What inspired you to tell this story?  My first novel, The Hour of Daydreams, was inspired by the questions I had after reading a Filipino folktale. Why would a woman marry a man who stole her wings? Why would she leave her daughter behind? Writing the novel was my process of uncovering the answers, to explore motivation and tell the story behind the story. For my first children’s book, One Hundred Percent Me, I wrote the story I wished I could have read to my own daughters when they were growing up, one that includes a character of mixed Asian and Latina heritage like them. When I became a mother, I repeatedly witnessed my daughters being asked the same questions about “what they are” or where they’re from. The main character in One Hundred Percent Me turns those questions on their head to say, “I’m from here; this city is just as much mine as yours; and I am myself and beautiful.” What did you edit out of this book? In writing the children’s book …

What inspired you to tell this story? I’m a storyteller through and through—for most of my life, I’ve processed lived experience by writing fiction. In 2015, I had some time on my hands (this was before kids!) and a few story ideas I really wanted to get onto the page. After I’d written the first two pieces, I could already see the contours of a collection coming together (though I didn’t realize it right away). There were characters I wanted to explore further and questions I wanted to answer. Once the ball was rolling, I was excited to keep going! What did you edit out of this book? Honestly? Very little came out of the book. I’ve never been a “messy” drafter—for the most part, I try to do the work of editing down my ideas while they’re still just mental exercises, before I ever put anything down on paper. That certainly doesn’t mean no editing itself happened (plenty did—many thanks to my editor, Yuka Igarashi at Graywolf!), but I didn’t need to edit anything …