Episode 119: Jennifer Rosner, Award-winning author of The Yellow Bird Sings and Once We Were Home
Jennifer Rosner’s first novel, The Yellow Bird Sings was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.
Her new release, Once We Were Home is historical fiction based on the true stories of children separated and displaced from their parents, during and after World War II. The novel has been called “moving, subtle, and beautifully told”.
We talk about the relevance of children being “re-united” with their culture, not only in history, but how similar situations still create moral debate, today.
Jennifer also shares her personal connection to the question of whether and why a child belongs in a particular place, or with a particular type of family.
Check out the book club questions and Jennifer’s best recipe for falafel on Book Club Bites.
Books Mentioned:
Once We Were Home by Jennifer Rosner (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
The Yellow Bird Sings by Jennifer Rosner (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness by Jai Chakrabarti (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Deaf Republic: Poems by Ilya Kaminsky (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Jericho Brown - Poet (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Beyond That, the Sea by Laura Spence-Ash (Bookshop.org / Amazon.com )
Full Disclosure: We are part of the Amazon and bookshop.org affiliate programs, which means Lainey or Ashley get a tiny commission if you buy something after clicking through from link on this website.
Connect with the author:
Transcript:
** Transcript created using AI (so please forgive the typos!) **
Lainey Cameron
Jennifer, it's fabulous. I was lucky enough to read it. And there were moments where I'm like pulling out the tissues. And there were also other moments where I'm like, my heart just sung. But you know, what I liked the most about this book is, there's a lot of World War Two fiction out there. I mean, it's probably the most popular category of historical fiction. But I did not know this story I did not know about the Jewish kids who after the war is over, were brought back from wherever they had been taken, hidden, etc. And with this book, you've interwoven the story of four different kids, and what happens to them after the war, as they're kind of reclaimed by the Jewish community. And I didn't know any of this, like, like, this was all new to me. And so I love whenever a book takes something that I should have known.
Jennifer Rosner
Thank you so much, I really appreciate you saying that, you know, I didn't know the history either. And I had been studying a lot of actually a lot about hidden children and never really learned what happened after. And then I ended up meeting a woman who actually worked as an operative in your larger mission to retrieve children after the war, these were orphans, and, you know, they had been in hiding in Polish Christian settings. And then because of this annihilated jewelry, there was this attempt to try to reclaim and get back every last Jewish child, because the that was the future of this people. And I found it really fascinating, but also, like, morally complex, it depended on you know, how old they were and what they remembered of their past. So for some children, you know, who really understood their Jewish roots going back to a situation like that felt comfortable. But for some children who were hidden, very young, maybe they were three, when it started, and they were seven, one and ended this Christian family was all they ever knew. And so it would be very complicated.
Jennifer Rosner
So I was trying to represent the psychological variation and the different reactions that children might have. And, you know, after studying that particular kind of situation, I also learned of other cases where children were taken from their settings under different circumstances. And without making any equivalencies between the cases I was just interested in the children's sort of psychological well being and how they struggled with the sense of self and identity and what home is, and all these things, can you give us a short version of what it's about. So it's about four different children who, you know, in different ways and under different circumstances are taken from a place where they've been harbored safely and are moved. And so in the case of two of the children, you know, they've been hidden with a Polish family. And after the war, a Jewish organization is seeking to take them back into Judaism. And so they're moved from that home. And then in the case of another child, he's in a convent, when actual relatives come to seek him out, the church actually takes him on the run over the Pyrenees. And in that case, they're trying to secure his salvation, his Christian salvation. In another case, there's a child who was actually taken from her family in Poland, and she's Germanized in so in a way, this is really about children who are moved in accordance with adult ideologies and or missions or beliefs about what's best for a child. And I'm examining it from the child's point of view, and what it means to be taken from these different places and how they feel about themselves their sense of self and, and home.
Lainey Cameron
It struck me how well you portrayed how it affects these kids identity as they go into adulthood. because the book follows them all the way from being kids into into becoming adults in their 20s-- and it I think it ends by like their late 20s, early 30s, if I'm right? Roger, who's who's been kind of brought up in this Catholic, monastery scenario, you know, the church thought they were trying to save him by not sending them back to the Jewish community, because they were going to save his soul by keeping them Catholic, I thought you portrayed really well, but this element of like, all the adult characters are trying to do the right thing in the name of their faith or in the name of what they believe is right. But is it really the right thing by the kids? And how does it affect a child's identity? If they start somewhere, and then they're wrenched out of that home and they're put somewhere else, and you're talking about kids who've already been through horrendous things because of the war. And you add this on top of that now they're once more snatched away from home, I just thought you've treated all so well. And I saw the word subtle in a lot of your reviews, you've taken this topic that it would be really easy to take like one site, you didn't you tried to prepare very, with great complexity and subtlety. And was that hard? Because you did it really, really well.
Jennifer Rosner
Thank you. I appreciate that. I mean, I actually think that there was so much blurriness, and I've been thinking a lot about this time in history and how I'm not even sure sometimes that there's a vocabulary to describe what happened. You know, when I met a woman who had done this opera, you know, she was an operative for this mission. Actually, there was a big conversation about the vocabulary, whether it was returning or redeeming or retrieving or ransoming. I mean, there were all these words and no one knew what it was and I don't even know if there was is a word or language to express this complex moment where these children who have had such rupture don't actually have parents don't have papers. Where is it that they belong? I mean, they have been stowed in this in this place to be harbored, you know for safekeeping, but they're not actually. You know, they're in that family maybe emotionally but not kind of officially. And so the whole thing was blurry and the church to who had taken the children, you know, for their safety for their salvation. In the case of surviving relatives, that seems clearer. But in the case of orphaned children, it's very blurry, I wanted the reader to feel, you know, the kind of complex psychology of the situation, which I think was really in, in place at that time. And so for all the cases, you know, if they were righteous in their belief, the child was moved along. And I wanted to say, you know, this situation of children being moved, you know, right now, Russian soldiers are taking Ukrainian children, there's a court case about a Native American child who's in a white family, and the tribe would like the child back and this kind of thing is happening all the time where we're moving children around, and according to some adult conception, and maybe not looking at where their bonds are, where they're, you know, emotional kind of identifications are and who they feel closest to.
Jennifer Rosner
And I think I would say one other thing, which is very personal, which is that, you know, while I, you know, kind of fell into the subject matter, because I met this woman, and it opened up this world. And then I started exploring all the ways in which children are moved around, there's something really personal about it, because I'm the mom of two deaf children. And I'm, you know, my husband and I are hearing that our children are deaf. And when we have these deaf children, and there's it's a very politically fractious experience to be hearing parents of deaf children, because everyone has opinions. And one of those opinions we heard was, you know, our children don't belong with us, we shouldn't be raising our children because they're deaf, and we had no idea how to raise deaf children, all this kind of stuff about where our children would belong. And it was startling to think, wow, in this particular case, that like, because our children didn't grow cilia in their ear, that we shouldn't raise them, you know. And of course, it's more than that. If you believe in, you know, a deaf community and Deaf culture and all these other things, like it's very complicated. But it was just shocking to be kind of thrown in the middle of a conversation about where children should be raised, and by whom, and who they belong to. So it's really close to the bone. Like, I think it's one of those things where it's a fascinating topic, but the thing that maybe drove me to my desk every day, was a deeper psychological kind of resonance with the material.
Lainey Cameron
Yeah, perhaps a little humility that none of us know how to do parenting the right way, the humility of like, maybe we need to listen to the kids and what's right for them as well, I felt that came across really well in the book that no one was listening to these kids, right? No one was asking these kids at any point, like, what do you want in this scenario? And so I thought that was really interesting and portrayed, probably very realistically, but it's not, that's not the way it played out. Right? No one sat down and had a circle and asked the children what they'd like to have happen. They all just got, you know, moved here and there and snatched and put back and yeah, it was very..
Jennifer Rosner
They believed it would all work out that the child would realize that this was the right placement for them that they would adjust to the new situation, and that it would feel like it was correct at some point. But one of the operatives who did this work wrote a lot, he actually followed every child that he moved, and he followed them for the, you know, over the course of his life, and he felt that he had been responsible for some real psychic damage that in the end, when he questioned what he done, he wasn't really sure, even though it felt like a moral imperative that Poland was such a dangerous place. It was basically a graveyard for Jewish people, and they felt they were saving those children. I think that later a few, you know, some of them were really reflective and thought, was this the right thing?
Lainey Cameron
And the person that you met, I'm really interested in how did you come in contact? Or how did you end up because that was obviously key to your inspiration. How did you meet this person that kind of inspired you to research this topic ?
Unknown Speaker
I was interviewing her husband for my first novel The Yellow Bird Sings, and he just said, you know, my wife story is more interesting than mine. And we just sat down, and she told me and, you know, I let the information sit with me. And I was really, you know, that this kind of happened. And then I started following I started reading historians. So there's a historian that Israel who has probably interviewed every person involved, you know, every operative and every child, and I'm sure you did such in depth research. And I actually had her read my manuscript, in fact, first, someone translated it for her, and then she read it and gave comments and then they translated it back. I mean, it was this big thing. And at the end, you know, she and this woman who translated like, sent me a pope photo with them, like holding up, you know, like a cheers with with little drinks, you know, that we had gone through the whole novel, but she was very generous and very persnickety, too. So it made me feel that the history wasn't accurate. And she helped me even understand like, if the children were being moved, maybe they'd be first in this part of Poland, and then they might get to this Bavarian part of the children's home and then they go to Marseille and from there, they get on a boat, etc. So so even checking, like the locations and the timing and how it might have worked, it was modeled after one of these movements of children.
Lainey Cameron
That's phenomenal. Like I can tell the research and just how much that soul went into This book is probably the best way to say it. I'm gonna read one quick quote, which I think is a beautiful quote and kind of captures the book really well. It's from Kristin Harmel, who is a fabulous author of historical fiction herself like The Forest of Vanishing Stars, The Book of Lost Names. Here's what Kristin said. She said "lush, transformative and heartbreaking. The poetic Rosner is a gifted storyteller, and here she asks us to consider the true meaning of home and family in a world turned upside down. Astonishing in both its detail and its lyricism and thrilling in its scope. "What a beautiful quote from Kristen, and for those who don't know, your previous book, which was also absolutely fabulous, The Yellow Bird Sings was a finalist in the National Jewish Book Award, and did phenomenally well and has 11,000 reviews on Goodreads and is just a fabulous read, if anyone hasn't read that one, you might want to do both. in either order, you might want to read both books. So let's talk a little bit about what you've learned as an author, because this is your second novel, you and I knew each other a little in our debut year as well, um, what do you advise to people who are wanting to write, you know, a book that is this beautiful and well researched? Like, where do you even start?
Jennifer Rosner
Thank you. Well, I feel like the advice I give writers is just persist and persevere and just keep going. Because the Yellow Bird Sings took me it was 10 years really, from the kernel of the idea to the published book. And that is a very long time. And, you know, many people produce books in a shorter way. But it just took that time. And I think because I stuck with it, I was able to accomplish it. And if I and so I think that persistence is really the key in this operation. You know, it's, you have to just get to your desk and keep trying. And, in fact, with that book, you know, I was joking the other night that for at the beginning, you know, there was in my mind, there was this mother and a girl in a barn. And I remember taking a walk with my friend and saying, you know, I'm gonna write the story about this mother and their own barn. And literally, like, three years later, we were on a walk again, and she's like, how's it going on, like, there's this girl and a woman in her bar in the barn, like, sort of still there. And sometimes it just takes really sitting with something and letting it have its time and simmer and that and being patient and kind. And, you know, I know a lot of people have like word counts. And everyday, they have to work for this many hours. And I don't do that because I can't, I can't legislate, when I'm going to write well, you know, and when I'm going to be creative and have an idea, I tried to sort of touch the material every day in some way, just so that it continues to simmer. And as long as I'm doing that every day, I'm the times when I'm on a roll, it'll take off. And other times when it's not working, I'll have like, just touched it enough that maybe tomorrow will be better. But I don't know, to me, I think it's just kind of being generous with yourself and letting the process take the time it needs to take and this novel was quicker. But I think, you know, a lot of the research I had done already, you know, was a foundation for that, and also this book at a different kind of action trajectory. And so in a way the writing mirrored that. And so you know, you have to let the process be I think in every book, I'm sure you can speak to this. Each book has its own process.
Lainey Cameron
Great. Yeah. And learning that. And I'm also learning the, the challenge of not comparing yourself to other people. I think your example of having patience with how long a particular book is going to take is really good because I thought my second one will be way faster than my first one. And it's turning out to be in many ways more complex. And my first attempt at it, like I told the story, but it wasn't the way it wasn't the way the story deserves to be told. So I rewrote the whole thing. And I'm rewriting the whole book a third time. And it's not what I expected. And it's hard when you compare to other people, I think that's the hardest thing when you look at other authors, and you're like that person brought us so many more books so much faster, or did whatever differently. And I think having that patience and that like compassion to know that your process and your creativity is going to be yours. And it's not going to look like anybody else's. And just be patients with your patient with yourself.
Jennifer Rosner
Yeah. And like I said, you know, when you think about the personal drivers that are moving you toward your material, no one else has that these are your reasons, and they're your drivers, and it's your process, and there's just no way to compare really to someone else. If they're doing it that way. It's just a different project. Yeah.
Lainey Cameron
So who do you admire? Or what do you enjoy reading anything you could recommend to our listeners here?
Jennifer Rosner
Right now I'm reading a collection of short stories by Jai Chakrabarti. This collection is called A Small Sacrifice for an Enormous Happiness. And I just love it. And actually I also I try to read poetry because I love just letting beautiful language and imagery roll over me and there's a book called Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky which is incredible and some books Yeah, Jericho Brown is one of my favorite poets really amazing. And I was reading recently a book called Beyond That, the Sea which is coming out in the end of March by Laura Spence- Ash and it's a beautiful Book. That one's historical fiction, it's actually somewhat related to my novel in that she's looking at British children who were sent to America for safety. Because there were, you know, bombings in England, and the kind of complexity of being a child who's moved to America into a family for five years, and then moved back to their family. So yeah, we're actually doing an event together. I'm really excited about that. Because I think there's a lot of resonance between our work I think I read mostly like literary fiction, historical fiction, and I like to read poetry.
Lainey Cameron
Beautiful. I love the poetry recommendations, I'm going to check some of those. And if folks were furiously taking notes, slash panicking as they're driving in the car, listening to the podcast, we put all of the book recommendations with links on the website at best of women's fiction.com. Just go find this episode. And you'll see all of Jennifer's social media, as well as each of the books that she recommended there. Before we wrap up, I always like to ask, is there anything I haven't asked that you wanted to make sure readers or potential readers know about this book? Or about you or anything I just neglected to ask you. I don't think so I think we covered it. Well, I will say then on your behalf that I saw that you are willing to zoom into book clubs. And I think this would just be a phenomenal book club book, I read the book club questions. And actually, I didn't ask some of them on air, because I realized that I didn't want to spoil it for anyone who you know, hasn't read the book and doesn't know the ending, but I thought your book club questions, were really thoughtful. So this would make just a great book club book.
Unknown Speaker
I would love that. But just to say that writing is such a solitary thing, and it's so nice to be able to, you know, share with readers and, and hear their reactions and just kind of hash things out. Because you know, you're making every kind of micro decision all along the way. And then it's really fun to kind of either explain why you did that and how it was received. And yeah, it's really fun to be at Book Clubs.
Lainey Cameron
Yay. I also think to your point, it's really topical. Because this issue of like separating kids, especially with the Ukraine war going on, is happening right now. And so I think there's a way to do if you're if you have the kind of book club that does like modern day, you know, very topical discussions. This book is actually incredibly relevant to those kinds of book clubs too, and would make a beautiful reads. So if folks want to find you or follow you learn more, where's the best place for them to find you?
Jennifer Rosner
Well, I'm on Facebook and Instagram, and those links will be there. But my website is Jennifer-rosner.com.
Lainey Cameron
Awesome. Well, thank you for writing such a beautiful book and letting me read it. And thank you for joining me today. And I hope people go out and get a copy because it's a fabulous, enlightening. I actually noticed the word thought provoking came up all the time in your reviews moving and thought provoking with the top two words along with subtle and so it's a fabulous, enlightening and thought provoking books. So I really appreciate you letting me read it. Thanks for joining me today.
Jennifer Rosner
I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you
Lainey Cameron
And one last comment from Lainey. If you're a fan of Jennifer's first novel, The Yellow Bird Sings, a key tip that we forgot to talk about in the podcast recording itself. There's a special scene toward the end of once we were home that gives you insight about what happened to a key character in The Yellow Bird Sings. I won't tell you more, but if you loved Jennifer's first book, don't miss this new one.