A Powerful Response to Family Violence

A Stronger Home
Katrina Chen and Elaine Su; illustrated by Delphie Côté-Lacroix
Orca Book Publishers

To come forward as a survivor of gender-based violence in this world requires a level of bravery that’s difficult to describe. To channel those experiences into a children’s book, so the world has an accessible resource to unpack what it’s like to build a home in the aftermath of violence, is a gift.

Following a mother and son’s journey to find a safe place to call home after experiencing family violence, Katrina Chen and Elaine Su’s new book A Stronger Home is a tender, heartening exploration of strength, resilience and community care. Illustrated by Delphie Côté-Lacroix and using the metaphor of a storm for the instability and fear of living in an abusive environment, the book highlights the realities of safety planning for those in crisis, while centring the warmth of the mother-son relationship. As they move from home to home, their community supports them in rebuilding a stronger home free of violence.

A Stronger Home is inspired by Chen’s own experiences as a survivor of gender-based violence. Chen, a former BC NDP MLA for Burnaby-Lougheed and Minister of State for Child Care, asked Premier David Eby not to be considered for a cabinet position in 2022. She said she needed to tend to the long-term trauma she experienced as a result of surviving gender-based violence, including as a child, more than once in her life.

According to Statistics Canada, more than four in 10 women have experienced intimate partner violence, a form of gender-based violence, at some point in their lifetime. Survivors of gender-based violence face immense barriers to support including cultural stigma, fear of retaliation, lack of trust and confidentiality in the criminal justice system, financial dependency and more, making it difficult to leave abusive situations.

When Chen decided she wanted to write a children’s book responding to family violence, she turned to New Westminster writer and elementary school teacher-librarian Elaine Su. Together, they worked on how to present an honest, culturally relevant representation of one family for young audiences and adults.

“One of the major reasons for writing this book is for the community to have a better understanding of trauma and family violence so we can heal,” said Chen. “I think about the young Katrina, who never told her story from her childhood. And it was because I never felt safe to.”

For Chen to publish this book now, all while on her own healing journey and navigating the long-term impacts of abuse, is incredibly difficult, Su said.

“I think anytime this book is talked about I want people to talk about how brave it is for Katrina and any survivor to tell [their] story, because we sure don’t make it easy,” Su said. “I’m really happy we’re doing our part how we can, to create a space where there hasn’t been.”

I sat down with the co-authors to chat about representation in children’s literature and the impact of accessible storytelling for survivors of gender-based violence. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

The Tyee: It feels like we’re at an inflection point with children’s literature, with significantly more diverse perspectives available than when I was growing up. Is this something you thought about when embarking on this project?

Katrina Chen: Absolutely. Our world is not perfect, even if there are challenges, and it’s important that we find a way to connect with our children, especially those who have been impacted by trauma.

For me, children’s stories are very personal. That’s how I learned English, to start. When I first came to Canada, it was really hard to read. I was 17 and teen books [were] too hard for me to read, so I started with children's stories.

I’m really hoping that through the [illustrations], this book is a way to connect with children and also with diverse communities who have different social, economic and language abilities, to learn about the impact of gender-based violence, family violence from a child’s view.

Elaine Su: There’s such a beautiful wealth of more diverse texts in children's literature than before, but the bar was so low. It’s not like we have a wealth of extremely diverse stories. We’re just coming from such a point of lack and such an emptiness. What I notice in my profession is that even though there are more texts, there is still, like, a real lack of intersectional representation.

This book was very personal to me because it also recognizes that there are certain stigmas that exist within East Asian cultures. It was a real privilege to be able to write a story that handled things with nuance and with grace and with a cultural relevance, but also to recognize that these books don’t exist because we don’t see our faces represented in these stories often as East Asian, South Asian, or Southeast Asian people.

There are certainly people out there who think conversations about gender-based violence are not for children, despite the fact that children are undoubtedly impacted by it. How did you approach writing a story like this in an accessible way?

Chen: I really thought about what I would love to tell the little boy at the end of the story.

It’s not my story, it’s many women and children’s stories who are impacted by family violence. It’s also a story that helps me with my own healing journey. I was first touched by gender-based violence as a young girl. And it never got talked about until I was in my late 30s and was touched by violence again.

I’m hoping that through the story, I’m telling that young Katrina that it’s okay to share. Whether it’s that little boy or the young me, it’s okay to talk about your trauma because when you don’t unpack your trauma, you don’t heal and it becomes a cycle of trauma and violence.

I think the purpose of trying to connect with young children is to let kids who are impacted by violence know it’s okay to talk about it. It’s okay to heal together.

Su: One thing I’ve learned in my profession is that kids take from books what they are ready to take away.

When we were crafting this book, we were really careful about a few different things. This is really a story about resilience and about a family, and it is not a story about an abuser. We are not here to give space or room to the abuse itself, because the story is about the healing that needs to happen as a result of it. So we use the allegory of the storm.

And a storm could be anything right? We know what it means for us. But also, people have a lot of different traumas, and families and young kids have safety plans and evacuation plans for any number of reasons.

We all have storms inside our lives. I think that’s the beautiful thing about what we try to do in telling this story — to make it a bit more accessible, because it is really hard to tell this story for young readers, but it’s not impossible.

What we want children to know is that when these things happen, you are resilient. You do have people around you. You do have a home that follows you, and that will continue to be resilient.

One theme from the book that really struck me was the importance of community care for survivors of gender-based and family violence. Why was it important for you to include this element in the book?

Chen: I think a big reason why I have been able to go on this healing journey and better recover from my trauma is the network and community of people that I have. It’s a lot of loving people like Elaine, who are willing to listen to the story and put it in beautiful writing. A lot of sisters, courageous women, a lot of women of colour who have been impacted by different types of trauma. It’s the men, too — like my son. It takes a whole community.

It was more of my personal experiences of how the love, care, patience and understanding I received from my life really helped me to be able to recover.

Su: You know we talk about the stigma that exists within our culture. But this is the flip side of it: for us, healing will have to happen, and does necessarily happen in community.

[The book is] kind of aspirational in that regard, too. I think we have such a capacity for community healing and for that richness that we already have in our communities to serve survivors better.

How, in your opinion, does having accessible pathways for children to engage with the impacts of family violence change the world for survivors?

Chen: There’s so much to do. There are systemic changes we have to make. As someone who has been through a lot of different processes as a survivor, there are so many gaps we still have. We don’t have a survivor-centered, trauma-informed practice when it comes to the judicial process, the criminal or family court.

We don’t have enough investment in public education and child care, and that is where the prevention of violence is so important.

I think that’s what this book is for. Through the better understanding of gender-based violence, we can open up that conversation and then push for systemic reforms.

Su: I think Katrina said it so well, but I think [A Stronger Home] is also a tool for families experiencing this to remove the stigma from it. It’s to be able to see your story reflected, and empower you to tell your own.

Stories have a great capacity to change the way discourse happens amongst young children who don’t often have the vocabulary or conscious recognition to speak about it, but they know when something’s wrong.

Chen: We did our book launch and there was an article that was out in Chinese. It talked about how I was touched by gender-based violence as a young child, and I still feel nervous because my parents in Taiwan would be reading this. My mom understands and we’ve talked about the reasons why I want to advocate. But in my culture, there’s still a lot of stigma around this.

Since coming forward, I’ve been asked, ‘Why do you have to talk about it? We brought you up really well, you grew up in a good family.’ Yes, I was really privileged, but I was still touched by gender- based violence at a young age.

So when I read the Mandarin article, I still thought, ‘Oh my god, what if my family in Taiwan read this? What would they think?’

But I hope in a few years I won’t have to worry about that. I hope in a few years, and this is where the power of community comes in, I can say ‘Well, one in three women are touched by gender-based violence.’

I’m just telling one story, there are so many. That gives me a lot more courage to continue to talk about it.