy from people who don't really think
you're human in the first place.
>> Yes.
>> So I'm just like, this is not my focus, this is not my audience.
I don't need to tell the people I'm writing this book for
that, what you have to look forward to is a life where people are going to try and
kill you, and all that.
They know, so what else can a book do?
>> So you talk about this being your first YA book, and
it just makes me think about maybe growing up.
What would it have meant to you to sort of see a trans character or
non-binary character as a hero in a story that you read?
And was that sort of your inspiration for saying, I'm gonna write this in a young
adult book because this would've been super helpful to me growing up?
>> I think it would have opened up more possibility.
>> Yeah.
>> And I started writing books when I was five.
I started writing children's books.
>> [LAUGH] >> I was illustrating them.
I spent a solid, at least, five years just plagiarizing Nancy Drew novels.
>> [LAUGH] >> But I was always writing, and
all the characters that I wrote were all these little white kids because I was
reading Enid Blyton books.
And I was just reading a lot of book for kids and a lot of young adults,
J.K Rowling and C.S Lewis, and it was just all white kids.
And so to me, that was the limits of the possibility, right?
Was like, as a kid you believe in the possibilities that you are given.
>> Yes.
>> And a lot of those happened through books.
And I'm often curious, if I could rewind time and be like,
if I was given books that had different possibilities, wider possibilities,
how would that have changed what I thought was possible?
To have options,
to be able to choose something you have to know that there are options.
If you don't know that there are options, you don't have a choice.
>> So for those of you who don't know, Jam is selectively mute and
uses sign language.
She comes from a family where her father speaks a language,
her mother speaks a language, there's just so many different uses of language.
And the diaspora is is really scattered all throughout, which I love.
What role do you think these types of languages sort of play and communicating
in general plays into the story, or into the larger story I would say?
>> With Lucille, I really wanted to write a black community.
And it was modeled after this thing Toni Morrison did in her novels,
where the town is just a bubble unto itself, and
you don't worry about any of the world outside it, and it's just within here.
And for me, so much of black community is that mix.
It is people from all over the diaspora, it is us talking each other's dialects,
and using different forms of Patois, and Pidgin, and vernacular Englishes.
And I really wanted that to reflect because I think that it's one
of the richer points of being in the community that is full of people from so
many backgrounds.
It's just constantly shifting there, and that fluidity between language.
And you really get to see the beauty of people's backgrounds, and
people's heritages, and where they come from, and how they connect,
or how they sound similar even if they're from different places.
To me that was a really important part of this
community that Jam gets to grow up in.
>> So can you talk a little bit about your choice to make Jam selectively mute?
>> Absolutely.
>> And what that means exactly for people who haven't read the book?
>> [LAUGH] Honestly, I found out about the term after I wrote the book and someone
described it like that in a review, and I was like, that's what that's called.
[LAUGH] But it's this thing of who are we centering in our stories.
And I wanted to center all the people who matter to me,
who are in positions that are usually shunted to the side,
and one of them is I wanted Jam to be neurodivergent.
I wanted that to show in different ways, in how she talked, or
how she didn't talk, and when she has panic attacks, and when she dissociates.
She has all these experiences that I wanted to center.
And I think it also shows in a lot of the other characters, or
in a lot of the other dynamics, with Redemption's parents.
Redemption has three parents, one of them uses they, them pronouns.
And I wanted to do it because I was like, this is normal.
This is just normal life for so many people.
What we call normal depends on what center you're in.
And I wanted to create a center where this girl sometimes she voices and
sometimes she doesn't.
And sometimes she floats away and has to be brought back to this reality, and
sometimes she has panic attacks and Pet calms her down.
And know that this is okay, it's okay if you're like this.
It's okay if you process like this, it's okay if you communicate like this.
This is a valid center, and there's nothing wrong with you.
>> You've said that Pet, the book, sort of came out of this fixation that you had,
or interest that you had, on exploring that people don't say what they mean.
Can you elaborate a little bit about how this novel came out of that fixation or
that observation?
>> When I was a kid, I was extremely gullible.
You could tell me anything and I would believe it because I generally didn't
understand, well, if this person loves me, obviously they won't lie to me.
And so it was hard for me to understand a world where people didn't
look directly at things, or people didn't say what they meant.
And I hated pranks for the same reasons, still do.
>> [LAUGH] >> Because I'm just like,
this just seems wrong.
[LAUGH] But I wanted to address it with Pet because I could see how you take that
and you move it to a national scale, and you just see the lies that are being told.
And I wondered what is it like to be a young person who's still much closer to
this idea of looking straight at something and saying exactly what you mean.
And hasn't bothered to learn about wearing all these different masks the way that
older folk do.
And you see that on a national scale, and you see how much damage is done,
and how many violent things are happening.
And people just won't look at them, and
there are people suffering because of that.
And you're told, if you look at them.
There's a part in the book where Pet is talking to Jam, and
it tells her that now that she can see things that other people don't see,
that she might become unseen as well.
And that's a thing that happens, where you look at things you're not supposed to look
at, you talk about things you're not supposed to talk about.
And the rest of society that doesn't want to look at those things and
doesn't want to talk about those things will just erase you.
You will just be removed, no one wants to listen to you, and
you just disappear with all the things that people don't want.
And when you don't want to look at certain realities,
when you don't want to look at certain people, you remove them.
You drown them, you don't let them into the country, you put them in camps.
There are all these violent things that happen because you don't want to look at
a reality that is different from yours.
>> So I know this is a generic question, a generic book question, but
I think it's really important here.
There's so many different things readers can take away.
But for you personally as a writer,
what is that one thing that you want readers to take away from this book?
>> I think, on the cover of the book it says, are you brave enough to look?
And when we first put it there, the publishers are like,
this is a little vague.
>> [LAUGH] >> What do you mean?
[LAUGH] And I was like, it can mean whatever.
Are you brave enough to look at Pet?
Are you brave enough to look for a monster?
Are you brave enough to look at the possibility of the world not being
as you thought it was?
And so that I think really is the takeaway of things,
it's like you don't have to be not scared.
Jam is terrified for most of the book.
[LAUGH] And it's okay to be scared because bravery is not the absence of fear.
Courage is not the absence of fear.
It's moving forward despite it, and so I think for me that's the takeaway.
It's okay to look at things, not to run away from it.
Not to pretend it doesn't exist, whatever that looks like,
in whatever context, just look at the thing.
And I think if more of us are able to do that,
it's going to empower us in a serious way.
>> Being brave enough even when society is telling you, you should be this way,
you shouldn't have panic attacks, you shouldn't be this.
And yet she's still able to sort of face her fears in a way that I think we all
wanna do.
So thank you so much for writing this beautiful book.
>> Thank you.
>> Where can readers find you online?
Are you on the Internet?
>> I am on the interwebs, yes [LAUGH].
>> [LAUGH] >> You found out about your long list on
Twitter, so- >> Yes, yes,
I found out a lot of things on Twitter, some things I don't want to.
>> [LAUGH] >> But I'm on Twitter.
I'm on Instagram.
I'm on Tumblr.
I have a handle, it's AZEmezi.
So it's my initials- >> AZEmezi.
>> And then my last name.
>> And if you haven't read Pet, make sure you pick up a copy today.
You can find it wherever books are sold.
Also make sure to like and comment on the videos, and to follow us on @Epic Reads.
>> And @Belletrist.
>> And I'm Ebony.
>> And I'm Karah, thank you so much for doing this with us.
>> Thank you, thank you for having me.
>> This was really amazing, this conversation, thank you.
>> And see you next time on Why Not YA.
>> Bye, guys.
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