Padma Venkatraman, author of Born Behind Bars, The Bridge Home, and other books for young readers, was born in India and now lives in the U.S. after residing in five countries and working as an oceanographer. Here she reflects on her education in STEM, the challenges facing BIPOC women in science, and her forthcoming middle grade novel, Safe Harbor.
I was born an ocean or more away from the shores of Rhode Island, which I now call home. And sometimes I feel as though I were born an ocean of time ago, too.
As a little girl in the 1970s in India, I always knew I wanted to be an author. I was born in a beautiful mansion, with a library full of books and a beautiful garden to roam in; but when I was about seven years old, my mother and I were quite suddenly evicted from this Eden and forced to live in a tiny apartment in an ugly high rise—because my parents separated.
I was the only kid at my school I knew of who had two living parents that did not live together—and that fact quickly made me realize that if I, as a female, wanted to stand on my own two feet and make decisions about my own life, I needed to earn money. My mother faced many societal obstacles merely because she was a woman and living apart from her husband, and her struggle to raise me on her own would have been futile if she hadn’t had an education.
So, quite early, I began to consider what kind of career might allow me to be financially independent. I loved books, I loved nature, I loved music (though I was rotten at it) and I also loved science and mathematics. Writing came to me naturally, and I filled notebooks with stories and poems; but I didn’t see writers around me. And the more I read about writers, the more I realized that luck played a huge role in any writer’s material success; writing as a profession was not a meritocracy. Yet I couldn’t imagine myself sitting in an office all day just to put food on the table. So what could I do?
Every once in a while, my music teacher would invite me to watch a “good” TV program at her home because we didn’t own a television set, and she was a generous woman who not only taught me music free of charge but also took an active interest in my education. Thanks to her, I saw Cosmos by Carl Sagan, and The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, and I realized that people could be paid to conduct research on stars in outer space or sea stars beneath the waves. And although I never saw a female, let alone a dark-skinned one, like me doing such things, I decided I was going to be a scientist. Thinking back on it now, I realize that I wanted to break Indian societal norms. I had a deep urge to do something that wasn’t expected of me as a woman. Being a leader appealed to me, because I was rebellious.
That’s how I ended up leaving India all alone, to pursue both my dreams. At 19 I was given a scholarship to an international school in England, where I spent a year doing a course in creative writing, among other things. A year later, I went to the College of William and Mary in Virginia to study oceanography.
I wasn’t shocked to discover that I was one of a kind in my incoming graduate class (I was the only BIPOC female). I was, however, shocked at the racism that was apparent in American society. Somehow, as an Indian kid, I’d assumed that American racism was a thing of the past—even though I was aware of the horrors of enslavement and genocide the settlers had waged against Indigenous nations. I wasn’t expecting to see Aryan Nation flags proudly hung on porches, let alone nooses hung in yards where people of color like me dared to live. I wasn’t expecting to have people refuse to rent to me because they were sure that I wouldn’t keep their places clean. I wasn’t expecting to hear neighbors tell me, after I finally found a place to stay, that they’d been worried when I moved in because there had never been any “colored” people living in their neighborhood before, but they were delighted and relieved to discover that I was a “good girl” and a “credit to my race.”
These experiences shaped my identity as a person of color in my adopted nation. White was never a “default” for me. As the only female of color, I felt an immense pressure to do well. And as a defiant Indian girl who had left home to strike out on a new path that no one had recommended, I couldn’t afford to fail and be kicked out of America in shame.
As I toiled toward my doctorate, I often felt isolated when white women gathered to discuss issues facing “women in science,” because they centered white women in science and had no idea of what my intersectional status as a dark woman brought to my experience. When, at last, I became a novelist, I wanted to write books informed by my experience as a BIPOC female oceanographer at a time when that was even more unusual than it is now (because unfortunately it still is rare). But I was terrified that my scientific training would overwhelm me and that I’d write something stale and stodgy. Although one of my dear friends from school in England had always encouraged me to write lyrically about science, it wasn’t until my sixth novel, Safe Harbor, that I finally plunged into writing a book that combines my love of poetry with my love of science.
Geetha, the protagonist of Safe Harbor, has a life that faintly echoes my own. After her parents divorce in India, her mother moves to America with her, hoping for a better life. Geetha is bullied at school and takes refuge in nature and music. She writes poetry. And one day, when she’s walking on the beach, she comes across a baby seal that has almost been strangled by plastic trash. And as she tries to help the seal, her world opens up.
Geetha’s efforts at conservation begin with one animal and then grow into a larger understanding about combating climate change and other types of pollution. Along the way, Geetha meets strong BIPOC female scientists: the marine mammal vet who saves the seal’s life and helps rehabilitate it is a Black woman, and Geetha’s best friend’s mother is a Latina scientist. Geetha’s own mother, too, is in graduate school, studying science—and I love her because she lives with and manages depression and anxiety, just as I do, and is also a strong person and a great mom (and we still unfortunately often come across fictional parents with depression who are portrayed as disengaged with or unsupportive of their children).
While the BIPOC female characters in Safe Harbor showed up in my imagination without active consideration, it’s not hard to see that my subconscious urge for equality and inclusiveness in science came through in the cast I created. As a BIPOC female oceanographer-turned-writer, I was thrilled that my characters would break new ground, by introducing all young readers to BIPOC female leaders and role models in all-too-often white male-centered and dominated fields and stories.
Safe Harbor, with its animal rescue adventure and its honest but hopeful portrayal of brown kids leading a fight for the environment (and against pollution and climate change), is exactly the kind of book I’d have loved to read as a child. And it’s still rare to find books with animal rescues and environmental themes that center BIPOC characters. The lack of role models in my childhood didn’t stop me from pursuing my passion. But I’m sure that if more young BIPOC females in my generation had BIPOC female scientists and oceanographers as role models—whether in real life or in the pages of books—I would probably have met other BIPOC females in my incoming graduate class. To make something happen, we must be able to dream of it. To dream something, we must be able to imagine it. And stories, to me, are ships that help us sail the ocean of empathetic imagination.
Safe Harbor by Padma Venkatraman. Penguin/Paulsen, $17.99 Jan. 21 ISBN 978-0-5931-1250-2
