Andrea Wang Weaves Threads of Belonging: Exploring Identity in ‘Summer at Squee’

A podcast interview with Andrea Wang on The Growing Readers Podcast, a production of The Children’s Book Review.

In this engaging conversation, Andrea Wang shares insights into her latest book, Summer at Squee, where she explores themes of community, identity, and inclusivity.

Delve into the heart of Squee Camp, a vibrant setting where Phoenny Fang navigates friendships, cultural experiences, and her own biases. Discover the inspirations behind Andrea’s storytelling, from her personal experiences at a Chinese heritage camp to her reflections on anti-Asian racism. Learn how Andrea crafted authentic representation while making the story relatable to a diverse audience. Uncover the threads of empathy and belonging woven throughout her narrative and explore the transformative power of embracing joy and shared experiences.

As Andrea reflects on her writing process and highlights from the book, listeners will gain a deeper understanding of the rich tapestry of identity and community depicted in Summer at Squee.

Andrea Wang Talks About:

• Exploring the Concept of Community: How Summer at Squee portrays the dynamics of community within the camp setting.
• Cultural Identity and Representation: How the book tackles themes of cultural identity, particularly focusing on Phoenny Fang’s journey of self-discovery as she navigates her Chinese heritage within a multicultural environment.
• Addressing Bias and Prejudice: How the narrative addresses issues of bias and prejudice, particularly in Phoenny’s interactions with other campers.
• Writing Process and Inspirations: Her creative process behind crafting Summer at Squee, inspirations for the story, including her own experiences at a Chinese heritage camp, and how she approached the development of characters and plot elements.
• Themes of Inclusivity and Belonging: The importance of creating inclusive spaces, both within literature and in real-life communities, and ways to foster a sense of belonging for all individuals.

Listen to the Show

Read the Transcription

Bianca Schulze

Hi, Andrea. Welcome to The Growing Readers podcast.

Andrea Wang

 Hi, Bianca. I’m so happy to be here.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, this is so fun. So I’ve met you a couple of times at some SCBWI events, but this is really the first time we kind of get to dive deep together into your writing and your career and, of course, your latest book, Summer at Squee. I would love to just let everybody get to know you by, like, what’s one thing that you do in your day-to-day practices that you think would be the most surprising or it could be the most relatable, but just something that could inspire others or just demonstrate that they’re not alone?

Andrea Wang

Oh, one thing I started last year was to read a poem a day. I had been so busy with kids and the pandemic, writing and promo, and everything that I had really stepped away from reading poetry on a regular basis. But last year, I made an effort, and it was so easy because there are many people who post a poem a day on Instagram, and I would scroll through those. And I’ve been looking through my own collection of books of poetry that I’ve collected over the years and reading those as well. And I just really love how it reminds me of the power and the beauty of language and what it can do. And I do feel like reading more poetry has influenced my own writing.

Bianca Schulze

I love that answer. Do you have something that you’ve already read for today, or do you still need to go do that?

Andrea Wang

My son, who is my new social media manager, posted a poem on my Instagram account today. It is a poem by Pablo Neruda that I came across when I was in college. It is really one of my favorites. It gave me a lot of hope in college.

Bianca Schulze

Okay, awesome. What’s your Instagram handle so everyone can go read your poem for today?

Andrea Wang

It’s Andrea, and the word why, and my last name, Wang. @andreawhywang. My middle initial is the letter y, and I just decided to be cutesy and type it out as a word because I’m a very curious person.

Bianca Schulze

I love that. I love that. Well, to be a writer, they say that you must be a reader first. Some people agree with that. Some people don’t. But I want to know if there was a pivotal moment in which you did consider yourself a reader.

Andrea Wang

I actually learned to read really early on, thanks to Sesame Street, and my mother used to say that she used to tell a story that I came into the kitchen one day when I was a toddler and pointed to the loaf of bread on the counter and spelled it out, the word bread, and then read it to her, and she was just sort of astounded. I was like, oh, I guess that means I can read, and then later in kindergarten, I remember my teacher asking me to read picture books to the other classmates. And so I think that’s really when I considered myself a reader.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah. Yes, to Sesame Street. I was a big Sesame Street kid as well. And now I’m curious if you recall any of those picture books that your kindergarten teacher asked you to read, or do you just remember the moment of reading?

Andrea Wang

I don’t remember what titles they were. I just remember reading. I was a very shy kid, so I hid underneath my teacher’s desk most of the time, reading books. This was her way of getting me out from underneath her desk and sort of joining the class and participating, asking me to read.

Bianca Schulze

She was a clever lady. I had this really particular moment of reading a book in elementary school, and for me, it was probably second grade. I could read. I don’t think I was a strong reader, but it was like an early reader book In a Dark, Dark Room. And I think it stood out because it was kind of scary. I think that it was like a collection of stories, In a Dark, Dark Room and Other Scary Stories. That book is still in print, and I’m not young anymore.

Andrea Wang

Wonderful, it’s a classic.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, it totally is a classic. I probably need to talk about it on The Children’s Book Review or something. All right, well, let’s find out what drives you and guides you in creating books for children.

Andrea Wang

Oh, like I mentioned, I was a really shy kid, and I also was the only Asian American kid in my class growing up in rural Ohio and actually in my grade. You know, my brother was a couple of years older than me, and there was one other Chinese American family in town—and their two children were also in different grades than me, so I felt very isolated and very alone and like I didn’t belong. And so I am really driven to write stories that represent Chinese American kids because I didn’t see myself represented in books as a kid.

Bianca Schulze

And I feel like this is a great segue because this book, Summer at Squee, is so much about Chinese culture and identity within the Chinese culture. And I love that this book explores representation within Chinese American culture. I’m so excited to ask all these questions that I have for you, so why don’t we start with having you share with the listeners just a brief overview of what they could expect from Summer at Squee?

Andrea Wang

Summer at Squee is about a third-generation Chinese American girl. Her name is Phoenny Fang, and Phoenny is her nickname for Phoenix. And she has been going to a Chinese heritage summer camp in the Boston area since she was six—since the first year she could attend. And her mom and her mom’s best friend are the co-directors of this camp, but it is Phoenny’s safe space. She has met so many great friends there. She has a whole group of friends she calls the squad, and they just love hanging out and doing all these Chinese cultural activities together. 

And in Summer at Squee, it’s her last summer at camp before she ages out, and she’s just determined to make this, like, the most epic, spectacular summer ever. But she learns once she gets to camp that her squad has been separated into different groups because there’s been an influx of new campers, and she’s pretty devastated, as most twelve and thirteen-year-olds would be by something like that. And she discovers that these new campers are not as into the Chinese cultural activities as she is, and she really needs to sort of expand her sense of what it means to be Chinese American. But that makes it sound like a really, I don’t know, issue-heavy book. And it’s filled with summer camp-like hijinks and pranks and activities. So, on the one hand, it’s very light-hearted as well.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, I love it. And let’s not forget that there’s also maybe a first summer crush in there, too. All right, well, let’s talk about the setting before we go into the characters. So, the setting of Squee Camp is really vibrant, and it happens to be quite transformative as well. Can you share any personal experiences or inspirations that influenced the creation of this camp environment? I feel as though, from reading the acknowledgments at the back of your book, this was kind of a personal story in a sense.

Andrea Wang

Yeah. So Squee (SCCWEE), which stands for the Summertime Chinese Culture Wellness Enrichment Experience, is based largely on a Chinese heritage camp that my sons attended, and it is called the New England Chinese Youth Summer Camp, NECYSC. And, you know, because I didn’t grow up with a lot of peers who looked like me when I found out about NECYSC, I was really determined to send my kids there. I wanted them to know this safe space, this sense of belonging that I didn’t have.

When my oldest was six years old, I started sending him there. One of the requirements of attending NECYSC is that parents serve a volunteer duty shift. So I sort of got to know some of the other parents, and eventually, I joined the whole organizing committee and helped organize and run the camp for a few years. And I just loved seeing how the campers were so excited to be there and how free they sort of felt. And nobody had to explain what it meant to be Chinese American. They were all just living it. It was, and still is, set on a campus in the Boston Area, and, you know, I also went to college in the Boston area, so the campus in Squee is sort of a mixture of a bunch of different places.

Bianca Schulze

I love it, and I feel as though—because it is light and fun, it’s also a very multilayered story. The topic of some Asian hate issues on social media does come up. It’s not, like, a giant part of the story, but it is woven in, so my other question, just in terms of inspiration, is, what else besides your experiences at this New England camp inspired you to put this story together as a whole?

Andrea Wang

So, I was writing this manuscript while the pandemic was going on, and seeing the spike in Asian violence was really disturbing. And I was really frightened. I thought I was in a safe space, but what I thought was a safe space no longer was. And I had friends who avoided being in certain places, like the New York City subway, or going out at certain times because they were also very afraid. And that definitely had a, you know, I mean, camp has always been a safe space for Phoenny, and what if it no longer is? 

So she has a number of challenges as she goes to camp this summer. It’s no longer a safe space. She’s not with her group of besties. And then there are the new campers who, and this is just a very mini spoiler alert, they are transracial adoptees. They’re Chinese adoptees, and Phoenny hasn’t encountered adoptees before. And in real life, NECYSC had a number of Chinese adoptees, and it was really interesting to me to watch how they interacted with their non-adopted peers. And so I wanted to sort of explore that a little bit more from the perspective of someone who grew up within the culture and sort of has to confront her own internal biases about what it means to be Chinese American.

Bianca Schulze

Thanks for kind of getting vulnerable there, too, with this, Andrea, because I think it’s really important to have these conversations and for everybody to hear your experience. And I love that this is an Own Voice story, and I think it’s just really important to know that, yes, you’re a Chinese American author, yes, this is a book about Chinese American characters, but this is not a book that is only for Chinese American readers. This is a book for everybody to read, so I just felt like we needed to make that clear right now. I also want to say that Phoenny’s journey, would you say Fenny or Feeney?

Andrea Wang

I say Feeney because it sounds like the first part of Phoenix.

Bianca Schulze

Perfect. Okay, so Phoenny’s journey at Squee is a lot about self discovery and navigating cultural identity, so I would love to know, how did you approach developing her character arc, and especially in the context of her interactions with the other campers?

Andrea Wang

That’s a great question. Any novel is an iterative process, right? And I think the more times that I revised it, the more times I got to know Phoenny and the other characters. There were a number of other characters because her group of campers is twelve kids, ten of whom are girls and, two of whom identify as boys, and two counselors and two counselors-in-training.

So there were sixteen characters to manage at any one time, and in Phoenny’s character arc, she is a little bit like an unreliable narrator, maybe not in the strictest definition, but she has a very particular worldview, and she has grown up immersed in Chinese culture. She’s very close to both of her grandmothers, and she goes to Chinese school on the weekends. Her squad is all Chinese American girls, and she just sort of expects that everybody is like her in a way. And when the adoptees come to camp, that’s really challenging for her. And she has to think about what it means to be Chinese American, perhaps having grown up in an adoptive household. 

And that was really eye-opening for me as an author. I am not an adoptee, even though I’ve been around adoptees while working at camp. And we had sensitivity readers. And I talked to friends who study transracial adoption. And Phoenny’s character arc was a lot, in some ways, a lot like my own, challenging my own biases about what it means to be Chinese American. And, you know, definitely, it was informed by my own experience of other people treating me, as perhaps, a tour guide to all things Chinese, expecting me to understand parts of the culture that I’ve never been exposed to or knowing the language fluently, which I don’t, and asking me about really random things like philosophy, Chinese philosophy, which I’ve know very little about. All of that sort of went into this book.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, I love that you have interwoven these Mandarin words and some little bits of Cantonese in there, and I had to have a little bit of a white girl laugh at myself trying to pronounce some of the words. And I loved that you wove those in, and often, the words that you chose to weave into the story had a lot of meaning. Like, there was a lot of purpose that went into selecting which Chinese words or Mandarin words you put in. So I would love to know now, so Phoenny definitely undergoes significant growth throughout the story, which you just kind of went into. So, what do you hope readers, particularly the younger readers, will take away from her transformation?

Andrea Wang

I think just to approach people with curiosity rather than with assumptions and to sort of try and push back against the labels we might automatically assign to people when we see what they look like and to really get to know them, because I think that once we do get to know people on a deeper level, we find that they’re more like us than we might have initially thought.

Bianca Schulze

Absolutely. Well, as we know, the story explores themes of Chinese American identity within the summer camp setting. And I said before I read the acknowledgments, I love reading acknowledgments in the back pages, and so I know that from that, authentic cultural representation is very important to you. So, do you want to talk about the steps you took to ensure authentic cultural representation while also making the story relatable to a wider, diverse audience?

Andrea Wang

So, I gave Phoenny this trait of really liking to sew and do crafts. I think that that was a way for me not only to talk about Chinese culture because silk is from China and China makes a lot of the world’s clothing but also to bring in fashion to appeal to all. You know, I think all readers are interested, especially in middle school, about their appearance and wanting to fit in, and clothing is a big way that they try to do that. They also always want the trendiest, most expensive thing right, to wear. 

But Phoenny has a little different take on it, right? She likes to upcycle. She’s always taking apart clothes and putting them together with other clothes, and she goes thrifting. And the main secondary character, who’s a transracial adoptee named McKenna, is also very into fashion but not from a crafting point of view.

So, you know, as they sort of initially butt heads and get to know each other and later on become friends. The adoptees provided a way for me, as an author, to get across aspects of Chinese culture in kind of an organic way where readers are learning about it through the eyes of the adoptees, the different kinds of activities that they do at this camp, and it was really important to me to keep it authentic. I did a lot of research. I obviously had first-hand experience going to Chinese school myself and helping run the camp with a bunch of these different activities, but I wanted to make sure that down to the type of bristles on the calligraphy brushes was absolutely correct. Like, I’m not making up the type of bristles that are on there. There was a lot of research involved.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, it certainly came across to me. Well, actually, before I go on to my next question because I’ve mentioned the acknowledgments a couple of times, you also wrote that, I feel like, if I understand correctly, that you sold this book to your publisher based on two sentences that were a snippet of the book summary. Is that right? Did I understand that?

Andrea Wang

So, yes. Summer at Squee is the second book in a two-book deal. The first book was The Many Meanings of Meilon, and I had that book mostly written when it sold. And I pitched Summer at Squee just sort of based on an idea that I had been kicking around for a little while. I’d always wanted to write about my experience and my kids’ experience at a Chinese heritage camp. So, yeah.

Bianca Schulze

Wow.

Andrea Wang

It was like a two-sentence pitch, which was, I had never worked that way before, and it was definitely an interesting experience trying to weave—I guess I think I called it, like, whole cloth out of that little pitch.

Bianca Schulze

Wow. Yeah, that’s amazing. I mean, I feel like I could spend another thirty minutes talking about that.

Andrea Wang

I owe it all to an amazing editor.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, that’s incredible. All right, well, Phoenny encounters challenges in understanding the experiences of adoptees at camp. So we’ve kind of touched on this a bit, but maybe you want to elaborate just a little more? How did you navigate the theme of inclusivity and empathy within the narrative?

Andrea Wang

That was very much my intent from the beginning. I think I got caught up in something writers are often told, which is to raise the stakes—that books need high stakes. And so initially, I had written the new campers, the transracial adoptees, as sort of the antagonists, right? Because they come in, and in Phoenny’s point of view, they’re messing up her whole summer.

And we did not want to harm any adoptee readers, and we didn’t want to use the adoptee characters in the book in such a way, in the way that perhaps I have often felt used as a Chinese American in real life to be a cultural tour guide. I didn’t want the adoptee characters in  Summer at Squee to feel like tour guides for transracial adoption. So, for Phoee, it had to be much more of an organic learning process. And I forget what the question is.

Bianca Schulze

How did you navigate the theme of inclusivity and empathy within the narrative? It was kind of a tricky question, I think.

Andrea Wang

Well, as I kept writing McKenna’s character and the other adoptees’ characters and getting to know them, it really shifted for me to think about them not as the antagonists but as, you know, they all have their own backstories and they all experience their adoption in different ways. And it was important for me to show that adoption is not always this happy, wonderful, rosy thing. And having five adoptee characters, I was able to show a little bit more nuance, I hope, and different perspectives.

And I think that’s what this book was all about, was to show different perspectives, how Chinese Americans, whether they’re adopted or not, were not a monolith. We all have very different perspectives about things, whether we grew up in places with many Asian Americans around or no other Asian Americans around. We’ve all had such different experiences, and so there’s a section in the book where they sort of joke about the different ways in which they’re bad Asians and how they run counter to the stereotype of a good Asian, quote, unquote. And so that was sort of fun for me to write because, yeah, there’s no one right way to be Chinese American or one right way to be whoever you are; however you identify.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, absolutely.

Andrea Wang

It was really, yeah, I just wanted to create empathy. I think everybody, every reader, can identify with that feeling of not belonging at some point in their life.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the definition, I was always told as a kid, of empathy is walking in the shoes of others. And to do that, you need perspective. And I think by having such a wide cast of characters, that’s exactly what this book does. It offers perspective. 

All right, well, themes of community and belonging are central to the book. So, how do you see these themes resonating with readers, especially in today’s cultural landscape? So the themes of community and belonging and how it resonates with our youth of today.

Andrea Wang

I think we all need more community, right? The pandemic at first isolated us, and politics has really divided us down to, now, the books that children are or are not allowed to read in schools in different parts of the country. And so I think we’re all really looking for community. We’re all learning how to be back in the community after being in lockdown. And the way that the kids in the book find it is by rallying against a common cause, and that is the online trolls that they’ve encountered. 

And so they’re building a community, and they’re learning to build a community by being at camp with each other. And I think the more time that readers spend being with each other rather than maybe on their screens, the more time they spend together in real-time, which helps build community and all those things that we’ve been talking about empathy, inclusivity, understanding, and belonging.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, I wish I had written down this line, but there was a line that you included that really, I think, is what you’re talking about. And it was about, I’m going to butcher it, so I’m sorry, but these are not Andrea’s words, word for word, everybody. I guess one of the ways to come up against hate is by showing your joy.

Andrea Wang

Oh, yeah, that is not my word or my phrase either. That is a poet who, let’s see, her name is Toi Derricotte, I believe, and she said that joy is an act of resistance. And that’s what trolls want us to do, that’s what terrorists want us to do, is to feel fear and to divide ourselves. But if we can overcome that fear and find joy in being together, that is by itself an act of resistance.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, well, so that I had it completely wrong, everybody. But it was in the story; it was in the story. But yes, and we’re talking about some deep topics because that’s what I seem to do. But I think that joy is what this story actually is all about and coming together. Well, could you walk us through your writing process for Summer at Squee? I mean, you touched on its origin with those two sentences, but were there any particular challenges or breakthrough moments during the creation of the story?

Andrea Wang

I think, yeah, I mentioned before that shifting my own perspective about who the antagonists were in the book was such a big breakthrough for me. Rather than having the antagonist be a person or a group of people, it was really the main character herself confronting her own biases and her own assumptions about other people. And once I sort of figured that out, thanks to my editor, I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. But then I had to rewrite the entire book. 

This book has gone through so many changes from the beginning to the end. I mean, since I wrote it during the pandemic, I really wanted and needed a light-hearted, fun book. And the first draft was very much a middle-grade romance. There were so many more scenes between Phoenny and her crush, Harrison, and as the book developed and I added layers, something else my editor said was that it’s less about the romance between Harrison and Phoenny. It’s sort of more about, you know, you could say romance, but friendship-romance between McKenna, and, like, they’re developing affection for each other as friends.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, I do want to comment on that. I just found the way you wrote about this first crush. It just felt so healthy. As a mom of three kids, two of whom are girls, I would be so happy for them reading this because it’s okay to have crushes. It’s okay to feel flirtatious, and it’s really important to make sure that whoever you’re crushing on is being respectful of you. And I felt like that respect level really came across, so thank you for doing that.

Andrea Wang

Thank you. I’m so happy to hear that. Yeah, I read several books about consent when this was sort of more of a middle-grade romance because that was and still is something that I think I’d like to write about, so it was really important to me that Phoenny and the other girls sort of stand up for themselves, speak up for themselves and make sure that they are respected.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, it’s so important. All right, well, you’ve written other books like the beautiful, award-winning Watercress, The Many Meanings of Meilan, as we just talked about, and Worthy. Well, Worthy’s upcoming, right?

Andrea Wang

Yes, Worthy will be out next year.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, amazing. Well, I would love for you to give us a glimpse into these projects and how you feel they complement the themes explored in Summer at Squee. Is there a thread, a common thread?

Andrea Wang

Absolutely. I think they’re all ultimately about identity, and they do touch upon anti-Asian racism. And Worthy, which comes out next year, is a picture book about a Chinese American man who fought in the American Civil War in the 1860s and the racism that he encountered being one of the very few Chinese people in the United States at the time and how we are all here now, and we are learning to, we are developing our own culture as Chinese Americans, which is very different from being Chinese, having grown up in China. 

Chinese American culture is a unique thing and an evolving thing, and I think that theme of evolution kind of runs through all of my stories since Watercress, right? Watercress is autobiographical and talks about sort of my grappling with my cultural heritage and learning not to be ashamed of it as a kid.

The Many Meanings of Meilan is about a Chinese American girl who moves to a small rural town in Ohio, much like the one that I grew up in and coming from Boston, Chinatown, that’s a huge shock for her. She gets renamed at school, and this profoundly affects how she thinks about herself and how important names are as an identifier, not just for who we are but it has roots in our culture and our heritage. And so I think all of these books are very related to those themes.

Bianca Schulze

A theme that was in Summer at Squee was the cloth and the fabric and the ribbons and the kinds of threads. And you were very specific on whatever moment you were connecting with a thread, on what kind of thread it was, because I know, again from the acknowledgments that you like to sew. So, if you were to pick a kind of thread or fabric that would weave through all of the books, what kind of thread would it be?

Andrea Wang

Wow, what a question. Through all of these books. Maybe not a thread, but a fabric like raw silk. And you know how raw silk often has little slubs in it? It’s not completely smooth. And so I think that that’s like these characters and their journeys and the way they identify, right? They have their flaws. They have their obstacles.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, that was a great choice. And yes, I know exactly what clothes you’re talking about, because I have this pink silk skirt that is in my closet. I bought it in my early twenties, and it’s beautiful. It was on a sale rack, and it was still far too expensive for me, but I had to have it. It doesn’t fit me anymore, but I cannot part with it. I look at this skirt, and I think maybe, just maybe, one of my girls will love it as much as I did.

Andrea Wang

Oh, I love that. Yeah, it’s like an integral part of you.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, I love that. It’s the roughness of those little kind of balls that appear on the silk. Anyway, I’m not a sewer. I’m not a crafter, but I loved that element of your stories, and so thank you for coming up with that answer on the spot.

Andrea Wang

I’m amazed that I came up with anything personally, but I really do love to sew, and I collect fabric, and so that came to mind.

Bianca Schulze

All right, well, can you share a highlight from the book? Or maybe you’d even be willing to read a favorite section.

Andrea Wang

All right, let me find it. This is just a short paragraph from a scene after bingo night at Squee, which is one of the activities they do, and their version of bingo is unique. She has tied with McKenna, Phoenny has tied with McKenna, and they have had to compete in a dance-off for the prize. Phoenny is very clumsy, and this is like her worst nightmare coming true.

But she survives, and she says afterward, “I study the faces of the people around the table, people who are now my friends. That’s the heart of Squee. Silly shared experiences like accidentally braining your counselor with a birdie, or falling over while doing wobbly wushu stances, or dancing completely out of rhythm to a song. It’s about being together and figuring out who we are without our parents around to tell us what we’re doing wrong or how we can be better. Squee is a chance to be ourselves for a brief, glorious time.”

Bianca Schulze

A great selection. May I follow up and share a couple of the spots that I highlighted?

Andrea Wang

Oh, I’d love to hear that. Yeah.

Bianca Schulze

So I feel as though these two little snippets that I’m going to read are kind of like a summary of what we’ve talked about throughout all the questions. “We’re all individuals with our own unique histories and experiences, likes and dislikes. We’re not interchangeable just because we share an ethnicity.” I liked the way that it was just so clear and succinct.

And then my next one, “‘And our camp demonstrates and celebrates all the beautiful ways there are to be us, American Born Chinese,’ I say. ‘Transracial Chinese adoptees,’ says McKenna, ‘immigrants, mixed race, mono or multilingual queer and questioning and so much more.’ I look at McKenna. ‘All at once and intersecting,’ she says.”

And I just wanted to share that because it is all intersecting. And yes, this is a lot about Chinese culture being Asian American, but that also is for everybody. We are all figuring ourselves out. And if we can go back to what we talked about with belonging and inclusivity, and if we could all just be together and realize that we’re all just figuring this out as we go each day and day, wouldn’t that be so much better?

Andrea Wang

So much better. Absolutely, yeah. And thank you for making the point that this book is for everyone. I mean, being Chinese American definitely is a big theme of the book, but it’s just one aspect or one facet of all the characters. There’s so much more to every single one of them.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, well, finally, what message or lasting impression do you hope that readers will carry with them after finishing Summer at Squee?

Andrea Wang

Let’s see, what did I write? So a lasting impression from Summer at Squee, I think, is just that you are fine just the way you are and, you know, again, to just look past the labels that are assigned to you, that you assign to other people and find the things that you have in common.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, absolutely. So, Andrea, for me, Summer at Squee, as you said, is definitely a book that helps readers of all backgrounds think more about their own preconceptions about ethnicity and culture and realize that there’s no one right way to be a part of culture. And I’m pretty sure those words were words that you wrote to me before we had our conversation today. So, thank you for writing, and I want to emphasize such a joyful story. And I do just have to laugh a little bit because it’s a story set at summer camp, and the day that we are recording this is a winter storm in Colorado, and we’re all longing for 

Andrea Wang

And we’re all longing for summer.

Bianca Schulze

Exactly, exactly. Well, just thank you so much for writing it, and thank you so much for spending time with me today and for coming on The Growing Readers Podcast.

Andrea Wang

Oh, this has been a wonderful conversation. I’ve enjoyed it so much. Thank you for having me.

About the Book

Publisher’s Book Summary: From Newbery Honor–winning author Andrea Wang, a new middle grade novel about a Chinese American tween who attends a Boston-based Chinese cultural overnight camp—and the many ways it transforms her.

Phoenny Fang plans to have the best summer ever. She’s returning to Summertime Chinese Culture, Wellness, and Enrichment Experience (SCCWEE for short and “Squee” to campers in the know), and this year she’s a senior camper. That means she; her best friend, Lyrica Chu; and her whole Squad will have the most influence. It almost doesn’t matter that her brother is a CIT (counselor-in-training) and that her mom and auntie are the camp directors. Time spent at Squee is sacred, glorious, and free.

On the day Phoenny arrives, though, she learns that the Squad has been split up, and there’s an influx of new campers this year. Phoenny is determined to be welcoming and to share all the things she loves about camp—who doesn’t love spending hours talking about and engaging in cultural activities? But she quickly learns how out of touch she is with others’ experiences, particularly of the campers who are adoptees. The same things that make her feel connected to her culture and community make some of the other campers feel excluded.

Summer at Squee turns out to be even more transformative than Phoenny could’ve imagined, with new friendships, her first crush, an epic show, and a bigger love for and understanding of her community.

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Show Notes

Andrea Wang is the award-winning author of the picture books The Nian Monster (Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature Honor), Magic Ramen (Freeman Book Award Honor), and Watercress (Caldecott Medal and Newbery Honor). Her debut middle-grade novel is The Many Meanings of Meilan, which was featured on a recommended reading list from TODAY Show Read with Jenna. Andrea likes to write about family, food, and culture. She spent her childhood in Ohio and Boston and now lives in Colorado with her family.

Resources: You can visit Andrea Wang online at ⁠⁠⁠https://andreaywang.com/⁠ and ⁠https://www.instagram.com/andreawhywang/⁠.

Thank you for listening to the Growing Readers Podcast episode: Andrea Wang Weaves Threads of Belonging: Exploring Identity in Summer at Squee. For the latest episodes from The Growing Readers Podcast, Subscribe or Follow Now.