Chevening Scholar Juleus Ghunta: His Life and Writing Rohan and the Shadows
This EPCC article introduces Juleus to California educators who want to promote mental health awareness in their classrooms and communities. I interviewed him in December 2021. If you’d like to see our 30-minute interview, click this link.
Interview
I met Juleus Ghunta at University for Peace’s Gross Global Happiness Summit in March 2021. I was completely immersed during his discussions on the impact of childhood trauma and was eager to read his new book Rohan Bullkin and the Shadows: A Story about ACEs and Hope. He articulated his views and experiences with precision and determination, yet Juleus is one of the most soft-spoken and patient people I’ve ever met. I admire his tenacity, fortitude, and clarity. I learned about Juleus’ editing and publishing process, including the approximately 500 drafts of Rohan and the thousands of emails to publishers, reviewers, endorsers, and people he reached out to for support and promotion for the book.
Juleus Ghunta grew up in Kendal, Jamaica, near the home of Cyril Everard Palmer who wrote many books about life in the Jamaican countryside, including a story about Juleus’ maternal grandmother. Years after Mr. Palmer left Jamaica for Canada, Juleus remembers sitting in Palmer’s childhood home and dreaming of a life as a writer. But he was illiterate and didn’t think it was possible.
Juleus explained that he had experienced considerable childhood trauma, “which reflects the experiences of many Jamaican children, as well as children around the world, including in developed countries. I started schooling at five years old and learned to read when I was twelve. Abuse significantly impacted my health and self-esteem. I struggled, not only due to poverty and a difficult home life, but especially because I did not know what to do with the nightmares, the self-hatred, the violence and rage I felt.”
When Juleus learned to read at age twelve, he searched for stories with protagonists who had encountered and overcome similar adversities, but such books were scarce. Now he is trying to fill that void. “Many children’s writers do not write books that explore difficult issues, despite the severe adversities our children endure. We often pretend these realities do not exist and ignore our children’s complex interior lives: their pain, their traumas, their emotions, and their longing to be seen as discerning rather than unperceptive. Authors do children and others a disservice when we shy away from exploring problematic themes,” he says.
The ‘others’ include many Jamaican teachers who come from difficult socioeconomic backgrounds. The education system is “populated with teachers who are severely traumatized.” As is the case in most developing countries, Jamaican children are usually encouraged to go to medical or law school, but many become teachers because they cannot afford these degrees or want to prevent others from experiencing the trauma they had.
What do we do when teachers pass their stress to children or experience secondary trauma? Reading can help children cope with adversity because the experiences of the books’s characters open the child’s doors to different experiences and ways of being for knowing people. “When I learned to read, I escaped into the world of books. One of the first books I read was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. I felt connected to Harry because we shared similar experiences. I needed to have a great imagination to survive my childhood and J.K. Rowling gave me permission to create a magical world for myself. I’m not sure how I would have turned out if I wasn’t able to escape into that world.”
Juleus says teachers should provide opportunities for children to use their imagination and creativity. Quoting Bessel A. van der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps the Score, he says “imagination is absolutely critical to the quality of our lives. Our understanding of this is well-established in trauma research and the evidence is all around us. Teachers must be careful to not suppress students’ autonomy and individuality.”
For many years Juleus played soccer to relieve tension and anger. In 2008, while studying at the University of the West Indies in Kingston, his leg was brutally broken in a soccer match. Unable to play soccer, he turned to writing to reflect on and reimagine the experiences that resulted in his 15 adverse childhood experiences (ACEs).
Juleus did not know about ACEs then or the groundbreaking 1988 ACEs study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDD) and Kaiser Permanente which is central to his current work as a writer and advocate. In that study, researchers collected data from 17,000+ mostly white, college-educated Americans regarding 10 types of abuse divided into three categories: sexual abuse, emotional abuse, and household disfunctions. Researchers found that 69% of the respondents had at least one ACE.
ACEs increase risks for maladaptive outcomes across a wide range of developmental domains, including postnatal brain development and gene expression, and may cause permanent damage to various parts of children’s brains, such as the prefrontal cortex which is responsible for impulse control and decision making. ACEs can be gateways to drug addiction, violence, and other harmful behaviors, and they can result in poor health outcomes such as chronic depression, heart disease and obesity.
Rohan Bullkin and the Shadows is inspired by Juleus Ghunta’s childhood and long battle with many of the impacts of ACEs. It tells the story of a young boy who struggles to read because of the adversities he faces. He befriends a book that helps him to understand and manage his Shadows which are manifestations of Rohan’s toxic stress. Even though the book takes on challenging topics, it is full of magic and hope that will engage and inspire readers. Rohan’s journey is a guide not only for children and adults experiencing ACEs but also for others who want to understand how to offer them support. Rohan is beautifully illustrated by Jamaican artist Rachel Moss and is published by CaribbeanReads.
CaribbeanReads published Ghunta’s first children’s book, Tata and the Big Bad Bull, in 2018. Tata features a young protagonist faced with many of the issues that afflict vulnerable children. Ghunta says he hopes his writing will “encourage people to have difficult conversations about many of the trials our children face. Hopefully, these conversations will help individuals and groups to begin their journeys toward trauma-informed healing and advocacy.”
Rohan Bullkin and the Shadows has received significant praise from distinguished medical doctors, psychologists, writers and educators, and from key figures in the global positive and adverse childhood experiences (PACEs) movement. Many of them have advocated for the inclusion of the book in education systems across the globe. Children’s rights advocate Michael Abrahams, MD, said that it “should be required reading in all schools.” Founder of PACEs Connections, Jane Stevens, said Rohan “is an enchanting story for all children and adults.”
During our conversations these past months, I saw him working to ensure the language flow will spark children’s imagination, speak directly to them and realize that they too can succeed.
