Obama's Sister: What Our Mother Taught Us

In 1984, YES! Publisher Fran Korten worked alongside Barack Obama's mother, Ann Soetoro, at the Ford Foundation's office in Jakarta, Indonesia. Ann's daughter, Maya, who was 14 at the time, attended the Jakarta International School with Fran's daughters, Alicia and Diana. Maya was recently in Seattle preparing for the launch of her new children's book,Ladder to the Moon, and Fran talked with her for the first time in 27 years. The book is a tale of Maya's daughter Suhaila's adventure with her grandmother Ann, who died in 1995, long before Suhaila was born. In the storybook, grandmother and grandchild climb a ladder to the moon where together they look back at the Earth. As they see tragedies unfold, they reach back to help. The book, launched in April 2011, is illustrated by Yuyi Morales, and published by Candlewick Press. Fran talked with Maya about the book, her life, and her reflections on her mother and her famous brother.

Fran Korten:This is your first book. What inspired you to write a children's book?

Maya Ng: In 2008, I was campaigning for my brother and had a bit of down time because my husband was taking care of Suhaila, who was then 3 years old. So I was in Chicago in the basement of my brother's home, and I thought to myself, if my brother can risk the enormous rejection [of possibly not being elected,] then I can risk the much smaller rejection of not having anyone pick up my book. I became emboldened. I think the campaign resulted in a lot of people, not simply relatives, being emboldened to try new things. It was a very fruitful time.

One could also say that the book was born years earlier. When I was pregnant with Suhaila, I came across some boxes that Mom had saved for me that said "for Maya's children." They contained my childhood toys and books. Seeing them filled me with sadness that she wasn't there to share this time with me. In a way it was like losing her all over again.

My daughter was born in 2004, just a couple of months before my brother made his speech at the Democratic National Convention. I suddenly had all of these new questions. So this was when I began imagining what my mother would have been like with her grandchildren and what they would have gotten from her.

Mom loved the moon. She would wake me up in the middle of the night to go gaze at the moon. I named my daughter Suhaila because in Sanskrit it means "the glow around the moon."

Korten:Have your children read this book?

Ng:Yes, I've read it to them. In fact Suhaila, who is now 6, helped me with a couple of the ideas. The orphan children leaping up like flying fish—that was her idea.

Korten: How does your other daughter, Savita, feel about her sister being in this book?

Ng:She doesn't know it's her sister because she is two and can't read, so she thinks it's her. She points and says "That's me." Then Suhaila says, "No, that's me," and she gets very upset. I've got another book in the works. It's a young adult novel entitled "Yellow Wood," based on the Robert Frost poem—two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and we took the one less traveled, and that made all the difference. In that book the main protagonist's name is Savita. I joke that I can't have another child without another book contract.

Korten:Ann is, of course, grandmother to Barack and Michelle's children, Malia and Sasha. Have they read the book?

Ng:Yes, they have. They liked it, though they have not seen the version with the illustrations. I had received that version at Christmas, but we had so much going on I forgot to bring it. My brother's book had just come out, so we talked more about his book. At Christmas several families and old friends join us—there's about 13 children in this group. It's a wonderful opportunity for my brother to be precisely who he has always been. He can completely relax. He even connects with high school friends.

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