Recently, I finished the latest revisions to my young adult manuscript after spending all fall putting it off even though I’d reduced my time at work to 25% specifically to have more hours for writing. The energy and motivation came to me only after I was hired for a very demanding, new job, starting January 1.

I guess I’d been discouraged. The hardest part about writing this story, and the reason I’m doing it, is that it’s true, not word-for-word true, but all of the events actually happened. It’s the story of a fictional, 14-year-old Armenian boy, named Arakel, caught up in the genocide 100 years ago in the Ottoman Empire. It’s not about any member of my family, but I feel I owe it to all of the people who suffered or died in the genocide to convey what they went through.

Arakel’s nearly dying voice in the desert came to me clearly years ago. At public readings in San Francisco and Somerville, after receiving awards for the manuscript, I’ve read from a chapter in the middle of the book where a camel caravan master picks Arakel up in the desert after he’s spent the night in a cave filled with bones. I’ve hardly revised that section since I first wrote it.

But how did Arakel feel before that, before he knew nearly all of his family, nearly all of the people in his town, nearly all of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire were going to die? And where should I start the story so teenagers with no knowledge of the genocide or the Ottoman Empire could relate? I’ve tried at least five different points in time, but none worked well.

If you write a book about the Holocaust, everyone knows what happened to Anne Frank. You don’t have to explain who Hitler was. But the Armenian genocide is different. And it’s not just teenagers who might not know. I received a query response from a literary agent on April 24, 2015 — the same day as the 100-year commemoration of the Armenian genocide, after the Pope had recognized the genocide, and the Armenian Church had canonized 1.5 million Armenian martyrs — and this agent suggested I rework the manuscript as a middle grade adventure. For the first and I hope the only time, I lost it with an agent and fired back an angry email. A lot of people died. This wasn’t an adventure.

But there I was, still revising Chapter One, still trying to create an instant connection with readers. My wonderful Critique Group stood by me with helpful suggestions, but by then they knew Arakel nearly as well as I did. I even hired Miss Snark’s First Victim to comment on the first 30 pages. She was brutal: “I’m confused and not in a good way.” And that was just her opening salvo. I won’t repeat the rest, but she ended her critique by saying, “I know you can do this.”

So I had to try. When I reduced my time to 25% at the beginning of September, and my son went off to college, which I instantly wrote about and the Washington Post picked it up for its “On Parenting” Blog (“My college freshman and the very delayed first call home”), I did not get right to work on my manuscript. Instead, I volunteered for added duties at a non-profit, worked out at my health club every day, even cleaned the house — anything other than write.

Then in December, when I got hired for a full-time job to start January 1, that’s what did it. It was now or never. I had to finish. On an unusually warm December morning, I sat on a bench outside my favorite coffee shop in Cambridge, and the first line came to me. It was so obvious I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. The rest fell into place.

The other day, I re-queried an agent, whom I’d thought would be perfect, and right away, she requested the full manuscript. It’s in her queue. Three months to wait. I can’t get my hopes up. I’ve been here before. I can’t get too excited, but of course I am. I’m hoping this time will really be it. I’ll let you know.

As a kid, I was never a ballerina in a fluffy tutu. I hated dresses. I played with stuffed animals, not dolls. I grew up being called a Tom-Boy. But recently, I stumbled into a Ballet Barre Workout class at my health club, when I was late for the class I meant to attend, and now ballet barre is my favorite thing.

Our teacher is tough. “Pull in those abs, Sarah. Harder. Tuck in your bottom, Sarah. Turn your feet out.” And I love it. When she tells us “to look straight toward the horizon and plié with dignity,” we do and beam. Our inner five-year-olds are very happy. We don’t care the mirrors lining the walls are trying to remind us of a different reality. We check our positions, tuck in our butts, and “gaze at the people in the loge box seats.”

Our teacher treats us like ballerinas. Maybe it’s her piano music tape, or her careful corrections: “Lift your arms over your head, slightly in front of you, so you could just see your fingers if you looked up” (which you are not allowed to do). Maybe it’s the delight she expresses when for a brief moment we are all balancing on our toes, arms curved overhead, without wobbling or holding onto the barre.

Whatever it is, the class casts a spell. If I were actually five, I’d probably hate it. In fact, at the only ballet class my mother ever took me to when I was about five, the teacher suggested to my mother that I not come back, “She’s definitely athletic but not a dancer.”

I was never the girly type. We have a photograph of a family gathering with my great grandmother in the center and my grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, siblings and cousins. I’m about four years old, wearing a pink party dress and a long-sleeve flannel shirt underneath. Years later, I asked my mother about it. “You refused to put on your dress. That was the compromise.”

I was upset in third grade when my father made my older brother and his friend Brad stop playing tackle football with me. Flag football only. When I was in sixth grade, my father lectured my brother about not throwing the baseball too hard at me after dinner when we played catch in our yard. So we waited until Pop went back indoors and resumed.

I played tons of sports in high school and played tennis competitively in the 18-and- Unders. People finally stopped calling me a Tom-Boy, but that hardly helped. When I tottered downstairs to our front hall one evening in the 11th grade, wearing a red chiffon dress and black heels for ballroom dancing/etiquette class, which I attended with my older brother, he yelled, “Look, it’s Minnie Mouse!”

I always thought there were boys and there were girls and then there was me, somewhere in the middle. Is that because everyone called me a Tom-Boy? Or something deeper? I was always attracted to guys, so that was that. What was there to think about? I just felt different.

When I was living in Montana in my twenties, I stayed once with two friends my age at their ranch. They were married and their uncle was visiting. I was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, and had my hair pulled up under a cap. Their uncle, who had recently retired from a lifetime career as a prison guard and wore the steel-toed shoes to prove it, looked at me, looked away and looked back again. He turned to them, “Is that your boy?” I’m not exactly shapely, but still. Did that make me a twelve-year-old boy?

What was this all about? A question of gender identity? Or just a girl who loved sports as a kid and hated dresses?

Does it matter? I don’t know. All I know is for the first time ever I want to be a ballerina. Oh, and I also want to learn how to box. Something else I’ve never done.

On Parenting

By Sarah B. Ignatius | November 6

Photo courtesy of iStock

When the college president stood before my husband and me, and hundreds of other parents assembled in the chapel after dropping our freshmen off, he told us we shouldn’t text our sons and daughters but use e-mail instead. And that we should wait before responding if they texted us. I understood.

“What the world needs is problem-solvers,” he had said to drive his point home.

That makes sense, I thought as I sat there. My husband has been on a campaign to foster independence since our son was 6 and we first started arguing over whether he was too young to ride the public bus alone. My husband swears he was taking public transportation in New York City himself by that age. And I went nearly 3,000 miles away for college in California at 17, calling home collect from a pay phone in the hall. And here we were, feeling grief-stricken that our only child was leaving us for college, hoping he wouldn’t hear it in our voices.

Read the full essay on The Washington Post’s website.

The week before I started freshman year of college in California (some time ago), I spent the night with my two girl cousins, sleeping in twin beds with a cot between us. The older of my two cousins, who was in high school, asked me what I thought about the meaning of life. She still poses big questions, probably picking up the trait from her deep-thinking father, my favorite uncle. I told her I thought life was like a clock ticking. The large round dial of her alarm clock glowed on the bedside table between us. “You just have to wait for it to wind down.”

“You don’t really mean that, do you?” she asked.

“I do.”  Depressing, I know.

I did attend college that fall and, after dropping out twice, did graduate.

Then I left the United States, hoping never to return. I was furious about the war in Vietnam and about our country preaching democracy at home and toppling governments abroad that didn’t serve our economic interests.

I worked for an anthropologist in Chiapas, Mexico, and made my way south through Central America with friends and eventually southern Colombia, by this time traveling alone. I fell in with some people from the United States, who were making a circuit of Latin America and who urged me to renew my Colombian visa in Ecuador, which wasn’t far away, come back to Colombia and travel some more. Several of my new friends had just been in Chile, where the United States was overthrowing the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende because he was nationalizing key industries.

From that remote spot, I wondered what to do. More than ever, I hated the United States, but I realized it was my country. If I was upset, I should go back and do something about it.

And here’s the part where the Pope and Bernie come in. They’re telling us the same thing — we have a moral responsibility to each other and to this planet.

Bernie, a Jew from Brooklyn, who, in his own words, is not particularly religious, features on his presidential campaign website a direct quote from the Pope: “we also have to say ‘thou shalt not’ to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an economy kills. – Pope Francis.”

During his closing remarks at Democratic Debate #1, Bernie asked all of us to take action: “Nobody up here can address the major crises facing our country unless millions of people begin to stand up to the billionaire class that has so much power over our economy and our political life.”

Pope Francis has given us the same message. His environmental encyclical in June called on “every person who lives on this planet.” In his public appearance to the crowds outside the U. S. Capitol in September, he reached out to people whether they believe in God or not: “I ask you all please to pray for me and if there are among you any who do not believe or who cannot pray, I ask you please to send good wishes my way.”

Why would the most powerful Christian leader in the world need us, whether we believe or not? He says he has many weaknesses and problems. “I am a sinner too,” he says.

He’s also saying everyone matters. Not just the great, the powerful and the righteous. Our voices make a difference too.

Bernie and the Pope are pleading with us to take action, to get involved and to make the world a more just, equitable and sustainable place.

And I’ve realized that fighting for what I believe in has given me a reason for being here.

It doesn’t really matter that Serena lost in the semi-finals of the U.S. Open and fell short of accomplishing the nearly impossible feat of winning all four Grand Slam tournaments in the same year. She’s a champion, and so is her sister Venus, definitely for their awesomeness on the tennis court, and most especially for showing us what dedication and hard work can accomplish.

Nothing was handed to these two sisters from Compton, who’ve dominated women’s tennis for nearly 20 years. In a sport usually associated in the U.S. with exclusive country clubs, Venus and Serena trained with their dad on cracked, public courts in a predominantly African-American city in southern California, practicing at 6 a.m. before school and again after school until dinner, gun fire popping in the background, their father fighting off gangs, and eventually gang members surrounding their court for protection. Not exactly the All England Club.

A few nights ago on center court at Arthur Ashe Stadium, named for the first African-American man to win a Grand Slam (the top four tennis tournaments in the world, played in Australia, France, England and the U.S.), over 23,000 people were transfixed by the sisters slugging it out against each other. Family tennis anyone?

When Venus and Serena first burst onto the professional tennis scene, lots of people had unkind words. They didn’t fit in, they were tall and strong, they hit hard, they had big serves, and they were black. People said they were too self-confident, they had power and nothing else, their father made a huge mistake training them himself for so long, and on and on. But Venus and Serena persevered, training hard, staying focused, and winning, and in the process, won over all of our hearts too.

They have shown us what we like to think is still true about this country, even as the divide between rich and poor widens and a class society takes hold and so much racial discrimination persists that we need a movement called Black Lives Matter. These two women have demonstrated that if you work really hard, if you keep fighting for your dream, if you stay determined and confident despite criticism and racial slurs, and if you’re courageous enough, you will indeed go far.

As Serena said to a group of girls in Nigeria, “It doesn’t matter what your background is and where you come from, if you have dreams and goals, that’s all that matters.” (reported by Benjamin F. Chavis, Atlanta Voice, June 12, 2015).

And that’s what their greatest legacy is — the inspiration they give to people all over the world — to dream big, then work incredibly hard to get there. Thank you Venus and Serena!

Do you look up to the Williams sisters too? Who’s inspiring to you?

I was lucky to meet up with Doug Holder of Ibbetson Street Press recently, who wrote about my good fortune in being selected as a Somerville Arts Council Literature Artist Fellow this year and my efforts toward the 100-year commemoration of the Armenian Genocide. Here’s his article from The Somerville Times. Thanks Doug!

Somerville’s Sarah Ignatius met me on a warm spring morning, at my unofficial office in the backroom of the Bloc 11 Café in Union Square. Ignatius is the Executive Director of the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation Project in Boston, and also a Somerville Arts Council Grant Fellow, who presented a talk and visual presentation at the Somerville Public Library entitled “Remembering 1915: The 100-Year Commemoration of the Armenian Genocide.” She is also the author of a young adult novel (not yet published) The Devil’s Kaleidoscope. The novel concerns a 14-year-old Armenian boy caught up in the genocide.

Sarah Ignatius

Ignatius has lived in a carriage house in the Union Square section of Somerville since 1992. She was born in Boston, but has lived in many other places. She told me, “I love Somerville, the community events, the special dynamic that the city offers. Some of the homes here are so beautiful, and I love the public spaces.”

Ignatius, in her role of the Executive Director of the Immigration Representation Project, helps immigrants from Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere to achieve asylum in this country. She claims she has a 90% success rate. Prominent law firms like Ropes & Gray and others send their young lawyers to train at the project, and in turn they provide valuable services for asylum-seekers.

The Armenian Genocide, Ignatius’ focus as of late, occurred in 1915 when 1.5 million Armenians were slaughtered by the Turks. Ignatius told me that she was delighted with the Pope’s decision to call the Armenian Holocaust a “genocide,” a word that has been quite controversial as of late. Ignatius’ presentation at the Somerville Public Library consisted of a PowerPoint presentation, along with a slideshow, which is meant for the Armenian and non-Armenian.

Ignatius’ young adult novel, The Devil’s Kaleidoscope, has as a 14-year-old boy as the protagonist, who is caught up in the genocide. According to Ignatius, “The book does not focus on violence, and is geared to promote peace in a world that is often filled with blood lust.” Ignatius said she had a great deal of help with her book from teachers at Grub Street in Boston. And indeed, Ignatius has another novel in the works that concerns two girls, 18 years old, Berkeley, the 70s—well you get the picture.

Ignatius wished me a quick goodbye, because like most of us in the Paris of New England, we always have a lot to do, people to meet, and many miles to go before we sleep.

Originally posted on The Somerville Times.

“I know what my purpose is,” Sandra Bland said, as recounted by her mother. “My purpose is to go back to Texas and stop all social injustice in the South.”

I’m sure she didn’t think she’d have to die trying.

But she did show the world how immense that calling is. It’s a horrible irony that she was excited about working at her alma mater, Prairie View A&M University, as an outreach coordinator. Now, everyone does know all about the area – where officers waste tax-payers’ money arresting people for imaginary infractions, divert public safety personnel as back-up in situations they created, require tow trucks on the scene of illegal lane changes, and so on, rather than actually fight crime.

Her turn signal infraction wasn’t even that. From the video, you see the road going from one lane to two as Sandra Bland drove through an intersection. To stay in the lane closest to the right side of the road, out of the passing lane, a driver has to move to the right, into the newly created lane, which is exactly what she did. It’s a road design issue, which causes a cautious driver to change lanes in order to stay in the slow lane.

Trooper Brian Encinia stumbled around verbally on the video about what the charge was. Just why was he arresting her? He clearly had no idea since he had no injuries and Sandra Bland had not committed a crime. Failing to use a blinker and smoking in your own car are not criminal offenses.

She repeatedly asked him why she was being arrested, and the trooper never answered. He had to make up a reason after aiming his taser at her, handcuffing her and slamming her head against the ground.

As for the race question, white people are rarely pulled over for changing lanes without signaling. However, I was and I’m white. It was one night in Seattle several years ago on a road that skirts the edge of a predominantly African-American neighborhood. I changed lanes to pass an annoyingly slow car. Of course I didn’t signal and a police car pulled me over. As the white officer came up beside the driver’s side window and peered in, an unmistakable look of shock came over his face. Apparently, he meant to get me for driving while black. He let me drive off, after advising me to be careful and reminding me not to change lanes so abruptly in the future. No ticket, no taser, no handcuffs, no smashed head, no jail cell, no death.

Sandra Bland was brave enough to narrate the injustices as they happened to her in that video, which is so hard to watch. It is our task to continue her fight for justice. Her voice is the voice of our conscience, urging us to speak out against injustice everywhere.

We know it’s what she would want us to do.