The many lives of Aida Waserstein

There’s an old saw, “Write what you know.”

Luckily for Aida Waserstein, there are multiple lifetimes of experiences she can draw upon in her new career as a children’s book author.

Waserstein is a Cuban refugee who found her way through foster care to Delaware to become a lawyer and serve a 20-plus-year stint as a judge in Delaware Family Court. Now retired and living in Lewes, Waserstein is using her experiences as a basis for her books, which she says are intended to teach children to appreciate each other’s differences. 

Waserstein came to the United States from Cuba in 1961, two years after Fidel Castro came to power. Her mother’s family had come to Cuba from Russia shortly after the Bolshevik revolution. Her father came to Cuba in 1937 from Germany to escape Nazi persecution. Waserstein’s mother died when she was very young, so when she came to America, it was with her father, aunt and uncle, one of 14,000 to leave Cuba in the wake of the Cuban Revolution. 

Waserstein said when she came, she could not speak English. She said her experience taught her that everyone was different and that was not a bad thing, which she tries to teach in her books.

Waserstein lived in Philadelphia when she came to the U.S., graduating from Upper Merion High School in 1966. She received her bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr College before going to law school at University of Pennsylvania, where she received a scholarship. Waserstein said her original career desire was to be a social worker, but she decided the law was where she could be most helpful to other people. She said at the time, there were not a lot of women or Hispanics trying to be lawyers.

Her first job out of law school was working as an attorney with the Wilmington-based Delaware Community Legal Aid Society, which provides free legal assistance to the poor. Waserstein said she started working class-action litigation at first, and found herself in an unfamiliar world.

“All the other lawyers had white hair and three-piece suits,” she said. “I was the only woman doing arguments in desegregation cases in New Castle County. But I did some law that if I worked for a firm, I wouldn’t have had that experience. I loved being a judge, but the best experience was being in legal services.”

She left the Community Legal Aid Society in 1976 to work at the Education Law Center in Philadelphia, which helps ensure education to poor children, minorities and children with disabilities. After working for three years there, she moved into private law practice, where she eventually founded her own firm, Waserstein and Demsey. 

The prospect of a judgeship was first floated to her in 1984, but at that time her nomination did not get out of committee. Over the next 10 years, she would periodically get asked to apply again, but she did not decide to throw her name in the ring until a vacancy in Delaware Family Court came up, which was the only court she really wanted to serve on because it would allow her to help people with their problems. 

That vacancy opened up in 1995, and she eventually got the job working out of the Family Court in New Castle County. After serving 21 years as a judge, Waserstein retired from the bench and began splitting her time between Wilmington and the Cape Region. 

It was in retirement that she began her new career writing children’s books. 

Waserstein’s first published book is “My Name Is Aida,” which, much like Waserstein’s own life, is about a 13-year-old girl who comes to America from Cuba and grows up to become a judge.

Waserstein said the purpose of the book was to reach out to young children who, like herself, find themselves feeling different because of who they are. She said the message of the book is that each person is unique, and being different is a good thing. She said she wanted to get this message across is a non-political way, and she did versions of the book in English and Spanish.  

Waserstein said she always liked to write, even when she was a judge, but writing a book for kids was a very different experience from writing legal papers. 

“It was a totally different kind of writing,” she said. “As a judge and lawyer, it was for adults and very technical.”

Now that she’s figured out how to write this way, she’s diving in in a big way. Waserstein said she has three other books currently in different stages of development. One is about a 9-year-old girl whose parents are getting divorced. Waserstein said the young girl, named Amelia, learns to assert herself and find her voice through drawing. 

It’s a story Waserstein said was inspired by some of the nasty custody battles she saw as a judge.

Her second book in development is about three children, one Afghani, one Pakistani and the other from Ghana, who learn from their teacher, Mrs. Cohen, the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, about gratitude. 

Finally, Waserstein said her third book is geared toward older kids. Called “Joey’s Buddy,” the story tracks the life of a young boy who gets taken into foster care and separated from his sister. When he gets separated, he forgets to take his stuffed dog, named Joey. The story tracks the young boy on his journey through the Family Court system and into adulthood. 

Waserstein said this book will take a bit longer to come out because it has not been illustrated yet. 

Once those projects are wrapped, she’s not sure what she wants to do afterward. She does know that she wants to spend more time at the beach.

“I’m a snob about the Delaware beaches,” Waserstein said. “They remind me of Varadero Beach in Cuba.”