Author Naomi Kanakia talks We Are Totally Normal, the art of "bro," and navigating hard changes
Change is a natural part of life. We grow, discover things about ourselves, and constantly reintroduce ourselves to the world. Change and growth can be just as common in the creative process, especially for characters who feel just as real as we do.
Author Naomi Kanakia knows a lot about the process of change. When she first started writing her YA love story We Are Totally Normal, her protagonist, Nandon, was heterosexual, and Kanakia was still identifying as a man.
Rewriting a finished novel
"It's a bit of a long story," Kanakia recalled. "Originally it was a heterosexual pairing. Nandon was getting together with the girl. [But] there was this strong homoerotic subtext between Nandon and Dave."
The original draft of the book was not what her publishers were looking for, but Kanakia was determined to sell Nandon's story. After pondering a while, she went back to the drawing board and completely rewrote We Are Totally Normal. This time she brought the homoerotic subtext to the forefront.
"I realized it would sell better if it was a Queer book. I revised it that way," Kanakia said.
Rewriting a finished novel is pretty typical for Kanakia, who admits she can be a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to her work. "Something about hearing comments back makes me reenvision the book, and I'll usually rewrite completely. I'll start over from a blank page and write a new draft, which is often completely different, and sometimes I'll do that four or five or six times," she said.
"In the case of We Are Totally Normal, my editor was like, 'Oh yeah, I have a few comments,' and then they gave me comments. I was like, 'Great, love these comments. I need to rewrite the whole book, because it's terrible.' I went back and rewrote the entire book, which you don't usually do after the book has sold."
Kanakia finished her earliest draft of We Are Totally Normal in 2016. Back then, her inspiration for the book had been to create a YA story about people who typically don't take up much space in the pages of the genre.
"YA books are always just about kids who are curious and ... read lots of books and [are] nerdy," Kanakia explained. "So for this one, I wanted to write about a guy who's just more bro-y, more traditionally masculine. The thing about bro-y people is that there's also that sensitivity. What makes them bros is that they have this more sensitive side. They'll be like, 'I love you, man,' but it's also camouflaged by all this overt masculinity. So that was the genesis."
Studying the art of the "bro"
As someone who is not very "bro-y," Kanakia had her work cut out for her. To get into the mindset of a hypermasculine teenage boy, she began to observe her surroundings.
"I went to the beach in Marin County, and the beach in California is so cold. I was there in November, and there were just these groups of teenagers, just like 30 teenagers huddled together on the sand, huddled up doing their teen things," she said with a laugh.
"I'm 37, and people ask me, 'How do you stay in touch with the teenagers and what they say and what they want?' Well, for most of the country, California is like another planet, so if I say something in the book that isn't 100% accurate, other people will be like, 'Oh, that's just how it is in California, that's just how people are in California,'" she added.
Kanakia's trick to remaining relevant in the world of teens is to avoid specifics. She won't use real social media platforms, as the coolest ones are always changing. She also tries to avoid slang as much as possible. "The kids in YA books will only say 'cool,' because kids have been saying 'cool' for 80 years. 'Cool' is probably going to stay current. The F-word will probably stay current, but other stuff, that will date you, it will make you sound weird," she explained.
The rise of Queer YA novels
Back in 2016, Kanakia didn't think a Queer YA novel would sell.
"When I first started selling YA books, there were not that many Queer books," she said. "In about 2015, Simon Versus the Homo Sapiens Agenda came out, and within a year or two, suddenly Queer romances were a much bigger genre. The market played a strong role."
As Queer books began to rise in popularity, Kanakia started to reexamine both her and her character's identities. "At some point, I just realized I had been avoiding this, because it was harder to sell. I'm Trans now, but I was a man then. I still am Bisexual, and I identified as a Gay man for a while, so that's a part of me too."
When she decided to change the central romance from a male/female pairing to a male/male one, Kanakia's book started to feel more real. The story gained a whole new depth as it embraced queerness.
"Being Queer is never normal," Kanakia reflected. "It always means something. If you have an opposite-sex crush, it just doesn't have that added layer of meaning, it doesn't mean something about your identity. When I decided to make We Are Totally Normal Queer, it completely changed who Nandon was, as a person."
Once she had decided to write a Queer story, Kanakia dove all in. She decided that her Queer love story wasn't going to be like the increasingly popular but rated-PG Queer romances cis women were writing. A sexless romance was just not going to be accurate.
"A lot of male/male YA books are written by women, and the romance is just very chaste. Two boys getting together — they're going to have sex. I don't know how to explain it. Nine times out of ten, there's gonna be sex. Not having that part of it just felt very wrong to me.
"If you're in a monogamous relationship with another guy, you're at least going to have anal sex or try it out. There's a lot of figuring stuff out, especially in your first relationship. It was kind of important to me to show that it's okay to have sexual desires."
Next steps
Now that she's started writing Queer stories, Kanakia isn't planning on stopping any time soon. Her next book, Just Happy to Be Here, which will hit shelves sometime in early 2024, will focus on a Trans girl attempting to go to an all-girls private high school.
"I felt like it had never been done," she said. "Even until quite recently, the all-girls schools didn't admit Trans women."
The story highlights the way some institutions are fast to "accept" Trans people as diversity tokens but less willing to break down their exclusive traditions in the name of true acceptance.
Kanakia said, "[Ara, the protagonist] tries to join a secret society in the school and gets a lot of pushback from the alumni, and she starts to wonder, 'By being at this school, am I ruining it somehow?'"
Building off of the recent politicization of Trans youth, Kanakia decided to make this book more chaste. Due to conservative lawmakers equating Transgender issues with sexuality and "sexualizing children," she chose to not include sex in this book, so that it could focus more on gender identity and not add to the idea that gender and sexuality are the same issue.
And it also focuses on the current political climate.
"After all this anti-Trans stuff that happened with the kids earlier this year, I really felt like this was something I wanted to put in the book. So I put a little about her wondering about the legal environment."
Just Happy to Be Here is also her first book centering on a Trans protagonist. While the book is still Queer, writing a Trans story was vastly different from writing a Gay story for Kanakia.
"When you're Trans and a teenager, it's quite different from being a Gay teenager," she said. "If you're Gay, you're like, 'Hey, Mom, I'm Gay.' There's nothing they can do; there's no way they can change it. But if you're Trans, it's like, 'Hey I'm Trans. I need you to call up the doctor and make an appointment at the gender clinic.' You basically can't get any gender-affirming treatment without your parents. It's a very complex relationship to navigate, and I wanted to put some of that in there with Ara and her parents."
Kanakia is also working on a Trans adult novel, which she hopes will be out by the summer of 2024.
"The working title is The Default World. It's about a Trans woman in her mid-20s who goes to San Francisco on a mission to save her cousin, who she feels is being exploited by burners who just want her money." This novel explores not only Trans identity but also Queer community.
Writing has been a great way for Kanakia to explore her own identity as a Trans woman. The more she does so, the better she understands the Trans characters she is writing.
"I really love writing Trans characters. I just think there are a lot of nuances to explore. It offers a lot of ability to look at gender," she said.
Writing her identities into her novels has always been important. Now, as she continues to grow and change, so do her books.
"It's a little difficult sometimes," Kanakia said, "because when I was writing just Gay or just Indian characters, I was like, there's plenty of authors who are doing that, and I didn't feel like I needed to be good. Now with Trans characters, especially Trans YA, I feel a sense of social responsibility."
With more Queer and Trans people emboldening themselves to take up space in the real world, there is an even greater need for writers like Kanakia who are willing to accurately represent the community.