“What inspired you to write 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑊𝑒 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑦 ?”

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope that 2021 has been treating you all well so far. There’s a lot of work to be done, but I have full faith that this will be a year of transition, progress, and healing. With this new beginning, I can’t help but reflect on my writing journey. I often find it hard to believe that The We and the They has been out in the world for five months already. It’s been an honor engaging with you all as we’ve explored different aspects of the story together. Though I am beginning to shift my focus toward other writing projects (more to come on that! 🤓✍🏽), The We and the They will always be, not the beginning, but a beginning of me seeing myself as a writer. It’s not a linear process in the slightest, but that’s what makes it all the more rewarding.

 A few days ago, a fellow author, the incredible Mackenzie Finklea, asked me, “What inspired you to write The We and the They?” When I saw the question, I was taken aback at first, not because it surprised me, but rather because it had been so long since I’d actually thought about my inspiration. Sometimes, I get so caught up in the throng of doing something I care about, I lose track of my “why” as it slips into the spaces between words. After I got my bearings though, I was able to produce an inevitably incomplete response. Here’s what I managed to write: 

That's an incredible question! Admittedly, sometimes I'm not even sure I know the full answer. 

Here's what I do know. 

It started with my grandfather's voice. 

It started with the recurring daydream of a girl swallowing a key. 

And it started with the pronoun “We” (quite literally). 

When I officially began writing The We and the They,  it was the early part of my senior year in college. So naturally, I was having an existential crisis of sorts. As I looked over the precipice into “real adulthood,”  I started to take inventory of who I am. In doing so, I realized that so much of how I understand myself, my “I” if you will,  is  profoundly shaped by the “We”s  of the collectives that I'm part of. These communities are ingrained with rich narratives of beauty, strength, and survival. Though I’ve been infatuated with all kinds of stories for my whole life, the stories my grandfather told my siblings and me throughout our childhood sparked the desire to understand how narratives mold identity for the collectives that I’m part of and the “others.” 

This is where things get interesting. 

It’s one thing to use the pronouns “We” and “They” to acknowledge differences. It’s another thing to then use that acknowledgement of differences to legitimize toxic power disparities that lead to the dehumanization of all parties involved in distinct ways. Some are systemically and systematically dehumanized in being denied equal rights and recognition of personhood. Others fall into the narcissistic blindness of feeling entitled to the odds ever being in their favor, being dehumanized in the act of perpetrating and maintaining dehumanization in corrupt systems. It’s all very complicated. No one ever wants to admit to othering for the sake of power, but everyone does it. Stewing in this realm of  discourse really pushed me to make this struggle  an intrinsic part of  The We and the They. 

Furthermore, I also knew that I wanted to really lean into the oral tradition components of The We and the They because I've always loved the way a voice imbues a narrative with a sense of weight and legacy.  Stories don't exist in some elusive ether. They exist inside of people's hearts, minds, and bodies. It’s almost as if they are  interwoven into DNA and beckoned by our life experiences. I’ve always felt this way about stories and I knew I needed to honor it in The We and the They and in my future work. 

As for the more fantastical elements of the story, I think they naturally emerged from my affinity to science fiction and fantasy books, though I enjoy books from many different genres. I appreciate how the very incorporation of fantastical elements appeals to readers’ universal inclination toward their own relevant specifics. If a story is too “realistic,” it becomes grounded in a context that may inadvertently alienate some readership. Whereas, in embracing the fantastical, there's a way in which the themes can be transferred, contextualized, or allegorized to multiple relevant “realistic” situations.

So, ultimately, all of those things sort of coalesced into a seed in the pit of my selfness that I had the sudden urge to nurture for it to grow. That probably still isn’t the full answer, but it’s something that I continue to cultivate and explore.