Terry Farish, Photo by Jim Bates<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nOn a sunny October morning, I met Terry Farish at a perfect New Hampshire location. We sat at a rustic table on the deck of a cabin overlooking a stunning New Hampshire lake. Terry served freshly made blueberry muffins and delicious drip coffee with frothy heavy cream. We were there to talk about her career as a children\u2019s author and to touch on some of her books. A favorite of mine is The Cat Who Liked Potato Soup. The book is about an \u201can ol\u2019 Texas boy, country raised and don\u2019t you know. He lived on a road called Chatterpie, just him and an uppity old cat who\u2019d rather eat the old man\u2019s potato soup than catch blackbirds.\u201d Unfortunately, her editor rejected the first version of the book when she initially proposed it.<\/p>\n
As the wife of a military man, Terry and her daughter, Elizabeth, went with him when he was transferred to England to live in the picturesque village of Oxfordshire, where she met and befriended the neighbor, Jimmy Fowler. Terry tells me of this hand-me-down tale that Jimmy shared with her one morning over coffee.<\/p>\n
\u201cJimmy was an old man, and Elizabeth would go to school, and I would stop by, and he\u2019d make me coffee, and he\u2019d tell me stories. He knew about everybody in the village. He told me this story of when there was a man who lived there. He said I\u2019ll tell you a story about a cat. He said there was an old-timer who had a cat, and they had just been together a long time, and he loved that cat. The cat was getting old. He was worried the cat was suffering. And he didn\u2019t want this beloved cat to suffer. So one day, she didn\u2019t get up. He needed to do something. There was a river down from our cottages called River Evenlode.\u201d Terry pauses and says, \u201cJimmy\u2019s telling this story, and he could be giving it a spiel, but I bought it all. He took the cat on his bicycle with a bag, and he put some stones in the bag. He put the cat in the bag with the stones because he couldn\u2019t bear to see her suffer. He threw the bag into the river so the cat could have a peaceful death.\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, here is when I ask disturbed, dismayed, \u201cHe drowned the cat?\u201d
\n\u201cYes,\u201d Terry replies. \u201cAccording to Jimmy. The man was very sad, and he peddled home and on his front stoop was the cat. She wasn\u2019t dying at all. The editor I sent it to said this is a really good story, but we can\u2019t publish a book where a man tries to drown his cat even if it ends up the way it does.\u201d So, Terry switches it up and writes a book about an ol\u2019 Texas boy and uppity cat, perfectly illustrated by Barry Root.<\/p>\n
Terry writes in the book, \u201cThe cat was fond of the man\u2019s potato soup which made him love her a breath more, but not so\u2019s you\u2019d notice.\u201d As I read this line and looked at the soft, dreamy-like illustration, I thought that\u2019s how much I want to love; a breath\u2019s more.<\/p>\n
Terry Farish is a petit, soft-spoken woman. And beneath this lovely exterior beats a courageous heart. An example of her courage was by spending a year in Vietnam – during the war.\u201c<\/p>\n
My father was transferred to Texas. There were so many military bases in Texas. So many soldiers were drafted. A lot of people were going to Vietnam, and we were near a helicopter base, where they learned and trained. I was in a women\u2019s college, and we dated these helicopter pilot trainees, so Vietnam was a part of the now and the future. Someone came from the Red Cross to talk to the women at the university to recruit them to go to Vietnam to work for the Red Cross. I was reading all of the controversies about the war. I didn\u2019t know the Vietnamese people\u2019s point of view. So I thought I would like to go and work for the Red Cross. I was stationed in Cu Chi, not far from Saigon and the 25th Infantry. I was just out of college. Our job was to help the soldiers. This was a guerilla war. It was grim, and there was so much destruction of the people and American souls. The Red Cross hired young women to take recreation programs out to the men. We flew by chopper out to the fire support bases and the landing zones where the men were stationed. There were some stand-downs, maybe one or two in the year. Ours was a year tour, just like the soldiers and nurses. Some people never got over that year.\u201d<\/p>\n
I asked, \u201cWere you ever in danger?\u201d
\n\u201cAll the time! I was not injured. My mother was a patriot, and she, like a lot of military mothers, there was a pride your child would serve. Unfortunately, it took us too much after the war to reshift our minds. Once that veil is pulled away, you see how wars are always a political game. It\u2019s kind of like a loss of innocence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Terry and my conversation move to her work of the books she\u2019s written about people of color. In her 2016 book, Luis Paints the World, with illustrations by Oliver Dominguez, Terry tells the story of a young Dominican boy living in a Lawrence, Massachusetts neighborhood whose brother has left for another war, Afghanistan. Luis begins a mural on an alleyway wall where eventually the neighborhood families come to add their point-of-view to the drawing.<\/p>\n
Another book from the same year is Joseph\u2019s Big Ride, with illustrations by Ken Daley. Joseph is living in a refugee camp in South Sudan and immigrates to the United States. This book follows her 2012 book, The Good Braider, winner of the School Library Journal Best Book of the Year.<\/p>\n
I ask, \u201cDo you ever get any feedback on being a white woman writing in a world of people of color?\u201d
\n\u201cI do now. When I was writing these books and The Good Braider, identity politics had not taken hold so much that I do now. I\u2019ve done two books in collaboration. I\u2019ve learned how much I can do, how much more I can do with a collaborator. I wouldn\u2019t write a book across cross-culture again from my point of view. It\u2019s something that, as a writer, I\u2019m just so hungry to discover new things. I love research and interviewing. I love understanding things so deeply that I can write about it. But politically, it\u2019s not something that is honest anymore. And if I was going to write like the book I just did, The Boy from South Sudan, I want to write with someone who can take me deeply into the culture and then share the byline because we did it together. That\u2019s what I want. Collaborating is now my favorite way to write. It feels it\u2019s deeper than research. It\u2019s sharing your lives with somebody else.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHow did you get involved with the Portland Sudanese community?\u201d
\n\u201cIt was 2001 when I met so many people from Sudan, and I was working in Portland, and began recording stories. I was a librarian at the Portland Public Library. Many of them said we would like you to tell our story because no one knows why we\u2019re here. A lot of them didn\u2019t have English. The kids did. I explained that I was writing about the experience of teenagers coming to this country for school. For about ten years, I worked with people there listening to stories. I was recording these stories. I was going to do a creative nonfiction book.\u201d<\/p>\n