SUBSCRIBE
SUBSCRIBE
SLJ Blog Network +
  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal: A Mock Newbery Blog
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • About TLT
  • Reviews
    • Book Reviews
    • A to Z Book Lists
    • Book Review Policy
  • Teen Issues
  • Middle Grade Mondays
  • Programs
    • TPiB
    • Tech Talk
  • Professional
    • Teen Services 101
    • Things We Didn’t Learn in Library School
  • MakerSpace
  • Projects
    • #SVYALit
    • #FSYALit
    • #MHYALit
    • #Poverty in YA Lit

June 10, 2021 by Amanda MacGregor

Life-Altering Stories: That book that got us thinking differently about fiction, Featuring Megan Freeman, Kalena Miller, Andrea Wang & Anuradha Rajurkar

June 10, 2021 by Amanda MacGregor   Leave a Comment

We all have that one book. The one that cracked the world open, made you feel seen. The one that showed how inventive, deep, and powerful stories can be. The one got you dreaming about writing your own stories one day.

The Class of 2k Books chatted about that singular title that set us on the path of chasing our writerly dreams. Check out the conversation below with Megan Freeman (Alone), Kalena Miller (The Night When No One Had Sex), Andrea Wang (The Many Meanings of Meilan) and Anuradha Rajurkar (American Betiya, Knopf). 

SCROLL TO KEEP READING THIS POST

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Megan Freeman: Reading Karen Hesse’s verse novel Out of the Dust was life changing for me. I was teaching middle grade English at the time and was looking for books to include in our curriculum. I had never read a novel in verse before and even though I had been a poet for years, the idea of writing an entire novel in poetry had never occurred to me. I still think of it as a touchstone book and a shining example of how just a few carefully chosen words can have an enormous impact and provide everything a reader needs to enter a world and have their heart broken open.

Kalena Miller: When I finished reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, I immediately sat down to write. As a teenager, I was a voracious reader, but it was The Book Thief that made me realize I needed to be a writer, too. The prose itself was so magical and powerful that I was filled with the desire to play with language myself. Over the years, I’ve discovered many books that similarly demonstrate the limitlessness of storytelling (We Were Liars by E. Lockhart, The Thing About Luck by Cynthia Kadohata, and Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng are recent examples), but The Book Thief was the first one that made me realize I needed to write fiction for young readers.

Andrea Wang: The Joy Luck Club blew me away. I hadn’t read a book with so much Chinese and Chinese American representation in it before — and with eight distinct points of view, too! I finally saw that I could be a writer and write about my own life experiences. It also opened my eyes to writing stories about my parents’ generation, about the love and loss they experienced in a different country. I love the idea of intersecting, intergenerational stories where the characters’ lived experiences can both harm and heal each other.

Anuradha Rajurkar: Andrea, The Joy Luck Club was so impactful to me, too, for so many of the same reasons. If I had to choose just one, the book that changed my worldview was Another Country by James Baldwin. The way he wrote about his intersectionality as a gay Black man in Harlem was unpredictably relatable to me, a brown girl of South Asian descent coming-of-age in the 80s in the Midwest. With searing prose and pitch-perfect dialogue and characterization, he handled the betrayals within our closest relationships in a way that made its delible mark upon my soul. This book revealed how to write about love, race, and culture in a way that felt honest, and got me dreaming about writing my own story one day. Another Country will forever be a part of me, undoing me in the very best of ways, even all these years later.

What story impacted your life and got you thinking differently about fiction? We’d love to add it to our TBR!

With love,

The Class of 2k Books

Buy links and more

Anuradha Rajurkar, author of American Betiya

Website: https://www.anuradharajurkar.com/

Purchase: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/607776/american-betiya-by-anuradha-d-rajurkar/

Andrea Wang, author of The Many Meanings of Meilan

Website: https://andreaywang.com/

Pre-order: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/635269/the-many-meanings-of-meilan-by-andrea-wang/9780593111284

Kalena Miller, author of The Night When No One Had Sex

Website: https://www.kalenamiller.com/

Pre-order: https://bookshop.org/books/the-night-when-no-one-had-sex/9780807556276

Megan Freeman, author of Alone

Website: https://www.meganefreeman.com/

Purchase: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Alone/Megan-E-Freeman/9781534467569

Filed under: Uncategorized

SHARE:

Read or Leave Comments
Guest posts

About Amanda MacGregor

Amanda MacGregor works in an elementary library, loves dogs, and can be found on Twitter @CiteSomething.

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Posts

May 2022

Have Some Mysteries and Thrillers for June Through December

by Amanda MacGregor

April 2022

Tackling Your Children's Collection Diversity Audit, a TLA presentation recap

by Amanda MacGregor

April 2022

Mindfulness in the Library, a guest post by Erica B. Marcus

by Amanda MacGregor

April 2022

Cindy Crushes Programming: DIY Paper Flowers

by Amanda MacGregor

April 2022

In SLJ: Verse Novelists Forge a Unique Connection with Young Readers

by Amanda MacGregor

ADVERTISEMENT

SLJ Blog Network

100 Scope Notes

Read Aloud Hall of Fame #8: LET ME FINISH! by Minh Lê and Isabel Roxas

by Travis Jonker

A Fuse #8 Production

Review of the Day: My Parents Won’t Stop Talking! by Emma Hunsinger and Tillie Walden

by Betsy Bird

Good Comics for Kids

Casagrandes | This Week’s Comics

by Lori Henderson

Heavy Medal

Continuing the Mock Newbery Process: Time for July Suggestions

by Steven Engelfried

Teen Librarian Toolbox

An Ode to Summer, a guest post by Ellen Hagan

by Amanda MacGregor

The Classroom Bookshelf

The Classroom Bookshelf is Moving

by Erika Thulin Dawes

The Yarn

Shark Week, Vanilla Ice Cream, and the Honda CRV: Bob Shea and Brian Won Team Up for ADURABLE

by Travis Jonker

ADVERTISEMENT

Related Articles on SLJ

Time to Refresh the Canon: Here Are Our Picks

14 Funny Titles for Teens | Summer Reading 2020

Hi-Lo & Mighty Reads: 15 engaging and ­accessible series for ­reluctant and striving readers

16 YA Novels That Reenvision History | Summer Reading 2020

Delicious Reads | YA Spotlight

Commenting for all posts is disabled after 30 days.

ADVERTISEMENT

Archives

Follow This Blog

Enter your email address below to receive notifications of new blog posts by email.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

This coverage is free for all visitors. Your support makes this possible.

Primary Sidebar

  • News & Features
  • Reviews+
  • Technology
  • School Libraries
  • Public Libraries
  • Age Level
  • Ideas
  • Blogs
  • Classroom
  • Diversity
  • People
  • Job Zone

Reviews+

  • Book Lists
  • Best Books
  • Media
  • Reference
  • Series Made Simple
  • Tech
  • Review for SLJ
  • Review Submissions

SLJ Blog Network

  • 100 Scope Notes
  • A Fuse #8 Production
  • Good Comics for Kids
  • Heavy Medal
  • Neverending Search
  • Teen Librarian Toolbox
  • The Classroom Bookshelf
  • The Yarn

Resources

  • 2022 Youth Media Awards
  • The Newbery at 100: SLJ Celebrates the 100th Anniversary of the Award
  • Special Report | School Libraries 2021
  • Summer Reading 2021
  • Series Made Simple Spring 2021
  • SLJ Diverse Books Survey
  • Summer Programming Survey
  • Research
  • White Papers / Case Studies
  • School Librarian of the Year
  • Mathical Book Prize Collection Development Awards
  • Librarian/Teacher Collaboration Award

Events & PD

  • In-Person Events
  • Online Courses
  • Virtual Events
  • Webcasts
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe
  • Media Inquiries
  • Newsletter Sign Up
  • Content Submissions
  • Data Privacy
  • Terms of Use
  • Terms of Sale
  • FAQs
  • Diversity Policy
  • Careers at MSI


COPYRIGHT © 2022


COPYRIGHT © 2022