Mark Labberton: I am so excited to welcome Mitali Perkins back as our guest on Conversing today. Mitali and I have known one another for decades, and it’s been such a delight over these years to see Mitali’s career as a writer unfold in such a promising, and exciting way. She has very successfully written many volumes for young readers.
One of her books, for example, is entitled You Bring The Distant Near, a book that received a nomination for a National Book Award. And Rickshaw Girl, another book, this one turned into a film. She’s written for young readers and published with such houses as Penguin Random House, Charlesbridge, Candlewick, Little, Brown, and Macmillan Children’s Books.
She’s also written books for adults, and the one that we’re looking at today is one of those books. She’s harvesting really her own creative process, reflecting on the challenges of being a creative, and has written a book entitled Just Making: A Guide For Compassionate Creatives. Mitali, thank you so much for joining us as our guest on Conversing today.
Mitali Perkins: Mark, I’m so happy to be here.
Mark Labberton: It’s been six years since we last had you as a guest, and I am aware in both your writing life, and your personal life and in my writing life and personal life, so much has happened since the last time we had you, and I’ve followed your work very closely. I consider you a great friend and a person who I admire so much, and I’m just really, really delighted to be able to have you.
When I read this book, Just Making: A Guide For Compassionate Creatives, the book that we’re going to be discussing today, I thought it holds two of Mitali’s great qualities. One is tenderness, and the other is tenacity. I do think both of these themes in your own character and life and work are captured wonderfully in this book.
And I think are very encouraging to creatives who might pick it up and read it as a way of stepping outside their own immediate circumstances, and maybe getting a larger frame on how they understand the task that’s before them, and the challenge. I wonder if you could just begin by framing the book a bit for us. What was it that really instigated for you the desire to write this book?
Mitali Perkins: I wrote it during the heart of the pandemic, Mark, most of it, and it just felt like I was very, very close myself to giving up on making, on the creative life. It just felt like the world was going to destruction and I was spending hours putting in a comma and taking out a comma. Or even writing for kids seems like frivolity compared to what everybody was undergoing collectively and individually around me in terms of suffering and injustice.
So, the last six years have been, I think, rife with that in all of our lives. That question of how do we spend our time? How do we spend our talents given a world so full of suffering? And especially when it comes to the work of writing fiction or the thoughts inside your head can lead you to quit.
And so I was very close to quitting myself, and I knew there were a lot of creatives around me who were also feeling discouraged both with changes, upheavals in the market, and the way to get our work to readers. As well as just personal inside pushback that what we were doing didn’t count. It didn’t matter.
Mark Labberton: So, this is breathtaking, I think for the average listener perhaps, who they may or may not know your work, which I outlined a bit in the introduction. You’ve had a very rich, very positive publishing history. You are beloved as a writer, and yet you could feel that close to almost giving up. So, take us a bit further inside that, because I think it feels like a mystery that that would be your response.
Mitali Perkins: Well, I think anytime there’s creative work, you see the finished products, and you see maybe the long story of a career and you end up, you look at the exterior packaging and oh, wow. Follow me on social media, Mark, it looks amazing my career. And then you unwrap it and you see all the slog you have to push through the interior vices, the pride, the vainglory, all those interior vices that every day beset you. And you have to push back against those to even write a coherent sentence that will actually be a blessing.
And then there’s the exterior pushback of years and years of rejections, bad reviews. Just go to your own Goodreads account if you want to get demoralized and read the feedback on your work. There’s all the things, just the blows that come in a career, and not just a vocation. In the book I talk about art making, both for people who see it as something that’s not for the market, as well as those of us who are trying to make a living at it.
So, there’s double pushback when you’re trying to penetrate the markets, and you’re trying to get your work through this narrow conduit called the marketplace into the hearts and minds of young readers. For me, particularly young readers. But for the rest of us, it could be people who want to see your paintings, Mark, or just different. Part of you thinks I should be noble like Emily Dickinson and press my flowers and write my poetry and then die, and then everybody will read my poems.
I don’t have any contact, no contact with the world, just create. But in reality, some of us are trying to make a living, and there’s a real joy in seeing the recipients of art receive the blessing of the work that you do.
Mark Labberton: Right, right. Well, you’re very honest in the book as one would expect, and you clearly have had a battle slug, even though you’ve had tremendous successes in certain moments, and ways. I can see in the book as well as in what you’re just saying, that the rhythm of being a professional writer, and really seeking to, as you say, make a living at your art is really, really a challenging thing.
Which is why I think this combination of tenderness that you retain combined with tenacity is really a particularly striking combination to me, and it comes through loud, and clear in the book. I wonder if you could also now just give us a little bit further framing around Just Making? The book unpacks this, but I think for those who haven’t yet read it, tell us why justice is such a theme in this book?
Mitali Perkins: Well, as I said, I was considering a world around me, and I have long considered a world around me as have you. You talked about this theme in your book in Worship, when you wrote about justice, and worship. The idea that we are all here for such a short time and when we leave, we do long that the world would be in some way, a better place. More just, more ordered, with more as I define it, not just justice, which is making wrong things right or bringing order out of chaos.
It’s more the idea of flourishing, of shalom, the idea of spreading goodness, the flourishing of human beings, that we hope that by the end if we take our last breath, there’ll be some forward movement in that shalom through our life, our one wild, and precious life as our dear Mary Oliver put it.
So, that was always a hope for me. And yet, as you know, I’m a child of immigrants, and when immigrants come, especially refugees like my parents, they put everything into their kids’ education, and all of their investment is in, and you know my family. So, you know that there were three career choices for the Bose sisters. There was engineer, doctor, and engineer. That was it.
So, having to march into your parents, and say, “Mom, Dad, great idea. You suffered all that trauma of war, so that I could be a children’s book writer. Isn’t that a great idea?” So, I started behind the plate, is that how you say it? Yeah. I don’t know about baseball metaphors. You probably, being a Giants fan, are better at those.
But maybe it’s the idea that I had no familial support for a career in the arts as well as no connections, no idea how the markets worked, nothing. I really came in here and just loved reading and knew that fiction had changed my life. And had brought forth more flourishing in my own life as a girl that had led me to a heart that wanted to. When I was in college, my vow was there shall be no child who goes to bed hungry at night by the time Mitali Bose, at the time, leaves the planet.
So, I had this zealous desire to see children especially flourish, but I thought it was going to be through eradicating poverty. So, I studied development. Well, how then do you end up in a career in fiction? That’s the story of, as you said, tenacity that I share in this book.
Mark Labberton: Right, right. Absolutely. I wonder, Mitali, if you could give people who are not as acquainted with you or your work, a little bit more detail about your family background? Just because it is so framing both to the why and the what that you actually do.
Mitali Perkins: Yeah. Well, I think, I don’t know, I can’t remember what I shared last time in our conversation. But as you know, my great moment of celebrity fame came when I was born. I was born in Kolkata, India, the third of three girls; Sonali, Rupali, Mitali. Sonali means gold, Rupali means silver, and Mitali means friendly. I think the value plummeted because I was the third girl.
But as I come to see, I think I do have the most precious, look at us. We’ve been friends for 40 years, so friendship is definitely more valuable as you age. But I was born in Kolkata in Shebashodon General Hospital, and I already knew the world was not a just, and flourishing place, Mark, because I took my time coming out of my mom. I was a month late, and my moment of fame came when I shattered all the hospital records, and made the headlines as the fattest baby ever born in Kolkata, India.
So, I remember when I wrote my essay for Cal Berkeley, that’s before I met you when you were the pastor at Cal, the student ministry there, and I was entering grad school. I got into grad school at Cal, because I talked about this. I said, “As the fattest baby ever born, I was born with all this privilege.”
And I then I thought about how when I go back to Kolkata, when I ride the buses, and I’m in the ladies only section of the buses, there in Kolkata they have a ladies only section. I am unnaturally tall and strong for a Bengali woman. Most of them are teeny tiny. So, the bus would jolt, and I would grab the bar and about 10 pairs of hands would hold onto my arm, which was such a symbol of my privilege.
So, I always thought about that, but how did I get to this place where I knew that I wanted to use my privilege for the sake of others? Because my parents, being refugees, and immigrants, we did not grow up with a charity ethos or a philanthropy ethos the way you do when you grow up with wealth.
We didn’t grow up with this sense of when you put rice on the table, you put rice on the table for your children. You’re not thinking about people who have less rice than you. So, my parents are wonderful. You’ve met them, you know.
Mark Labberton: Yes, yes.
Mitali Perkins: But they just didn’t have that sense of, and I completely understand it. Not that there aren’t charitable people who have very little, but for my parents it wasn’t like that. It was just a very family focused. So, how did I care? Why did I start caring about children with less privilege?
I can only attribute it to the great work of reading, of reading widely. I was a feral reader. I started going to the libraries when we immigrated here to New York when I was seven. Flushing Queens Public Library every Saturday, seven books for four years before we moved to California, and middle school. I did the math, that’s like 1,400 heroes’ journeys mostly all fiction.
When you think about that, you think, I wrote another book called Steeped In Stories about growing up as a feral multi-storied reader. When I visit kids as an author visits, I tell them, “If you want your soul to be strong, just do that. Just become a feral, multi-storied reader.” And then you’re not afraid of books, you’re not afraid of stories, because there’s so many. They moderate each other.
And so I was in charge of my own story by the time I was 12 or 13, because I had been so well-equipped by reading. And I also began to really deeply care about the poor and about the people with less privilege, because of those stories. They widened my heart, they widened my mind. They gave me a sense of calling that I was not just here for myself.
I was really parented through those books in a way that, where my parents wonderful as they were, there was just a lot of trauma, and lack of guidance sometimes with true north. And I found true north in those books in a way that really eventually led me to the faith. So, that’s a long answer to your question, but that’s where I ended up.
Mark Labberton: So, along the way, in your years in college, you came to faith in Christ, and at a really faithful Hindu home, and out of a background that had taken root in your life, I’m sure, in a variety of different ways. I know that story well, but I would love for people to just hear that briefly. If you could give us an overview of how that really unfolded. It’s a remarkable story.
Mitali Perkins: It’s still unfolding.
Mark Labberton: Yes, of course.
Mitali Perkins: As I am just even now getting so renewed and refreshed in my encounters with Jesus, who I’d never heard of. Christmas was some fat guy in a red suit who gave presents to everyone else. And Easter was this white bunny that hopped along and gave candy to everyone except our family, because we had no idea. Nothing. No Judaeo-Christian background.
We went to see that Charlton Heston movie, The Ten Commandments, and we were living in Mexico at the time. My dad had a brief stint there. The five of us walked in and 20 minutes into it, we were like, “What is this?” My dad leaned over, and said, “Let us leave; let us go bowling.” So, we all went bowling. What’s this movie? This guy with a beard and this, who was this? Anyway, it was very crazy. We had no idea.
So, by the time I got to college, I really hadn’t learned anything about Jesus, because it wasn’t taught in the schools, and nobody shared it with us. And so we went to college and started reading the great books, and I had a great humanities professor that had us read the Bible. So, we bought the Bible, and I bought the Bible at the bookstore.
I was broke, Mark, and I had no money for books. So, you had six weeks to return books. So, it was Genesis Chapter 1, 2, and 3 that we had to read. And I remember reading them thinking, “What is this? Naked people in some garden, some snake dragon thing.” I just thought, “I’m going to return this Bible because I’m never going to read this thing again.”
So, I got 70% back on my first Bible from the Stanford book store. They dreaded seeing me come in. I was always returning things because I was so broke. But anyway, that being said, when I first read the Gospels, thanks to a friend who said, “You should probably read the Gospels, and a Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.” I had already become a re-reader of the Narnia books from when I was 10.
And when I first encountered the Gospels, He was so familiar to me, Jesus himself. Just talking about that true north, I had already come to know him through so many of the stories that I loved that I felt like when you see a long-lost friend, and you run to embrace that friend, that’s how Jesus was for me in the Gospels. And so as a writer, you look at the scenes from the Gospels, and you just can’t make this guy up.
He never, as a protagonist, he never did. He was always doing the unexpected plot twists and there’s the darkest moment. It just was this classic narrative arc that felt like, oh, well, maybe this is the true story behind all the stories. That sense of deep familiarity with story of a hero, as I said, so many heroes’ journeys consumed all those years.
So, not just his story, but the man himself, the main character, I knew this guy. I had thought, of course, Judaeo-Christianity was for Westerners, not for Brown Indian folk like me. But the more I read, the more I thought, “This guy was kind of Brown.” The way he operated was very Middle Easterny, and Jewish and just so familiar in so many ways. Both culturally in the form of story, as well as in the form of his character, and his words that resonated.
I still didn’t understand anything about the church, knew nothing. I remember coming to First Pres Berkeley when I was in grad school, and you would say, or not you, maybe it was Earl Palmer at the time. He would say, “You’ll find the orders of worship in the narthex.” And I’m like, “What is a narthex?” All these unfamiliar language of the ecclesiastical world.
So, then I just wanted to follow Jesus. I was baptized at Stanford my junior year in the fountain there at the foot of Hoover Tower in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and haven’t looked back since. Just fell head over heels in love with the capital P, protagonist, of all of our lives, and the author and finisher of our faith, and haven’t turned back since. It’s been decades of walking with this in the footsteps of this crucified, resurrected, wonderful friend.
Mark Labberton: Mitali, when you brought your faith in to the questions of justice, to come back to that, how did that further expand or affect the imprint that all of this rich reading that you’d done of all these novels, and then your faith in Christ comes into form? How did those two things begin to intersect around issues of justice especially?
Mitali Perkins: Right. Well, I think it was the good teaching I was getting in some really great churches, including where I was at First Pres Berkeley. And just that idea that as Christians, as followers of Jesus, that’s not even an option. We are here on this earth too to help bring the shalom of Christ, the Kingdom of God into people’s lives, both collectively as well as… I was at grad school in public policy, and I’d studied international development, and I knew there was not going to be a hungry child until.
So, that desire was growing, and being nourished by the teachings of the scriptures that I was getting week in and week out. For those of you who don’t know, I took a two-year word study course in grad school from Dr. Mark Labberton, that went over this beautiful. Still, Mark, to this day, the foundations of my faith of that two-year course of looking at the work of God through history, and the Bible sweep. We’d meet every week and just the rich themes of seeing the themes of shalom all throughout and how the Kingdom of God, it was just something that was not negotiable.
We needed to work to bring the Kingdom of God into this suffering world. So, that was being fed, but I’d already had that, as I said, to some extent by the stories I read, and it was exciting. It was an exciting time when we were all struggling together just to make sense of that call, and it was really a communal effort. We were linking arms, went overseas for a while. But still was reading and writing and always reading and writing fiction for children. That was just something I was doing on the side.
Mark Labberton: Right. When I said at the beginning that this book, Just Making, was a book of both tenderness, and tenacity. I think when I think about you, Mitali, personally, you are these two things. You have this, for me, this exceptionally tender spirit, which is partly why you can bring a sensitivity, and a perception of people, including children, into existence through your writing. That is exceptionally tender and very, very nuanced about different characters, especially girl characters, but by no means only girl characters. It’s really all of your characters.
So, there’s this incredible tenderness, this heart of love, I would say, for the world, for people, for vulnerable people particularly. And then you embrace the task first, just initially creatively of bringing these creatures into existence through your writing, which is just an exquisitely beautiful act. And then eventually you hit the wall of this incredible, challenging reality of the publishing world.
The grist between those two things that on the one hand, your actual spirit, and on the other hand, the necessity of doing this tenacious work of battering down the doors of the publishing industry. Even though you have had far more success than many, many, many, many writers, it is still the fight that you describe clearly, and the changing markets and all of that. So, now bring those two things if you would, into conversation with each other.
Mitali Perkins: Okay. So, I started writing, as I said, I always wrote for fun. I had stories and poems when I was 7, 8, 9 years old.
Mark Labberton: Nice.
Mitali Perkins: But I was writing stories on the side and I was teaching at Pepperdine as a professor and visiting professor, and thinking about development work, but still writing stories. So, I entered a contest just for fun, Little, Brown had a contest. What I was finding that as a Christian at that time, the markets, and still today of course, there’s this Christian market, and there was this traditional market or secular or whatever you want to call it, and never the twain should meet.
I just didn’t have the language. I didn’t have the upbringing or whatever, it wasn’t in my bones to speak Christianese very well. I think I tried a couple of markets there and I just thought, “Who are these people?” And the fiction I was reading at that time was just, there was some good stuff, I’m not denigrating at all, but I just thought that this is not for me.
I knew immediately that, and I also knew that my heart was for people outside the church. I still to this day really struggle with speaking the jargon I don’t know. So, in any case, the outsiders of the church, that’s where I want to land, right on the intersection between sitting on the front porch with my stories, and saying, “Hey, everybody, come. Hey kids, here I am. Come on.”
I wanted to deeply, Madeleine L’Engle, being a mentor, that idea of just, and Katherine Paterson, who talks about those of us who care about our faith, and a hurting world. Katherine Paterson says, “We can’t put on our faith frilly dress on our stories or lace bows, but it has to be in the bones of our story.” The very bones have to be imbued with justice, and compassion and the themes of the Kingdom of God.
And I knew that. I knew that because I felt that the bones of a story went into my bones and strengthened me, so I wanted to do that for kids. So, themes like courage, and I like the clash of virtues. I like the clash of when you have to choose between honouring your parents and doing the right thing. I like exploring the clash of different callings or different virtues. And I felt the children would understand that, the nuance of that, because I did as a 9-year-old. That’s what shaped my ethics and my philosophy.
So, I began writing, and I entered a contest Little, Brown was having just for fun, and I won, Mark. I won this contest, and they were like, “We’re going to publish your book, and here’s a little cheque.” And I thought, “Woo-hoo, let’s go to dinner everybody.” I never thought in a million years it would be a career. It just was a fun thing, a miracle.
Because the market was pretty close to diverse, marginalized voices at the time. So, I was writing stories about Brown kids, and there was no market for that. This is what, so many years ago. Now, of course, thankfully the market is changing, the traditional market’s changed a lot, but before that, it was closed to a lot of times to voices like me.
But this contest was particularly, Little, Brown was very prescient. And they said, “We’re looking at,” it was called One World or looking at voices from other cultures, so that’s why I won. And then I thought, “Oh, I’ll write a second book.”
And this one was fully set in India, and it was a story of a girl who goes back with her mom. Her mom is an adoptee from India and wants to spend a year there and she doesn’t want to go. It’s set in Berkeley, the very first chapter is right along Telegraph Avenue. And that book, Mark, I wrote it, went back to Little, Brown, and I write about this in Just Making.
Mark Labberton: Yes.
Mitali Perkins: Came back with editorial notes and I changed everything and I revised everything. And then after six months, my editor there called me, and said, “I just can’t get marketing to buy off on this book. I’m so sorry, Mitali, we can’t publish it.” So, I did that again, I revised it.
I started learning about the marketplace at that point, how do you enter this tent? I think of the market like a big tent, and there’s all the publishers, and editors and agents inside it. And I’m outside going, “Hey, hi, I’m out here.” I am far away from even any entrance to the tent.
And so I started going to conferences. I’d save all my pennies and go to a society, children’s book, writers, and illustrators conferences, figuring out the market. What’s an agent? I had no idea. And of course, cheap immigrant that I am, in the book I describe how I got an offer from one of the top agents in the industry to read my book.
I remember channeling my inner Madhusree Bose, my mother, and saying, “Wait, does she pay me?” And they said, “No, no, you pay her.” And I said, “How much?” And they said, “Well, about 15% of everything you write.” I’m like, and I could hear my mom’s accent, “15%, no, thank you.”
I turned down this offer for my book to be read by the top literary agent in the business. Oh, my goodness. Anyway, I’m trying to figure it all out, making mistakes. And that book, that second book, I keep revising it, sending it to a new editor, it comes back with notes. I revise everything, change everything, and it gets rejected again. Round two, round three.
So, Mark, I don’t know if you remember, can you guess how many times I did that full-on revisions from an editorial request that led to a rejection? Do you remember?
Mark Labberton: I don’t remember.
Mitali Perkins: Take a guess. Take a guess.
Mark Labberton: I’ll say five.
Mitali Perkins: Yeah. 22 rounds of that. It was 12 years between my first book and my second book. And every single time I remember, you get that knockout punch. And when a rejection letter comes, no matter how sweetly written it is, it’s stings like crazy. I remember just being in the dust and just thinking, “What am I doing? There’s so many things I could do with my time.”
And then you know when you’re walking or you’re taking a shower and your mind goes to the thing that you really care about?
Mark Labberton: Right.
Mitali Perkins: Well, it would go back to my character, my main character. I just love her, I love this character. And so I would start to rework the book again. At the end of 12 years when I went on a retreat, and I thought, “This is the definition of insanity, doing the same thing again, and again with the same terrible results.”
I remember during that prayer time there where I got such a deep sense of God saying, “Listen, I care about this. I care about stories for children. I care about shaping the hearts and minds of children through stories. Do you care? How much do you care, Mitali?” And I said, “I guess I do care.”
I remember the second book finally found a market through, it was Random House, 12 years. When that book came out, I thought, “Well, if God cares this much about it, maybe I should take a risk, and just go all in.” So, I quit everything, my development work, my teaching work, and I just said, “I’m going to go for it.”
By this time, I’d known the market through the School of Hard Knocks. The great Professor Pain was teaching me how to, and I put some of this in the book, a lot of the tips about the market that I learned. And I thought, “I’m all in. If God is all in, it would be wrong of me not to at least give it my full little lighter yoke effort.” I felt a sense of God saying, “I’ve got the heavy yoke. Will you walk with me in this? Will you go the long haul?” And I just said, “Yes.” It was very much an invitation.
Mark Labberton: Right, right. Well, I do know this story that there was a time when I was visiting with a family in the Midwest who I know, and love very much. We had not ever discussed you, or your books, or anything. I had not discussed any of that with them. And all of a sudden they referred to you as an author that they had all read. There were four children in this family, triplets, and another child as well.
And so they just referred to Mitali Perkins. And I said, “Oh yeah, Mitali, tell me about your responses.” They were like, “I know Mitali.” “You know Mitali Perkins.” It was absolutely like a wonderful flash of fandom that just lurked just beneath the surface just on saying your name. I’m saying that because this is the yin and yang that you capture so wonderfully in Just Making.
Where on the one hand, you know, and have experienced, of course, the people who have found your books and found in your books, something that feels so singular and powerful and transformative. That’s one side of the experience. But the other side of the experience is this incredible tenacity and self-criticism. You go in the book into a lot of things that dog the writer, or the artist, the maker internally, and externally.
So, you’ve referred to some of those things already, but take us a bit into that narrative, and give us some examples, please?
Mitali Perkins: Yes. So, it’s funny when you bring up that family because as you know, there’s always the long story. And I find that one of the fascinating parts of growing older is that the author of our faith is always weaving. I remember you telling me that story years ago and little did we know that down the road I’d be teaching as a visiting professor at the college where one of those triplets was going to be attending. And that I would become her teacher and I would get to read her writing.
Mark Labberton: Exactly.
Mitali Perkins: Just such an interesting next step for that story. So, in the book, I talk about both interior, and exterior forces that try to destroy our making. I talk about justice for the creator of art, justice for the recipient of your art, and justice for the wider community.
When that is happening through our art, and of course shalom is coming to us as we make, and hopefully shalom is coming into the lives of the children or the adults who are reading, and receiving our work. But also you hope for the wider community. So, if that’s happening, that’s really happening, that’s the truth about what making does, because we’re made in the image of God. And what we do is bringing Tohu wa-bohu, did I say that right, Mark?
Mark Labberton: Yes, right. In Hebrew, right.
Mitali Perkins: Chaos, right?
Mark Labberton: Right.
Mitali Perkins: In Hebrew, that ordering from chaos, which is what creative work does. Then there’s going to be pushback and it’s diabolical pushback at times. It comes from exterior forces that tell us our work isn’t good enough. It’s those rejections, it’s those just the closed doors, no access to the tent. A feeling of like, “Well, what am I doing? I’m never going to bring that shalom, because I can’t get to my recipients.” And then you just get tempted to give up.
And so I offer some practices that will help you keep making when the exterior, when the tent is saying, I talk about third spaces, finding third spaces. I talk about honing in your craft during that time. There’s so many things we can still do to retain our agency as makers that give us that sense of volition when we feel like the volition all belongs to the power mongers and not to us. There’s still ways we can retain our power as makers and still stand up to the market and say, “Okay, well,” hands on hips, “you can think that, but I like my stuff.”
It’s championing your work. It’s really being the advocate of your work. And so there’s some practices that I outline there that face off the market and help us to keep making when the tent is like, “Who the heck are you?” And I’m like, “Well, I’m me. So, just I’m going to keep making.” Even though I’m out in the gutters out here, I’m still going to keep going.
And then there’s the interior stuff, which is I think so much more difficult to confront. Because those are the threads get woven into the creative life that really suck the beauty and truth and goodness out of the work itself. Let’s say we’re beset with vainglory, the scarcity mentality of somebody else’s win being my loss. I didn’t get that award. Oh, they got a good review, and I didn’t. I’ve never made the bestseller list, Mark, and my book’s tanked. It’s out of print.
All that comparison stuff that it eats away at our interior life to the place where we can no longer bring, guard, or I guess husband the work itself. Which just needs us to really bring those vices into the light, so they don’t permeate, and destroy the beauty, truth and goodness we’re trying to bring into our stories or our art.
So, that vice vainglory is a terrible one, and it’s secret. You don’t even want to confess that you’re looking at somebody else’s Amazon rankings. You don’t want to confess that. It’s so ugly. It’s embarrassing. We have to because those vices are there, and if we don’t root them out through the great gifts of confession, and forgiveness, then it’s going to suck all the joy out of our creative gifts in our life.
So, those are what I talk about. And some of them are very ancient practices that we can use to say to these vices that are within, “You are not going to have the last word on my creativity either. No.” So, that’s what I outline, all these practices I’ve used through the years to just keep making, and just to keep believing that making is going to bring flourishing.
Mark Labberton: Right, right. I’ve been working on a book for a number of years on fear. This book, which touches on a topic that I want to suggest as the dominant emotion of this era, is a book, and a topic that I feel extremely compelled by. It’s such a pervasive thing. It’s a crisis in so many different directions, inside the church, beyond the church, around the culture in general, around the world. It’s just we’re in an intensely fear-dripping era.
I think what I’m trying to offer in this book is meant to somehow be an engagement around that topic in ways that I obviously hope would be a help to people. Now, I spent all of last summer doing nothing but writing on this book. I didn’t do any other things. By the end of summer, I was completely defeated.
I felt like this book was not at all the book that I wanted to write. And that I really was not at all convinced that I have the capacity to write the book I would want to write, which I still think may be true. And which I’m not hesitant about saying, because I think some topics are just a lot harder to write on, and I think fear is one of those, because it has so many dimensions.
It’s very hard to write in a way that feels worthy of the challenge of what fear actually is. So, I’m ready. I’m your patient. I’m a client. I’m needing your help. Mitali, what would you suggest?
Mitali Perkins: Have you written this summer, this last? Have you gone back to it?
Mark Labberton: I have not written on this for a whole year.
Mitali Perkins: Oh, wow. It’s been dormant for a year. Okay. Interesting. Yes. Well, what I would tell you, Mark, putting my white coat on, and my stethoscope. First of all, I’m going to listen. Is the heart still beating? Is the passion still there? I still hear the passion as you’re sharing it. When you introduced the topic, I still hear your shepherd’s heart saying, “I want to speak to fear.”
I just heard a little bit of it and I could see that the passion for this theme is still there. So, I guess I would say to you, I remember when I was in Italy, and I went to see the David, you’ve been there. So, you see, when I was there, there were all these sculptures called The Prisoners, and they’re all along this avenue. And there are these pictures of bodies that are trying to come out of stone.
So, obviously the sculptor, he had done this work. There are just parts of bodies and they’re trying to come out of stone, and you’re walking up, and you’re looking at each one. And each one is in such pain, but you can tell they’re in formation, and they’re flawed. And then you keep going closer and closer and closer, and then you enter into the place where there is the David.
You look at it and it’s like this ta-da moment. But you realize that really if it hadn’t been for those sculptures along the way, those flawed almost failures that wouldn’t have gotten us to the place. Even the David is flawed. Note to the artist, he needs to be circumcised. A small note, not that that’s the first thing I noticed, but there’s flaws. It’s like, come on.
So, I think the courage that you need, you’re going to write about fear. So, I would ask you Mark Labberton, Mark Labberton, my dear friend, whose other books have so encouraged me. Are you willing for this piece of work that you’re going to offer to be flawed? To be not finished? To be imperfect, and yet to be part of the communal conversation about fear?
Mark, look at your fingerprint. There’s your fingerprint, there’s your voice print. Each of those are a unique, nobody else has those on earth. So, in our conversation around fear, there’s a tale or an approach that only Mark Labberton can offer from all the years you’ve lived, and I know you, you have suffered.
This is why I don’t think AI can never write a book about fear the way that Mark Labberton, and the other people who are going to write about this topic, are going to approach it to equip the sheep to face this, as you said, what’s the word? Endemic. This problem that is so besetting all of us.
When you were talking, I started to get hungry to read it. Yes, yours is not going to be the only thing I read about it, and yours is not going to be the perfect thing I’m going to read about it. But because it’s written by Mark Labberton, who has suffered, who has lived a story, who has lived well, who has tried to live well, who has failed. Your failures, those are going to be in this book, and it’s going to inform me in a way that only could be informed through my flawed friend, my beautiful, flawed friend, Mark Labberton.
And that offering is going to be, maybe it’s going to be a sculpture along the way, but it’s eventually going to lead me, Mitali, into that moment of here’s how I can confront fear. Here’s how fear will not have the last word, but courage, and hope will and I will resist despair, the despair of our age.
So, that’s what I’m going to give you, Mark. This is the book you’re just going to write for you. That’s going to be part of that communal answer. It’s not going to be the answer. It’s going to be a flawed answer. But if you don’t write it, then we’re not going to have that one piece, that one sculpture that’s going to help us get to our shared David, right? So, there you go. How’s that? Does that help you?
Mark Labberton: That’s great. No, it’s extremely, extremely helpful, Mitali. Thank you very much.
Mitali Perkins: Now, I’m going to have to hold you accountable to this. See, you brought this to me, Mark, so I’m going to have to cheque in, and gently ask you.
Mark Labberton: I know. This might end up on the editing floor as it were.
Mitali Perkins: Yeah. But as I said, when we talk about flourishing, the thing you’re making, maybe there’s going to be a time in your life ahead, we don’t even know where fear is going to come upon you. And the work you’re doing will help you to flourish through that time.
Mark Labberton: Yes, yes.
Mitali Perkins: Maybe it will be just Janet who reads it, or myself or whoever else you share it with, or a sermon you give. Maybe that’s all it will end up. Maybe it won’t even see the light of the day, or maybe it will. Maybe it’ll come out and people will read it, and there are other people who will be able to face down fear.
So, we don’t know whether this is a flourishing just for you, but I think to not write it after I heard just even a snippet of your passion, to combat this foe of our age as you presented it. To not do it, I think would be exactly what the diabolical enemy of our faith wants us to do. So, there you go, Mark.
Mark Labberton: Mitali, I take it at full value, so thank you for that.
Mitali Perkins: Okay. No pressure.
Mark Labberton: Yeah, no pressure. I do remember when I was working on the first book that I wrote, The Dangerous Act of Worship: Living God’s Call to Justice, that-
Mitali Perkins: One of my faves.
Mark Labberton: … that I was really aware that I had to die to what I summarized as trying to write the perfect iPhone book. Meaning the perfect product that had the perfect things that were the only most right and creative and clever and sleek things. And clearly, that was not any book I was ever going to write.
So, it became a really important crossing point. And I think in this case, the thing that makes it interesting to me is that I feel relatively free, I think, of trying to do that. I think it’s more, it’s a slightly different question, which is really more, am I capable of writing this book? Or is this book and its topic simply beyond me?
I am fine admitting that it’s beyond me, because it is as a topic beyond me. I can say that without even needing to reflect on it. It’s such an enormous topic. But I do think that what you’re saying is a good pushback. I have been thinking that this fall, that if I am able to squeeze in sufficient time, I really do want to give it another go.
I have another way of conceiving the book than what I had written. I would start all over from the beginning. It wouldn’t be in any way a revision. It would be just a, from the beginning, different book, differently conceived. I might be able to write that book.
Mitali Perkins: Well, I love that. That is exactly what I was insinuating when I said the work of Michelangelo. The process is so important to this first round that you did, this first draft that you did. The work begins to speak to you.
One of my practices is to liberate the work, to really believe the work itself has a life of its own. It’s the mystery of creativity. You’re creating something that really does have something that stands apart from you.
And so if the work is whispering to you, as I said, as you’re walking your dog or you’re taking a shower, it begins to call to you again to say, “Revisit me again in this new way, in this fresh way.” But the work that you did last summer is definitely not lost, because it’s shaping the voice the way that you want to offer this.
So, if it is whispering to you, it’s not like you want to drag a huge boulder up a hill, there’s times to let work go. I’m not saying there’s not times to say no. And as you’ve done, you said that book, that was not the right frame. That was not the right scaffolding or whatever.
So, you can remake it, but that work is not lost, because now you know what the work is saying to you. Mark, I don’t want to be that. I want to be this. And if it’s whispering to you in a way that is invitational, where you feel like, “Huh, I’m thinking about it, it’s calling to me,” then it’s worth another round.
And sometimes I’ve written stories that I’ve laid dormant for years, and then the work itself comes back to me, and says, “Mitali, let’s give this another try.” I come back to it and I’m changed, I’m different. I’ve suffered and triumphed since then. The work and I can engage in a fresh way.
Mark Labberton: In a different way. Yes.
Mitali Perkins: Yeah. That actually ends up with a product that’s much more, I don’t know, true or better. You could tell it’s better. But, as you said, I’m glad that you’re accepting that Mark Labberton doesn’t have to write the definitive work on anything.
Mark Labberton: Exactly.
Mitali Perkins: That’s too much pressure on one flawed human being. But Mark has things to say that I’ve, my entire life as a follower of Jesus, has been blessed by the words of Mark Labberton, so I’m ready for it. And fear, fear, fear, oh, gosh. Especially when it comes to this work. Fear is such a problem.
Mark Labberton: Well, Mitali, what you’ve just beautifully demonstrated in these last few minutes is that A, you’re a teacher. B, you’re a coach. C, you’re a cheerleader. One of the things that we haven’t talked about yet, but that I want to touch on as we come to the close of our conversation is just the way that the theme of community, how the change moves out from the intimacy of initial readers, let’s say, into a wider community of people.
You’ve spent a great deal of time speaking in children’s contexts, in schools, classrooms, libraries, tons, and tons of direct contact with children. I just wonder if you could say a bit about how that experience with living children and young people affects the work that you’re actually doing as a writer?
Mitali Perkins: Well, there’s nothing like, you talk about tenderness. I think that there’s no way to escape that, the desire for that in your work when you’re writing for children. I have a book coming out now in the fall, it’s called The Golden Necklace, and it’s set in the Tea Estates of Darjeeling, near where I was the fattest baby ever born.
But it’s a question, I love tea. I love Darjeeling tea, and you always want to ask whose hands pluck the leaves? And so I had to do a lot of research for that. It’s children’s fiction. It’s a mystery. It’s akin to my book Rickshaw Girl, which is about microcredit set in Bangladesh, and a lot of these justice themes I put in my stories.
And so it’s interesting with Rickshaw girl, when I go into talk to kids, and it’s fully set in Bangladesh. It was rejected so many times, Mark, because it has no Western Bridge character. It’s just all Bangladeshi people and a girl who wants to help her family, but can’t because of gender issues, and she has no economic power.
And so I go in now and parents now, well, young moms will come to me, and say, “Oh, I love that book. And now I’m reading it with my daughter.” I think, “Oh, that book is now serving the next generation.” I’ll see kids who will come to me, and say, “Oh, I love Naima. She’s like my best friend.”
I think about how fiction does that, it opens, builds bridges, and so I see the effects of that book. They want to help, I get them linked in with organizations like Kiva, or places where they can get involved with microcredit.
But then I go back, back to when that book was being written, Mark, and I’ll just close with this story here of how that book was my third book. And after all the rejections of Monsoon Summer, it finally came out, and I was going to get to go to a signing.
I was living in Boston at the time, and I was going to get to sign my book at the American Library Association Convention. And I thought, “Oh, my gosh, this is my moment.” I put on my lipstick, and best clothes, and I show up at the convention, and I get to the exhibit floor. And there I am, and my name is on the table. But I look to my left and to my left was the hot young adult author of the day, a young guy. And to my right was the hot picture book author of the day, and I was in between them, and I knew right then I was doomed.
But I thought, “Okay, well, here I am. I’m going to hold my head up high.” I sat down and they sat down and all the librarians streamed in. There was a long line in front of hot author A, a long line in front of hot author B, and not one single person in the line of Mitali Perkins to sign Monsoon Summer. I talk about embracing moments of mortification as a way to build this tenacity you’re talking about.
And I didn’t know about it. This was my first really public moment of mortification, apart from the private rejections, and it was public. Everybody could see that there I was sandwiched between these two lovely young white men. I remember thinking after 20 minutes, I just thought, “I should just get up. I can’t take this anymore. I just get up and go.”
But boys were little then and I thought, “I do have this manuscript in my bag. This is 40 minutes left in this time period. I could just bring it out.” And I did. And sometimes in the moments of mortification, we have to do something physical to get through it. I remember reaching into my satchel, pulling out my manuscript, and putting it in front of me and taking out a red pen. And I began to read my work. It’s that moment of, you know that flow. I talk about flow.
Mark Labberton: Wow.
Mitali Perkins: After about 10 minutes, I forgot all the, I was just like, “Naima, how do I, what do I?” I was starting to use edit, and play with nouns and verbs, do my craft, and I forgot about everything. Well, this doesn’t always happen in moments of mortification. This was my first one, so God was very good to me.
I look up and I see this beautiful redheaded woman, and she’s come over from one of the lines, and she’s standing there, and she said, “Oh, you are Mitali Perkins. Hey, I read Monsoon Summer. I liked it. What are you doing there?” And I said, “Well, I’m working on this book about Rickshaw Puller’s daughter who’s trying to,” and I gave her a little pitch. I’m not good at pitching. Even to this day, I can’t pitch well, but gave her a synopsis.
And then she said, “Oh, I’m an editor at Charlesbridge, and that sounds like a really interesting book. Would you send that to me?” And this book had already been rejected by 14 publishers. I said, “Okay.” So, I sent it to her, and that’s how that book got published. That book which is-
Mark Labberton: Which then becomes a movie.
Mitali Perkins: Yeah. Which then becomes, still a print for the next generation to read. So, I think about it when every time a kid comes up to me, I think about that moment of mortification, and I think I’m just so grateful that God gave me. It was one of those know Ebeneezers, those pile of stones you look back in your career, and you think.
When I feel that embarrassment, that mortification, if I can just stay, and do something physical to honour my work, it always ends up being goodness comes pouring back, and shalom comes pouring back in to that situation. I’ve seen it time and time again, not as beautifully, and as obviously as getting published from that moment, but think, what if I just left? I wouldn’t have.
So, I leave that with you as one of my practices to embrace those moments of mortification, and wait for God to show up as we do something. An act of with our bodies usually to champion our work, to champion our creativity.
Mark Labberton: Tenderness and tenacity again, Mitali.
Mitali Perkins: Thank you, Mark.
Mark Labberton: It’s just such a beautiful combination. Thank you so much for being a guest today. This has been a delight, a challenge to me personally. I’ll keep you posted on the book. And I just know that our listeners are going to enjoy the wisdom and experience that you share so richly in Just Making. It’s a wonderful book. And I’m so thankful for the book that you’ve just told us about, The Golden Necklace, that we can look forward to this fall.
Mitali Perkins: Yeah, thank you, Mark. The website for Just Making is justmakingguide.com, so they can find out more about that. Thanks, Mark. Well, we’ll have to have coffee in about three or four months, and I can say, “So, Mark, is the work whispering to you?”
Mark Labberton: Yes.
Mitali Perkins: All right.
Mark Labberton: Thanks, Mitali.
Mitali Perkins: We’ll talk soon. Thank you.
