Goodreads asked Julia Benally:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Julia Benally I started writing about the planet of Ilo when I was twelve. I wrote numerous stories about the place by hand, but the dynamics kept changing, so I said I needed a base for the other stories to stand on. But what was it going to be about? The answer didn't come until I was 18, and working as a miserable substitute teacher on my reservation. There, I observed lots of suffering. The kids were misunderstood, mistreated, abused, some had seen rape, others had been raped, the teachers were awful to them, and the kids themselves made fun of each other, like laughing at students because their parents had died. It hurt seeing this, and there was nothing I could do about it. I tried making the school room a happy place when I was there. I wished I could give them someone who could love them, a mom and dad who weren't drunk, homes that weren't full of that mess, but I couldn't. So in "Pariahs," I could change that, even if it was a fantasy.

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