Writing from the Immigrant Experience Author Panel: Paula Yoo (moderator) / Zahra Marwan

Paul Yoo is an accomplished writer. RISING FROM THE ASHES: LOS ANGELES, 1992. EDWARD JAE SONG LEE, LATASHA HARLINS, RODNEY KING, AND A CITY ON FIRE (Norton 2024) won the YALSA Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults Award & SCBWI Golden Kite Award/Nonfiction Older Readers. FROM A WHISPER TO A RALLYING CRY: THE KILLING OF VINCENT CHIN AND THE TRIAL THAT GALVANIZED THE ASIAN AMERICAN MOVEMENT (Norton 2021) won the Horn Book Award, longlisted for the 2021 National Book Award and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist. Other books include the YA novel GOOD ENOUGH (HarperCollins 2008) and nonfiction picture books from Lee & Low Books about Dr. Sammy Lee, Anna May Wong, and Dr. Muhammad Yunus. Paula’s TV credits range from NBC’s THE WEST to The CW’s SUPERGIRL and multiple pilots. She enjoys playing violin & with her 4 cats!

Paula starts by noting how nuanced talking about the immigrant experience is. She holds up all the panelists books and her enthusiasm for all of them is contagious. She even made the potato curry recipe in the back of The Spice Box by Meera Sriram (panelist) and brought it to make us all salivate.

During conversation about language, Paula shares for those who might not know, that there has been a movement in the last 20 years to stop italicizing words written in a foreign language as not to other them. 

Fun fact and connection with panelist Edwidge Danticat: Paula was a huge fan of Edwidge's adult short stories, and when Paula was writing for The West Wing, episode 414, they were sitting around the room, with Aaron Sorkin, pitching ideas for a revolution happening, and Paula had read Edwidge's story Children of the Sea which Paula used as an example and that's what lead to the storyline for that episode. How cool is that!

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Working as a traditional artist with watercolor and ink, Zahra Marwan creates work that reflects her cultural roots in Kuwait as well as her life now in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She loves poetry and independent cinema and how quiet and mysterious the night is. She is deeply fond of the sea.

Her debut picture book, Where Butterflies Fill the Sky, was published by Bloomsbury Books and named one of the New York Times / New York Public Library’s 10 Best Illustrated Books as well as NPR’s Best Books of 2022. The week before receiving the Dilys Evans Founders Award from the Society of Illustrators, she was honored with an award by the UN Human Rights Commission for creating art that brings visibility to statelessness, indigenous groups, and minority rights.

Where Butterflies Fill the Sky about not wanting to leave her home as a child and the luck of coming to New Mexico. And Zahra's latest book The Sunflowers relates to the art our ancestors have left us in a way to connect with family. 

In discussing language, Zahra shares that she grew up speaking Arabic. Now living Quebec, she speaks to people in both Arabic and French, and she notes that when she is in public and speak Arabic, she feels more scared than if she was speaking French. Simply introducing herself and saying her name prompts questions from people. For Zahra, the personal is always political, and she is alway navigating how to survive in countries that don't want her. 

Zahra believes that Arabic language is so rich and inspires her art. Her art is stunning, and Paula (our moderator) notes that there are so many easter eggs in the art that Zahra let's us know about in the author's note. Do take a look!

Her book iWhere the Butterflies Fill the Sky received an award from the United Nation Human Rights Commission for brining visibility to statelessness, indigenous, and minority rights. 

Zahra has felt really lucky to work with editors she has. They have taken her, and what she wants to do, seriously--the stories from her culture and what she understands her culture to be as opposed to constant Ramadan stories.  Zahra says, "There's more to the Middle East."

This panel discussion is deep and personal, and one you'll want to listen to. I hope you will.

If you want to view this session to hear the full content, along with the rest of the conference, register at https://www.scbwi.org/events/virtual-summer-conference-2025. Replays of the conferences will be available until September 14th, 2025.