Question (Q): Lisa, your YA novel Home Home (Papillote Press, 2018) tells the story of fourteen-year-old Trinidadian Kayla, who struggles with depression and anxiety, as well as with her mother’s personal and cultural inability to understand that these conditions are biological. The girl’s circumstances and health journey require that she leave her mother’s home (as well as her island) in order to obtain the type of services and loving family care that she needs. What inspired you to create such a character, and how did you inform yourself in preparation to write the book?
Lisa Allen-Agostini (LAA): The Home Home protagonist is based on a combination of my own experiences and the experiences of a friend of mine whose family sent her to Canada after her mental health problems resulted in a breakdown.
I’ve been a print journalist for decades and I covered mental health, writing features about suicide and depression in Trinidad and Tobago. I was diagnosed with persistent depressive disorder and social anxiety disorder in my 30s, but had experienced symptoms for most of my life, I think. I’ve always been interested in mental health as a topic, and started writing about it in newspaper columns as far back as 1995.
In Trinidad Creole the expression “home home” encapsulates the idea of a true home vs a temporary home. It’s a main question running through the story, precisely because where the character is from is not necessarily where she is most comfortable or at home.
Q: We watched your TED Talk and were impressed by your varied projects as a writer. You have delved into several genres (poetry, journalism, speculative fiction, and more). When did you become aware that you also wanted to write for young adults? Has interacting with teenagers during the writing workshops that you facilitate been one of the motivators?
LAA: My occasional work as a teacher and in writing workshops for children and teens exposes me to how young people think and see the world. I also have two daughters, now aged 25 and 18. But I really came to writing for teens through Trinidadian children’s writer and editor Joanne Johnson.
I love reading young adult literature. And since we write what we read (the GIGO principle) I suppose it’s natural that I’d be comfortable writing in the genre. But I’d never tried it until Joanne worked with Macmillan Caribbean on a series called Island Fiction. She issued a call for submissions of Caribbean speculative fiction novels for “tweens” – aged 11- 15 – and I successfully submitted a short sci-fi novel called The Chalice Project, which Macmillan Caribbean published in 2008. Joanne was exceptionally helpful in getting it into shape for young adult readers, particularly giving me guidance about how to write technical information for young readers and making the writing more cinematic.
Q: Home Home has a hopeful thread woven through it. It educates the younger generation about the important issue of mental illness, for it identifies it for what it is, another chronic condition that is manageable, like asthma, or diabetes. It is a novel that encapsulates the promise of a better future, the hope of self empowerment, and a glimpse at provisional reconciliation based on understanding. How do you foresee the novel inspiring young readers to realize they could be going through a similar situation as the protagonist and seek help? Or to understand and support their friends during a psychological crisis?
LAA: I hope the reader can see that depression and anxiety, which the protagonist is diagnosed with, are real illnesses with real treatment available. And that the conditions should be taken seriously. In the region, parents often dismiss teen mental illness as willfulness, laziness or spiritual affliction, and a mental health diagnosis is regarded with suspicion. I want teens to be able to see past our cultural biases to consider mental illness like any other medical condition that can be affected by medication, diet, exercise and lifestyle.
Q: In Home Home, you tackle another vital topic, homosexuality. Homosexuality is presented through likable, well-defined characters with unique personalities, interests and senses of personal style, the narrator’s aunt, Jillian, and her girlfriend, Julie. In Canada, their healthy partnership is out in the open, leaving no room to doubt the nature of their relationship. At the same time, you address the expected secrecy of homosexuality in the Caribbean space, bringing to mind Rosamond S. King’s description of “El secreto abierto.” Have you seen a positive response to this frank representation of homosexuality from YA Caribbean readers?
LAA: I read Rosamond’s work, and it is spot on regarding el secreto abierto. There is a way Trinidadians are happy to pretend that queerness doesn’t exist, or to code it as a part of someone’s life that is widely known but never openly spoken of. Many, if not most, queer couples operate like good friends or business partners in public, and when I do readings and it comes up, kids always recognize it as a familiar evasion. Mostly readers have been open-minded about the queer characters in Home Home, but in a few cases young people have been very angry when it came up in a reading, insisting that homosexuality is a sin, an aberration, not to be spoken of or encouraged in any way.
Q: In the novel, the protagonist explains her mother’s inability to understand her illness by saying, “It was clinical depression, I tried to tell her, the doctors tried to tell her, Aunt Jillian tried to tell her. Depression is an illness. It had nothing to do with her. It was inside of me, like some kind of glitch in my basic programming.” Some parents take it personally, seeing their child’s mental illness as “deliberate bad behavior” (67) and a commentary on their own bad parenting (44), instead of trying to understand the biological roots or other factors. Why did you decide to present these parental reactions to mental illness?
LAA: When I was a teen, in late secondary school, I took an overdose of cold medication in a suicide attempt. It made me vomit, but my mother refused to even consider taking me to the hospital and never mentioned it again. When a teen I know was hospitalized a few years ago for a similar attempt, many, a number of adults told me she was being overdramatic and that they would never have taken their child seriously if they had done the same thing.
Trying to kill yourself is not normal and should always be treated seriously, but parents here very often don’t see it like that. There is such stigma around it; and it’s made worse by the prevailing attitude that children are faking or looking for attention, and that parents should be firm and not “let the child have their own way”. I’d say mental illness in children and teens is more commonly ignored by Caribbean parents than treated as a possibly serious condition.
Q: Is the protagonist’s mental condition solely biological? Or have the other social and familial issues presented in the novel (historical, geographical, political aspects of the Caribbean or school and family life) influenced this young woman’s health?
LAA: I don’t know. Possibly all are influences. Though the book talks about brain chemistry as a separate thing, you’re right: environment and history play a huge part in our mental health.
Q: Home Home is also about a daughter’s relationship with her mother, a mother whose love, according to Julie, “comes out as criticism” (84). We’ve seen this kind of troubled mother-daughter relationship in other works of Caribbean fiction. Jamaica Kincaid, Michelle Cliff, Makeda Silvera, and Edwidge Danticat, to mention some examples, have in one way or another represented Caribbean mothers as controlling, difficult, indifferent, or sharp. Do you think this is an accurate representation of Caribbean motherhood and intergenerational relations? When writing your mother character Cynthia, did you have any other Caribbean literary mothers in mind?
LAA: Not really. As I said, aspects of the protagonist’s experience are based on my own story. I had a difficult relationship with my own mother, and my “mommy issues” show up in my work quite a bit: there’s a whole section of my book of poetry Swallowing the Sky that explores the generational relationships between my grandmother, my mother, myself and my daughters. The mother-child bond is one of the most important of human relationships and can affect all subsequent relationships we form.
But though my mother and I always seemed to be in different keys, I know people with wonderful relationships with their mothers, so it’s not a universal thing in the Caribbean. Perhaps the mothers in our fiction are presented that way because they make for good conflict. Perfect moms don’t make good fiction. If you’re being very cynical, you could say bad mothers have birthed some good writers.
Q: In Home Home, the Here vs. There theme is presented as Trinidad vs. Canada, and ultimately as Caribbean vs. the Metropolis. That is Jillian’s case, as she leaves Trinidad to go to school and stays, perhaps, because of the challenges of being an openly lesbian woman in her country. There’s also the protagonist’s situation; she is sent to Canada by the mother to recover, as well as to draw public attention away from her attempted suicide (7). The text seems to suggest that both Jillian and the protagonist have better chances of “progressing” and living improved, comfortable lives outside of the Caribbean. Would you say that the Caribbean can be a difficult space for some people in terms of their “becoming” or “progressing”?
LAA: A small place will always be cozy for some people and claustrophobic for others. For those who don’t want to live el secreto abierto, the Caribbean can be a closet they can’t wait to escape. And though they are improving, community mental health resources (in Trinidad, at least) are not easily accessed by working class people. I know some people who have sought treatment abroad they never would have sought here.
Jillian didn’t leave because she was a lesbian; she left to go to university, as many, many young Caribbean people do. While she was abroad studying, she came out. In the book, she acknowledges that she does not have a dream life. And Josh’s mother still struggles with mental illness even though she, a Jamaican, lives in New York. Leaving the Caribbean for the metropolis is no magic bullet to happiness.
Q: The places and spaces in the novel are very significant, and they communicate. For example, Kayla’s pink girly room, Julie’s clean neat house, Jillian’s barbecues in the back garden, the touristy places they visit, all speak volumes. Especially in the section of the novel in which Cynthia comes to visit, and there are clear and marked contrasts between Trinidad and Edmonton, Canada. Can you tell us about how you tried to create these spaces in a way that would move the story forward and reflect the characters?
LAA: The spaces weren’t consciously mapped out. I planned only a few points of the story when I started writing and wrote the whole thing over an Easter vacation when my brother, God bless him, took my kids for the holidays. The story and most of the settings just tumbled out.
I do use details to tell a story or explain a character concisely. I’ve been told I write cinematically and clinically; what I aim to do is show how environment and character are expressed in the details. The protagonist wouldn’t have decorated her room that way. It was someone else’s idea of what a teen girl’s room should look like. Or, in another scene, having her go shopping at the mall and be asked to make decisions when she had explained how hard making decisions was for her. So that when she is able to choose something, the reader can see that there is a disconnect between the observable reality and her self-perception; this girl thinks she is ugly, and she is stupid and she cannot be loved. The observable reality is that she is none of those things, and quite the opposite.
I spent some time in Edmonton on an exchange programme in the mid-1990s and was housed by a lesbian couple in the suburbs. Jillian and Julie’s house in Home Home is very much like their house. Cheri and Joanne, the couple on whom Jillian and Julie are very loosely based, also took me to Banff, although we didn’t do the activities described in Home Home. It’s a top tourist attraction in that part of Alberta and almost a required trip for visitors. I added the scene at the request of my editor at Papillote Press, publisher Polly Patullo. The manuscript was very short and she asked for a bit more at certain parts. I thought, what better way to prolong family discomfort than by sitting in a car for a four-hour drive to turn around and sit for another four hours. Really classic family awkwardness, that is.
Q: You use music as the first significant connection between Kayla and her Jamaican-Canadian-US romantic interest, Joshua. When the teenagers meet, Kayla describes Joshua’s playlist as “old and romantic” as opposed to “young and urban.” Why did you choose for them to find common ground in a playlist of “old and romantic” music rather than other interests? Can you say something about the chosen songs and what they evoke for you as the writer of these scenes?
LAA: The old songs mentioned are some of my own favourites – I confess I am both old and a romantic – and the newer artistes are ones my daughter and nephew, both 18 now, were listening to during my edits a couple years ago. I guess I chose music I’m familiar with.
I love music. It is one of the easiest things for people to bond over. I think when a person discovers another with the same taste in music, it’s an instant connection, a point of reference that isn’t just intellectual. Music is spiritual, music is biological, and the way the vibrations affect you is tangible. When you share music with someone, you share something profound. There is an intimacy in selecting music together for a party, even if it’s just choosing a playlist.
Q: Kayla and her closest friend back in Trinidad, Akilah, use Skype as their main means of communication, over other social network platforms. How might the real-time, face-to-face contact with Akilah and the visual fragments of Trinidad that Kayla can see through the computer screen contribute to supporting her in the healing and recovery process that she faces?
LAA: Kids in my country don’t use Skype so much these days and they don’t use it in the same way they use other social media platforms with VOIP. If they have to use it, they sign on, use it, and sign off. With platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, two popular VOIP platforms for young people in Trinidad, they are on the app all day, and communication tends to be ongoing throughout the day. Skype allows the Home Home protagonist to control who she talks to and when.
The calls help her. Just having supportive friends and family helps in recovery. When you’re homesick seeing something from home can make a difference too, even if the sensation is bittersweet, as it is for the protagonist.
Q: When Kayla and Josh Skype Akilah, they discuss many of the social issues that exist in Trinidad. They talk about the daily murder rate, overall crime, power outages, lack of water availability and the kidnapping of girls for the sex trade. The narrator also describes to Josh how school in Trinidad is violent, with “some girls getting into fights… they stab each other over boyfriends and stuff” (63). She answers Josh’s concerns with dismissive responses claiming “those schools are where the majority of kids end up in our country. It’s normal…” (64). Do the statements of the fictional characters mirror the reality of Trinidad?
LAA: Yes. It sounds outrageous, but it’s true. Last year in Trinidad and Tobago there were 462 murders in a population of 1.3 million. There is crime of all kinds, from political corruption to financial crime by local conglomerates to rape and robbery among schoolchildren. There are normalised scheduled widespread power outages for repairs. The violence epidemic among secondary school students is well reported in the media and has received government attention. And the majority of secondary school students do attend government schools, as opposed to the often more prestigious denominational colleges.
(To be perfectly fair, the human trafficking trends in Trinidad and Tobago are not well understood or documented, but many girls and women do go missing every year, and there are some who think they are being trafficked. Either way girls and women are not encouraged to be out alone at night. I didn’t mention the ridiculously high rates of GBV-related murders of women and children. Last year 52 women were killed in such situations here.)
Q: Kayla discloses her mental health condition in a private conversation with Josh, after he casually comments that his mother suffers from depression. He also discusses with her his father’s alcohol consumption and dating life. Would you consider this disclosure on her part a turning point for her in terms of recovery and personal growth?
LAA: The first time you hear someone mention a mental illness as an offhand thing, like it is a normal thing, it automatically makes you feel more comfortable discussing your own condition. It’s so stigmatized in the Caribbean that the difference is electric. Yes, I’d say it was a turning point for her in her growth. Making a new friend is also good for her growth.
Q: Fatherhood is another subject that comes up various times in the novel. What would you like to say about how the novel presents fathers?
LAA: Josh’s dad is a drunk, and the protagonist’s dad is absent. Fathers have it hard in this book. Unfortunately, there are many kids who have similar experiences of fathers in the region. In one group I read to, I asked them to raise their hands if they lived with their dads. Fewer than half did.
Q: Referring to his mother’s depression, Josh talks about how she makes things harder for herself, and for him, because she chooses not to take her medication. He also lists all of the stuff that is actually good for her, which leads to the protagonist opening up about how people in Trinidad would never understand depression. Are you trying to break this taboo by discussing the subject openly in a text for YA readers?
LAA: Definitely. I think the more people are able to talk about it, the more confident they are in seeking help where it’s available. You won’t fix a problem you don’t consider serious. There’s also a lot of isolation in mental illness, wherein people feel they are alone in what they are going through. Building community can be an important part of healing, too.
Q: When you have been able to present your novel Home Home in front of a YA audience, how has it been received? Have any of the YA comments caught your attention and stayed with you?
LAA: I’ve been on a tour of Trinidad schools co-ordinated by CODE and the Bocas Lit Fest with the Ministry of Education and the National Libraries. (CODE is a Canadian NGO that gives the annual Burt Award for Caribbean Young Adult Literature; my manuscript for Home Home was awarded third place in 2017.) CODE has given copies of the book to school libraries, and one school has put Home Home as required reading for an English literature class. We visited 12 schools in October 2018.
Most of the groups responded positively to the book. After some readings, individuals confided that they were depressed or suicidal. I encouraged them to talk to guidance officers, teachers or other adults who could point them to resources and counselling.
A number of adult readers have sent me private messages saying they wished they had read this when they were teens. Teachers and librarians have also told me they identified with the character and her illness. There is a longstanding need to open this discussion. I’m glad my book is helping do that.