WOW Reads: S3, E6 - TRAP Reads Dear Manny by Nic Stone

Join the Worlds of Words Center Teen Reading Ambassadors (TRAP) as we discuss Dear Manny by Nic Stone.

Nic Stone is open and warm, just like her favorite color -- orange. We discuss her commentary on lies (fiction is truth through the lens of a lie), her degree in psychology (understanding human experience helps with character development) and the habit of pursing discomfort (helps us grow and staves off boredom). 

Authors mentioned in this episode:
Toni Morrison, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Jacqueline Woodson and Terry J. Benton-Walker.

Additional authors and the books mentioned in this episode:
Jason Reynolds, Long Way Down
Elle Desamours, Needy Little Things
Louis Sachar, Holes (a book that also came into play with the Middle School Reading Ambassador conversation around Jasmine Warga)
Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides

Thanks to the Tucson Festival of Books for coordinating Nic Stone's visit.

This podcast was recorded in the Digital Innovation and Learning Lab (DIALL) in the U of A College of Education with assistance from the U of A COE Tech Team.

Producer/Host: Rebecca Ballenger, Worlds of Words Center Associate Director
Lit Discussant: Kait Waterhouse, U of A COE Graduate Assistant
Learning & Engagement Intern: Bonnie Rock, U of A W.E. Franke Honors College Student
Audio Engineer: Alexis Mendoza, Worlds of Words Student Employee and U of A First-year Student
Coordinator: Vianey Torres, Student Employee and Nursing Major

For more information on the WOW Teen Reading Ambassadors (TRAP), visit wowlit.org.

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Thank you for listening and keep reading!

Transcript

Hello and welcome to WOW Reads, a podcast of Worlds of Words that centers youth voices around literature written for them. Worlds of Words Center of Global Literacies and Literatures is committed to creating an international network of people who share the vision of bringing books and children together, thereby opening windows on the world. 

Worlds of Words Reading Ambassadors engage in a university experience of children's literature within the University of Arizona, College of Education. Reading ambassadors learn about literature for young people under the direction of faculty and staff with an expertise in children's literature, education, library science, and marketing. 

We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of indigenous peoples. Today, Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes, with Tucson being home to the O’odham and Yaqui. Committed to diversity and inclusion. The university strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign native nations and indigenous communities through education, offerings, partnerships, and community service. 

Nic Stone is a well known writer from Atlanta, famous for her books Dear Martin and Dear Justice. Her novels are mostly written for middle schoolers and teenagers, but can be enjoyed by adults as well. Many of her books focus on racial injustice, and are told from the perspectives of those dealing with it firsthand. Her work is extremely touching and sometimes hard to swallow due to her powerful storytelling. 

Her latest book, Dear Manny, is the third and final book of a trilogy. It is written from the perspective of Jared, a privileged white boy trying to bring about positive change by running for junior class council president of a prestigious university. Through the course of this book, he is met with the pressures of a complicated love interest, building a strong campaign, and dealing with political adversaries, all while not only trying to better his community, but himself through a series of letters to his deceased best friend Manny. 

Today we had the amazing experience and great honor to moderate a session at the Tucson Festival of Books with Nic Stone, and we will focus on that in our podcast recording today. But first, a round of introductions. 

My name is Rebecca, but my dude bro name is Mike. 

My name is Quin, but my dude bro name is Ian. 

My name is Gabby, but my dude bro name is Derek. 

My name is Avery, but my dude bro name would be Charles, but I'd only let people call me Chuck. 

My name is also Quinn, but with two N's and my dude bro name is Logan.

My name is Minerva and my dude bro name would be Jason. 

My name is Audrey and my dude bro name would be Kevin. 

My name is Maggie and my dude bro name would be Marcus. 

My name is Rebecca and my dude bro name would be Nicholas. 

Isn't it great that Rebecca and Quinn get two dude bro names? So, let's just talk.

Let's just throw it out there and talk about what it was like meeting Nic Stone today. 

It was really great to meet Nic Stone. She was very extroverted, and she said many things that were definitely worth writing down. You could just tell that she was very passionate about her work and that she did it because she wanted to see something that she didn't have as a child.

She was really nice and also extremely outgoing. She answered every question perfectly. Incredible answers, they were incredible to listen to. 

I felt honored to meet Nic Stone, it was awesome. Her words were very powerful and like, empowering. 

One thing that actually really caught my attention was her discussion about being comfortable. She said being comfortable is boring and that life happens when you are uncomfortable. So I think that was pretty awesome, especially as an introverted person. I'm uncomfortable all the time, but you just have to push through it because that's life and that's how you're going to have the greatest life possible. 

I thought that was, that caught my eye too— Well, my ear too Gabby. That the idea of pursuing discomfort and that it keeps you from being bored and boring at the same time.

Building off of that, she mentioned, like, I asked her a question about activism and one of the things she said was to try to pursue some of that stuff because if it's something you really believe in, then it is worth fighting for. 

I also like how she mentioned lying at the beginning. This is unrelated, but like her lying in the beginning while she is writing fiction to create this whole other story, it was pretty funny. 

Yeah, it was funny, but it was also sort of educational that you would need that artifice in order to tell some truths. 

This is kind of back to the being uncomfortable thing, but some of the best books I've read have made me and other people that have read them extremely uncomfortable, like they talk about topics that just sort of make you want to like, flinch, or like, turn away from the book.

But the way they're written out, so beautifully written and it says so much about just the world as a whole that you sort of can't look away, and it's incredible to read. 

I think going off of that, I think that it was really interesting how Nic Stone kept talking about these different perspectives that she's read and like, she has to make space for in her world. I thought that was really interesting to know that she has her perspectives, and like, obviously if you read her books you know what her perspectives are. But she makes space and is allowing other people to tell her their perspectives and so she can learn from them, and I think that's a really cool way to look at the world and just experience it.

I like how she said that white boys need books too. Like, because this book is written from the perspective of a white kid at a university. Just kind of figuring out where he stands with understanding how racism works and microaggressions and the like. I thought that representation was actually pretty cool because there are a lot of books about white boys.

Sure, but they, a lot of them are pretty old, outdated. They don't include some of the stuff that was talked about in this book, which was pretty interesting. 

Yeah, she even quoted Ibram Kendi saying that “We are—” and I wonder if she meant we writers, I wasn't clear about that, “the ones who create the heroes.” We make the heroes, and so if we're making heroes who can live in discomfort and we're making heroes who can learn from others and, you know, sort of grow in those ways, then that would be aspirational for some readers. 

I think that's super powerful, too, because not only is she doing that for people that look and grew up the way that she did, but also for people who aren't like her, which I think is like so cool.

She also said, like on top of like white boys needing books, Like it also gave them something to look up to or like somebody to want to be in the future. So, I think that was also really powerful. 

Well, let's talk about the book a little bit. So we did read Dear Manny, the third in this series, but we also in our lit discussion talked about Dear Martin and Dear Justice. So if you want, if we want to talk in this, if we as this, conversation progresses, if we want to bring up one of those other books, let's do it. 

What were some of the connections that you made? Well, All the books that she's written so far.

Well, in this trilogy are connected because they're kind of in the same universe. So you will see the same characters, but I read Dear Martin, and I think it's interesting how different it is when it's written from a different perspective and seeing a main character from another book through, like, this kind of out of touch person's eyes is just interesting to see and also who they write their letters to.

We talked about that with Nic Stone, and she said that when she writes a book like this, she chooses who the main character writes their letters to because it just makes sense for them. And so, yeah, I think that's an interesting connection that you can make throughout all the books. 

Yeah, it's very interesting to look at who each person is writing letters to because again, like Nic Stone said, only one of them is writing to someone who can respond while the others are writing to people who are dead and famous.

Well, only one of them famous, but they're both dead. And so it's just interesting to see who exactly they're reaching out to, why they're talking to them, and if they're actually reaching out or just using them as a way to talk. 

We actually talked a lot about character connections. She says Dylan is so much, Nic says Dylan is so much of herself, of Nic, and that Dylan can say things that Nic cannot. She said she had fun writing Ainsley, which is interesting because we've had so much, of her writing in a male perspective. 

So from character, from that character standpoint, did you connect to any of the characters in this novel and how? 

I would say that out of all of the characters, I definitely related to Jared in the ways that I would like to think that I'm trying to better my point of view on people outside of my own personal circle. Whether that be like race related, sexual orientation related. However you want to say it, I think that it's cool to see somebody like that who has a past of being closed minded. Like trying to make themselves better. I wouldn't say that I necessarily relate to him in, like, the worst ways. I hope not, but I definitely saw parts of myself in the ways that he was trying to be a better person.

You also asked her about her major in college and how that might help her in creating these characters. 

She said that psychology helped her in writing because it taught her more just about how humanity is. It says that basically, despite how different everyone is, we all have like the same core experiences of like happiness, sadness, anger, things like that, and it's that that really shows how different and similar we are. 

Yeah. So she said, psychology is everything. Maybe also something to think about when you go into college. It might be possible for whatever field you go into to have connections that you might find surprising. 

I'm definitely interested in the field, because I think it really did help her with immersing yourself in creating this character that's the complete opposite of her of like other characters she's written in the past. So the fact that she's able to just immerse herself in that and like, completely, I don't know, very accurately to portray this other person. I think that's something I'd want to be able to do. 

She also said that, like, her psychology major helped like her make her characters feel real because while they're not, because she understood human experiences, like on such a deep level, because of her psychology major, it helped the characters feel like they were actual people.

I also think that her psychology major, with how she described it was really interesting because, in her words, not like exactly, but she used her ability to lie, she talked about in the beginning of the session, and her psychology major to lie to people about her books that she wrote and she's, which I think is really interesting because I don't really I've never really heard an author say something like that before. She's like saying, because she writes, like fiction, right? And she's saying how she wants her books to be interesting and you have to, like, relate to them. But she's lying to you to be able to hear and understand it, I don't know, I think it's really cool. 

Yeah, she was pretty glib. She just said, I'm a professional liar. She clarifies later, in her, in a more serious answer, and she says fiction is true through the lens of a lie, because as we're reading these sort of made up stories about characters or their situations that they're in, they reveal, we become— first of all, attached to them as though they were truth, and then they also reveal certain truths about us.

So let's pivot real quick, as she also talked about, the books that she was into, the books that she read when she was younger, she didn't see herself in. She went to Spelman College, sort of like really truncating her experience here, But she goes to Spelman College and she's exposed to, she starts reading Toni Morrison and Zora Neale Hurston and Alice Walker. So we talked to her about, authors that she would have related to maybe writing for people your age. Do you remember part of that conversation? 

She said that she, read some books about, like, black representation and that they were all very historical and very traumatic, and that she wanted to write something that was a little bit lighter and trauma and triumph. So I thought that was definitely important, especially for younger readers. And also on that, she said that she likes to write short books because she has younger readers, which I thought was pretty important also. 

Another thing she said about writing is her saying that not everything she writes is like some giant book that's going to be published, but just like, something random like a dragon coming from underground or to like, say that we need to help it because they're going into crisis because of climate change, I think is the exact example she gave. Yeah, it's just interesting because it just that, well, yes, there are like the authors have to write actual books and stuff, they also can just write what they want for no reason, just for fun. 

So she points to Jason Reynolds and Jacqueline Woodson as her mentors. And then she named some, authors that she's excited about now. She names, hopefully I don't butcher these names, Elle Desamours who did "Needy Little Things", and Terry J. Benton Walker. Did she pique any of your interest? Is anybody interested in reading one of those authors? 

I mean, Elle Desamours sounds interesting, just in general, the book she described sounded interesting and like something I'd maybe want to read. It depends. I prefer, I don't really go towards YA, at first, like as my first instinct, but I feel like they could be good. 

I remember she mentioned a book that talked about girls in high school, but I don't remember what it was called. 

The Virgin Suicides, right? 

Oh my God, I love that book. I'm sorry. No, Yeah. It's such a good book. Read it. 

Was that because she said that— She said it's because it was a book that brought up events that were identifiable by teens as as real life experiences and it treated them seriously. 

She said it was because it was just so human. It portrayed issues that everyone had and they were actually serious issues. So it's not like trying to make fun of people that have what could be considered by a lot of people small issues, but instead treating like showing you that just because those issues are considered small, they aren't small to you, they're real issues that you have to deal with. 

Yeah, just a short thing on that, I really loved when she was talking about that, and especially this one quote she said “books and literature are vehicle validation.” and I thought that was just very honest and true. 

She also brought up liking the book holes a lot as a kid, like just remarking on the fact that the kid's name is Stanley, and that's just, she talked a lot about it and clearly agree with that. She also mentioned, I think it's really cool that Jason Reynolds was one of her mentors, because I've read I read his book A Long Way Down, and it's it is like poetry. It's amazing that she was like taught by or mentored by someone like that. 

All right. Any last impressions? 

I want to talk to her again. She was just really, she was just open and warm and her favorite color is orange, and that's an open and warm color. I don't know, she gave me a hug and it was a really nice hug too. 

I think that she was very personable with everyone, not just the Teen Reading Ambassadors, but everybody in the room, everybody in her sign in line. I could see why we would all really enjoy having her back. 

Another thing mentioned towards the end was that her next, I think she said three books that are coming out are from female perspectives. Which is a contrast from the three in this trilogy that we read, which are all from male perspectives. So yeah, I'm really excited if I do read them to like, kind of see how she writes that perspective.

Not for nothing, She told us a couple of secrets we'll have to keep buttoned up on, so stay tuned. 

Well, I would like to thank Nic Stone for meeting with the Teen Reading Ambassadors from Worlds of Words. I'd like to thank the Tucson Festival of Books for making this happen. I'd like to thank Alexis Mendoza, who is flying solo as our sound engineer, Kate Waterhouse, our lit discussant, Vianey Torres, who keeps us administratively in check, Bonnie Rock, our intern. We are recording in the Digital Innovation and Learning Lab in the University of Arizona College of Education.