Leise Hook’s Letter to Librarians

In NAMES AND FACES, Leise Hook explores what it means to come of age as a mixed-race woman, forging a singular identity in a world intent on putting her into ill-fitting boxes. In her author letter, Kate shares how her childhood librarian inspired her to start creating books, and how the many libraries around her led her to the resources and spaces she needed to write NAMES AND FACES.

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Dear Librarians,

My elementary-school librarian turned me into an author with just a sewing machine and a sheet of gold foil stickers. She instructed my classmates and me to each bring in a typed and illustrated story. A few weeks later, she presented us with our finished books–pages sewn into a cloth-bound cardboard cover adorned with a gold sticker. It was then that I started to believe that I could make real books. My librarian changed my life, and that first book became a prized possession. I keep it in my studio still.

I have been trying to make sense of my mixed-race identity since childhood. In fact, the story I wrote and illustrated for my librarian was about a bear who doesn’t know whether she is a panda or a red panda, until she looks into a pond to see her reflection. Seven years ago, I moved from a diverse neighborhood in New York City to a homogenous, rural village in Vermont, and I was confronted with the questions and observations I had been gathering since I was a kid about being caught between two cultures: Chinese and white American. I began to explore my thinking through comics, the first of which was about how the names of invasive species (in this case, “Asian carp”) can hurt communities. As the Covid-19 pandemic spread in 2020, the President used the terms “Chinese virus” and “kung-flu,” fanning the flames of anti-Asian hate. My comic about these names no longer felt like a small, personal obsession, and NAMES AND FACES began to take shape.

With this book, I wanted to ask: what does it take to understand yourself accurately among reflections that are distorted or incomplete? In my search for answers, I explored a wide range of topics and periods of my life, including: dying my hair blond in a quest for beauty and belonging; looking for representation from American Girl dolls; chasing an authentic Chinese self as a recent graduate in Beijing; and inheriting generational pain as well as a love of photography.

I believe many readers in your community have also grown up between worlds–races, identities, religions, cultures, nationalities–and they might deeply relate to my book’s stories. I hope that by writing and drawing about seeing and being seen, naming and being named, I’ve cleared a little bit more space for more of us to claim our complex selves. In a time of global instability where many are tempted to oversimplify and stereotype, I think this space beyond simple categorization is more important than ever.

I would not have been able to finish NAMES AND FACES without my access to many wonderful libraries. Libraries in Vermont, New Hampshire, New York, Virginia, and Stockholm provided the journals and books I needed for research, as well as quiet spaces to think. Thank you for all that you do to keep libraries one of the most vibrant and important places in a community.

Leise Hook
Author of NAMES AND FACES

Download a PDF of Leise Hook’s letter here!