{"id":206,"date":"2024-09-09T18:34:43","date_gmt":"2024-09-09T18:34:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/?page_id=206"},"modified":"2026-06-19T04:03:01","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T04:03:01","slug":"monique-and-ann","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/?page_id=206","title":{"rendered":"Monique and Ann"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Monique and Ann have been good friends since 2012. We met shortly after we had each moved thousands of miles with our families to the same new city in the Pacific Northwest. Monique moved after years in the US Deep South; Ann moved from Southeast Asia were she had been living and teaching for a decade. We met at a function for our older kids’ elementary school, and again with our 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 we could collaborate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We are truly among the worst selfie-takers in the Pacific Northwest, yet the photo above will be hard to replace as “our” picture, even with a real photo shoot. It captures the day we got to snuggle, check out, and return our own book<\/em>, after twelve years of hard work, from the same small, cozy neighborhood library that we had both raised our kids going to. So poignant!<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Here are images from our young womanhoods, when we were just starting out in the world, and a bit of our bios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Monique traveling Europe in her early 20s. Someone randomly asked if she was a model and they could photograph her. Note the awesome “DANGER” labels over her head, which she was oblivious to at the time. Appropriate! -Personal photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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, traveling Israel and Europe alone, finally moving to the US, fleeing Hurricane Katrina, 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 many goats and cattle, much water fetching and dung clearing, a “spawn of Satan” ram, bush hunting from her father’s Land Rover, an amazing dog, her beloved traditional healer grandfather saving her life, actual bandits (twice! Different ones!), an up-close encounter with a leopard, several 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, and many cakes and diplomatic bags. She holds a hard-won diploma in Hospitality and additionally works in healthcare in our shared town. Her clients regularly hassle her to please get her stories out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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Ann’s old press pass from her first high school job, working for her local Eastern Kentucky county newspaper, print-only at the time, around 1990\/91. A wonderful experience! -Personal item<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Ann Hendricks 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 in Malaysia to raise their 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 grown and nearly grown children, a very tired husband, and this project.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Photos from the time of the book<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately, Hurricane Katrina swallowed most of Monique’s photos, along with many other prized possessions. However, she does have these two childhood photos, from the years covered in the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Monique and Ann have been good friends since 2012. We met shortly after we had each moved thousands of miles with our families to the same new city in the Pacific Northwest. Monique moved after years in the US Deep South; Ann moved from Southeast Asia were she had been living and teaching for a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-206","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":743,"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/206\/revisions\/743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daughteroftheleopard.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}