Santa Clara Assistant Professor is celebrated for her debut novel, What the Fireflies Know

Dr. Kai Harris, a Santa Clara professor of creative writing, has been nominated for an NAACP Image Award for her book What the Fireflies Know.

The NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) is the largest civil rights organization in the United States. Its Image Award honors outstanding pieces of Black literature, music, theater, television and film.

Harris’s nominated book is set in 1995 Michigan and follows ten-year-old protagonist KB as she tries to navigate a new world of secrets about her sick mother, dead father and estranged grandfather. At the center of her novel is a story of hitting life’s milestones as a young Black girl.

“I felt like I was just one example of Black girlhood, but I started to realize there are many writers who write about the Black girl experience,” Harris said. “I wanted to learn more about that and write my own Black girls.”

Her journey began during her masters degree program at Belmont University, where she was tasked with recalling a childhood memory and penning it so vividly that a reader would feel like they were there in the story. She ended up writing about her summers in Lansing with her grandfather, which inspired the home of What the Fireflies Know’s KB.

“It was me thinking about some of the last moments I had with my grandfather before he passed away,” she shared. “By creating this story and character, I was able to grieve the loss of my grandfather in a new way – in a way that I don’t think I ever did.”

Using this emotional catharsis, Harris explores the perspective of a child. She believes that an important theme in her book is the way society interacts with young people.

“KB, as the youngest person in the family, is the one who understands that we need to help each other to navigate this grief and trauma,” Harris said. “I wanted to show the value of the perspective of young people and show that they’re in the midst of everything that’s going on, and generally, they’re paying attention, so we should listen to them more often.”

Writing the novel was not without its challenges. Harris recounted her struggles with writing KB’s emotionally fraught experiences in the story.

“It was difficult to have hard things happen to KB because I came to love her so much as a character and I wanted only good things to happen to her,” she said.

Harris hopes that she can use Black girls and women to talk to every kind of reader, no matter their background. Growing up, she had learned that only Black people would read Black books. However, she questioned this false adage because she read books about white people often and still saw herself in the characters.

To defy this standard, she wanted her book to remind readers to unite over shared life experiences rather than allow race to be a distinguishing narrative factor. It was a complex, difficult process, but she persevered by remembering her inspiration.

“The thing that kept me pushing through was the original passion for why I wanted to write,” Harris shared, referring to her major theme of the experience of Black girlhood. “If we stay true to what we’re trying to do and why we’re trying to do it, no matter what happens, you’ll feel good about it because you stayed true to yourself and your passion.”