Victoria Chang believes that young readers can handle the truth.

In Eureka (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Jan. 27), her latest novel in verse, the acclaimed poet presents a traumatic moment in American history to middle-grade readers. She tells the story of the 1885 expulsion of Chinese people from the city of Eureka, California, and the destruction of their Chinatown, through the eyes of Mei Mei, a 12-year-old girl caught in the upheaval.

Chang’s “lyrical free verse transports readers into the vividly realized historical setting,” notes our starred review, rendering the struggles and joys of Mei Mei’s life during a racially divided time with striking specificity. The young protagonist describes the flight of fellow Chinese from Eureka as people “running in different directions, like red cockroaches,” yet she still manages to find hope in gestures as simple as the footsteps of a companion.

Rendering such harrowing history in terms that connect to young readers requires careful thought, and Chang spoke to Kirkus about her process via Zoom from her home in Los Angeles. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Why was it important for you to write about the 1885 expulsion of Chinese from Eureka for young readers in particular?

When I was in history class, so little of Asian American history was ever covered. I write in the author’s note for this book that when I read about the scholar Jean Pfaelzer’s work, I was struck by the realization that what happened in Eureka was not an isolated event. At the time [from 1849 to 1922], anti-Asian violence was happening in multiple cities. The more I learned, the more I wanted to write about it for young people.

It was really important to me to catch kids as early as possible [as readers] to reverse or influence any of their existing prejudices and biases that they might be growing up with. I thought about building a really cool character and narrative about resilience, found family, friendships, love, and courage that they would be engaged with.

How do you make a dark moment in history feel safe and accessible?

I just think about my own kids and how much they knew, even in third, fourth, fifth grades—way more than I thought they did. They’re able to handle a lot, and I think this age bracket can handle this history. It’s about figuring out how to tell an interesting story that young people can love, and therefore they can love learning about history.

Hopefully, they’ll see a connection with history and see themselves in it. My hope is that someone reads it—and it doesn’t have to be an Asian person, it could be anyone—and sees, “Oh, this is happening today in a way, and it also happened back then, and they found ways to survive and overcome. Maybe I can, too.”

There’s a lot of hardship in the world in our individual lives, so how do we create a rich life that’s full of hope and courage despite these days feeling really hard sometimes? That’s why I went through Mei Mei’s life: She had fun, she flew kites, she played hide-and-seek with her friend. She was just a regular kid, and yet she had all these hardships, just like the kids today have, too.

It feels like rooting the story in Mei Mei’s perspective is key to that connection for readers.

When I was a kid, I was just looking for real stories of real people. I was given hard stuff to read, and I loved it all. Books and stories are a way to identify connection, but also the ways in which we’re uniquely singular. How are we connected across history and time with all of these really interesting people who lived interesting lives?

It’s imagination. It’s empathy. It’s entering someone else’s world, but it’s also seeing something that feels so familiar because you’re a kid, and they’re a kid. It just stretches the mind.

One of my favorite lines in the book is when Mei Mei pictures herself traveling to Eureka: “me in a wagon / embroidering the road.” What is it like to bring lyricism and poetic beauty to young readers?

As a poet, I can’t help but push into the more imagistic, metaphoric realm. I feel kids can handle that. These young readers can visualize what I’m saying. I’m always thinking about being an ambassador for poetry, and that also means being an ambassador for slowing down perception and beauty and expressing it through language.

As a kid, at 4, 5, or 6 years old, I was thinking in metaphors. I spent a lot of time alone outdoors, and I was always doing language associations. I would stare at the smoke coming from a chimney and wonder, What does that smoke look like? Or when I was sad, rather than saying, I’m sad, it made a lot more sense to me to say, The trees look sad, or The leaf looks like a tear. It was always the way my brain worked, and when I learned about poetry in the first or second grade in public school, I was like, Ooh, this makes so much sense to me.

How did you find your way from writing poetry for adults to writing for children?

I just love the verse novel. With adult poetry, I like to write in groupings and series, and I don’t need to be as linear. It’s like I’m circling and swirling around themes. But in middle-grade verse novels, I get to stretch myself in terms of thinking about plot, narrative, inciting incidents, characters and dialogue. I get to use all the things I’ve learned over decades of writing poetry, but what a joy and a gift to be able to continue to grow as a creative person.

With verse novels, how do you think about the page in terms of using white space and how that will affect how readers receive the book?

The beauty of the verse novel is that there’s so much white space. With each line, the reader can travel a little bit, then return to the start of the next line. That kind of motion to me feels more intimate, welcoming, and accessible, especially to readers who might be struggling to read or struggling with attention. They’re short lines with space to the right that’s more open.

I like to leave a little bit of space between the lines, too—I never like text to be single-spaced. It makes such a difference in terms of creating a hand that’s held outward, as if to say to a reader, “Come in, you’re welcome in this space.”

What are some of your favorite verse novels?

I have so many. Unbound by Ann E. Burg is about slavery for middle-grade readers, and it’s deftly done. Another favorite is May B. by Caroline Starr Rose, which is also historical fiction, and it’s about a resilient young girl who survives after being left alone in the winter on the Kansas prairie.

I especially love middle-grade and young adult verse novels that are by fellow people of color, creating stories that haven’t been told before. Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga, The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, and The Crossover by Kwame Alexander and illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile are particular favorites. I could go on and on!

Hannah Bae is a writer in Brooklyn.