HomeThe Booklist Interview An Na

The Booklist Interview

An Na

An Na’s first novel, A Step from Heaven (Front Street), is the 2002 winner of the Michael J. Printz Award for excellence in literature for young adults. It was also a Booklist Editors’ Choice selection and a National Book Award finalist. A stirring immigration story of Young Ju’s coming of age from the time she leaves Korea as a small child until she graduates from high school in America, the novel is also a universal drama of a family’s search for home. An Na (pronounced Ahna) spoke with Booklist by phone from her home in Oakland, California.

BKL: How much is the novel your own story?
AN NA: The inspiration for the story definitely came from memory. There are parts that are just me. For example, I remember being forced to get my hair permed, being told that all Americans have curly hair. But as the novel grew, it became Young Ju’s story. Her father is beaten from the beginning, and he struggles with his place and his manhood in this new country. It was different for me. My father was a stern and very traditional father, but my parents did well here and adjusted well. Still, there were times when it was difficult and there were lots of family arguments.

BKL: Did you feel caught between being Korean and American?
AN NA: That really was a conflict when I was growing up: learning to be independent and speak my mind at school, and then coming home to be a Korean daughter, demure, soft-spoken, obedient. There were definitely battles, especially when I was a teenager. I was different from Young Ju, much more outspoken. I really fought hard against my parents.

BKL: Were you ashamed of your parents, like Young Ju is?
AN NA: I was two different people. At church and with my Korean friends, I was loud and gregarious, and I wasn’t ashamed of my family or my house. But I went to a pretty affluent high school, and it was difficult being in honors classes, feeling kind of poor and out of place because I was Korean American. I was always traumatized when my parents came to school, especially with the language barrier.

BKL: That scene in the immigration office shows the child taking control. Did you speak for your family in situations like that?
AN NA: Many times. I think that’s a unique experience for children of immigrant parents. The kids become very powerful when they translate. I recently spoke to a mostly Polish high-school ESL class, and the teachers told me that the kids sometimes lie and don’t tell their parents everything. I remember lying to my parents about things I didn’t want them to know.

BKL: How did you develop the technique of moving from memory to fiction?
AN NA: It was Sandra Cisneros who first inspired me. I read House on Mango Street (1984), and I felt those realistic vignettes were a terrific way to capture childhood and memories. Then I read Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes (1996), which made me think I could do a child’s voice without having it sound condescending or babyish. And then I had a really amazing writer, Jacqueline Woodson, as my first writing teacher. She kicked my butt. She was the one who taught me to pare down my language, look at the metaphors, and see how a vignette packs a multilayered punch.

BKL: Readers love that hilarious chapter when Young Ju makes up a story for show-and-tell in second-grade: “My brother. He die.”
AN NA: I imagine there are lots of older sisters out there who wish their little brothers were dead.

BKL: Did you read American children’s books when you were growing up?
AN NA: I was a big reader. I read all the Laura Ingalls Wilder and Judy Blume books. They were my teachers. I had nobody to explain American culture or things like sexuality. Those things weren’t spoken about at home. Why are people “going out” with each other? What’s all this about breasts? You know, those questions that you can’t ask your friends because you’re scared you’ll sound dumb, and you can’t ask your teachers. I turned to books.

BKL: Did it worry you that there were very few books about people of your ethnic background?
AN NA: I wish that there had been more. It would have changed my impression of myself, my identity at school. I remember feeling that everyone was looking at me when we got to the Asian section in history class, because I was one of the few Asian Americans in class, let alone in the school.

BKL: And when you have children, will you keep them in touch with their Korean roots?
AN NA: I hope so. But I know how difficult it is because my parents tried very hard with me. I went to Korean school and refused to learn. It was one of those things: “I’m in America. I don’t need to learn Korean.” I do speak Korean pretty well, but I don’t read or write it. I wish I did. That’s something I’m going to try and instill in my children, especially because my husband, James, is Irish and we’ll have half-and-half kids. It will be a struggle, I think, trying to keep some of the traditions and the culture alive.

BKL: Are you writing anything now?
AN NA: I’m working on a novel about a Korean American family that runs a dry-cleaning business. One of their workers is a Mexican American boy, and he and the owner’s daughter fall in love. I’ve had this image for a long time of these two teenagers sitting on the bumpers of their cars, falling in love.

—Interview conducted by Hazel Rochman

(Booklist/March 15, 2002)