BEACON
THE SOUTHERN MAINE COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENT NEWSPAPER | Volume 8 • No. 3 • OCTOBER 23, 2012
Doing the Underworld as it has Never Been Done An Interview With Daniel Marks By Shawn Veasey his past spring semester The Beacon published an article titled, “Don’t Judge a Book by its Genre.” In the article we included the opinions of some of today’s talented young adult authors regarding adult themes in young adult fiction. One of the participating authors was the uberly funny and talented Daniel Marks. The reason I interviewed Mr. Marks is that his extensive experience in working with children and teens, interested me, plus he had written a dark, daring young adult novel containing adult themes which seemed fascinating. SV: How did you get your start writing? DM: My words come from a couple of different places. Number one, I have a love of story. I learned to read before I was ever introduced to the concept of school. My mother taught me to read and then modeled that books were worthy of love and attention. Fast forward to my early teen years. I started to draw people in as a confidant. In counseling, which ended up being the focus of my education and career, there’s a sense that some of us are “naturals,” that we draw people in because we’ve learned early on how to listen and mirror in such a way that the person feels an immediate engagement. So, I’m that guy. After I received my Master’s in Counseling, I ended up in an intense system that was both unforgiving and lacking in support. Lots of counselors and social workers dropped out within the first year. The ones that stayed, burned out slow, and developed a pitch-black case of gallows humor to get through the day. Those two things, the reading and the humor are why I’m a writer. I was confidant that was enough and it was. SV: One of the things I admire about you as an author and as a person is that you really care about young people, about their feelings and experiences as human beings. Which is refreshing because so many adults can be accidentally and purposely dismissive of young adults and their feelings. Did your experience working with children/teens prepare you or help you write Young Adult fiction? DM: It definitely prepared me and it also focused me in on the kind
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IN side: 2 PTK at Bayside, Joe
Bornstien & Networking
3 Smoke, Mirrors & Thunder 4 Soul-Making 5 Understanding Biodiversity, Harvest on the Harbor & the Children of Obesity
6 Why War & Yes on 1 7 Here a Mitt, There a Mitt,
Everywhere a Mitt Mitt & Letters to the Editor
9 Happy Birthday, Clean Water Act & Nutty Adventures
10 Chasing Movies, Movie
Reviews & Hunger Prevention
11 The State of the Patriots
of things that I wanted to tackle. There are themes at play in my Young Adult fiction that wouldn’t have shown up without twelve years of working with adolescents. Themes like: the danger of unearned reinforcement and the aforementioned disallowing of personal responsibility. I’m really worried about this trend in parenting and it shows up in my work. Take for instance the idea of everyone, of all the kids getting trophies, for varying levels of achievement.
Where is the real world equivalent of this? It certainly isn’t in the workplace...or it shouldn’t be. We disable a generation by pretending that they don’t have to pursue excellence. SV: You were one of the authors who gave a quote for The Beacon’s article about “adult themes” in Young Adult fiction and it really stuck with me. DM: “Kids deal with all kinds of issues that grownups wish they didn’t have to. Wishing doesn’t make reality go away, so it’s important to address these concerns. Otherwise, kids may feel like they’re the only one in the world who has this problem. And that’s so not okay.” SV: I had asked you because of your experience and the way you handled the “adult themes” in your own work. For example, your Velveteen has some issues I wouldn’t wish on anyone, let alone a teen. The words “Dark” “Morbid” and “Fascinating” have been used to describe her story. How did you come up with the idea for Velveteen and did you worry about readers (and critics) thinking the story would be too dark for its target audience? DM: Velveteen actually started as an idea for a middle grade novel about a girl named Luisa (who is in the final version as a secondary character) who idolized her grandfather, a detective. A series of child murders rocks Luisa’s town and she decides, much to her misfortune, to track down the killer. Somewhere in the premise, I began to think it would be interesting to follow Luisa post death and that’s what led me to the idea of purgatory, or rather my version of purgatory as a vast ashen city. I had my goddaughter, Delaney, read the piece and her advice was that it read too old, so later, when I revisited the premise I bumped up the target age and added a new protagonist: Velveteen. The idea of fiction being too dark for kids gets back to the idea that they need to be shielded to the point of disability. It’s much more important for children and teens to learn how to deal with conflict, to develop skills, than to hide it away. In fact, it’s detrimental. I intentionally made the character as prickly as possible and meted out the dark and (continued on page 4)
Maria Wafula Speaks at SMCC By Tiffany Crockett ujambo! (Hello in Swahili.) On October 11th Maria Wafula and friends arrived on our campus to personally thank the school for its gracious donation of books for her library in Busia, Kenya. Eva Chancey, daughter of Molly Chancey, an SMCC English teacher and a former student who while visiting Kenya stumbled upon the Busia Community Library and took it upon themselves to help this library thrive. Eva’s first call was instinctually to our beloved school. Due to the success of the Busia library that started as a few books mixed in with the produce in Maria’s farmstead, Maria’s Library Organization has been able to create and fund more libraries in Kenya. “Every single person in this room has an idea of what a public library is and we all have different ideas of it. With Busia it is not the case at all,” said Maria while speaking to students on our campus. Maria added, “most people in Busia don’t even know what a library is, so this creates an enormous opportunity.” The Maria’s Libraries organization has been able to completely reinvent what a library is. Maria started by going to the people of her community and asked, “what do you need?” And “what do you want?” This made the Busia Library a very unique project by fitting the needs of the people that would be visiting the library. With the Busia library they were able to marry the new world of technology with traditional library resources, overcoming the challenges of establishing successful libraries in a place like Busia. At one point in Maria’s talk, she reflected upon
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education saying, “I got this idea. What is education for? Education is to have it and use it.” In the beginning of her life she worked as a secretary in an east African community. That career did not last long, nor did her schooling, due to a tyrant leader that broke up eastern Africa. At 22 years old, Maria started to think of how she could really put her knowledge to use and this led her to agricultural farming, then the first books found their way into her farm stand. Maria, the selfemployed farmer is still to this day the main founder of her namesake library. “What does it mean for you to be a Kenyan? You have this talent, are you using it? Are you maximizing it?” To Maria being a Kenyan and using her talent as a social worker is very important. So important that she reached out to her community and was able to give them what they needed. Listening and talking with Maria left me with this question: what does our community need and what can we do to fulfill those needs?
Maria Wafula from Kenya, spoke on the SMCC campus on October 11th, 2012/