I have always adored history. Not so much the sweeping events that make up the basis of our cultural knowledge, but the story of the people who make history happen. For me, history is the story of someone I relate to, the little guy who gets caught up in a big thing. For me, history is the story of the double amputee who escaped from a Nazi prisoner of war camp three times. History is the story of the woman who built her own tank and went to the front in World War II. And the history that has captured my imagination for some five years now is the story of Russian women who flew biplanes against Messerschmidts—and won.
The Night Witches were the first all-women’s combat regiment in modern history. They fought red tape (if you’ll forgive the pun), bureaucracy, and sexism for the right to fly the worst the USSR had to offer against a far superior German war machine. Their official name was the 588th Night-Bombing regiment, and on paper their mission was simple: drop things. They dropped bombs, leaflets, bricks, and railroad ties—anything that would keep the Germans from sleeping.
They flew inferior biplanes that were so slow, enemy aircraft couldn’t even catch them; planes that tried had to slow down so much that their engines stalled. The Night Witches flew so low to the ground they could be shot by your average German with a gun, and their planes were so flammable that usually one shot was all it took to bring them down. Nevertheless, they were dubbed Nachthexen by the Germans for their deadly silence and precision. Every night the Night Witches would cruise to their target, then shut off the engine to make a silent dive. They’d release the bombs (sometimes climbing out on the wing to release a sticky trigger) and restart the engine as they pulled away. The Night Witches made up to eighteen of these missions a night.
When fighting for the Soviet Union, their lives weren’t the only things on the line. They had to excel over the men on their base to shake a reputation of inferiority that they’d never earned. Worse, the USSR had a hard policy on soldiers that were captured or went missing in enemy territory: they were assumed to have defected or broken under torture, and were considered traitors until and unless their loyalty was proved to the state. Some women who died in enemy territory weren’t properly recognized for decades after the war was over.
I was devastated that someone could be rewarded in such a way for their service—and I was intrigued by the dedication the Night Witches showed anyway. I wanted to write about women who would risk it all, and why, and what friendships they would forge in the fire of war. I wanted to write about women who relied on each other. I wanted to write about women who survived and thrived in spite of the men in their lives. So I wrote We Rule the Night, about women who fly in the face of derision, oppression and death, and become best friends along the way.
I hope you enjoy it.
We Rule the Night
by Claire Eliza Bartlett
Two girls use forbidden magic to fly and fight--for their country and for themselves--in this riveting debut that's part Shadow and Bone, part Code Name Verity.
Seventeen-year-old Revna is a factory worker, manufacturing war machines for the Union of the North. When she's caught using illegal magic, she fears being branded a traitor and imprisoned. Meanwhile, on the front lines, Linné defied her father, a Union general, and disguised herself as a boy to join the army. They're both offered a reprieve from punishment if they use their magic in a special women's military flight unit and undertake terrifying, deadly missions under cover of darkness. Revna and Linné can hardly stand to be in the same cockpit, but if they can't fly together, and if they can't find a way to fly well, the enemy's superior firepower will destroy them--if they don't destroy each other first.
We Rule the Night is a fiercely compelling story about sacrifice, complicated friendships, and survival against impossible odds.
When, at nineteen, I encountered the Tristan legend for the first time, it felt more like watching an action-packed popcorn flick than reading a medieval manuscript. Forget Perceval, that pious weenie; Beroul’s The Romance of Tristan was the real blockbuster of a legend. It had magical potions, an evil dwarf, loads of lepers, dark and twisted love, problematic sex and an extravagance that couldn’t be missed. Someone should make this into a movie, I thought.
Many iterations of the legend embrace a similarly go-big-or-go-home attitude. There’s the Richard Wagner opera, for instance, which is the version that most Westerners know best. Wagner first conceived of it as a quick little side project to make him some cash in between composing parts of the Ring Cycle, but it turned into a four-hour ode to unresolved longing. A Norwegian poet, writing to his friend after viewing an early performance of Tristan und Isolde, declared it “the most enormous depravity I have ever seen or heard.”
Amelia Westlake Was Never Here was inspired by a hoax that two friends and I invented in our final year of high school. Our aim was to amuse ourselves and, with any luck, our fellow classmates by creating an imaginary student called Amelia Westlake. We began small, putting Amelia’s name down on lists for sports teams, graffitiing it on school desks, and accepting birthday party invitations on her behalf. We waited to see if anyone noticed.
If my kids think I’m cool, they hide it remarkably well. The fans of my music seem to think I’m cool. The internet sometimes does, I guess. But my kids? By all measurable indicators, my kids find me stupendously boring. Especially as they find their way into full-blown adolescence, Max and Soleil slot me further and further down the list of worthwhile expenditures of time and attention.
LB School: How did the ideas for each of your books come to you, and why did you feel that they were stories that needed to be told?
Monica Hesse: While I was doing some research for a previous book, I came across a black and white photo of a young woman in a tiara, wearing a corsage. It had obviously been taken at a school dance; the caption said the girl was 16, and the prom queen of Federal High School in Crystal City, Texas. It also explained that Crystal City was an internment camp. This completely blew my mind. If your education was like mine, Japanese internment in World War II was skimmed over in history class—maybe something you’d talk about for a day or two. I didn’t know much about individual experiences, and I was completely drawn to this young woman in the photograph. What would it be like to be the prom queen of your internment camp? What kind of internment camp would even have such a thing?
SA: I say that Internment is set 15 minutes into a terrifying future, but the fact is, the events of the novel are rooted in elements of America’s deeply disturbing history. Too often, we believe that specific moments in time—like this crucible we seem to be living in now—exist in a vacuum. But the past is prologue. I think young adult literature is a perfect place to explore this idea—how the past is always with us, but also how we are not doomed to repeat the past.
MH: I think we often get preoccupied with big, dramatic acts of resistance: protests, rescue missions and escapes. But there’s a quieter kind of resistance that is no less important: the small, noble act of keeping your humanity when the world is inhumane. Refusing to believe that someone is less than you just because they’re different than you. Willing yourself to be a rigorous thinker in a sea of propaganda. Those are small, quiet acts that anyone can do, and they’re deeply important. That’s the kind of resistance in The War Outside.
When I wrote Firegirl, published thirteen years ago now, like most readers, I had a problem with Jeff Hicks, a boy who bullied both Tom Bender, who tells the story, and Jessica, a girl whose horrific accident left her disfigured and isolated. While Tom gets to know Jessica a bit, Jeff’s response to her is unrepentantly cruel. When Tom Bender drops him as a friend at the end, I thought it was a good thing.
When Little, Brown acquired my book dummy Omu’s Stew, my editor Andrea said that we needed to change the name. “The double oo’s don’t flow nicely,” she explained to me. I verbally agreed, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. Even after we mutually decided on Thank You, Omu! I still wasn’t sure, and as I collaged spreads I debated between Omu’s Feast and Omu’s Magic. Today, as my book is on shelves, I can say with certainty that Thank You, Omu! is the right title. However for me, it didn’t come down to double oo’s. Instead, it’s because Thank You, Omu! isn’t about stew at all.
Nevertheless despite all her effort, Omu never hesitates to share with her neighbors. Giving can be a sacrifice of time and talent, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. While the neighborhood brings every intricate dish you can imagine, it is the little boy’s simple letter that shares the same collage paper as Omu’s stew. The stew and the thank you letter are equal in value. While having a delicious stew was the dinner Omu expected, the thank you letter the little boy presents her with is what she truly wanted. The countless hours she spent making the stew were worth that one note. I’ve come to cherish the name Thank You, Omu! because at the heart that’s what this book is. It’s a thank you. Like the little boy, I’ve written my own thank you letter. Not simply to my grandmother, but to everyone who has given me love, encouragement, and support. What my community, what my grandmother taught me is that life is more than what you can get. It’s about what you can give.
On the night of November 8th, 2016, I was poised to celebrate. A woman was about to be elected president of the United States. A woman! I’m not that old and yet I remember so much casual sexism growing up, so many lessons I was taught that, in hindsight, were about preserving the patriarchy, not my safety or well-being. I may have been late to the party, as it were, but I was 100% ready for a female president. Women had been fighting for this moment for so long. And now here we were, shattering the glass ceiling once and for all.
In Grace and Fury, not every female character is strong in the same way. But they all, to different degrees and at different times, fight to subvert or dismantle the system holding them back. And, importantly, they aren’t the only ones. There are male characters who are uncomfortable with the status quo as well. Because feminism isn’t about man-hating or elevating women above men. It’s about striving for equality. Equal opportunities, an equal seat at the table.
“You wrote a graphic novel memoir? Who wants to read a story about you?!”