My book, The Dragon’s
Daughter, has an unusual hook: the Ku Klux Klan. Are you wondering where I
got the idea? I’ll tell you a little bit about the origin of the story.
A long time ago, let’s say 1996, I was taking a speech class
to complete my bachelor’s degree. Speech 101. Very basic. One of the speeches I
had to give was an informative one. At that time, the Skinhead movement was in
the news a lot. Their numbers seemed to be growing and a Skinhead had just
punched Geraldo Rivera and broken his nose. I got curious about these Neo-Nazis
and decided to focus my speech on them.
During my research, I discovered that the kid who punched
Geraldo was the son of the then-leader of the White Aryan Resistance. Further
research provided me the man’s phone number in California, so I called him. It
was a very disturbing conversation. Why? Not just because of his obvious
racism, but also because he sounded so normal as he talked about it.
We talked about the beliefs that the WAR was founded on,
most of which he tied to the Bible—in a very disingenuous,
convoluted way. We talked about a recent murder of a homeless black man (in
Seattle, I think) at the hands of two Skinheads, and he told me the only thing
he regretted about that was that two white boys were sitting in jail for that
crime. Reprehensible. Almost unbelievable.
And yet through that whole conversation, no matter how much
my skin crawled, I couldn’t get over how normal he sounded. He didn’t talk like
Darth Vader. He didn’t yell or swear at me. He just very calmly and
matter-of-factly spewed his prejudice down the telephone line.
That’s what makes these people so dangerous. They don’t look
like monsters. And they ground so much of what they believe in (again, their
twisted take on) the Bible. For people who are searching for a group to belong
to, for people who don’t question what they’re being told, the KKK and other
white-supremacist groups can quickly feel like family. Their message is God,
Family, Country. Oh … and with a healthy dose of racism.
This phone call in 1996(-ish) wasn’t my only encounter with
people like this. Through my work as a reporter (way back in the late 1990s), I
came into contact with members of the KKK. In those encounters, I was struck again
by how very normal they look and seem. I wondered how these people with families—babies,
toddlers, teenagers—could live such normal lives on one hand while they propagated
intolerance and racism and prejudice on the other?
This is where and how The
Dragon’s Daughter was born. I couldn’t stop thinking about the families of
these men. I couldn’t stop wondering what it would be like to be a child in a
home like that—and what would happen if that child hated everything her father
stood for? If she didn’t buy into it? If all she wanted was out and away?
That is what you get in Mariah. You get a 16-year-old girl
who has known the Klan her whole life, who has been brought up in its realm,
but who lives an otherwise very normal life. She has a brother who antagonizes
her, a best friend she can’t live without, and a love of photography and
volleyball. She just happens to be the dragons’ daughter.
And she wants out.
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