Monique and Ann met shortly after they had moved thousands of miles with their families to their new city outside Seattle, Washington. Monique moved after years in the US Deep South; Ann moved from Southeast Asia were she had been living and teaching. They met at a function for their older kids’ elementary school and again with their youngest kids at a local park, and became great friends. Ann had already paused her usual teaching work to focus on writing for a while: Monique shared stories from her incredible youth and asked if they could collaborate.
We were (and still are) both very busy moms, and worked on this project in our bits and pieces of spare time over more than a decade, often while we were driving, shopping, grabbing coffee, or meeting up at each others’ homes. The adventure of our friendship and doing this project together has been a true joy!
We haven’t had time to go for a recent photoshoot together or separately, so here are images from our young womanhoods, when we were just starting out in the world.
Monique N. Leparleen has led one of the world’s most interesting lives: from simple manyatta and farm life, to hustling the streets of Nairobi, to traveling in Israel and Europe, to finally moving to the US, fleeing Hurricane Katrina and her ex, and settling clear across the country in a thriving small city in the cool Pacific Northwest, surrounded by towering evergreens. Along the way there were leopards, much water fetching and dung clearing, a crazy cow, many goats, a “spawn of Satan” ram, bush hunting from her father’s Land Rover, an amazing Afro-German shepherd dog, her beloved traditional healer grandfather saving her life, actual bandits (twice! Different ones!), an up-close encounter with a leopard, many times of running away to save herself (and others) from ill-intentioned family and strangers, getting “adopted” by a demanding and persnickety old elephant, all kinds of school and learning experiences, a sneakily-gotten diploma on a full scholarship (her father had not wanted her to go to college and taken active steps to prevent it, but she outwitted him), and many cakes and diplomatic bags. She holds a hard-won diploma in Hospitality and is additionally a CNA, currently practicing in our shared town. Her clients regularly hassle her to please get her stories out.
Ann Hendricks-Huang also started as a simple country girl, moving from Illinois cornfields to a “rustic” home in the Appalachian hills of Eastern Kentucky. She benefited from generous scholarships and received degrees in Philosophy (BA) and Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (MA). She lived in Southeast Asia for a decade, teaching at an English center and then the National University of Singapore, and then moving with her young children to her husband’s hometown of Seremban, Malaysia to raise their young kids near his parents. While there she ran a thriving private English, reading and writing classroom with many dozens of beloved students who have now grown into their own careers and families around the world. Since moving back from Asia, Ann has been on childrearing and writing sabbatical, culminating in three beloved nearly grown children, a very tired husband, and this project.