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Feb. 22, 2013
Coming out as yourself
Elisabeth Kushner on her Purim book for kids.
LAUREN KRAMER
Her book The Purim Superhero, illustrated by Mike Byrne, recently won Keshet’s LGBT Jewish Children’s Book contest, and Vancouverite Elisabeth Kushner is on the road promoting it, still stunned and amazed by its success. The librarian with Vancouver Public Library took time out of her travel schedule to speak with the Jewish Independent.
JI: What was the inspiration for The Purim Superhero?
EK: It always seemed weird to me that there were lots of great read-aloud stories about Chanukah and a good number of Passover books, but there were, at that time, almost no books about contemporary Jewish kids celebrating Purim. It seemed like such a natural theme for a children’s book, with many of the appealing qualities of Halloween and April Fool’s Day (Costumes! Silliness! Carnivals! Treats!), but most of the books I found, while wonderful, were basically retellings of the story of Esther.
I wanted a book to share with my library classes that would reflect and expand on their present-day experience of celebrating Purim. I thought a kid with a costume crisis might be a good hook for a story. A few years later, when I heard about Keshet’s contest for a picture book with both gay/lesbian and Jewish content, I thought, wait, I’m a Jewish lesbian, I’m a parent, I’m a writer, and I’ve read lots of Jewish picture books. If I don’t enter this contest, I’ll never forgive myself!
I realized that my old idea for a Purim story was a perfect fit for this project: Purim is very much about “coming out” as yourself. Esther is a great example of someone who comes “out of the closet” for a good cause, and I thought that would be a good setting for a book about a kid with gay parents.
JI: Who is your target audience for The Purim Superhero?
EK: When I started writing this book, I was thinking about the kids I used to work with as a school librarian at the Jewish Day School of Metropolitan Seattle – kids for whom Judaism was integrated into their everyday lives, and for whom celebrating Jewish holidays was a backdrop for lots of typical childhood experiences. Most of those kids were not growing up with same-sex parents, but weren’t too fazed by the idea that a person might have two moms or two dads or another kind of family structure. But as I wrote, I also began to think of kids, whether Jewish or not, who are different in a variety of ways, and who might feel lonely or awkward because of that, and, I think, really, that’s most kids at some point in their lives.
JI: Is this book about a gay Jewish family, or being different, or both?
EK: Part of me wants to be contrary and say, “Neither! It’s about a kid who loves aliens, and how he celebrates Purim!” But, of course, it’s really about all those things. My favorite books are about more than one thing at once, and let the reader, at least to some extent, find their own message in the story, and that’s what I tried to accomplish with The Purim Superhero. So, for one child, the most important aspect of this book may be that Nate has same-sex parents, while another may be reassured by the idea that there’s more than one way to be a boy, and someone else might like that there are aliens in it, or superheroes, for that matter.
JI: How representative is the family you portray?
EK: In my experience, Nate’s family is pretty typical of the reality of a mainstream middle-class North American nuclear family, aside from the fact that the parents are both men. There are two parents and a brother and a sister, the kids go to school and Hebrew school, the parents work, they all sit down and eat dinner together and talk about their day. I think kids’ concerns and needs – for safety and security, for love and acceptance, for the basic necessities of life and a chance to learn and friends who appreciate them – are very much the same, no matter what their family is like.
JI: What values do you hope this book will teach?
EK: I am hoping the book will teach, or at least encourage, kids to respect what’s individual and unique in themselves and others, and also to pay attention to the voice inside themselves that tells them what’s important to them. I think both of those are very Jewish values, and that living them takes a fair bit of courage. Aside from telling a good story with interesting characters, I wanted to write about a kid who is a little unusual but also really wants to be part of his peer group. I wanted Nate to be able to hold onto the part of himself that is unique and original, and also to honor his desire to have friends and fit in. In this case, he’s able to do both, and also to help inspire at least one other kid to express his individuality as well. I think it can happen that way in real life too – at least, sometimes.
JI: Why did you give Nate two dads rather than two moms?
EK: There are a few reasons. First, there aren’t as many children’s books about two-dad families as about two-mom families, and I thought it would be nice for there to be some more representation. Also, my experience as a parent and someone who works with children professionally is that for kids of Nate’s age – about four or five – the options for self-expression are actually narrower for boys than for girls. That is, if a girl doesn’t want to dress up as a princess or do other conventionally “girly” things, that’s more likely to be considered acceptable than if a boy is less traditionally masculine, so boys who have unconventional interests really need all the support they can get!
From a narrative point of view, that imbalance also means it’s more dramatic for a boy in a picture book to experience gender-based peer pressure around a Purim costume than it would be for a girl in a parallel situation. And, I wanted my male protagonist to have trusted adults in his life who were also not conventionally masculine – hence, Nate’s dads, who, without making too big a deal out of it, cook and sew and are very nurturing.
Lauren Kramer is an award-winning writer in Richmond. Read her work at laurenkramer.net.
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