White Writers Write Me: Ann M. Martin
I was wearing tie-dye stretch pants
And a BabySitter’s Club t-shirt,
Tail tucked into a t-shirt tie on my right hip
to mirror my side ponytail.
I flipped
To Babs Bunny bookmark
On that title page
To ask Ms. Martin
(Sung in my head like the theme song to the show)
To write
My name
And hers.
As I waited in line,
I caught glimpses of her
Looking like a vice principal
Shoulders padded like an ‘80s woman
With something to prove.
“Hi,” she said to me—to me—
And I said “I like your books.”
“Thanks for reading. I like your shirt.”
I look down at the shirt and up at my dad.
He smiled and shook his head.
They must have been around the same age, but
Ann M. Martin would not be my stepmom.
“I got an award at school. For writing. ‘The Lost Earring.’
“Great!” She scratched
A pen across the title page.
“Who is your favorite babysitter?”
I flamingoed one tie-dyed leg up and down the other,
And I thought on my oscillating—
A word I’d learned from reading the fan
When I ran out of books—
Affiliations with the different characters:
Claudia—the Asian American go-to
But lived with both parents, in a house,
With a genius sister. No.
Kristy and Stacy were the bitches,
“đĩ ngựa,” my bà ngoại coached,
I hated at school because
They would never talk to me.
The other one—the blonde—
All about nature and sunshine,
Things I got in limited doses
Because I was an indoor kid
In latchkey, in the projects,
In my mom’s refugee bubble
Built by her encircling traumas,
The centrifugal force
That bound me to books,
To windows.
I must
Have been too
Slow.
Dad talked for me,
“We got the shirt at Target.
She was excited it would match her pants.
Her mom got her those.”
I flush.
He gave me all those books.
He gave me the ability to have so much to say
That I couldn’t get it out.
Ann M. Martin,
Who paid for shoulder pads
With money from telling stories,
Passed my signed book back to me
With a smile
That still unnerves me
When I see others’ offering it to me.
My dad ushers
Me to the side
As Ann M. Martin
Looks away to the next fan.
I say,
“Dawn.”
And a BabySitter’s Club t-shirt,
Tail tucked into a t-shirt tie on my right hip
to mirror my side ponytail.
I flipped
To Babs Bunny bookmark
On that title page
To ask Ms. Martin
(Sung in my head like the theme song to the show)
To write
My name
And hers.
As I waited in line,
I caught glimpses of her
Looking like a vice principal
Shoulders padded like an ‘80s woman
With something to prove.
“Hi,” she said to me—to me—
And I said “I like your books.”
“Thanks for reading. I like your shirt.”
I look down at the shirt and up at my dad.
He smiled and shook his head.
They must have been around the same age, but
Ann M. Martin would not be my stepmom.
“I got an award at school. For writing. ‘The Lost Earring.’
“Great!” She scratched
A pen across the title page.
“Who is your favorite babysitter?”
I flamingoed one tie-dyed leg up and down the other,
And I thought on my oscillating—
A word I’d learned from reading the fan
When I ran out of books—
Affiliations with the different characters:
Claudia—the Asian American go-to
But lived with both parents, in a house,
With a genius sister. No.
Kristy and Stacy were the bitches,
“đĩ ngựa,” my bà ngoại coached,
I hated at school because
They would never talk to me.
The other one—the blonde—
All about nature and sunshine,
Things I got in limited doses
Because I was an indoor kid
In latchkey, in the projects,
In my mom’s refugee bubble
Built by her encircling traumas,
The centrifugal force
That bound me to books,
To windows.
I must
Have been too
Slow.
Dad talked for me,
“We got the shirt at Target.
She was excited it would match her pants.
Her mom got her those.”
I flush.
He gave me all those books.
He gave me the ability to have so much to say
That I couldn’t get it out.
Ann M. Martin,
Who paid for shoulder pads
With money from telling stories,
Passed my signed book back to me
With a smile
That still unnerves me
When I see others’ offering it to me.
My dad ushers
Me to the side
As Ann M. Martin
Looks away to the next fan.
I say,
“Dawn.”
Jade Hidle (she/her/hers) is the proud Vietnamese-Irish-Norwegian daughter of a refugee. She is a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. Her travel memoir, The Return to Viet Nam, was published by Transcurrent Press in 2016, and her work has also been featured in Michigan Quarterly Review: Mixtape, Southern Humanities Review, Poetry Northwest, Columbia Journal, and the Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network’s diacritics.org. You can follow her work at or on Instagram @jadethidle.