Becky Kapell Q&A
Becky Kapell taught herself to play guitar at age 42 and has since put out two critically acclaimed Americana albums.
“I feel like Minnesota does a great job with charitable work but our approach is rooted in white liberalism, which creates a philosophy of us and not us. I challenge people to think from a standpoint of solidarity and not charity.”
It took a while. At first I didn’t intend to write about them because I didn’t want to feel like I was exploiting their stories. But then in 2005 I went to this creative writing workshop for social workers at the University of Iowa. The first paragraph of the first page came from that workshop. The instructor encouraged me to keep at it. She liked that I was present in the narrative and challenged me to continue in that direction. But I still wasn’t sure I wanted to use the stories of the children as material.
The stories were unshakable to me. I just couldn’t let them go. And I noticed how under-reported the subject was.
I was conscious of that. As a non-fiction writer who is writing about marginalized populations, there is a power dynamic. I’m the one telling the story. I wanted to honor the complexity of the people I’m writing about and not stereotype or generalize. I tried to create space for these young people to essentially write their own stories.
I learned early on the importance of providing structure to the lives of these young people. This is a relationship built on trust and a lot of the young people in this book were rejected by family. They didn’t know what trust with an adult looked like. I started out thinking I should be their friend and pal around with them and that didn’t work. It’s about being caring and consistent and establishing boundaries and accountabilities.
Yes. That I’d still be there the next day.
Isn’t it? It’s 40 percent, although they make up only 8 percent of the population.
It’s hard to build empathy through statistics. That’s what stories are for.
“Random Family,” which is about poverty in the south Bronx. “True Notebooks,” which is about a writer who goes into a juvenile detention center to teach creative writing to young people in L.A. “A Shining Affliction,” which is about psychotherapy and secondary trauma and how practitioners need to work through their own stuff to be present and available to clients.
I do.
Just wonderful. I was in Connecticut and gave a workshop to social work professionals and did a reading. A young woman, a 16-year-old high student, snuck in and came up to me and said her parents had an issue with her sexual orientation. She came home from school one day to find out her parents had moved out without telling her. Just left her homeless. She looked up and told me she feels really invisible in my life and hearing you read made me feel seen. That felt really good to hear.
I feel like Minnesota does a great job with charitable work but our approach is rooted in white liberalism, which creates a philosophy of us and not us. I challenge people to think from a standpoint of solidarity and not charity.
Keeping mental health as a center of all the work that service providers are doing is incredibly important. Direct care workers are working from a trauma-informed perspective, which acknowledges the root of behavior and not just a contentious situation. Maybe the person isn’t freaking out from not doing the dishes; maybe it’s something deeper. Mental health as a framework to care is so important.
That was the result of a five-minute assessment by a psychiatrist.
Service providers aren’t getting paid much and they have massive amounts of clients. They have to get through the day. Everyone is overworked and under-resourced. It’s more that the system is broken. Unfortunately, as a result, lives are sent off course.
My work will always be around youth identity, poverty and mental health and how these things intersect. I’m interested in how communities can provide support to young people who are dealing with depression and suicidal thoughts. There’s a community in Iowa that has had a lot of suicides and little community response. I’m looking into talking to those folks about what’s being done and what isn’t being done. I found a mother who lost her son who wants to be an advocate and speak up.
Becky Kapell taught herself to play guitar at age 42 and has since put out two critically acclaimed Americana albums.
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