On Witches, Representation, and Resurrections: How I Became a Children’s Book Author By Tina Kim

To celebrate International Children’s Book Day on April 2, our guest blogger for this month is the author of the Olive Oh series, Tina Kim (IG @tkimwrites).

Olive Oh Gets Creative by Tina Kim, illustrated by Tiff Bartel

My path to becoming an author began with witches.

When I was eight, I believed they roamed our neighborhood late at night, flying on their broomsticks wearing that black pointy hat, on the hunt for small children like my sister and me. (My reference for witches at the time was from Hocus Pocus and only Hocus Pocus.)

While my parents were asleep in the other room, I’d see shadows of long, sharp fingernails against my bedroom window and I’d hear the tap-tap, tap-tap.

One night, I swore I heard a cackle — felt their breath against my cheek, hot and sour. Cold hands grabbed ahold, pulling me by the legs underneath the covers.

Next to me in our twin-sized bed, my little sister, the cutest six-year-old to ever live, was in deep slumber with her mouth slightly open.

Her chubby cheeks were perfect, round peaches. Of course a witch was going to snatch her up!

I prayed that they’d take me and leave her alone. I was ready to offer myself as tribute.

All through the night I waited for the inevitable.

But nobody came.

I was relieved — and slightly disappointed. I was sure they were there. That cackle was right in my ear.

A few days later, I learned that those shadows were not from the murderous claws of evil, wart-faced Bette Midler look-alikes waiting to feast on human children.

I discovered that outside my window was the skinny, winter-bare limb of an old tree, swaying in the wind and sometimes hitting up against the glass.

The tap-tap.

And the cackle? A figment of my imagination.

I was a kid and my mind loved to create these stories, my head always in fantasyland.

As I grew up, witches no longer terrified me but they never fully went away.

I couldn’t stay put in reality. Reality was dull or boring or had too many limitations for what I wanted.

I grew up in the 90s with Nirvana, Tamagotchis, Buffy, and Jonathan Taylor Thomas. (J.T.T. to all you die-hards like me.)

I grew up in the best decade ever, objectively speaking.

However, most of what I saw on TV or read in books didn’t reflect the reality I was living, that I was embodying.

YM and Seventeen dispensed makeup tips for girls with double eyelids and high cheekbones. The books displayed in the best seller section at Barnes and Noble had mostly blonde teens on the covers.

That wasn’t me.

I rarely saw a girl who looked like me in media. If I did, they were often set decor with one-liners or no lines at all.

So in my head, I re-wrote those shows.

Of the books I read, I replaced the main characters with ones that had brown or black hair with monolided eyes and lived in homes that smelled of kimchi and soybean paste.

And in my wildest fantasies anything was possible. I could be anyone and do anything:

I was a precocious spy, writing in my top secret notebook with observations made on my friends and neighbors!

I drove in an open-top Jeep with my friends, Cher and Dionne, on our way to eat rabokki because we were celebrating getting full rides to Ivy Leagues on sports scholarships even though our GPAs were beyond rescue!

Luggage bag in tow, I arrived in New York, embarking on a new chapter and my big, permed hair didn’t make me look like an ahjumma, but like a college freshman who talked thoughtfully into her tape recorder!

The list went on and on.

When I think back on my desire to escape reality to find solace in my fantasies, it’s kind of heartbreaking.

Because it wasn’t fantasy that I was creating. Not really.

It was representation.

I just wanted to be seen.

When I was twelve, I told my parents that I wanted to be a writer.

I thought maybe I could write about Asian kids like me. Put them center stage rather than off to the sidelines.

But there was a hiccup.

I, googly-eyed by the prospect of one day living my dream of being a novelist, had momentarily forgotten that I was the offspring of immigrants.

In case you didn’t know, if you are a child of immigrants, you have a destiny to fulfill.

Even before you are an embryo, this destiny supplants itself into the minds of 99.9% of the immigrant parent and must be downloaded onto the child once they are able to understand language.

It happened to me when I was a wee little thing rocking my first mullet.

(My sister had the bowl cut.)

My parents knelt before me and spoke in their omnipotent voice:

“Eldest daughter, one day you will do something extraordinary. So extraordinary, the world will tilt on its axis. Because you, O Daughter, will become… a doctor! Or a lawyer! Maybe an accountant! You will go on to make six-figures and buy us a Mercedes Benz — S Class, because anything below that will not bring honor to this house. This path that no one before you has ever walked (except every other Asian child) will solve the problem of the American Dream our ancestors came searching for in this land of opportunity and equality.”

I did not become a doctor. Not even close.

Side note: I am sure the above professions are great, just not great for someone who passes out at the sight of blood and cannot calculate tip to this day.

Between the ages of twelve to about the time I learned the term “geriatric millennial” applied to me, I tried alternate variations of fulfilling that destiny. To choose the path worthy of my parents’ pride.

It was their dream to attain status and respect in a country that afforded them little.

I couldn’t make that happen for them if I had my head stuck in the clouds. I needed to wake up and grow up. Be an adult. And while I’m at it, learn what NFTs are.

It was time to pull the plug on my dream. I needed to do that thing in Men in Black where Will Smith erases Tommy Lee Jones’s memory.

I told my twelve-year-old self to forget about being an author. It wasn’t enough.

And I stopped writing.

For the most part, I was pretty successful at putting an end to my childhood fantasies. The whole of my twenties, nobody knew that the Tina Kim of Yore had once dreamed of publishing a book. I convinced them no such thing existed.

More so, I convinced myself that I had finally grown up. I was a different person now and writing felt like a lifetime ago.

The thing about dreams is, like the past, they come back to haunt you.

All those things you’ve long repressed resurrect themselves with a force greater than the Terminator itself.

During this time, I was in my graduate psychology program with hopes of helping others heal from their past and childhood wounds (I am aware of the irony here).

On a late night when everything was quiet, I heard characters in dialog with each other -- the characters I made up when I was a kid. Scenes began playing inside my head, old and new.

Everything I buried was alive again.

After nearly two decades, the stories emerged from their graves and found their way back to me.

In September 2021, I published my first chapter books.

They’re about an eight-year-old Korean American girl who is an aspiring artist living with her multi-generational family in Los Angeles. Her brother is in a Kpop dance group and her sister hopes to become a doctor when she grows up.

(I had to make that doctor dream come true somehow.)

Olive Oh says whatever is on her mind, sometimes very loudly, creating all kinds of messes in her wake.

She is unapologetic about who she is, following the path she’s carving out for herself.

When I first sat down to write her, I didn’t know where she came from.

She certainly wasn't me. I wasn’t as bold or carefree.

Olive came out of my wish to speak my mind. To open up the vault I’d kept locked for so long. To finally choose my own path.

If I could go back to my twelve-year-old self and tell her that I published a book with scenes of a family eating rabokki, pa jun, and many more Korean dishes, I doubt she’d believe me.

Then again, I’m sure she could imagine it.

To learn more about Tina and her work, check out her website and her Instagram page for more details. We hope you’ll give her a follow and support a local AAPI female author!