Embracing All Your Parts with Amaris White

Mixed Asian Media - December 6, 2022

By Jalen Jones

Amaris White is the co-author and illustrator of the humorous and heart-warming poetry collection Poetry with Dad. The book — which has since been turned into a series, with the publication of its follow-up More Poetry with Dad — was created by Amaris White and her father, Trevor White, to share poems with the intention of making readers “smile each day with a little artistic humor.”

To get started, would you mind saying a little bit about your background and how you got started on journey Poetry with Dad?

So my dad was struggling with some health issues last year and, for the most part, throughout a lot of COVID. Because COVID is so isolating, he lost a lot of his social circle, and he was high-risk. A lot of this was before the vaccine came out. It was really tough for him, and so I came up with this idea to cheer him up — a sort of a group project we can work with.

I remembered how when we were kids, my dad was always really, really clever with words. Not only is he English, but on top of that he loves the English language. He would give us English assignments and make us memorize poems. He read to us every single night before bed. He could also make up poetry on the spot. You could come up to him and say, “Oh, make up a poem about Jalen on Zoom,” and he could come up with it in 10 seconds, and immediately jump into a cute, silly poem about Jalen on Zoom!

When I was younger I loved to draw, though I'm not a good artist by any means. My dad mentioned when I was in middle school, like, “Oh, we could come up with cartoons together.” But nothing came of it. So when the pandemic happened last summer, I approached him with an idea and said, “You know, it might be fun if you wrote poems, and then I poorly illustrated. That could be a fun collaboration.” I remember him responding, “Oh, I don't know if I have the energy for it.” I was like, okay, no pressure, it's fine. But then within 10 minutes, he sent me a poem, and another, and then another, and he's like, “Oh, I'm just on a roll!” I made my first illustration, and then we ended up doing it every single day for about 120 days. It really brought a lot of joy and excitement to both of our lives.

My dad's health conditions got a little bit worse over time, and he passed a few months ago. The project had sort of had to come to an end. I have about 10 more poems left that he wrote about the holidays, so I'm going to illustrate and publish those going into next month. Then I'll probably do a third book. We have Poetry with Dad and then More Poetry with Dad. I thought I might put together, like. “Holiday Poetry with Dad.” Then I have to sort of think about what this next chapter is going to look like. We had talked about writing a children's story, and had sort of a brief outline with touching points, so we might work on bringing my dad's story to life.

I love how you mentioned that your dad would give you assignments when you were little, and then you came up with this assignment for him! That must’ve been really sweet. It seems like writing and illustrating with your dad served as this guiding light for you during the pandemic. I can tell it kept you both going.

I think it's really nice because he was always so good at writing, but he never wrote anything [like a book]. It's nice to have these books, and through them his words will be able to live on forever. I found that a surprising number of my friends' kids really enjoy the poems, which is so sweet and nice. When I suggested the project, neither of us realized that this would be the last year he had, so it's kind of poetic and beautiful that we got to be able to share it by creating this together.

It truly serves as a sort of remembrance. It can last forever.

I did want to talk a little bit about the poems. You and your father have created really endearing poems and illustrations in your collections. They gave me a really heartwarming feeling, and I could tell there's a lot of heart and joy in the work that you did together. Did you explicitly set out to capture any specific emotions — be that heartwarming, joy, or stuff like that? Or did these feelings just naturally crop up out of the practice?

I think they naturally cropped up. You'll see one repeating character, and there's a girl named Amalaina. Her name is based on my name and my sister's name. A lot of the stories are either completely fabricated, and some of them are about true stories. There's one poem with Amalaina and her dad and a bunny rabbit:

My mom plants flowers in the yard. They're such a pretty sight. But lately Mr. Bunny comes to fill his appetite. So Dad and I decided that we stew them in a pot, but mommy put her foot down saying absolutely not.

My dad's English, so he likes eating rabbit. He would always make jokes about eating the rabbit in the backyard because my mom would be so upset, since she loves rabbits and thinks they're so cute — she just doesn't want them eating her garden! There's another poem about my dad going to a bar, and that's sort of like an ode that he wrote to the local bar down the street that he would go to all the time. There's a poem about Amalaina being mixed — her dad is from England, and her mom is from Japan — so there's little bits of touches for that.

One thing that was really important to my dad was having an educational aspect. He really believed that if you can have fun while you're learning, then that's the best way to retain information. You’ll see a dash of educational elements, whether it's teaching you about the equinox and the seasons, or something about Isaac Newton and gravity.

I noticed the educational aspects of your poems too — I loved that there was a poem about International Women's Day, and another one that taught me about platypuses. It really shows how your dad was able to capture this childlike wonder, while also still teaching people. It's really beautiful.

How did you go about balancing all of these aspects into your work? Was there a curation or editing process that you did together? I want to know more about the process of creating these pieces.

So, my dad would get into flows when creating poems. Sometimes I could have a day where he'd send me seven poems in a day, back-to-back-to-back. Other times it'd be a few days without hearing a poem.

There was definitely a curation process. There were poems that my dad would write, where I would find them a little confusing and say, “Can we tweak this?” And there'd be illustrations where he'd be like, “Oh, this doesn't really convey what's happening in this poem.” Sometimes we could get on each other's nerves. I'd get offended if I'd spent, like, two hours working on a drawing and he'd be like, “I don't like it.” [laughs] But I do take his feedback, and we keep going on. It's part of having any kind of project with a family member.

I noticed that Amalaina shares the same identity as you, half English and half Japanese. Was it always a goal of yours to represent those with similar backgrounds as you and your sister?

So, Amalaina was a name that my dad would always use throughout by putting my and my sister’s names together. I think he had joked or made comments in the past about wanting to write a story about Amalaina. She was inspired, I think, from our lives to some extent. I think when you're drawing for your personal experiences, it makes sense that the character would also be mixed.

I kind of hope that if any of my friends' kids read [these books], they see that representation, because I think that's important. There are a few of my friends’ kids who are actually in the illustrations. One of them is a little girl who's mixed Asian as well! It's very cute. I tried to make the other characters outside of Amalaina and her father a little bit more diverse, just because I think it's important to show that.

So much of who Amalaina is is that she comes from two different cultures. I remember being told by somebody when I was younger that they felt sorry for me because I had two cultures. I was so confused at the time, because I thought it was the best of both worlds! I get to have double the holidays. Why would that be a bad thing? I get to go to Japan every summer. I get to eat Japanese food. It didn't strike me as a bad thing. Back when I was growing up, people were always asking, “What box do you fit into?” Once it was a standardized testing exam, and you could only circle one race. I remember my dad asking, “What are my kids supposed to fill out? They're not one race.” They would say, “Well, pick whichever one they're more of.” Like, they're half. You can't. They're not more one thing than the other. They're exactly half and half mixed. I think I would just rotate and randomly do it based on whatever I felt like filling out that day.

I remember filling out “Other” a lot of the time, because I’d refuse to choose just one.

That's definitely an important part of who Amalaina is. She's not just a precocious little girl. She's a precocious little girl that comes from two different worlds, and she gets to share that that's just part of who she is.

I think my dad's writing comes across like an old, English man wrote it. And then I feel like my drawings were inspired by my mom. She would do cartoons when we were younger — so I copied her. I was obsessed with manga and anime. I was constantly drawing Sailor Moon and Pokémon or whatever the next thing was. I think inherently every single illustration is sort of a merging of two cultures: there's the old, English man who wrote the words, and then there's the half Japanese daughter who copied anime and manga for most of her childhood with this Japanese-inspired type of style. In some ways, these books really are the melding of those two cultures. There's no way to separate it. 

It's really admirable how it serves as a representation for the many people who will read these. I mean, I even felt a little represented too. I'm gonna be showing this to my little sisters too. I can't wait to see more.

I wanted to ask what you might have on the horizon. You mentioned a third book, maybe related to the holidays.

I'm really trying to figure out what to do next. Some ideas I have are sharing more of my story through just cartoon representations. I've also thought about sharing more different parts of Japanese culture, which I thought could be fun. But I’m definitely in a transition moment. It's sad that there is a finite amount of Poetry with Dad that can happen. I guess we'll have to stay tuned. I don't want this to be the end of this journey.

What better way to try and motivate yourself to do that than to invest in yourself, and give yourself the proper tools. I've been doing some online tutorials to try and get my game and figure out how to continue this journey going forward.

That’s really exciting! I'm glad you're sticking through it.

Jalen Jones is a writer, poet, director, and all around creative who came of age in Eagle Rock and the greater Los Angeles county. Over the years he has hosted a children’s workout DVD series, directed an Emmy Award winning Public Service Announcement, and produced the NAACP Image Award nominated short film “The Power of Hope.”

Passionate about portraying the real, the unpinpointable, and the almost-unsayable, Jalen has published a wide array of poetry and creative work that lands on these very discoveries. More than anything, he hopes to build a house out of words that can make anyone and everyone feel like they belong. Find him on Instagram @jalen_g_jones.