Because I create stories by poking and prodding at the concept in my journal, asking myself endless questions. Some of the questions I scribbled during the week after those earlier entries above were: “Why did the mother go into space? Was she a scientist?”

I drew on Hawaiian history, specifically the story of Kamehameha and how he unified the islands with an armada of war canoes and soldiers. I haven’t read many stories that draw inspiration from my culture and wanted to try my hand at expanding it.

I loved the process of building Muna’s world: the social hierarchies and stereotypes that govern the lives of immigrants and othered folk in Barish; the world of writing, publishing, bookselling; the kind of story Muna would be driven to write, what obstacles she might face in pursuing her dreams; and also the intertextual bits i.e., the excerpt from Muna’s work in progress, and the references to the Halfborn series and the latest bestseller.

The Indian fig tree family is one of the most extraordinary species with whom we share this planet. Even today, in India you’ll find them growing almost anywhere—out of a wall, sprouting from a pavement, taking over entire compounds. To walk in a grove of bodhi or peepal trees is to experience the world in a way that is uniquely Indian. I’ve been in redwood forests, pine groves, and other stands but the fig trees of India have a wanton wildness that truly brings home the meaning of the word “jungle.”

As much as I love the conference, I discovered there’s no quicker way to become invisible than to walk around with a toddler at an academic conference. People I’ve known for years developed sudden blindness and a preference for taking the long way around rather than pass where we were sitting. Left alone with my son sleeping in his stroller, I started writing about COVID-19 and the strain of being a mom and having an unsure foundation (which is one of the very conditions of parenthood).