The Cupertino Courier
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Cupertino native's books rooted in her own life
By ANNE WARD ERNST
Since the second grade at Cupertino's Lincoln Elementary School, Justina Chen Headley loved writing and telling stories. She was writing stories about being a teenager before she was one, and now as an adult with two children of her own, she's still telling stories about young adults.
She writes to tell stories to herself but her voice reaches the ears of others.
Headley, who now lives in the Seattle area, is the author of two recently released books: the April-released Nothing But the Truth (and a Few White Lies), which was published by Little, Brown in April; and The Patch, released in February.
A speaking engagement at Monta Vista High School followed a day of speaking and book signing May 23 at another alma mater, Stanford University.
Her Nothing But the Truth (and a Few White Lies) is a young adult book that Publisher's Weekly calls "an impressive debut."
It is the story of a girl named Patty Ho, a Hapa. The Hawaiian phrase, Headley says, which was once derogatory but is now embraced, means a girl who is half Asian, half white--and is not totally comfortable in her own skin. Patty is sent off to math camp at Stanford after her divorced Taiwanese-born mother learns a white boy may be romantically linked to her daughter's future.
When she was growing up, Headley says she never saw herself in the numerous books she read.
"There were almost no books featuring realistic Asians. There was nobody ever like me in a story," she says.
Headley's other book, The Patch, a picture book for ages 4 to 8, was written for her daughter who was diagnosed with amblyopia (also known as lazy eye).
Publisher's Weekly was less-impressed with The Patch, but School Library Journal and Kirkus Reviews both found the story about a girl who has to wear glasses plus a patch over one eye worthy.
The story is based on the happenstance experience when, at Headley's own eye examination, her doctor had a little extra time to take a look at her then 3-year-old daughter's eyes and discovered "a problem." The first time her daughter went to ballet class wearing her eye patch and glasses, other children made fun of her. Headley's character, Becca, in The Patch finds a way to make it cool and fun to wear a patch by becoming patch-eyed characters such as a Ballerina Pirate, Private Eye and One-Eyed Monster.
Both Nothing But the Truth (and a Few White Lies) and The Patch are connected with a philanthropic interest Headley has.
She created a "Nothing But the Truth" essay contest for which she will award the winner a $5,000 scholarship in her parents' honor. Headley says she wanted to create the scholarship to honor her parents because they were so supportive of her and her three siblings, and made personal sacrifices to give their children an education.
Headley teamed up with a designer who created eye patches decorated with characters from her book The Patch and is donating $1 from each patch to the public health program InfantSEE, which provides free eye assessments for all infants under the age of 1.
For more information about Justina Chen Headley or her appearances and her books, visit www.justinachenheadley.com.
