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St. Paul Youth Concert Series Inspires Writer’s Novel

(St. Paul) – Tom Xavier’s Neffatira’s First Challenge is both a celebration of diversity and an exploration of bigotry. Neffie, the main character in Tom Xavier’s second novel, always knew she was different. Born to a white mother and a missing father who was supposedly from African, she always felt she was the misfit in her all-white, home town in northeastern Iowa.

“She’s decidedly the school freak,” says Xavier of St. Paul, who goes on to explain she is actually from a different world. “When she bends across the Tymes to a different universe where she suddenly becomes a noblewoman of the ruling classes, you’d expect her to welcome the change. But it’s not so easy for her. The characters in her new world have different but deeply ingrained bigotries she’s expected to accept and share, and she doesn’t like this.”

Neffatira’s First Challenge, released in December of 2019 by Koehler Books of Hampton, Virginia, is filled with action and adventure but underlying the fast-moving plot is a story about intolerance, prejudice, and social dysfunction.

“In the summers, I run a global music project,” Xavier recalls. “This one time, I was with a woman from Northern Ireland who noticed some African women waiting openly for a bus. Amazed by the sight, she remarked that we didn’t seem to have any prejudices in the United States. When I told her we did, she asked, ‘But do you kill each other over them?’”

This question has stayed with Xavier, whose work with children includes many project participants from war-torn parts of the world. He wrote Neffatira’s First Challenge as a coming of age story but also as a fantasy exploring the clash of cultures in another world.

“We once had a couple of refugees from the Bosnian War. They had to flee because being Muslim meant being killed. Recent events here in the U.S. have reminded us we’re not so different—and this has got to change.”

Each summer, Xavier’s nonprofit, Sounds of Hope, Ltd.,  works with a select group of seventy-five children and young adults aged ten and above from countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, and throughout the United States. The project is focused on learning popular and traditional songs and dances from each other’s cultures, and then traveling throughout Minnesota and surrounding states to perform concerts of global songs and dance.

“The concerts are a celebration of cultures,” says Xavier. “But the world is also full of hatred, bigotries, violence, flights of refugees, and other, hard issues. Even though we’re a children’s project, we don’t run from these themes and I want to write novels that address them, as well.”

Since its founding in 1991, more than 600 young people, including the girl who inspired Neffie in Neffatira’s First Challenge, have participated in Xavier’s concert series. “When the real Neffie came to Songs of Hope, she was a 12-year-old girl of mixed race who was a little scared but also excited to find herself in a place that was culturally diverse. Suddenly, she was just one different kid among many different kids, and this amazed her,” remembers Xavier, who adds that the idea of exploring new cultures and discovering new places is in his blood. “When I stepped out of my blue-collar neighborhood as a young man, I wanted to go everywhere and see everything. In a way, I was like Neffie, a misfit, only my weirdness was I liked differences and distrusted sameness.”

Xavier likes writing about characters who think for themselves. “Lots of young readers nowadays feel like strangers in a strange land—whether they’re new immigrants or refugees or native kids who just aren’t part of mainstream culture. I hope the story will inspire them to step outside their comfort zones, push limits, and challenge the world to accept them as they are,” says Xavier. “The status quo just can’t be accepted when it involves bigotry, racism, intolerance, and violence against fellow human beings. Change is needed and young people should be the instruments of change.”