It was during the COVID pandemic. George Floyd had just been murdered. Bestselling author Nicola Yoon was hurting. So she wrote.
“It all had a really profound effect on me, like a lot of people. I was despairing, and filled with rage and sadness,” said Yoon, who found the words of her new “One of Our Kind” pouring out of her. “The first draft took me six weeks, which is the fastest I’ve ever written anything.”
In the novel, a family — Jasmyn and King Williams and their son, Kamau — experiences disturbing changes when they move into an exclusively Black community. A passionate advocate for justice, Jasmyn realizes her neighbors have no interest in social issues or their identities as Black people.
Yoon’s young adult novels “Everything, Everything” and “The Sun Is Also a Star” were bestsellers that became movies. But “One of Our Kind” is intended for adults. We talked about why she had to write it, loving Minnesota writer Kate DiCamillo and being 1,000 years old.
Q: “One of Our Kind” is informed by recent events such as police shootings of Black people. Where did the idea for the book come from?
A: A couple of places. This podcast I listen to, “You’re Wrong About,” was doing an episode about “The Stepford Wives” and how we remember that book [about strong women who lose their strength when they move to a mind-controlling suburb] wrong. It’s actually quite feminist, but people forget that. So, I thought, “ ‘The Stepford Wives,’ but Black.”
Q: You said the idea originated in a couple of places?
A: Also, I had been on a panel about race with a friend and, later, we went to dinner and we drank too much wine and chatted. And he said, “Do you ever wonder who we’d be without the specter of racism?” It’s hard to imagine how you would be without this huge thing.