7
“What’s wrong with alphabetical order?”
My friend sat across from me in the neighborhood café, watching the cus-
tomers carry out their Sunday morning coffee rituals. I’d recently started
working as an editorial assistant at Johns Hopkins University Press so I
assumed she wanted professional advice. More likely, I realized years later,
she simply wanted to boost my confidence. Whatever the case, after reading
her proposal for a study of refugee women, I cared very much about her proj
ect; I was determined to help her write an unforgettable book. But that table
of contents, arranged like a class roster, would launch it into obscurity.1
I asked why she’d chosen alphabetical order. Yes, it was logical. Yes, readers
could easily find the woman whom they wanted to read about, although I
pointed out that these women weren’t famous and few people would recog-
nize their names. Besides, weren’t some of the interviewees identified by
pseudonyms? My friend eventually admitted that the contents page reflected
her filing cabinet. She’d organized her research by individual interviewees.
Naturally she envisioned her book following the same order. And why, I
pressed, had she adopted this filing system?
Her answer stopped my heart. Treating these refugees as raw material for
an academic study demeaned them. They’d suffered violence and dislocation.
Rather than dissect their stories, she wanted to keep them whole. I’d drawn
diagrams to show her how to structure the book, but now I folded the sheets
of graph paper and slid them into my tote bag. For the next three hours, we
worked together to create a new table of contents that attended to her goals for
the book, the reader’s interests, and the refugee women’s dignity.
Whether or not my friend wrote an unforgettable book, I will never forget
that conversation. By forcing me to articulate what I’d learned as a reader and
CHAPTER 2
Designing Your Book:
The Initial Structure
