For a while, I didn’t know where to tell people I was “from,” but now it feels so natural and good to say I’m from Texas. I was born in Saudi Arabia and lived there until I was twelve, when my family then moved to Austin. The sun rising over the hills, the early morning mist in the live oaks, the mourning doves calling-these things are so familiar and comforting to me. I love waking up in my mother’s house, in the neighborhood where I grew up. KEJIA PARSSINEN: It’s always wonderful to be home. What’s it like to set foot on Lone Star soil again? LONE STAR LITERARY LIFE: Welcome back to Texas. We corresponded with her during her recent Texas book tour. In many ways, her new novel The Unraveling of Mercy Louis (Harper, 2015) is a tribute to all the girls she met on that journey: her coaches, the ones on her team, and the few Mercys she played against, the ferocious girls who left her awe-struck as they lit up the scoreboard, as they owned the court, the day, the season, the town. Kejia Parssinen played basketball competitively throughout middle and high school.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |