Content Warning: This section mentions racism, colonialism, rape, drug overdose, anti-gay bias, and a lynching.

In Betty, Tiffany McDaniel uses her mother’s childhood as a basis for her story. McDaniels began writing the story when she was 17, after her mother told her about the abuse that she and other women in her family had survived for generations (Chesanek, Carissa. “Tiffany McDaniel: Spilling Secrets.” Guernica, 28 Sept. 2020). She continued to edit the story but only published it in 2020, nearly 20 years after she originally wrote it. While fictionalized, the plot is based on interviews with her surviving family members, whose real names are used in the story.

McDaniels grew up in Circleville, Ohio, a small town in southern Ohio, similar to the fictional town of Breathed, Ohio, where McDaniels’s first published book The Summer That Melted Everything also takes place. The land plays an important role in the story—Betty learns about each plant and animal from her father, who carries on Cherokee traditions by working with and honoring the land. McDaniels’s own childhood was full of Landon’s wisdom passed down from her mother, Betty. Betty told Cherokee stories to McDaniels and her two sisters in the same way that Landon does for Betty—for example, teaching them about the Three Sisters—maize, beans, and squash.