Straight from the Source: Jenny Lacika on Writing Historical Nonfiction

What typically comes first for you: a character? An era? A story idea? How do you proceed from there?

Often, I am interested in a certain topic and read until I find someone who catches my attention.

My biography with Ashanti Fortson, Talking Books: Audiobook Inventor Dr. Robert B. Irwin and a New Way to Read, came about because of my interest in disability history. I am autistic and have multiple sclerosis, and my family has other disabilities, so it’s a topic that is important to me.

I wasn’t sure what exactly I wanted to write about, so I started reading The Disability Rights Movement by Doris Zames Fleischer and Frieda Zames. There was one sentence on talking books, “…long playing (LP) records were used by blind people before they were used by the general public, for talking books preceded commercial LPs by fourteen years.” Audiobooks were super important to me as a child with strabismus, so I needed to know more.

Eventually, I learned about Robert B. Irwin, who lost his sight as a child and went on to improve accessibility for blind Americans in numerous ways. Every new thing I learned about him made me more sure I needed to write about him. Sometimes the process is not so clear cut. Sometimes I need to read and read about a topic or person before I am convinced that I am really interested, and sometimes that never happens, so I was really excited about Robert’s story.

How do you conduct your research?

While reading through a source, I tend to collect additional sources. I love secondary sources, because they can lead me to primary sources I might not have found on my own. It branches out farther and farther while I collect interesting facts and think about the themes I want to emphasize. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in finding new sources that I lose sight of the goal, but I like to get as clear a picture as I can.

For Talking Books, the process was interesting because it went from researching very broad ideas to learning about Robert. I was fortunate that there was a lot of documentation from the American Foundation for the Blind and news articles, but also from Robert himself and the people who worked closely with him. But Robert wrote about his own experiences and work in a way that felt a bit removed from it emotionally. This provided a challenge because I wanted readers to connect with him, so using the circumstances that blind students at the time were experiencing helped to bring the reader closer to Robert. So rather than telling the reader what he was feeling or thinking, they can read about how he was treated and then they can infer how that might have felt.

At what point do you feel comfortable beginning to draft? How does your research continue once you begin writing?

This has changed over time for me. Early in my writing, I would write long first drafts that were rambling and included everything I found interesting. I would then have to do more thinking about what I wanted the story to say, what I wanted readers to take away. Then I would need to do a lot more research to bring those ideas forward. Now, I tend to research until I see a strong takeaway, an idea to emphasize, then begin to draft. Now I usually take a few months to read about a subject before I try to draft and I do a lot more outlining than I did previously. I still need to refer back to the research as I draft, but usually I am referring back to information I am already familiar with and not looking for new information.

What is your favorite thing about research?

Learning new things! More specifically, I really love when I am researching a topic and find connections to other topics or people that I am even a little familiar with. I love learning how different histories connect and interact. While learning about Robert, I learned more about Helen Keller and her resistance to the talking books program. She thought that there were more pressing issues for the blind community. She eventually changed her mind and was instrumental in convincing President Roosevelt and Congress to fund a WPA project to create more talking book machines that not only allowed the program to expand to more readers, but employed workers with vision loss.

What’s your least favorite thing about research?

Finding really interesting facts that I have to cut from my book! For Talking Books, I learned that Robert paid for college by working as a door-to-door salesman, traveling on a tandem bike with his brother. They sold stereoscopes. He must have been an excellent salesman to sell a product he himself could not use! I am sure these skills helped him with everything he was able to achieve, but because it is a picture book, we wanted to get to his work on audiobooks more quickly, so we had to make some necessary cuts.

Jenny Lacika is a picture book author from New Mexico. As a chronically ill Chicana and graduate of MIT, her work often explores themes relating to STEAM education, disability and accessibility, and Chicanx culture and history.