Jasmine Warga

Jasmine Warga: The immigrant straightaway that the first generation works, like, so hard just to have, like, stability and to live, and then it's the second generation that really gets to, like, dream.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: As Hamilton and Lafayette say on Broadway, immigrants, we get the job done. Yes. And the daughter of an immigrant and this week's guest reminds us that if we are lucky enough to have someone lay that foundation for us, then it's our job to honor their gift by leaning fully into life.

Jasmine Warga: We all need to have radical hope. Believe me, I am a really hopeless days too, but it's such a privilege to get to live and to survive. Our job is to live,

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: and I think that's a really amazing thing. Jasmine Morga is a Newbery honor winner and New York Times bestselling author of Other Words for Home, The Shape of Thunder, A Rover Story, and many more. Her work explores identity, belonging, and how being different can be what unites us. In this episode, Jasmine shares what it was like growing up as a mixed kid in the Midwest, her light bulb moment while teaching sixth grade, and how Animorphs, surrealist art, and a dash of Virginia Woolf shaped not only her voice as a writer, but also her commitment to living joyfully and spreading joy to others. My name is Jordan Lloyd Bookie, and this is the reading culture, a show where we speak with diverse authors about ways to build stronger culture of reading in our communities.

We dive deep into their personal experiences and inspirations. Our show is made possible by Beanstack, the leading solution for motivating people to read more. Learn more at beanstack.com, and make sure to check us out on Instagram at the reading culture pod and subscribe to our newsletter for bonus content at the readingculturepod.com forward slash newsletter alright On to the show. Hey, listeners. Are you looking for a fun, easy way to track your reading and earn cool rewards?

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And if you are an educator searching for a fresh alternative to accelerated reader, Beanstack is the perfect tool to cultivate a thriving reading culture. Ready to turn the page? Visit beanstack.com to learn more. How are you doing, Jasmine? We're you're in Illinois, mister Shoe's neighbor, famously.

Jasmine Warga: Oh, I love John. He is such a special person. I feel like that's one of the gifts of the universe that we are neighbors.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: We'll start at the beginning. You're a Midwest girl like me. You're from Cincinnati.

Jasmine Warga: I am inordinately proud to be from Cincinnati. I think it's a really special Midwestern city that it's really sits, you know, on that intersection between the Midwest and the South. But I grew up in a small town in the Cincinnati area, which is where my mother had grown up. My dad is a Palestinian immigrant. And I think early on, the insularness of the town was both comforting and confusing to me because I was asked really early on where I was from because it was such a small town.

And I presented differently than my classmates. And I it took me a little bit to understand that was the question, was sort of identifying my ethnic identity. But that was a little bit puzzling when you're a kid and, you know, your best friend who lives next door to you isn't being asked that same type of question. So I think early on, it was a place where I became really curious about my identity and what it meant to be from here, but my dad was from this other place, and I had this connection to this other place.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I feel like probably for you growing up, people when you would say your dad was a Palestinian refugee and immigrant from Jordan, people probably had no idea, you know, were, like, ignorant to what that really meant, and that must be so different for your own kids and for you now to have there be such, like, a very, very public conversation and knowledge about Palestine now today. You know?

Jasmine Warga: Yeah. I mean, for sure. I mean, early on, I sort of learned to self erase Palestine from when I would talk about my identity just because people didn't understand what that meant. So I would say my dad's from Jordan. Mhmm.

And I also was coached really early on for my dad to acknowledge Jordan because Jordan is the only country in the Middle East that gave citizenship to Palestinian refugees. And because my father was granted citizenship from Jordan, he was able to get an education, which obviously shaped the whole course of his life and my family's life. And so it is really complicated to be from this one place, also be from this other place. Like, I've never visited anywhere in sort of the Palestinian territories. I've only ever been to Jordan, but all of my family there is Palestinian.

And when we used to go in the summer, they would quiz me and say, what are you? And they wanted the answer to be Palestinian, not Jordanian, and that was really important to them. And so I think all those layers of identity and trying to figure out how they could all add up to something that felt like wholeness. I think for a long time, I felt like I had all these different parts of myself, and they were competing with one another. And I think part of writing for me has been a project of trying to put all those pieces back together.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Were you always, like, the only one more or less when you were younger who was, like, a brown kid in your school, in your area?

Jasmine Warga: A 100%. We were the only I was the only Muslim kid in my class. Mhmm. So only kid, as far as I know, who had a parent who was have been born in a different country. And I think for a long time, I just wanted to, like, pass.

I wanted to blend in. I wanted for the teacher not to immediately be like, where are you from?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: So interesting and also just so interesting to be like a a mixed kid with like those dual identities, which I think nowadays is far more common and, you know, but then was just really you kinda had to pick, you know, in a different way for kids then.

Jasmine Warga: Yeah. Because in lots of ways, had a very typical, like, white Midwestern childhood experience of, like, my core childhood memories are watching the Cincinnati Bengals on Sundays at my grandparents' house. You know? So I feel whereas, like, a lot of my, like, Arab and Middle Eastern friends now that I have an adulthood aren't mixed. And so their view of their identity, while they, like, I think had all of the similar, like, wanting to blend in type feelings I had, It's a little bit different because, like, they were getting a cohesiveness, like, feeling of, like, well, this is my identity.

And I think I was always like, I don't know. Like, I never feel like I'm enough of either thing. Like, when we go in the summer to The Middle East, I'm American, and I don't speak Arabic well. And Mhmm. But when I was back in Cincinnati, I was immediately recognized as somehow being different from my classmates.

Right?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Right. Yeah. I'm a parent of mixed kids, so I believe that in the long run, it's like, it's so great. Your your whole view of the world is different. You're constantly, like, you are by definition an empathetic person because you have to view the world from, like, these multiple lenses every single day.

But it's hard, especially then. I think it's easier today than it was.

Jasmine Warga: Yeah. No. It's again, I think there's a lot of what I talk about at school visits, but I think those things that made you insecure and a little bit confused as a kid are the things as an adult you're the most proud of. And I feel like I've really leaned into my mixedness, and I love it now. And I love that it's, like, unexpected.

I feel like I'm way more Ohio than a lot of people expect. Yeah. And I'm also so proud of my era of background and feel very connected to that, and I think those things can really coexist. And like you said, I think we're seeing more and more kids with that type of background in America. And I think that's really beautiful.

I think that's kind of what America should be in it.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Like many authors on this show, Jasmine's questions of identity marked much of her childhood. She straddled many worlds and tried to make sense of her multi ethnic background in a community where that wasn't the norm. Reading became a way to try on different identities, to see herself in new places, and to make sense of the world around her.

Jasmine Warga: I think because I had such a flimsy sense of self, I was actually a really, really great reader and that I was so easily able to try on the personality of every main character that I read and I loved being fully absorbed in these worlds. And so I loved Animorphs. My favorite book from when I was a kid was Ella and Janet, and I, like, lived in that world. I wrote what would now be called fan fiction, but about Animorphs and Ella and Janet. And I remember The Giver was a book that really, really made me think, right, about this idea of, like, do you have to have sadness in order to sometimes feel happiness and being fascinated by that concept.

I would read almost everything, and I was really lucky that I had an amazing children's librarian at the local library in Wyoming that was constantly giving books. I remember she saved friendle for me when it came in, and I loved it. And when I think back on books, have a really positive association with my reading life from, like, fourth to seventh grade of I was sort of never a better reader than between those ages. And I think something about your brain, like, you have that growing awareness that you're able to really engage with, the philosophy meat of the book, but you're also really able to, like, believe that you're in this other world or you're on this adventure in a way that sometimes I think becomes a little bit harder the older we get to, like, fully transport in that way.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Were your parents big readers too?

Jasmine Warga: Both of my parents really big readers, and my mom also read to me all the time. Like, I was one of the later kids in my grade to learn Mhmm. To read, like, independently on my own. But I think I never had a bad association with reading because my mom was really patient, and I think it was always, like, a really Mhmm. Joyful experience because she was always reading to us.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Well, do you remember some of the books that she read aloud to you?

Jasmine Warga: Yeah. Of course. She read Girl of the Lumber Lost to me and I remember loving that book. All of the Anne of King Gables books. Oh, yeah.

We read, you know, of course, Matilda and Charlotte's Web. Those are some of the ones I really distinctly remember.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: What about, like, storytelling? What was the role of storytelling in your life? I'm particularly interested from your, I guess, dad's side of the family because I can imagine especially, like you said, you're sort of from three places really

Jasmine Warga: Yes.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: How that, like, storytelling element probably is particularly important there, but I'm just interested in some of that fabric of your early life.

Jasmine Warga: It's pretty amazing to me that I'm pretty sure my earliest childhood memory is of me sitting on my grandma, my father's mother's lap, and she's telling me a story. And I only met her two times in my whole life. She came to visit us in Cincinnati, and she was telling me a story about mermaids that live in the Dead Sea. And I remember this feeling of, like, she's sharing something with me that's important about our family. And then what I remember the most is that at end the of the story, she asked me to tell her a story about my home in Ohio, and I think that was her way of sort of teaching me that storytelling is sharing.

Right? And it's the way that we can communicate about things that matter to us and things that we love. And definitely, like, dad told my brother and I so many stories about his childhood, though in a similar way, I think, that to lots of people who have immigrant parents who have experienced pretty big traumas. It's also my dad is reticent to share certain things, and I've had to pull them out of him as an adult who understands more to be able to ask more, like, questions. So, like, I was told a lot of, like, silly stories as a kid and good war and those are important.

But then I as I became an adult, I had more, like, draft questions about childhood. And I really remember when I was about a teenager and we were visiting Jordan, and I was begging to see the old apartment where they used to live. It was in the, like, old side of Amman on the East Side of the city. And my dad, he finally caved and drove us there, but he wouldn't get out of the car. He wouldn't go in.

And I remember thinking, like, oh my god. This is so weird. But the apartment itself, you know, was so small. It was, like, smaller than my bedroom back home, which also was something I'd understood, but it's a different thing to, like, see it and see what it looked like. But getting him to actually, like, really talk about real concrete details of his childhood is much harder than some of these, like, family stories or Arabic proverbs or things that like, those were the types of stories Mhmm.

That are fun, right, that he would tell my brother and I like those kinda nighttime bedtime stories. But recently as an adult, I become really interested in wanting to know, like, real narrative stories from his child. But he's really firm about loving the country of Jordan and feeling like the country of Jordan gave him and his family this new life. It's funny. He's much, like, calmer than me when I'm, like, spitting out or feeling upset.

Like, he really has this feeling of being, like, you know, our job is to live, which is something my grandma used to say to him all the time. And I think that's a really amazing thing. And then also, I think my brother and I can, like, feel differently because there's more like, we have more privilege and space to feel differently that, like, we are surviving. Like, we can ask for more of that to survive. And I think that that is obviously not unique to my family.

I think in lots of ways, that's the Mhmm. Kind of the immigrant story that the first generation works, like, so hard just to have, like, stability and to live, and then it's the second generation that really gets to, like, dream.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. And do you feel like our job is to live, which I love that? And you feel like you're living that out in a different way than he sort of

Jasmine Warga: Yeah. Yeah. I definitely do. But I think that that's good for me to remember that he's like, it's good to, like, be engaged and obviously remember. He's like, but you can't make yourself sick.

Like, you need to live. Like, that is your job.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Jasmine imagined becoming a writer as soon as she learned it was a real job back in the first grade. But she didn't grow up knowing any authors and didn't see anyone she could picture herself becoming. Just as she said, her father's hard work gave her the privilege of higher education and the chance to take her time figuring out what exactly she dreamed of becoming. She thought of writing, but that dream felt fragile. So for a long time, she kept it tucked away.

Jasmine Warga: In college, I studied history and art history, and I don't know why I thought that that was gonna be, like, more practical than I was honestly, the the truth is that I was really scared to say creative writing because Mhmm. I had never shared my work with anyone, and I was really afraid of getting feedback. And it took me a long time to understand that that's how you get better. Right? But I think I was being really afraid of somebody telling me, like, you're not good at this.

And, like, my dream felt really fragile and something I was, like, holding on to. But I think I studied stories in a different way. Like, history is narrative and especially, like, art history is so visual. But I always said I wanted to be a writer, but I wasn't really actively trying to create things in college. Like, it never occurred to me to write for kids until after I graduated from college.

I was a sixth grade teacher, and that's when I had this, like, light bulb moment of being, like, those are the books I loved the best. Middle school was really hard for me. Like, I have so much that I wanna say in this space.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I wonder since you're an art history major if there was like an artist or particular piece of art or anything that was really formative for you or something that sort of shifted your perspective at that time.

Jasmine Warga: I love surrealist art. Like, I really like, I remember being fascinated by, like, Salvador Dali's paintings and, like, how visual they are and how many questions you can have about them. But I also love the story of Camille Claudel, was, like, the sculptor who worked with Rodin. And she famously did, like, all of the hands on the Rodin sculptures, which are the harder part. But then was kind of, like, thrown away into this, like, mental asylum.

In part, she was, like, she was having some struggles, but also she'd been having this, like, affair with Rodin, and he didn't want it just felt, like, so torrid and terrible, but also, like, dramatic, and it just, like, appealed to my 19, 20 year old interest.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yes. Torrid. That's so true. I've been to the Rodin Museum a couple of times, but I did not know that story about Camille Claudel. But it reminds me a bit of this line from your book that I highlighted.

It's a strange thing happened in Cherry Hall that reads, all great art is a mystery waiting to be solved. And, well, I guess her work on Rodin's hands was also its own kind of mystery as you put it too.

Jasmine Warga: For sure. That's what I I love about art and that's what I like like to do with kids at school visits is like show one of these interesting paintings and have them ask questions about that and show them that's what storytelling is. It's just asking questions. It's not knowing anything. It's paying attention and asking questions and saying, hey.

Have you ever wondered about this too? Or what if? And I think that that makes it feel, like, much more accessible and fun, this idea of, like, you have to know something and then write that down to share. And I always explain it's never, like, I know something. It's more that I'm curious, and I wanna share my curiosity with you.

We throw our parties. We abandon our families to live alone in Canada. We struggle to write books that do not change the world despite our gifts and our unstinting efforts, our most extravagant hopes. We live our lives, do whatever we do, and then we sleep. It's as simple and ordinary as that.

A few jump out windows or drown themselves or take pills. More die by accident, and most of us are slowly devoured by some disease or, if we're very fortunate, by time itself. There's just this for consolation, an hour here or there when our lives seem against all odds and expectations to burst open and give us everything we've ever imagined. Though everyone but children, and perhaps even they, know these hours will inevitably be followed by others, far darker and more difficult, Still, we cherish the city, the morning. We hope, more than anything, for more.

I remember one morning getting up at dawn. There was such a sense of possibility. You know that feeling. And I remember thinking to myself, so this is the beginning of happiness. This is where it starts.

And of course, there will always be more. It never occurred to me it wasn't the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment right then.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Jasmine read from The Hours by Michael Cunningham, a novel that weaves together the lives of three women across different time periods, all connected by Virginia Woolf's missus Dalloway. Jasmine first read The Hours as a high school senior and at the time, she was overwhelmed by dense reading assignments and had mostly lost touch with the joy of reading for pleasure. But The Hours cracked something open. It was dark, yes, but also accessible and emotionally alive in a way that felt totally new.

Jasmine Warga: I think that that was the time of my life where I was really feeling like, oh, my childhood has come to an end. And so I think I was really interested in the idea of the passage of time and, like, what does that mean? But now it's so funny. This, like, resonates with me so differently at the moment in my life that I'm at right now being, like, okay. This one perfect afternoon with my family, I'm gonna hold on to it.

That's a pocket of joy. Love it right then and not worry so much about what comes after. But I think that what I love about books is how you can revisit them. And so it like, that this struck me at 18, and it still strikes me now, but maybe in a little bit of a different way.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. I like hear echoes of what your dad and your grandma say in that too. You know? And then just, like, also thinking about happiness is not like a constant state. Contentment can be.

Jasmine Warga: Yeah.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: But then this idea of just, we all we want more time, and only those really wise kids really are the ones who know that you don't have it endlessly. You know?

Jasmine Warga: Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's such a blurry space, right, where you go from being a kid to an adult. And in some ways, you never feel older than but you're such a baby. I don't know.

So the book, like, really it's still really strange. And that passage almost makes me cry every time of this idea of I've had so many of those moments of you're just so happy and at peace. And I think, you know, I've gotten better at, like, appreciating them for what they are and not reaching for the next thing, right, or thinking about sustaining it, but understanding, like, the beauty is in the fleetingness of it.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Perfectly said. Well, thank you for that. I think that is, like, interesting to have that be sort of, like, the you know, for that to be, like, the book that kinda catapulted you back into sounds like just reading for pleasure.

Jasmine Warga: It was a really, like, kind of faux intellectual 18, 19 year old of,

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: like Mhmm.

Jasmine Warga: Loving that it was, like, weaving what already had the stamp of being, like, approved literature. Because I think that was also a tension I felt at 18 because I understood in kind of the hallowed halls of academia that the serious academics were not interested in creating. Mhmm. And so I wonder too if that's why I was keeping that impulse desire a little bit touched close to, like, my chest. Because there was something I had this feeling of, like, wanting to be taken, like, very seriously, which is very funny now given the type of books I wanna write and how I think about it, but that was something I don't know.

And, again, I don't know if that's, like, craving that approval from, like, an institutional type approval of that somehow, in some kind of unconscious way, stems back to all of those other identity questions I had of knowing, like, okay. Well, this is approved. If I know about this, you fit it. You know?

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. Right.

Jasmine Warga: And so this book, like, made sense to be kind of a gateway book because I think my mom knew that I'd be willing to read that because of that Virginia Woolf hook.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Tapping back into reading helped Jasmine recover something she'd almost set aside, her creative voice. But it didn't immediately lead her to writing. Instead, after college, she joined Teach For America and wound up in a middle school science classroom in Texas.

Jasmine Warga: So it had been tagged, particularly because of our low standardized test scores, particularly in reading. And it made me really sad that, like, none of my students thought of themselves as readers by and large. And I've sort of had memories of being like, that was my favorite part of that age. And so I decided that for the last ten minutes of every class, I would read aloud to them. And from watching them fall in love with the books I was reading aloud and, like, going to the bookstore and selecting books for kids that had been published since I've been a kid, particularly, I remember, like, reading to them When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead and being like, this is the most amazing book in the whole world.

I felt just, like, so inspired it. And I can only describe it as a light bulb moment of being like, oh, wow. This is, like, what I wanna do. I wanna be a part of this world. I wanna write books that hopefully make kids wanna be readers, but more importantly, feel less alone.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: And do you do a lot of, like, school visits for all of your books?

Jasmine Warga: Yeah. Yeah. I do. I do. Which is really cool to go, like, across the country.

I see all different kinds of schools, but then also there's, like, this universal thing of, like, 11 year olds everywhere. This, like, intersection between, like, intellect and imagination. And I love that about this age group that they're, like, very curious about the world and really into the idea of, like, authenticity and asking, interrogating things, but also that they're still willing to be silly and imaginative. And I think that that's what's so good for me about school visits. Because I think when I first got into this, I remembered, like, the most serious version of myself at, like, 11.

Yeah. But I forgot the version of myself that was, like, drawing dragons in a notebook and, like, you know Right. Or, like, playing Animorph still on the blacktop and still, like, into Imagine and playing all those types of things. And so I think that being around 11 year olds and 12 year olds and 10 year olds is good for me in that way of being like, yeah. They're really smart, and they wanna think deeply about things, but they also, like, are fun.

And I wanna meet them there too. And I think those things can exist together.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Yeah. Have you had any, like, experiences maybe with some of your more any of your books that you that really stand out to you as, okay. This was, a moment that I had with the kid that really just has stayed with me.

Jasmine Warga: I think what this has been happening a lot, which is really amazing, is so when I talk about a Rover story, I share that resilience, who's the main character. He's the Mars rover. And kind of his central arc in the book is that he, like, has feelings and he worries that that makes him different from other robots. And I share because I say that I always get asked many of my books are autobiographical and none of them are. They're all made up, but that resilience is actually my most autobiographical character.

It's most similar to me because I was a super sensitive kid who I had really big emotions and I would get upset really easily. I'd cry really easily, and I felt different from the rest of my classmates. And I think most all kids have had some experience of feeling different in some way. And I think the way, like, especially a rover story is a book that kids have really embraced, like, I'll get so many cool drawings.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Oh, yeah.

Jasmine Warga: The characters feel really real to them and the way that it's, like, captured their imagination has been really cool

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: to see. The theme from a rover story of feeling different is universal. It's a message that connects with a broad range of readers. But in another of her books, Jasmine wanted to send a story specifically to one little girl, her own younger self.

Jasmine Warga: I mean, my book, Other Words For Home, is really special to me and that I never saw Arab or Muslim characters in books growing up. And I know I'm definitely not the first person, to say that or have that story. But then to see so many kids of so many different backgrounds embrace Jude and relate to Jude is just, like, really healing for my 10 year old self. Because while I was writing that book, I had this voice in my head that was like, no one's gonna wanna read this book. You know what I mean?

Because I've never had seen it. And so I think that that's, like, what's incredible. A 12 year old boy on my school visit in Missouri who, like, loves other words for home and just, like, that's really incredible. And I think to me that's really what's amazing about books is their ability to not only celebrate our differences, but remind us of that, like, common bond of human experience.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: So Other Words for Home became, like, your catapult book, I call it, that authors have. But I think it's really cool that after that, you went on to write these, like, very different stories from that. I mean, you've got a robot, you've got a mystery, you've got them all. But still sometimes there are Arab American characters in there. And so I guess I'm wondering how has the way that you think about weaving that part of your identity into your work, how has that shifted over time?

Especially now, you know, as a parent too?

Jasmine Warga: I think when I was writing Other Words for Home, I had a lot of things that I wanted to ask and share and say about being Arab, Arab American, the diaspora, being Muslim, and I feel like I really filled that book with that. Representation is really important to me, but I think diversity can look different than what we think. Like, I always explain, like, the way a rover story is written and the themes in that book. If I wasn't the granddaughter of Palestinian refugees, the book would not be written that way. Yeah.

There's Arabic words in that book, that's the type of book that when I was not that other words for home, wouldn't have liked it. Like, I knew what it was like to be an Arab and Muslim kid. Yeah. What would have been really exciting to me is just that the scientists at NASA was Arab, and there were Arabic words in the book. And so I think I'm interested in expanding our ideas of, like, what a diverse book is.

Because I think sometimes, and it's really well meaning, people want to support books where they feel like they're having a different reading experience, which is great. I think those books are super important.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: They have like this on the cover where it feels very like it's physically Yeah. See something. It's like, okay. I get yeah.

Jasmine Warga: Yeah. And I think that that's important. It's a good impulse, but I also think it's important to support books from authors of different backgrounds even if what they're writing doesn't necessarily match what you think it should or could look like. I love that when I get to show up to a school visit, I've written a rover story that I think it's kind of surprising sometimes to kids that I'm the author. And I think that's a powerful type of diversity too.

I mean, my book that's coming out next March 2026 is an animal story. And to me, it's actually my most personal book ever in sort of identity questions of, like, what does it mean to feel all this pressure to, like, represent a community, and what does it mean to feel like you're the only one? And I feel like those are questions that I'm interested now in exploring through other lenses. Like, I think folks that directly engage with identity are super important, but I also think diversity can look like lots of things. I'm excited about that, and I think that that is kind of where I see the conversation going that we don't have to have such a, like, narrow understanding of what a diverse book is.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Jasmine's books look different on the surface, different genres, different kinds of characters. So with this in mind, I asked her, does she see a through line connecting them all?

Jasmine Warga: My books are actually kind of thematically similar. They're sort of all about belonging. They're all about finding home. They're all about learning to embrace all the different parts of yourself. And I think that switching genre has helped me to switch the lens through which I explore that theme.

Mhmm. But I think that that's the universal thread that actually unites them. I think my books lots of times seem more different than they actually are because the covers are so different because they're so different in genre. But I think really, they're all about characters who are trying to figure out where they belong and trying to figure out how to embrace, like, their truest self.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: I want to close out the interview by reading a line for your book from Other Words From Home that feels especially right for this moment, when so many of us are experiencing a sense of hopelessness. And you wrote, hoping I'm starting to think might be the bravest thing a person can do. And I wanna know what does that mean to you now, especially as a parent and just as someone writing stories for young people that hold both hard things and also hope.

Jasmine Warga: I think that, like, we all need to have radical hope, and I think it's really easy to fall back into cynicism. Orienting yourself into a position of hope helps you to show up for your community in the best way. Right? I think about it so simply that every day when I drop my own kids off at school, I say to them that they know that there's the daily challenge, which is make somebody else's day better. And every night at dinner, we all share, like, if we completed the challenge and how we completed the challenge.

And I think that it can feel so hopeless when you think about all the big systems. Right? But I think that if all of us were just a tiny bit kinder and more engaged with our community every day, the world would be a better place. And so orienting yourself in that way. Believe me, I am really hopeless days too, but trying to keep my mindset sort of going back to what my dad always tells me of it's such a privilege to get to live and to survive and to make the most of my time getting to do that and proceed from a place of hope.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: Throughout our conversation, Jasmine kept returning to this idea of belonging, how stories can help us understand who we are and also allow us to reach beyond ourselves. Her reading challenge, read global, invites adult readers to do just that, to step outside the familiar and read more broadly beyond our own borders.

Jasmine Warga: Often read only American writers. Right? And so I wanna challenge anyone listening to this to try to read, you know, five books this year that are by an author whose nationality is not American. I think reading books in translation is really cool. If you read a book that was written in another language, translated into English, thinking about that reading experience.

So sort of read global because I think we're in this moment where I would love us to recenter as, like, a human community, you know, that I'm wanting the best for, like, our global human community. And I think that literature can help us to sort of feel connected beyond borders and nationality. You can find Jasmine's reading challenge and all past reading challenges at the readingculturepod.com.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: And this week's Beanstack featured librarian is Cassie Owens Moore, a middle school librarian in South Carolina at Seneca Middle School. She shares how a group of fired up sixth graders convinced her that Marvel and manga deserve their own sections in her library and why building a great library means working for your students.

Cassie Owens Moore: I call it reading by example. I'm a reader, And so I'm always talking to students about books that I've read, books that I want to read, what did you just read. And I have a just a very simple dry erase board at the circulation desk that says what I just finished reading, what I'm currently reading, and what I'm going to read next. And so students are always saying, oh, you read that? Did you like it?

Can I see it? You know, that kind of thing. And, you know, just I'm constantly talking about reading. I will listen to my students too. Earlier this year, I had a group of sixth graders who came in like mad that the Marvel books were wrapped in the graphic novels.

And they were like, Marvel needs its own section. I said, does it? And so why do you think that? Oh, because Marvel books so I pulled them all out and I gave them their own section. And then another group of students, again, sixth grade of them, they're so demanding.

They wanted to know why were manga in the graphic novels. And I said, well, aren't they all in the same? And you would have thought that I just spoke blasphemy because they are not the same. And they quickly told me how they're not the same and why I was wrong. And so I had to apologize and I created a manga section and that has made a difference.

And so I listened to them and once they realized, oh, like she's actually gonna do what you suggest. Well, yes. Yes. I will. I tell them on the first day of school and then I remind them throughout the school year.

This is our library. I'm the facilitator, but I pretty much work for you in this space. And they take that pretty seriously. So they start to bring me book lists of things that I should order. And for the most part, I order them.

I read them first. I wanna make sure that you know we're not doing anything that could get us in trouble. But, no, they just they'll they'll read a book from the public library and they're like, do we have this book? There's a whole series. And and I listen to them.

I mean, it's your library. If you're not utilizing it, then what am I doing? And so, yeah, that that's been a game changer.

Jordan Lloyd Bookey: This has been the reading culture, and you've been listening to my conversation with Jasmine Warga. Again, I'm your host, Jordan Lloyd Bookie, and currently I'm reading amelia if only by Becky Albertalli and say yes by Kwame Alexander be sure to read the blurbs at the beginning of that book because you will find one from yours truly and it's my first If you enjoyed today's episode, take one minute to give us five stars on Apple or wherever you listen. Thank you so much for doing that. Your reviews help us get the show recommended to others, so it really matters. This episode was produced by Mel Webb and lower street media and script edited by Josiah Lamberto Egan to learn more about how you can help grow your community's reading culture please check out all of our resources at beanstack.com And remember to sign up for our newsletter at the readingculturepod.com forward slash newsletter for special offers and bonus content.

Thanks for listening, and keep reading.