The not-so-secret world of Cindy Pham

From Hollywood to literature, there is no shortage when it comes to retellings of the classics.

The Lion King is based on William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. She’s the Man is The Bard’s Twelfth Night. While Clueless and Fire Island are based on Emma and Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, respectively.

And when it comes to books, we’ve got Chloe Gong’s Secret Shanghai young adult (YA) series, whose two duologies cover Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and As You Like It. And who can forget one of the most popular retellings nowadays, A Court of Thorns and Roses, which is inspired by the Beauty and the Beast fairy tale?

But one story that hasn’t received much of the retelling treatment is Sleeping Beauty.

Enter Cindy Pham.

Cindy Pham has gone from BookTuber to published author.

Mari Huang

The 31-year-old Brooklyn-based BookTuber just published her first book, The Secret World of Briar Rose, which dropped Tuesday and takes readers into the dream world of the notoriously slumberous royal. Pham’s queer retelling of the fairy tale examines the issue of truth, history, and who gets to tell the story. The YA book also explores mental health as many of the characters’ experiences have been inspired by Pham’s own depressive episodes.

I recently spoke with Pham about Briar Rose, why she chose to do a Sleeping Beauty retelling (“There's not much expansive lore to it…it gave me just enough, but not too much.”), our shared love of The Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer (“That was so big-brain energy of her, but also super fun.”), and how writing the book helped her figure out she was queer (“Our reality can be so confining that it doesn't even let people grow in that aspect.”).

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Samantha Pak: You got your start doing videos on BookTube. What made you want to foray into actually writing a book?
Cindy Pham: I was always really into writing way before I even started a BookTube channel. It would start off with novelizations of my favorite TV shows or video games or movies, and then it transitioned to writing fan fiction. And then by the time I got into high school, I started writing original fiction. So I had always wanted to write a book.

I actually wrote the first draft for this book between the end of high school and first year of college. Then I put it on the back burner because I needed to focus on my design career. It was during my first job that I got really into reading. I started a BookTube channel, and it  snowballed from there. And it just really connected my love for storytelling again, and I got to a point in my life where I was like, “Dang, I should really revisit that story I wrote back when I was a young adult, that Sleeping Beauty story.” Because when I did have free time, my mind always gravitated towards that story. This time, I just felt more compelled to tackle the story again and rewrite it after having grown after 10 years.

SP: Why Sleeping Beauty?
CP: It came from this desire I've had since elementary school. I would write for escapism, because I started wishing that I could fall asleep and never wake up. I didn't realize at the time that it was a passive form of suicidal ideation. But when I got into writing as a form of escapism, I made that connection of sleeping forever, and the themes of depression and suicidal ideation. I felt like Sleeping Beauty would make an interesting allegory for that: What if the character Sleeping Beauty had wanted to sleep forever as well? What if she was using this as a way to also avoid reality and problems, and find escapism in some imaginary world, the same way that we do when we read books or write stories or engage in any form of media?

Another facet of it is that this character is often criticized for her passivity and lack of agency. I felt like those are interesting qualities to explore, because those are the same things I have when I go through my depressive episodes. It's very difficult to be the motivated, determined, ready-to-save-the-world, or take-on-the-world archetype of a main character or hero, when you are struggling with a lot of mental health issues. Also, an issue I've had since as long as I remember is over sleeping. I would often sleep for longer than 12 hours, sometimes even 24 hours, just to avoid reality altogether. It was an interesting story to be the start-off point to explore mental health in a young adult story, and in a fairy tale retelling.

I enjoy when stories subvert expectations, and I also enjoy playing into this narrative theme of who gets to really tell the story.

SP: I also appreciated that you flip things on their head when it comes to the fairy godmothers, the stepmother, the prince, and the villain. What made you want to change things up?
CP: Because the premise takes place in the dream world while she's asleep, I really liked the idea of finding out what was actually going on the whole time while she was asleep that you didn't know otherwise in the original tale. I enjoy when stories subvert expectations, and I also enjoy playing into this narrative theme of who gets to really tell the story. And so the idea of fairy tales within this narrative is almost this constructed story that people are trying to tell you, but it's not necessarily the truth.

I also wanted to tell the story with a main character like Corin, who would ordinarily be relegated to a background character, because she is a dark-skinned woman of color living in poverty. She doesn't have magic or special abilities. She's definitely a character that probably would be seen as a necessary casualty for a revolution.

SP: Corin’s grandma came to the country in the story as a refugee. How much did your background and your heritage influence the story?
CP: I am also the child of immigrants. My parents had immigrated to the U.S. from Vietnam, and I was born in the U.S., while my older sister had been born in Vietnam. The focus I've had on making Corin and her family background be one of immigrants, and the grander theme of how ultimately, life is much easier to survive when we look out for each other—including people who come from different backgrounds—comes less from my personal experience, and more so from what I have come to observe and learn about the world.

My interest in it came more from my genuine interest as a person going through the world and learning more about what's going on, but I could definitely see how I probably am more invested, because I am also the child of immigrants as well.

"The Secret World of Briar Rose" flips the "Sleeping Beauty" fairy tale on its head.

Olivia Sy

SP: You wrote this initially back in high school and college. What was it like when you went back and revisited that story and saw what you wrote as a young adult?
CP: I definitely knew that the writing was going to be sh*tty. I think the way that I approach first drafts is that I focus on just getting it done in the first place, and I do the rewrites later. So I knew that I would rewrite the whole thing. So even if I had written the first draft in my adulthood, I probably would have still rewritten the whole thing.

Revisiting it again, so many things got added—in terms of the queerness when I also later on discovered I was queer, the more political aspects when I also became more politically conscious of things. The story grew along with me. It made me glad that I had taken the time to just live my life and observe the world, so that I could revisit the story again, knowing more than I did back then.

SP: You mentioned the queer storyline and how that helped you figure out and realize you were queer. Can you talk about that, and what that process and realization was like?
CP: I had decided to make the characters queer women in the second draft. Because in the first draft, the main character was actually a man. The book isn't really a romance, but there's a very, very faint romantic inclination going on. And it was straight. And that was because I grew up very heteronormative, and when I made the change for them to be queer women, I was still straight.

The decision came less because of diversity, and more so because I was thinking back on the themes of this book, and how these characters are escaping into an imaginary world where they can exist to freely be themselves, without judgments or oppressive forces that exist in the real world. It's freeing in so many different layers for Corin, who comes from a life of poverty and constant invasion. So I think from a class perspective, that is freeing. But then I was thinking about other layers. I thought about how for her to be a woman specifically, and a woman of color, and for the characters to be queer, that idea of freely existing in some kind of safe space where you aren't confined by reality, it just hits different for that intersectionality of those identities.