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Interview with Elizabeth
Partridge and Aki Sogabe
By Elisa Oreglia
Posted: March 2003
Elizabeth was born and raised
in Berkeley, California. She is married with two grown children, and
for many years she's worked both as an acupuncturist and as a writer.
Last November she was a National Book Award finalist for her book This
Land Was Made for You and Me: The Life & Songs of Woody Guthrie,
published by Putnam Penguin.
Aki was born and grew up in Japan's Shizuoka prefecture.
She married a Japanese American merchant marine officer, and they lived
with their two children in Japan, Singapore, and Hawaii, before finally
settling in Belleview, Washington, in 1978. She is now a naturalized
American citizen.
Elizabeth and Aki were interviewed separately about their
first book together, Oranges on Golden Mountain, the story of
a young Chinese immigrant to San Francisco. They will soon follow this
with Kogi's Mysterious Journey, a Japanese folktale, due out
later this year.
Growing up and reading
Elizabeth always loved books. “I was a bookworm”, she
says. “I loved to read. I was very sociable, and I liked things
like cooking, and baking, and arts and crafts projects, and I read everything
I could put my hands on, everything, without discrimination.“
Aki admits with a chuckle that she was a tomboy
growing up. “But I also always liked to have something to draw
or to paint, and to read - cartoons, of course! But also good stories.
When I was in high school I liked Tolstoy, Hemingway…“
Neither one dreamed of a career in the children's book
world when they were little, but whereas Aki was always drawing
and painting, Elizabeth didn't even like to write. “I never
thought I'd be a writer. I didn't like to write! My best friend in college
was writing children's books in a little shed in the backyard and I
thought she was crazy. I couldn't understand why she was so interested
in writing books for kids, it just seemed like a lot of hard work and
not much fun.“
Chance, luck, and coincidences
Acupuncture became Elizabeth's full-time job, and it wasn't
until she started reading to her two sons that she rediscovered the
magic of children's books. “I started figuring out what was well
written and what was not that good, because I love it when a story really
works, I love the craft of writing.“ Her first book, however, was
born as a study guide about the photographer Dorothea Lange, who was
her godmother. It was published almost by accident: an editor at Smithsonian
University Press heard that Elizabeth was doing this project, and thought
it would make a great book. The study guide became a book of Dorothea
Lange's photographs and essays (Dorothea Lange: A Visual Life),
and Elizabeth became a published author, ready now to turn to her real
love, children's books.
Aki discovered papercuts quite early in her life:
“One day when I was in middle school I saw Chinese papercut illustrations
in a newspaper, and I really liked them, so I copied them. I used origami
paper and then cut it with scissors. I used to cut out little pictures
and give them to my friends as birthdays presents. Papercutting remained
my hobby while raising my own family. It became more serious when we
moved here: I have always been very influenced by the great Japanese
artist Hokusai, especially his Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji,
and when we arrived in Bellevue I used to create nothing but waterfalls!“
“The first time I sold my artwork was almost 24
years ago. I went for a check-up at the dentist, and I had brought a
couple of my works to show to the receptionist who was curious about
papercuts. In the office there was also a dental equipment salesman
from Oregon, who saw my work and asked how much it was. I had never
sold my art, so I didn't know, but I was pretending I knew all about
it. I said 'How about $50?' and he bought it! The dentist's wife was
listening and she wanted one too, so she bought the other one.“
Her start in children's books was equally adventurous.
“I was showing my artwork in a tiny gallery in Hood River, Oregon.
Linda Zuckerman of Harcourt stopped there on the way home from her vacation,
and somehow she and her husband ended up in that art gallery, saw my
work and liked it. One day, in 1992, I received a letter from her. I
wasn't very familiar with the children's book world, but after a while
I wrote back to her. We met, and in October 1993 my first book was published,
Cinnamon, Mint, & Mothballs: A Visit to Grandmother's House,
written by Ruth Tiller. So I really feel like luck and destiny and chance
all worked for me.“
Creating - inside and outside one own's culture
Aki finds that, because she's Japanese, publishers tend to ask her
to illustrate books that have some kind of Asian aspect, because they
feel she has the right background, and will understand certain details
intuitively.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, soon came up against
the problem of whether, as a writer, she would be allowed to write on
topics outside her own culture. “There's been some really crappy
mistakes made when people write outside their own culture. They put
their own cultural values in another culture, which is really unfair.
I've always struggled with this issue. The first children's book I wrote
was about an African American girl who saved her sister's life using
folk medicine (Clara and the Hoodoo Man) and it was based on
a true story one of my acupuncture patients told me. I wanted to tell
the story, but was really afraid I would get into trouble for writing
outside my culture.“
“I asked Ursula LeGuin, who's a wonderful writer,
how she felt about people writing outside their culture, and she said:
‘I fully believe that as a writer you have a right to write absolutely
anything that you would like to write. I also believe it's come time
for people to write their own story, and stop having them always be
written by doyens of culture.’ Two competing thoughts, but she
concluded that the wonderful thing about getting older is that you can
hold contradictory thoughts. That's such a beautiful concept and I have
come to believe in both those ideas myself - the writer’s right
to write about what they want and the need for people to speak up about
their own culture and to be published and recognized.“
Oranges on Golden Mountain
Elizabeth: “I was doing research on when and how Chinese
medicine came to this country, and I discovered that 300,000 Chinese
had come to California in the latter half of the 19th century, but we
don't teach our kids about that immigration experience. It was like
a hidden history that had just dropped away, and it really bothered
me. I decided to write Oranges on Golden Mountain, and
to make it historical fiction, making up the main character, but telling
the true story of the experience.“
Aki: “When I was illustrating Oranges,
I drew a Japanese boat instead of a Chinese one, and it was Elizabeth
who noticed the mistake. She is very accurate, attentive to the smallest
detail. In one scene of her manuscript, the mother sat by the hearth,
but Elizabeth wasn't sure about how such a hearth looked, so I called
the Wing Luke Asian Museum [in Seattle] and asked. The curator described
it to me and I tried to do it, but Elizabeth wasn't convinced, so she
changed the story. Well, for an author this is simpler, they can just
change a few lines on the computer, but for an illustrator it is different!
Nonetheless, the Oranges story was based on history and Elizabeth wanted
to be very sure that she wasn't making any historical mistake. I was
pretty sure the hearth was right, but she wasn't convinced, so we changed
it. She was very nice about it, though. After we finished the book she
sent me a big Hawaiian flower!“
Elizabeth: “Since Aki is Japanese-American,
I was afraid of making a mistake. Of course, there's a huge difference
between Japanese and Chinese culture, even though to some it might be
all ‘Asia’… So I did carefully check everything she did,
because sometimes she would fall back on what would be right in her
own culture. I loved Aki's work for Oranges so much that I wanted
to write another story just for her to illustrate. So, I researched
an old Japanese folk tale about a priest who wants to paint but is not
happy with his paintings. One day he falls in a lake and gets turned
into a fish and has all these experiences as a fish, and then really
understands the freedom of being a fish and is able to draw and paint
much more beautifully. I wrote this story and Aki is working on it right
now. I was very glad when she said that she would illustrate it.“
Aki: “We work well as a team. In the future,
if she wants to work with me, I'll definitely work with her. I hope
she'll like the illustrations I did for this latest book!“
Wise words
Aki: “I don't use a computer for my work. Computer technology
is so pervasive nowadays, I think people get tired of it. Papercutting
has to be done by hand, although there is software that imitates it.
But the look is not original. Maybe in the future, when I am very old
and have arthritis, perhaps I'll use a computer.“
Elizabeth: “I don't have any regrets
for not having started my writing career earlier. Learning acupuncture
was very absorbing for me, and I couldn't have done it with only half
of my mind. It took me at least 10 years before I began to feel I was
finally understanding the medical system. It made me let go of my own
cultural biases and learn a whole new way of looking at the body, the
mind, and the spirit. Also, as you get older you have a lot more to
write about, a lot more perspective, a lot more interesting things have
happened to you. When I was just a 22 year-old I didn't have a whole
lot of material to work with yet.“
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