How My Book Helped Me Face My Fears, a guest post by Thushanthi Ponweera

Change has always been hard for me. 

I vividly remember sitting in my grade 7 classroom, listening to my best friend tell me that her family was planning to move to the States. I had gone to enough owner-leaving-the-island garage sales –great for preloved book hauls btw!– with my parents over the weekends for me to know that this was something people in Sri Lanka did: leave. I had heard my parents murmur it was “because of the war.” But I didn’t get it. We weren’t going anywhere. We had a good life. So did my friend, by the looks of it. Never mind everyone else; why did she have to go? I cried for days. I don’t remember how my mother consoled me, apart from telling me I had other friends. True, yes, but not very helpful to an inconsolable 12-year-old.

Long story short, she didn’t go. And we are best friends to this day.

I’ve been thinking about change a lot since becoming an adult at the ripe age of thirty. Yes, you heard that right. Up until I was twenty-nine years old, I lived with my parents as is typical South Asian tradition. I grew older in age and experience, sure. I attended university, worked numerous demanding corporate jobs, watched both my parents undergo heart surgery, and racked up my share of failed relationships (that included friendships. Maybe distance had nothing to do with it after all!). But I was still cocooned in the familiarity of my home in the same city I had lived in all my life.

By the age of thirty-one, I had gotten married, moved out of my parents’ home, and given birth to my first child. Needless to say, I was unprepared. After many shaky starts and stops, and lots of soul searching and therapy, I believe I am finally an adult. I am still very much a work-in-progress, but I know now that just as I am responsible for my loved ones who depend on me, I am also responsible for myself. For my own growth and for my own happiness. And if it weren’t for all the changes I went through in this past decade, I doubt I would have made that realization by now.

In my debut middle-grade novel I am Kavi, the protagonist is 10-year-old Kavi, a little girl who at such a tender age, has been through more life-changing experiences than I have in my entire life. Thaththa, her father, who has been away throughout her childhood fighting a war that he eventually loses his leg to, returns home only to die of a heart attack. Not even a year later, her mother is remarried to Thaththa’s best friend. Not only does Kavi have to endure the grief of losing her father and the shame of seeing her mother with a new man, but she is also working tirelessly to pass the big grade five scholarship exam. Being the bright, hardworking student she is, she succeeds. This brings even more change into her life: Kavi has to move to the big city all by herself, leaving behind everything she’s ever known. 

I’m writing this post a week into another personal life change. Last week, my family and I packed up and left the only home I’ve ever known: my beautiful island of Sri Lanka. I became a statistic; one of those people who left. This time it wasn’t because of the war but because of the political and economic crisis that Sri Lanka was/is embroiled in. It made us reevaluate our plans for the future. And so here I am, in Qatar, a place that is not too far geograpically from Sri Lanka but is worlds apart.

It hasn’t been easy. But it hasn’t been too difficult either. Self-growth has helped. So has one other thing; a piece of ammunition I didn’t have until a few years ago.

I have Kavi. 

I now realize that I poured in all my insecurities, my fears, my absolute aversion to change and unfamiliarity, and my deep discomfort when faced with figuring out new ways of doing old things into my main character. Spoiler alert: Kavi turns out fine despite all of it. And she does so in style. She is the spunky, brave, confident person I never was. Whenever I hit a rough patch, when a new experience exhausts me, when I smile at strangers hoping to make a new friend to replicate even a fraction of the joy of my old friendships, I think of Kavi leaving behind her mother without turning back; of Kavi staring in awe at the concrete blocks of Colombo; of her delight at living in a mansion, even if it’s as the maid’s niece; of how she wanted to make friends with the wealthy, cool kids and found a way to do it, even to her own detriment; and how she rises up from the eventual mess she finds herself, phoenix-like.

Change will always be hard, but now I have a new mantra. If Kavi can do it, so can I.

And so can you.

Meet the author

Thushanthi Ponweera is an author and poet from Sri Lanka. Before daring to follow her dream of being published, she was a marketing specialist and entrepreneur. Her writing reflects the frustration she feels at the inequality and injustice she sees around her and the deep love she has for her island home. Thushanthi lived in Colombo all her life and just recently moved to Qatar with her husband and two children.  I Am Kavi is her first novel. You can find her on Instagram as @bythush and on Twitter as @thushponweera.

About I Am Kavi

Caught between two worlds—a poverty-stricken village and a fancy big-city school—a young Sri Lankan girl must decide who she really is and where she really belongs.

1998, Colombo. The Sri Lankan Civil War is raging, but everyday life must go on. At Kavi’s school, her friends talk about the weekly Top 40, the Backstreet Boys, Shahrukh Khan, Leo & Kate… and who died—or didn’t—in the latest bombing. But Kavi is afraid of something even scarier than war. She fears that if her friends discover her secret—that she is not who she is pretending to be—they’ll stop talking to her.

I want to be friends with these / happy, / fearless, / girls / who look like they / belong.
So I could also be / happy, / fearless, / and maybe even / belong.

Kavi’s scholarship to her elite new school was supposed to be everything she ever wanted, but as she tries to find some semblance of normalcy in a country on fire, nothing is going according to plan. In an effort to fit in with her wealthy, glittering, and self-assured new classmates, Kavi begins telling lies, trading her old life—where she’s a poor girl whose mother has chosen a new husband over her daughter—for a new one, where she’s rich, loved, and wanted. But how long can you pretend to be someone else?

This dazzling novel-in-verse comes from an astonishing new talent who lived through the civil war herself. Perfect for fans of Jamine Warga, Supriya Kelkar, and Rajani LaRocca, I Am Kavi centers a powerful South Asian voice, and stars an unforgettable heroine each and every one of us can relate to.

ISBN-13: 9780823453658
Publisher: Holiday House
Publication date: 09/19/2023
Age Range: 8 – 12 Years

Filed under: Guest Post