Rajani LaRocca's picture book ‘Some of Us’ is her personal tribute to American democracy

We last spoke with local doctor and Newbery Medal-winning author Rajani LaRocca just under a couple of years ago, about her nonfiction picture book “A Vaccine is Like a Memory.” 

She returned to our studios to join GBH’s All Things Considered host Arun Rath to talk about her latest nonfiction picture book for young readers, “Some of Us: A Story of Citizenship and the United States.”

What follows is a lightly edited transcript of their conversation.

Arun Rath: I’d like to do something a little unusual, if you’re up for it. Rather than describing this book, I was thinking, it’s a picture book — it won’t take us long to read the book, and then discuss it. How does that sound?

LaRocca: I think that sounds great.

Rath: Brilliant. We’ll go, maybe, back and forth on it?

LaRocca: Yes, absolutely.

Rath: Awesome. Oh, and tell us the name of the illustrator of the beautiful illustrations in this.

LaRocca: The illustrator is Huy Voun Lee. She is amazing. Her illustrations are just incredible for this book.

Rath: We’ll talk about them, but first, start us off with “Some of Us.”

LaRocca: Some of us are born American. Some of us choose.

Rath: We may come from across the world, or quite nearby.

LaRocca: Some of us are babies, carried in hopeful arms. Some are six, or 16, or 60.

Rath: We leave the countries of our birth and come here by boat, and plane, and car, and train, and foot.

LaRocca: We leave loved ones, important jobs, beloved places. We leave behind all we know.

Rath: Some of us are invited to study or work because of particular talents or training.

LaRocca: Some flee war, oppression, poverty. We all deserve safety, respect, opportunity.

Rath: We bring with us our languages, our cuisines, our customs, clothing, music, stories, histories. We bring hard work and determination, intelligence and skill, optimism, joy.

LaRocca: We learn and teach, work and rest, live freely as we contribute to our new communities. We bring threads from the countries of our birth and add to the rich tapestry of our new home, a place we grow to love.

Rath: And after years, without relinquishing who we are or where we came from, if we choose — if we are fortunate — we can become naturalized citizens. We can become American.

LaRocca: We study how U.S. democracy works. We take a test and do an interview to demonstrate our understanding.

Rath: And then, we take an oath — not to the President, not to Congress, but to the ideals of the United States: freedom, justice, peace, equality.

LaRocca: We make a promise: I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We pledge true faith and allegiance.

Rath: In return for accepting these responsibilities, we receive rights to speak our beliefs, to worship or not, to be treated fairly under the law.

LaRocca: We can sign up to vote or run for elected office. We can fully participate in the governing of the country we love.

Rath: Some of us are born to it.

LaRocca: Some of us choose.

Rath and LaRocca: And we are all American.

Rath: This is a beautiful book, and — you could probably tell — I get a little emotional with it as well, because I’m a child of immigrants. We talked about your own journey the last time you were here, about your background; born in India, grew up in Kentucky, made it out here to Boston for school and your career, and then, raising a family here.

Start off by situating your own citizenship journey. When did you become a naturalized citizen, and what do you remember? What were the emotions about that process for you?

LaRocca: So, my dad became a citizen when I was six, and he could have just signed me on as part of that, but he wanted me to make a choice. He wanted me to choose for myself. So, when I was 15, I became a naturalized citizen.

You know, what’s interesting is that freshman year of [high] school, we all took a class called “Government.” We all read the Constitution and learned about the founding of the United States’ democracy, so I felt really prepared for this exam. The exam was not a big deal for me; the interview was not a big deal to me. At age 15, you think you know everything.

So, I went to the naturalization ceremony. I took the afternoon off from school, and I didn’t think it was going to be a big deal. But I got there and looked around this courtroom full of people from all over, I mean, speaking all kinds of languages. There were people with their newly adopted babies, older people and everybody in between. How could I not be touched? It was so beautiful.

It was an amazing shared experience to be in this room with everybody making the same choice, and we all raised our hands at the same time, and we all said the words at the same time. After that, we all got little American flags, and we could pose in front of the big American flag in the courtroom. It was incredible.

That evening, we went to friends of ours — we went to their house for dinner. At the end of dinner, they brought out this cake that said, “Welcome to the USA, Rajani!” And I was laughing and crying because I, of course, had been here. I mean, I thought of myself as an American — I had lived here since I was the age of one — but it was important to acknowledge that this was a big step.

I really appreciated that because this was a family of immigrants as well. They had all become naturalized as well, and it was just … It was wonderful. I never forgot that. I’ll never forget that feeling of being in community with these people who were choosing to be part of our democracy.

Rath: Wow — just a wonderful, joyous thing. In this book, you run through a variety of other types of experiences, though, that were not as easy as your family or my family. I’m curious about the project of writing this, and also working with your illustrator as well, how you talked about and decided the range of experiences to show in “Some of Us.”

LaRocca: I wrote this book kind of in a rush of inspiration. I had met this editor at a writing retreat, and we discovered over lunch that three of us at the table were naturalized citizens. We talked about our naturalization stories.

I don’t know how the topic came up, but after that happened, I said, “You know, I think this needs to be a book. I don’t think there’s a book about this.” She said to me, “Yes, please write it because I would love to publish that,” and I said, “Okay.” So, I went home, and I was so inspired.

I thought about all the different places that people come from when they come to the United States. It occurred to me that unless you’re Native American, all of us — all of our ancestors — came from someplace else in this world. I wanted to capture that in this book. Some people fled something. Some people came here because they saw opportunities that they didn’t have where they were. Some people are actually invited to come here, right? They’re like, we want you to come because you’re the world expert on XYZ.”

I wanted to acknowledge that people come from every place, including places that are near us, right? And that you can’t tell just by looking at someone whether they’re an immigrant or not, because that’s one of the things that makes our country fascinating and so strong: that we have a huge diversity of people here. I love how [the illustrator] Huy captured that in the illustrations as well. The opening spread is, “Some of us are born American. Some of us chose.” And you can’t tell the difference between those people.

Rath: Right. The two groups look as diverse as each other.

LaRocca: Exactly, exactly. I had very little to say other than, Wow. I mean, just incredibly powerful art.

Rath: Is Huy Voun Lee — I don’t want to assume from the name — also an immigrant?

LaRocca: She is! She’s an immigrant from Cambodia, and she’s also a naturalized citizen. Our editor, Huy and I are all naturalized citizens of the United States.

Rath: Awesome. I should mention there’s also a fair amount of text that we didn’t read: Useful information about citizenship and about, well, human rights in general that you work in at the end.

LaRocca: Yes! You know, we typically think about picture books as being for young children, but we also acknowledge that they’re almost always read to them by older people, by adults. I wanted to make sure to include more in-depth information for those people.