Interview: Newbery Award Winner, Cynthia Kadohata, author of Outside Beauty

Read our review of Cynthia Kadohata’s most recent young adult novel, Outside Beauty.

Literary Safari: “Kira-Kira” is a book about two sisters. This one is about 4. What is it about you and sisters?!
Cynthia Kadohata: I’m very close to my sister. My relationship with my sister — and my brother! — are a couple of the defining relationships of my life. My siblings have had a huge influence on me, and we were a threesome the whole time we were growing up.

LS: In this day and age where being a multicultural author comes with its own baggage, “Outside Beauty” struck me not so much as a story about ethnicity and more of a story about coming of age. How do you strike a balance between writing about the teenage experience versus meeting the demands and pressures to write about “the Japanese American experience”? Did this influence your choice to make many of your characters mixed race?
CK: Hmmm, that’s a good question. The only strategy that I’ve found useful for myself is to write whatever I feel passionate about at the moment.

LS: “Outside Beauty” will remind some readers of “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.” Both are stories of summer separations endured by young women. However, “Outside Beauty” is also different because your characters are all different ages and connected through blood ties. As you were writing, were you thinking about this similarity and about the difference between family and friends?
CK: Actually, I wrote the first draft of this in the late nineties. I’m not sure “Sister of the Traveling Pants” had been published yet. In any case, I didn’t think of the similarity at all as I wrote. I’m very close to my family but also feel very close to my best friends. I probably have fewer friends than most people but am quite close to them and trust them completely.

LS: Shelby has many crosses to bear. She questions her mother’s devotion to beauty, she starts out embarrassed of her Japanese father (in fact, she’s the only 100% Japanese character), and she is the protector of Maddie, the youngest sister, who seems to be a victim of abuse. Was there a message you wanted your readers to take away from your main protagonist’s experience?
CK: Among other things, I wanted readers to come away loving Shelby’s father and seeing the value of her relationship with him.

LS: How did you get the idea for the book?
CK: I wrote the first draft while I was in the throes of divorce about ten years ago. I guess I was questioning what family means at that point in my life.

LS: Obviously, if “Outside Beauty”were set in contemporary times, the letters the sisters wrote to each other would have been replaced by email. Did this influence your decision to set the book in the 1980s? How else did the decade influence your characters?
CK: I think, subconsciously, I set the book in the eighties because that’s the last decade I really felt comfortable with in terms of knowing what kids were into. I don’t keep up well. I was the last person in America to realize what an iPod was.

LS: And, now onto the writing process. How and when do you write? Do you have any writing rituals?
CK: I can’t tell you my superstitions because they don’t make any sense at all but it would be bad luck to tell you! I write in the early afternoons for about three pages or three hours, whichever comes first.

LS: Having won the Newbery Medal, what are the pressures and pleasures of being an “award-winning Asian American writer”? Do you feel a responsibility or a set of expectations?
CK: Fortunately, my editor is quite demanding, in a good way. So I don’t have to feel responsibility or a set of expectations from anyone except her.