Shelf Awareness--Interview with Francisco X. Stork

Francisco X. Stork: On Creating Courage, Empathy and Hope

Francisco X. Stork is the author of Marcelo in the Real World, a recipient of the Schneider Award. The Last Summer of the Death Warriors received the Elizabeth Walden Award. The Memory of Light received four starred reviews and the Tomás Rivera Award. His novel Disappeared is the 2018 recipient of the Best Young Adult Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and a Walter Dean Myers Award Honor Book. Illegal, the sequel to Disappeared, received the In the Margins Book Award and the 2020 Best Young Adult Book from the Texas Institute of Letters. Here he discusses his new book, On the Hook (Scholastic), how he adapted it from an earlier work and the audience he is hoping to reach. He lives outside of Boston with his wife, with whom he has two children and four grandchildren.

Would you tell us about the process of revisiting/rewriting your first novel to create On the Hook?

I guess it started with the sense, after the earlier work came out, that I had not fully tapped the potential of the story and the characters. Years later, when the opportunity presented itself, I jumped at the opportunity to create a totally new story but still using the same setting and the names of the old characters. It was a little like writing fan fiction, only the characters from the previous work had to become more vibrant and complex.

Why do you think your story is so different this time around?

I wanted to create a new story that took into account how the world has changed in the past 15 years. The emotion we call hatred, which in its pure form is basically the desire to kill or hurt another human being, seems more prevalent, more intense, more acceptable today. It is something that has become okay to carry within us so long as we don't act it out. But, of course, we do end up acting hatred out in ways that are hurtful to others and to ourselves. The hatred that Hector is hooked on reflects the hatred that has so comfortably made its way into our hearts. The newness of the story reflects the fact that I have written eight other books since then and I know more about the craft of writing for young readers than I knew then. Hopefully, I am also a little bit wiser.

Hector changes a lot over the course of the novel. Can you talk about his choices and his growth as a character?

Hector does grow in the novel, but his growth is a kind of one step forward and five steps backward. Hector, the A-student, the brilliant chess player, the engineer-to-be, decides to become a badass in order to avenge his brother's death at the hands of Joey. Hector does all he can to become evil. He makes one bad choice after another, while Joey, the real evil character in the novel, begins to make choices that are good for him. Hector has to reach a kind of rock bottom of evil, before he can grow into someone who is aware of who he is and that he is responsible for what he does.

Why does it take catastrophe and a desire for revenge to motivate Hector to act?

I think of growth and maturity as the decision to create the person we want to be. This is a very scary thing to do and most of us would rather be whatever else others want us to be. It happens that sometimes life sends us a catastrophe, like it did in Hector's case, in order for us to wake up and start becoming who we are meant to be. Hector thinks of himself as incapable of courage, as a coward, until he is so disgusted with himself that he must act. The actions he takes are clumsy and more hurtful than helpful, but he has set in motion the kind of agency that will eventually take him to the courage of being his ordinary self.

Would you say empathy and justice are fairly central to all of your work? if so, why?

Yes. Empathy is a goal in the sense that my characters are usually marginalized youth. I write so that young readers begin to understand what it is to live with the social or mental barriers that create marginalization. But I have to be careful with the concept of empathy because, despite their marginalization, I want my characters to serve as role models and to be admired rather than to invoke sympathy, or worse, pity. To want to have my characters admired doesn't mean that they are all good. Rather, I want them to be admired for their hope, for their struggle against difficult circumstances, for their effort at becoming free human beings who choose their destiny. The portrayal of justice in my work realistically and without judgment presents the barriers that are preventing my young characters from being free and from growing. If I want to write about how we become human, then I must also write about the systems, the laws, the social attitudes that are keeping my characters, and us, from becoming human.

What do you hope your readers will take away from this story?

When I was writing On the Hook, I kept in my mind's eye a young boy who was at risk of getting swallowed in a cycle of violence. I wanted to write a book that was real to him. A book that he found meaningful and that maybe made him look inside of himself and see the incredible courage that is needed to live a life that is responsible to self and others.

Is there anything else you'd like readers to know about On the Hook?

It's a serious book, as you can see from the questions and answers above. But it is also an action-packed, funny and hopeful book that gave me a lot of joy to write. I hope that in addition to the seriousness, you also find the joy.