Writing With a Broken Tusk
Writing With a Broken Tusk began in 2006 as a blog about overlapping geographies, personal and real-world, and writing books for children. The blog name refers to the mythical pact made between the poet Vyaasa and the Hindu elephant headed god Ganesha who was his scribe during the composition of the Mahabharata. It also refers to my second published book, edited by the generous and brilliant Diantha Thorpe of Linnet Books/The Shoe String Press, published in 1996, acquired and republished by August House and still miraculously in print.
Since March, writer and former student Jen Breach has helped me manage guest posts and Process Talk pieces on this blog. They have lined up and conducted author/illustrator interviews and invited and coordinated guest posts. That support has helped me get through weeks when I’ve been in edit-copyedit-proofing mode, and it’s also introduced me to writers and books I might not have found otherwise. Our overlapping interests have led to posts for which I might not have had the time or attention-span. It’s the beauty of shared circles—Venn diagrams, anyone?
“History is Key.” Anita Kharbanda’s Lioness of Punjab
How is it that growing up in India, I never heard of the woman at the center of Anita Kharbanda’s Lioness of Punjab? In accounts of the Emperor Aurangzeb’s siege of the Anandpur Sahib gurdwara, her name was curiously missing, just another example of the erasure of women in 19th and 20th century accounts of the past.
Mai Bhago lived in the 18th century, refusing to fit the mold of a domesticated woman. Instead, she mastered the arts of war and took up arms against the Mughal Empire.
Colonial Connections in Saving Savannah
Tonya Bolden’s YA novel, Saving Savannah, is set at the end of WWI. It’s a meticulously documented novel, the story of 17-year-old Savannah Riddle who finds herself rebelling against the elite Black Washington DC society of her parents.
Power and the Silencing of Activists
Mythology and performance play roles in Oonga, the novel version of a 2013 movie with the same name, which won a 2021 Neev Book Award. The real-life dystopia of corporate plunder and the clash of ideologies lie at the heart of the novel, its storyline delivered in fragments that echo the fracturing of the land, torn up and left bleeding by the mining company. Sometimes fiction can help disseminate the truth about real-world events.
History and Self in Everything Sad is Untrue
Here is the debut offering from an exciting new press—Levine Querido—notable in contemporary children's and YA publishing for the minds behind it and for its focus on building a platform for previously underrepresented voices.