tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-62145319096851932562024-03-13T15:28:22.567-04:00CBC DiversityAdvocating for an inclusive and representative children’s publishing industry CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.comBlogger148125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-20760203544814765182013-10-23T11:17:00.001-04:002013-11-12T14:35:48.880-05:00CBC Diversity Moves Homes<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">To Our Amazing Readers--</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Thank you for reading our blog and supporting our initiative! We're not stopping, and we're not slowing down. On the contrary, we're gearing up to provide you with more content than ever before! To do this, we've found a platform that we think you'll enjoy if you haven't already discovered it, Tumblr.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We've already got our <a href="http://cbcdiversity.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">CBC Diversity Tumblr</a> up and running and invite you to check out our new look. After this week, we will no longer be updating our CBC Blogger page, however, all the past posts and resources will still be available for viewing on this site. We've transferred all of the last year and half onto our new Tumblog and plan to continue providing thought-provoking new posts, series, resources, and more in our new home.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We look forward to seeing you over there!</span></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">**Please note that on Monday, Oct. 28th, 2013, the proper address to reach CBC Diversity's Blogger page will be cbcdiversity.blogspot.com. Cbcdiversity.com will take you to our Tumblr page.</span></span></div>
CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-39784882630596002502013-10-18T12:06:00.000-04:002013-10-18T12:06:00.437-04:00CBC Diversity Newsletter: October 2013 v. 2<br />
<div align="center"><div id="glossi-embed-56032" style="cursor:pointer;"><a href="http://glossi.com/CBCDiversity/56032-cbc-diversity-newsletter-october-2013-v-2?tkn=c7ecfb1d237c4580ae68680b53eafd7b&eb=CBCDiversity" target="_blank"><img src="http://glossi.com/embed/cover-img/56032/media/6426b719b69d4536ae18aa5b6daf5d99JZ3z6Y.png" alt="Glossi.com - CBC Diversity Newsletter October 2013 v. 2" title="Glossi.com - CBC Diversity Newsletter October 2013 v. 2"></a><p><a href="http://glossi.com/CBCDiversity/56032-cbc-diversity-newsletter-october-2013-v-2?tkn=c7ecfb1d237c4580ae68680b53eafd7b&eb=CBCDiversity" target="_blank">Click to view <strong>CBC Diversity Newsletter October 2013 v. 2</strong> on <strong><big>GLOSSI.COM</big></strong></a></p></div><script src="http://glossi.com/static/js/lib/glossy/embed/cover/entry.js?glossiId=56032&eb=CBCDiversity&height=573&width=450&tkn=c7ecfb1d237c4580ae68680b53eafd7b"></script></div>CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-61570143781508157762013-10-17T11:53:00.000-04:002013-10-17T12:08:44.611-04:00Industry Q&A with author-illustrator Don Tate<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="more" style="position: absolute; top: -99em;"></a>
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>When you were a child or young adult, what book first opened your eyes to the diversity of the world? </b></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://media.tumblr.com/d94fd79a67565772d5adbff8c175171d/tumblr_inline_mutjxddwc21s70xgv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="image" border="0" class="alignLeft" data-mce-src="http://media.tumblr.com/d94fd79a67565772d5adbff8c175171d/tumblr_inline_mutjxddwc21s70xgv.jpg" height="200" src="http://media.tumblr.com/d94fd79a67565772d5adbff8c175171d/tumblr_inline_mutjxddwc21s70xgv.jpg" width="149" /></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I
didn’t read books as much as I should have. I struggled with
comprehension and retention. There was plenty of Dr. Seus and Mother
Goose around the house, but I preferred our Funk & Wagnalls Young
Students Encyclopedias. That’s where I discovered a multicultural world.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As
a child, I thought the world was white. That’s what my world looked
like growing up in Des Moines, Iowa in the 1960s and 70s. White people,
white books, white movies, white television, white music. Encyclopedias
allowed me to see the world from another vantage point. They revealed a
world made up of color -- brown people of every shade. Maybe that’s why
encyclopedias appealed to me so much.</span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>What is your favorite diverse book that you read recently?</b></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I’m
a little confused about the term ‘diverse book.’ It's one of those
uncomfortable, elephant-in-the-room terms, that used to mean one thing,
but has morphed into something entirely different. It’s an industry code
word whose definition still evolves.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I’ve illustrated
children’s books for nearly 30 years -- trade and educational. When I
entered the business back in the 80s, people used the word ‘diversity’
interchangeably with Black or African-American. When someone said
‘diversity,’ I knew they were talking about me. I was often hired to
illustrate a text because an editor had a ‘diverse,’ ‘multicultural,’
‘African-American’ manuscript. However when I hear the term used today,
it’s more inclusive, as should be. When someone says ‘diverse,’ they
could mean African-American, Hispanic, Asian, Native, LGBT, girls/women,
mixed-race, physically challenged, Buddhist -- or even white. A better
question might be: What is a favorite book that exemplifies diversity?
But even that would be a difficult question because I don’t think
diversity can be about one or two books. It’s about a body of books: <i>Heart & Soul</i>; <i>Diego Riveria</i>; <i>Dreaming Up!; Around our Way on Neighbor’s Day</i>; <i>Alvin Ho</i>; <i>Jingle Dancer</i>. There’s so many.</span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>If you could participate in a story time with any children’s book author or illustrator (alive or dead) who would it be? </b></span></span></span><br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://media.tumblr.com/7f6d7ca245e6f5485722bfef7bf836a3/tumblr_inline_mutk1vhk3B1s70xgv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="image" border="0" class="alignRight" data-mce-src="http://media.tumblr.com/7f6d7ca245e6f5485722bfef7bf836a3/tumblr_inline_mutk1vhk3B1s70xgv.jpg" height="200" src="http://media.tumblr.com/7f6d7ca245e6f5485722bfef7bf836a3/tumblr_inline_mutk1vhk3B1s70xgv.jpg" title="Photo Credit: www.ezra-jack-keats.org" width="192" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo Credit: www.ezra-jack-keats.org</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Ezra
Jack Keats. It’s funny, but until just a few years ago, I thought Ezra
Jack Keats was a Black man --- ha-ha-ha! -- but, honestly, I did. He had
a way of portraying African-American people authentically. And he did
it with soul! In order for a white artist to illustrate Black people,
they need to understand our skin color, hair texture, anatomy, or the
art will pop off the page as unauthentic. Or at least it will to other
Black people. Ezra portrayed Black characters with dignity and pride
(though some early critics said otherwise). Interestingly, he did it at
a time in history when Black people weren’t portrayed much in
children’s literature at all. Ezra’s stories did not focus on the
character’s race, racial strife, slavery, civil rights. He told stories
with universal themes that every child could relate to. The color of his
character’s skin faded as one got into the story. I don’t know that
anyone has been able to do that since then.</span></span></div>
<br />
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>How do you introduce books featuring characters of color to parents and kids? </b></span></span></span><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://media.tumblr.com/7cacfb9ba79e3a233e01d5d921a7e7d8/tumblr_inline_mutk4qTZ3t1s70xgv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="image" border="0" class="alignLeft" data-mce-src="http://media.tumblr.com/7cacfb9ba79e3a233e01d5d921a7e7d8/tumblr_inline_mutk4qTZ3t1s70xgv.jpg" height="200" src="http://media.tumblr.com/7cacfb9ba79e3a233e01d5d921a7e7d8/tumblr_inline_mutk4qTZ3t1s70xgv.jpg" width="160" /></a>I
introduce my books to kids by visiting schools and participating in
book festivals. I don’t make an issue of race. I tell stories. I draw
pictures. I talk about my books. My brown-face characters speak for
themselves. Children, regardless of race, are open to my books. Parents,
however, can hesitate sometimes. For example, one time at a book event,
a white child strolled up and picked up one of my books. He was with
his parents, who looked a bit uncomfortable with the situation. He
turned to his mother and said, “I want this one,” pointing to my Willie
Mays book. His mother smiled in attempt to hide a struggle going on
inside her head. But soon her feelings were plastered all over her face:
She did not want to buy my book for her kid. After a few seconds of
hem-hawing, she responded, “What about one of those books?” She pointed
to another author who was signing nearby. Then she pointed to another.
Those authors were white. I don’t remember the authors or their books,
but they didn’t feature Black characters. To my amusement, the kid did
not give up. “I want this book,” he said. I fought off a smile. This has
happened more than a few times. I think the more kids-- and parents of
all races -- are exposed to racial diversity in books, the less race
becomes an issue.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Authenticity is, of course, key
in multicultural literature, and often times reviewers tend to highlight
perceived inaccuracies. How do you think this affects the publishing
industry’s decision making process in including or excluding characters
and books with diverse and/or multicultural themes?</b></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://media.tumblr.com/e289dd2b0eb9d6d146fad62cdd2fd126/tumblr_inline_mutk1hahCQ1s70xgv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="image" border="0" class="alignRight" data-mce-src="http://media.tumblr.com/e289dd2b0eb9d6d146fad62cdd2fd126/tumblr_inline_mutk1hahCQ1s70xgv.jpg" height="200" src="http://media.tumblr.com/e289dd2b0eb9d6d146fad62cdd2fd126/tumblr_inline_mutk1hahCQ1s70xgv.jpg" title="Photo Credit: www.ezra-jack-keats.org" width="199" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo Credit: www.ezra-jack-keats.org</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It’s
been my experience as a picture book illustrator, that when an editor
has a book with African-American subject matter, written by a white
author, they’ll bring on a black artist, if possible. They do this, I’ve
been told many times, figuring a Black artist will bring a greater
sense of authenticity to the story. I agree and disagree. As a Black
artist, I know my people, culture, life experience. I can make it real.
But so can an artist of another race, if they do their research like
they should -- Ezra Jack Keats, again, a good example.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
practice of matching a Black author to a manuscript with Black subject
matter creates a niche for Black artists. Filling that niche keeps
manuscripts coming our way, as long as the artwork is quality and
deadlines are met. On the flip side, it can also put us into a box. I
love illustrating books about my people. I am thankful to the editors
and art directors who provide me work. But where are the offers to
illustrate a manuscript with a white protagonist? Will that come along?
Or what about a manuscript featuring a cute dog, funny pig, or
crazed-out carrot? I can do a crazed-out carrot.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>How
can we reconcile the prevalence in reviews of readers wanting to like
or sympathize with the protagonist, and our call to write people with
whom they fundamentally differ?</b></span></span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I don’t know if
the publishing industry can reconcile with readers (white readers?) who are less interested in books with protagonists who differ from
them. It’s a free country, you can’t force ‘em to read what they don’t
want to read. But I think if you can reach their children, you can
affect the future.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When children are raised with books
featuring multicultural characters, protagonist who are different from
them are no big deal. As a Black male, I didn’t very often have the
choice between a protagonist who looked or didn’t look like me. If I was
going to read a book, it would likely feature a white protagonist.
Period, like it or not. So today I can read a book like <i>The Marbury Lens</i> and not get tripped up on the race of the character.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>As
someone who reads, loves, and often reviews children’s literature,
please provide what you feel are the three most important things to keep
in mind when writing a diverse character or about a different culture?</b></span></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Be
wary of stereotypes. Check your work by checking with others. I belong
to several writing critique groups. I’m the only person of color within
those groups. When my friends write about other races, I’m careful to
point out stereotypes or things that might be offensive to people of
color. My friends aren’t racists in the least bit, but they’re human.
They have preferences and biases, same as I do. But they’ve probably
never been the victim of racism, and so they just don’t know when the
line has been crossed.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The question of stereotyping can be
fine line to walk, in my opinion. Lets say a white author writes a
story about a Black teen, who lives in an urban neighborhood and likes
to play basketball, is raised by a single mother, whose father is dead
or in prison. Is this stereotypical? Yes, kinda. But is it realistic?
Oh, yes! Should a white author avoid this kind of imagery for fear of
being called out on stereotyping? No, I don’t think so. But I advise
that they check themselves by checking with Black people. And if they
don’t know any Black people, well, there’s where the problem will begin.</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If more books were published like Varian Johnson’s <i>My Life As A Rhombus</i>,
books featuring suburban, Black math-whiz teenagers, in homes with two
caring and hardworking parents, the other stuff wouldn’t likely be an
issue anyway. Balance is what’s needed.</span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<a href="http://media.tumblr.com/49b13c0950ceca2806293743e02af57b/tumblr_inline_mutk8lFZHz1s70xgv.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="image" border="0" class="alignLeft" data-mce-src="http://media.tumblr.com/49b13c0950ceca2806293743e02af57b/tumblr_inline_mutk8lFZHz1s70xgv.jpg" src="http://media.tumblr.com/49b13c0950ceca2806293743e02af57b/tumblr_inline_mutk8lFZHz1s70xgv.jpg" width="85and" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Don Tate has illustrated many books for children, including <i>She Loved Baseball, Ron's Big Mission, Duke Ellington's Nutcracker Suite</i>. He is also the debut author of the award-winning <i>It Jes' Happened: When Bill Traylor Started To Draw</i>. Don lives in Austin, Texas.</span></span></div>
CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-81487653207141911342013-10-04T11:24:00.000-04:002013-10-04T11:24:12.700-04:00CBC Diversity Newsletter: October 2013 v. 1<br />
<div align="center">
<div id="glossi-embed-52216" style="cursor: pointer;">
<a href="http://glossi.com/CBCDiversity/52216-cbc-diversity-newsletter-october-2013-v-1?tkn=76b155a00f31496da165a52b37793ab8&eb=CBCDiversity" target="_blank"><img alt="Glossi.com - CBC Diversity Newsletter October 2013 v. 1" src="http://glossi.com/embed/cover-img/52216/media/79c8a55df9314c979566d7770aa68fbaRhAATM.png" title="Glossi.com - CBC Diversity Newsletter October 2013 v. 1" /></a><br />
<a href="http://glossi.com/CBCDiversity/52216-cbc-diversity-newsletter-october-2013-v-1?tkn=76b155a00f31496da165a52b37793ab8&eb=CBCDiversity" target="_blank">Click to view <b>CBC Diversity Newsletter October 2013 v. 1</b> on <b><big>GLOSSI.COM</big></b></a></div>
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CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-67539311672237855592013-09-30T11:24:00.002-04:002013-09-30T11:27:27.640-04:00Diversity 101: Blurring the Lines Between Familiar and Foreign <a style="position:absolute;top:-99em;" name="more"></a>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Part II—A Focus on Dialogue </b></span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Contributed to CBC Diversity by Uma<span style="font-size: small;"> Krishnaswami</span></i></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><u><b>My Personal Connection</b></u></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The books you read as a child are as real as the places you live in or the people around you. They whisper to you of the possibilities the world can offer, like mental pathways into your own as-yet-unlived future. <br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qgz-AcEDcLM/UkmVZPXY-7I/AAAAAAAAAcc/TZuXUoDvunU/s1600/image-home.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-qgz-AcEDcLM/UkmVZPXY-7I/AAAAAAAAAcc/TZuXUoDvunU/s1600/image-home.jpg" /></a>In that category, <a href="http://www.rumergodden.com/index.php" target="_blank">Rumer Godden</a> gave me permission to write. <a href="http://www.kipling.org.uk/index.htm" target="_blank">Kipling </a>both enchanted and troubled me; only many years later did I understand my own need to write about the country he depicted with his strange colonial mixture of tenderness and disdain. But as a child of the late 1950s growing up in India, I cut my reading teeth on Enid Blyton. <br /><br />I learned a lot from Enid about humor, family, friendships, and the pleasure of racing along a swiftly unfolding plot. Now, thinking back, I am pretty sure that I also learned how not to write dialogue. </span></span><br />
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<a name='more'></a><div style="text-align: justify;">
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><u><b>Stereotypes/Cliches/Tropes/Errors</b></u></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Consider this passage. The characters, including Kiki the parrot, have arrived in a fictional place called Barira. They’re met by the hotel manager:</span></span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">‘Ha – what you call him – parrot!’ said the little manager. ‘Pretty Poll, eh?’</span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">‘Wipe your feet,’ said Kiki, much to the man’s surprise. ‘Shut the door!’</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The small man was not sure whether to obey or not. ‘Funny bird!’ he said. ‘He is so much clever! He spiks good! Polly, polly!’</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">‘Polly, put the kettle on,’ said Kiki, and gave a screech that made the man hurry out of the room at once.*</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">*(US readers, note that the punctuation is correctly quoted from this UK edition)</span><br /><br />Note the reference to the speaker as “the little manager.” In the allocation of power, even the talking parrot is higher up than this adult character in a developing country. Note the deliberate errors in his speech, his hesitation in choice of words, his mildly mangled pronunciation and syntax. All of it results in making the foreigner seem an object of ridicule. <br /><br />From <i>The Valley of Adventure</i>, here’s a passage where the children talk about the natives of the country they’ve landed in:</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-elPzbgFT-Qc/UkmVggtRYgI/AAAAAAAAAcg/c-sKrNJ2Jy0/s1600/the-valley-of-adventure-6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-elPzbgFT-Qc/UkmVggtRYgI/AAAAAAAAAcg/c-sKrNJ2Jy0/s1600/the-valley-of-adventure-6.jpg" /></a><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">‘What country are we in?’ said Lucy-Ann. ‘Shall we be able to speak their language?’</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">‘I don’t suppose so for a minute,’ said Philip. ‘But we’ll just have to try and make ourselves understood.’</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />One wonders if they pulled it off by shouting or speaking… very… slowly. <br /><br />This isn’t meant to indict Enid Blyton as a person or as a writer. In Blyton’s 1940s world, speakers of English were “us” and everyone else was “them.” Social psychologists call this “ingroup bias.” We all have some version of it. As writers we need to become aware of our own biases as we create the voices of our characters. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><u><b>Things I’d Like to See</b></u></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Here’s what I tell my students in the <a href="http://www.vcfa.edu/wcya" target="_blank">MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults</a> at Vermont College of Fine Arts. <br /> </span></span></div>
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<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In dialogue, create speech patterns that don’t stereotype. This means listening, really listening, for character voice, a process that is equal parts meditative practice and craft. If you don’t listen closely enough, you end up transcribing real conversation, and we all know the paradox in that—real speech, written down as dialogue, sounds fake. Take that across cultural lines, and those transcriptions sound not only fake but patronizing.</span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Use colloquial speech—please don’t take all the contractions out. Personally, I’m tired of hearing South Asian characters who sound like Gunga Din. When you’re writing contemporary fiction, let your characters sound as if they live in the same century as we do. You’re after cadence, not caricature. <br /> </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">When characters use a sprinkling of languages other than English, allow the meaning to emerge through context. Parenthetical translation isn’t incorrect, exactly, but it can become annoying if it’s overused. Sometimes mood matters more than literal definition.<br /> </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">It really helps if you have at least a working familiarity with the language you’re trying to sprinkle in. Otherwise your characters are going to sound as if they’re reciting from tourist phrase-books. <br /> </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Get into your characters’ hearts and souls, not just their thoughts. Emotional resonance is what you’re after, regardless of what kind of story you’re writing. Dialogue that is too cerebral will feel flat, as if your characters were talking heads. Then again, make sure that the character’s emotions feel true to his or her cultural context. Oh, and while you’re at it, make sure you’re not stereotyping that context either. <br /> </span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Whether you’re writing within or out of your own cultural context, let dialogue do the work it’s meant to do—show subtext, hint at unspoken emotions and interpersonal dynamics, affect the momentum of the story by driving it forward or lingering for a glimpse into something deep. </span></span></li>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><u><b>Suggested Reading</b></u></span></span></span></div>
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<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">In <i>This Thing Called the Future</i> by J.L. Powers, Zulu words are used in dialogue with subtlety and sureness. The author is aware of the choices she makes in matters like standardizing plural forms for clarity or employing nouns in sentences. </span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>Tell Us We’re Home</i> by Marina Budhos. In this novel with a braided structure, the voices of three immigrant girls are perfectly tuned. </span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>Where the Mountain Meets the Moon</i> and <i>Starry River of the Sky</i>, by Grace Lin. The dialogue in both books seems an effortless extension of the storyteller’s voice. </span></span></li>
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<li><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>The Revolution of Evelyn Serrano</i> by Sonia Manzano integrates Spanish words and phrases into dialogue with ease and fluidity. Each spoken voice is clear and distinct. </span></span></li>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NlNsh3MDUzY/UkB3u1ZvHCI/AAAAAAAAAcI/NGgdWzJ18kM/s1600/Uma+2011+hi-res1.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NlNsh3MDUzY/UkB3u1ZvHCI/AAAAAAAAAcI/NGgdWzJ18kM/s200/Uma+2011+hi-res1.jpeg" width="75" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Uma Krishnaswami is the author of <i>The Grand Plan to Fix Everything</i> and <i>The Problem With Being Slightly Heroic</i>, both from Atheneum Books for Young Readers.</span></span></div>
CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-53346301215401027962013-09-25T14:34:00.003-04:002013-09-25T14:34:57.690-04:00Checking Boxes and Filling Blanks: Diversity and Inclusion in Children’s Literature <a style="position:absolute;top:-99em;" name="more"></a>
<i><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span id="goog_2008915405"></span><span id="goog_2008915406"></span>Guest post by educator and writer, Cory Silverberg.</span></span></b></i>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lee & Low Books'<br />
<a href="http://blog.leeandlow.com/2013/06/17/why-hasnt-the-number-of-multicultural-books-increased-in-eighteen-years/" target="_blank">Diversity Gap in Children's Books Infographic</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The publisher Lee and Low recently mobilized social media (through the nifty infographic on the left) to jumpstart a discussion of diversity in children’s literature. No surprise to anyone who is paying attention, while the US continues to undergo a significant demographic shift, diversity in children’s books is not reflecting what we the people look like today.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When we grow up not finding ourselves represented in popular media and educational curricula it becomes just a little harder to creatively imagine our futures, to explore our identities, to try on different ways of being; all of which are essential aspects of development. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Shame thrives in invisibility and silence. This is why representation is a critical aspect of diversity work. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But we need to also be mindful of how easily a complicated idea like diversity becomes code for one flattened out thing. That thing is usually the visual representation of race. As authors and educators, editors and publishers, we need to notice how this is missing the forest for the trees. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So as publishers start identifying even more specific ‘diversity markets’ and begin to make editorial “requests” to meet them, it seems like a good time to consider both the forest and the trees, and think about whether there’s a way to tend to both.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">To accomplish this we need to think not only of diversity but also of inclusion.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Writing Diversity in Children’s Literature</span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In theory, diversity should refer to the range of varied experiences and ideas represented in a book, or more broadly in a publisher’s catalog. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But all too often diversity becomes code for visual representation of races other than white. One reason for this is that saying diversity when we mean race avoids calling out the publishing industry’s systemic racism, something most authors (who want to be published by this industry) are understandably uncomfortable doing.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When talk of diversity expands beyond race it still ends up looking very much like a checklist of compartmentalized identities. Can we get a child in a wheelchair? Check. Can the doctor be African American, and a woman? Check and check.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Representation matters, so this kind of diversity may have meaning, but as author and illustrator Maya Gonzalez pointed out so well in <a href="http://www.picturebookacademy.com/8/post/2013/07/polka-dots-self-portraits-and-first-voice-multicultural-childrens-books.html" target="_blank">a recent post</a> on First Voice multicultural children’s books, neither the characters nor the books guided by the checklist approach resonate in the same way with children.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There’s a difference between representation and diversity; that difference matters and needs to be talked about. For me, this is where inclusion comes in.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Writing Inclusion </span></span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Inclusion, as a value and a writing practice, isn’t about representing as many different things as possible. Instead the goal of inclusion is simply that readers find a space for themselves in our stories, and that they can bring all of who they are to the reading experience, or at least as much of who they are as they want or can. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For adults I often describe the difference between diversity and inclusion as the difference between entering a room and seeing folks who look like you, and entering a room and feeling like you belong. One is usually necessary for the other, but they aren’t the same thing, and they don’t always follow.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For children, it’s the difference between opening a book and seeing someone who looks like you - understanding that this is the character your meant to feel connected to because of that one visually represented thing you have in common - and falling into a story as you are. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Diversity, as it’s often practiced, teaches children to compartmentalize their experiences of, say, race or gender or class. Inclusion creates a space for them to explore not only multiple parts of their experience but also how those experiences are woven together in their bodies and lives.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It’s the difference between having to check a box or fill in a blank in response to some question about yourself. Whenever possible, particularly with young kids, I would say we want them to fill in blanks, not check boxes. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Writing inclusion then, means leaving spaces, rather than adding boxes.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Thinking about diversity and inclusion should not be an either or proposition. We need both, desperately. We need more representation, not only of race, but also of gender and bodies, ideas and experience. As Gonzalez writes, we need more First Voice literature that engages all children and reflects the communities and cultures our children actually live in, which are never as monochromatic or monotone as so much children’s literature appears to be.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Writing inclusion, then, is about creating spaces where children can learn about and across differences, spaces where we learn about both what makes us unique and what connects us to each other. </span></span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7yUeyz7coRc/Uh-Rzd6ethI/AAAAAAAAAYc/ftj0UbbjgTk/s1600/corysilverberg3+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7yUeyz7coRc/Uh-Rzd6ethI/AAAAAAAAAYc/ftj0UbbjgTk/s200/corysilverberg3+copy.jpg" width="81" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Cory Silverberg is an educator and writer. He is working on a series of inclusive children’s books about sexuality and gender for Seven Stories Press. The first, <i>What Makes a Baby</i>, was released in May 2013. He can be found online at <a href="http://sexuality.about.com/">sexuality.about.com</a>, where he writes about sexual education, culture, politics, and health.</span></span></div>
CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-72905207428475855072013-09-23T15:08:00.001-04:002013-09-23T15:08:13.092-04:00CBC Diversity Newsletter: September 2013 v. 2<br />
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CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-75630724812068271682013-09-23T13:22:00.001-04:002013-09-23T13:22:13.720-04:00Diversity 101: Blurring the Lines Between Familiar and Foreign<a style="position:absolute;top:-99em;" name="more"></a>
<b><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Part I</span></span></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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</xml><![endif]--><span style="font-family: "Cambria","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Helvetica; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">—</span>A Focus on Narrative</span></span> </span></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Contributed to CBC Diversity by Uma<span style="font-size: small;"> Krishnaswami</span></i></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><u><b>My Personal Connection</b></u></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Back in
the last century, when I dreamed of writing for young readers, the conventional
wisdom about weaving foreign languages into fiction written in English went like
this:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Don’t. </i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The
stories I longed to write spanned continents. My characters often spoke in two
languages, sometimes with varying degrees of fluidity. My narratives demanded a
mixing of languages, reflecting the hybridity I was trying to show.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I plunged
in, wanting to find my own answers. I wrote a lot of bad stories that earned
the rejections they deserved. I kept asking myself, how can I represent this linguistic
and cultural material while being truthful to the stories I’m trying to tell?</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><u><b>Stereotypes/Cliches/Tropes/Errors</b></u></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Over the
years, I’ve tried many ways of weaving in snatches of the languages of India
into the narrative in my books. I’ve settled on a few guidelines that make
sense to me:</span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">1.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>Avoid
stepping out of the story to translate a word or phrase. Instead try to make it
clear in context. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">2.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>Avoid parenthetic comma phrases. More on this
in my 2009 blog post,</span><span style="font-size: small;"> <a href="http://umakrishnaswami.blogspot.com/2009/06/parenthetic-comma-phrases-anyone.html" target="_blank">Parenthetic Comma Phrases, Anyone?</a> </span></span><br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">3.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>Read
the work aloud and listen—really listen—to it. Is there meaning constructed
from the linguistic overlaps that would be missing without it? </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: -0.25in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">4.<span style="-moz-font-feature-settings: normal; -moz-font-language-override: normal; font-size-adjust: none; font-stretch: normal; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;"> </span>Trust
the reader.</span></span></div>
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I want to emphasize that this is about narrative, not
dialogue. Sprinkling foreign languages in dialogue—that’s for another
conversation. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><u><b>Things I’d Like to See</b></u></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Revisiting this subject now, I thought of books I’d loved in
my childhood and teenage years—books that seemed to whisper to me
confidentially, as if they’d been written for me alone. Was there something to
be learned from revisiting those texts?</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">To find out, I took a look at two texts that were
formative in my young reading life: <i>The
River</i> by Rumer Godden, and “Rikki Tikki Tavi,” from Kipling’s <i>The Jungle Book</i>. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Here is a passage from <i>The
River</i> in which young Harriet, living in India, is battling with Latin
declensions. Talk about hybridity! </span></span></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It is strange that their
first Latin declension and conjugation should be of love and war:--</span></span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Bellum Amo</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Bellum Amas</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Bellum Amat</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Belli Amamus</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Bello Amatis</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 1in; text-indent: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Bello Amant</span></span></div>
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">“I can’t learn them,” said
Harriet. “Do help me Bea. Let’s take one each and say them aloud, both at
once.”</span></span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">“Very well. Which will you
have?”</span></span> </blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">“You had better have
love,” said Harriet. </span></span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">There is no translation. Sufficient that the subject is
love and war. The Latin words are a litany of opposing forces. They can be
thought of as music. Literal translation
is irrelevant. In a sense, the lyrics are yet to come, in Harriet’s own story
of longing and ambition, carelessness and betrayal. Elsewhere in <i>The River</i>, Godden scatters words like
bazaar, ayah, and Diwali, unitalicized, trusting readers to understand them
contextually. To contemporary readers, they may be no more alien than English
words like bauhinia and jute. Most importantly, Godden limits the mixing of languages
to suit her young viewpoint character’s perspective. European in India, Harriet
would be privy to some elements of local language and culture but not others.</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In “Rikki-Tikki-Tavi,”
Rudyard Kipling names his animals with Hindi descriptors: </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This is
the story of the great war that Rikki-Tikki-Tavi fought singlehanded, through
the bathrooms of the big bungalow in Segowlee cantonment. Darzee, the
tailor-bird, helped him, and Chuchundra, the muskrat…</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">By ducking
the need for translation, the narrative creates the illusion that all readers
are privy to a hybrid English in which animals have names—itself a conceit—and
those names are borrowed easily from the subcontinent. Illusion, in fiction, is
everything. </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In “Toomai
of the Elephants,” Kipling relies more upon the narrative conventions of his
time: </span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Kala Nag,
which means Black Snake, had served the Indian government…</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">His
mother, Radha Pyari—Radha the darling—who had been caught in the same drive…</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Both
stories boast a strong narrative voice, but the little mongoose’s journey is
far more compelling. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 2pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Surprisingly,
we still seem to rely upon Victorian conventions of parenthetic translation. But
there are alternatives. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 2pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Look how
the word “pakora” occurs in the opening pages of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s novel,
<i>The Conch Bearer</i>:</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 2pt 0.5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">“…maybe, thought Anand with a
grin, it was just his boss, Haru, the tea stall’s owner, frying onion pakoras
once again in stale peanut oil!”</span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 2pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Later:</span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 2pt 0.5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">“The smell of the hot pakoras he
was carrying was driving Anand crazy. He was so hungry! He had to clench his
teeth hard to resist the urge to sneak a pakora—just one—into his mouth.”</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 2pt 0.5in; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 2pt; text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We’re engaged
by sensory markers like food smells, clenching of teeth, and hunger. Defining
the pakora is beside the point.</span></span> </div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 2pt; text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><u><b>Suggested Reading</b></u></span></span></span></div>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In <i>The Wild
Book</i>, Margarita Engle scatters words like <i>reconcentración</i>, <i>indio</i>, <i>guajira</i> through delicate verse stanzas.
She uses italics but clarifies contextually and without sacrificing rhythm and
pacing.</span></span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 2pt; text-align: justify;">
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Rickshaw. Longyi.
Mua. Peh</i>. These few words serve to pin the Burmese setting in place in <i>Bamboo People</i> by Mitali Perkins. </span></span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 2pt; text-align: justify;">
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In Kashmira Sheth’s <i>The No-Dogs Allowed Rule</i>, the first person narration invites the
reader to engage with the family’s food,
habits, and culture, with Hindi words thrown in like dashes of turmeric. </span></span></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">These
books would not be the same without their linguistic blends. Hybridity seems best
achieved when the dream world of the story is maintained, when the author’s
intention is not overly visible, when the writer trusts the reader enough to resist
the impulse to explain everything. </span></span><br />
<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NlNsh3MDUzY/UkB3u1ZvHCI/AAAAAAAAAcI/NGgdWzJ18kM/s1600/Uma+2011+hi-res1.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NlNsh3MDUzY/UkB3u1ZvHCI/AAAAAAAAAcI/NGgdWzJ18kM/s200/Uma+2011+hi-res1.jpeg" width="75" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Uma Krishnaswami is the author of <i>The Grand Plan to Fix Everything</i> and <i>The Problem With Being Slightly Heroic</i>, both from Atheneum Books for Young Readers.</span></span></div>
CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-49153232187822438202013-09-20T09:42:00.000-04:002013-09-23T12:36:29.098-04:00Is the Race Card Old School?<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="more" style="position: absolute; top: -99em;"></a>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><i>An It's Complicated! — Authentic Voices guest post by author, </i></b><b><i>Mitali Perkins</i><i>.</i></b></span></span><br />
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</div>
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Am-Tji4vCsg/UjxPGOQdGLI/AAAAAAAAAbw/WQEAa0JR0OM/s1600/Rickshaw_Girl_Perkins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Am-Tji4vCsg/UjxPGOQdGLI/AAAAAAAAAbw/WQEAa0JR0OM/s200/Rickshaw_Girl_Perkins.jpg" width="156" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When my book <i>Rickshaw Girl</i> (Charlesbridge) came out, one reviewer said I was “drawing on my cultural roots” to tell the story. <br /><br />I winced when I read that line. <br /><br />I was writing about Naima, the Muslim daughter of an impoverished rickshaw puller in Bangladesh. My grandfather was a Hindu landowner who exploited people like Naima. The rift between me and my character was almost as wide as a daughter of a slave-owner writing about the daughter of a slave. Sure, we’re both Bengali, so we share a language and other cultural commonalities. But why is race the primary authenticity card when it comes to granting storytelling permission? What about power, gender, class?<br /><br />The bottom line is that all fiction crosses borders. Age: middle-aged people write about children. Gender: women write about boys; men write about girls. Class: suburbanites write about inner-city kids. <br /><br />If we don’t write an imagined life, we craft memoir. <br /><br />Does that mean anybody can write anything when it comes to fiction? It must, with caveats. Because what an author learns before the age of seven does matter in fiction.</span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Am I better equipped to tell Naima’s story than someone who doesn’t speak her language? Perhaps. Don’t I grasp her non-verbals better than a “cultural outsider” because I learned them at my mother’s knee? I suppose so. You learn cultures like you learn languages. An average child quickly becomes fluent, her soft palate and tongue mastering accents and tones, her superb proficiency demolishing an intelligent adult’s best efforts. <br /><br />But here’s the rub: a writer who <i>isn’t</i> Bengali but who grew up with few choices and little power might also be uniquely equipped to tell Naima’s tale. It would be told differently, but this writer learned the desperation of poverty at <i>his </i>mother’s knee. In his version, Naima’s struggle to help her family would resonate with another kind of proficiency acquired as a child.<br /><br />Why does race trump in North America when it comes to a discussion about authenticity and fiction? My best guess is that we adults are stuck in that particular paradigm of identity. Race takes primacy when it comes to how we see others and how we see ourselves. In our minds, it still parallels the deeper question of power at the heart of this conversation, because the appropriation of story is a powerful act. And perhaps we’re (sort of) right.<br /><br />But things seem to be changing in the next generation. Young people are grasping nuances of gender, education, and class along with race and culture much sooner these days. Many of them are becoming quickly proficient in crossing all kinds of borders. Our job in storytelling is to deploy our adult faculties of experience, research, imagination, and empathy, and do our best to follow. <br />
</span></span><br />
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</div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fnrof13VbIU/UjxPOnvhH6I/AAAAAAAAAb4/tK-FKfARxtc/s1600/Photo+on+5-3-13+at+5.22+PM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 5px; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fnrof13VbIU/UjxPOnvhH6I/AAAAAAAAAb4/tK-FKfARxtc/s200/Photo+on+5-3-13+at+5.22+PM.jpg" width="137" /></a>Mitali Perkins (<a href="http://mitaliperkins.com/" target="_blank">mitaliperkins.com</a>) was born in Kolkata, India and immigrated at age seven to the United States with her family. Her newest title for young readers is an anthology called <i>Open Mic: Riffs on Life Between Cultures in Ten Voices</i> (Candlewick, September 2013). Mitali speaks about the transforming power of stories as windows and mirrors, blogs about “books between cultures” (<a href="http://mitaliblog.com/" target="_blank">mitaliblog.com</a>), tweets regularly (<a href="https://twitter.com/MitaliPerkins" target="_blank">@mitaliperkins</a>), and connects with readers through Facebook (<a href="http://facebook.com/authormitaliperkins" target="_blank">facebook.com/authormitaliperkins</a>). She lives and writes in the San Francisco Bay Area.</span></span></div>
CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-15972914715239205342013-09-19T16:57:00.000-04:002013-09-24T10:48:54.241-04:00"I Want to Write What I Know"<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><i>An It's Complicated! — Authentic Voices guest post by author, </i></b><b><i>Bil Wright</i><i>.</i></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">“Write what you know!” Isn’t that what English teachers, writing instructors and even guest authors encourage beginning writers to do? Many young writers, eager to begin to unravel the mystery of how to tell a story “successfully” hold onto this advice as a foundation for their writing careers whether it be professionally, academically or writing for their own enjoyment. Certainly this adage provides a certain comfort level; writing about what is familiar almost guarantees, if nothing else, a level of credibility and even authenticity, doesn’t it? And certainly, for any writer wanting to make a deep connection with his/her reader, authenticity is a quality that is highly desirable. So then does that mean I should stay away from writing about topics or characters, indeed people who are less familiar to me? Perhaps I should not include them in my computer created world, lest I fall short of making them totally believable to my reader. Perhaps I should compile a list so that I’m careful to avoid these topics and characters as I proceed to tell my stories. </span></span></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> For example, as a heterosexual white, middle class male, what would I know about a Latina immigrant from Santo Domingo with three young children? How could I possibly describe accurately any detail of her life or the lives of her children or husband? How could I capture in words her emotional response to having her native tongue dismissed as meaningless jibberish, her family’s customs treated with condescending smirks? Nope, better stay away from her, for sure. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Or, as a Caribbean born woman with staunch Catholic beliefs, why would I spend time or precious page space creating a gay or lesbian character as I write my novel about students in a public junior high school in New York City? First, I don’t personally know any gay or lesbian adults or adolescents, they’re simply not a part of my world. And even if I did know one in a casual way—let’s say my neighbor had a son or daughter who was gay or lesbian, why would it be necessary to include that in my novel? After all, I don’t write novels for gay and lesbian audiences! I write for, well, the AVERAGE reader! Aren’t there writers who specialize in stories about gays and lesbians? Wouldn’t it be wiser for me to leave that to the experts in that field? </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> And besides, wouldn’t it take a great deal of time, energy and research to figure out how to write about Latinos or Gays and Lesbians or even people with physical disabilities so that my writing sounded like I was WRITING WHAT I KNOW? I mean, I have to admit, I simply don’t know <i>those people</i>, or if I do, I don’t really <i>notice </i>them. They’re not a part of my world, my everyday existence. </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What’s that? Yes, I said I live in New York City. Yes, of course, I feel a responsibility as a writer to reflect the world around me. But, what I’m telling you is that, assuming I'm a heterosexual white male, I only tend to see other white people. I mean other than some of my co-workers, or one or two of my daughters’ friends. And yes, my son, Andy, did have a teacher who was Puerto Rican last year. But all of that is beside the point. What would you have me do? Ask her how she feels having to discourage Puerto Rican children from speaking Spanish in class? Would you want me to ask my daughter, Grace, why she feels it necessary to be best friends with a girl who insists on being an “out” lesbian in high school when high school is hard enough as it is? Or better yet, would you have me invite the girl to dinner so I could get to know her better myself, just so I could include a young lesbian in my novel? And what, pray tell, would I gain from that? </span></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Oh, I see. You want me to REALLY reflect the world as it is, even if it takes tedious hours of research, or going out of “my way” socially or even spiritually. No! My goal, the goal I’ve had since I first took a creative writing class in seventh grade is to WRITE WHAT I KNOW. It gives me a sense of safety, reassurance, comfortability and distance from anything that threatens to cause tremors to my everyday existence. And I don’t care if it leaves out the whole rest of the world. ISN’T IT POSSIBLE TO BE A GOOD WRITER, EVEN WITH BLINDERS, AND WRITE WHAT I KNOW? </span></span><br />
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<br />
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6PnujDfSAZA/UjtW4aDt5qI/AAAAAAAAAbg/-CVUJExMxnA/s1600/314826_2378235297378_504507404_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6PnujDfSAZA/UjtW4aDt5qI/AAAAAAAAAbg/-CVUJExMxnA/s200/314826_2378235297378_504507404_n.jpg" width="86" /></a> <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Bil Wright has won
the American Library Association's Stonewall Award and the Lambda Literary
Award for his novel, <i>Putting Make-up on the Fat Boy</i> and is also the author of
four other novels including the re-released <i>Sunday You Learn How to Box</i>.</span></span></div>
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CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-76563393870417416972013-09-18T13:35:00.002-04:002013-09-18T13:49:58.034-04:00Authentically Me<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="more" style="position: absolute; top: -99em;"></a>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><i>An It's Complicated! — Authentic Voices guest post by author, </i></b><b><i>Sharon G. Flake</i><i>.</i></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Growing up I did not see the value in being my authentic self. I was skinny, long-legged, and shy with big rabbit teeth. Some adults and kids even called me Olive Oyl (Popeye’s Girlfriend) —enough said? <br /> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I remember wanting to be like my neighbor Yolonda. She could wear a blanket and look red-carpet ready. I on the other hand, could never quite make fashion work, even today.<br /><br />By middle school comparing myself to others was a fine art. There was the blond I sat next to who had the most exquisite handwriting. For years I tried to emulate it. In high school there was Pam. She absorbed information like a sponge. Earning high A’s with ease or so it seemed. I would study until my brain froze, only to end up with a lack luster B or C. <br /><br />Thank God for my freshmen college English class. Before then, I do not recall feeling one-way or the other about writing. Yet somehow my professor lit a flame in me. No longer did I need to be a carbon copy of others, at least on paper. My writing was opinionated, fearless, and political. I was determined to use my work to give voice to the powerless. And because I loved the community I grew up in, I never hesitated to draw on its strengths, challenges and uniqueness.</span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Later on I found that being true to myself as a writer also helped me to appreciate the uniqueness of my writing process. I kept silent about it for years. You see, I do not write from an outline. I do not know who my characters will be or what my story is or where it is going until the people and places emerge line by line. I get on my computer, like a cowboy on a horse, and ride. I let the story take me where it will. But like any good rider, I am in control of the reigns. Even using my boots to nudge the story in another direction if pushy characters or bad plotting try to take over. <br /><br />I do know two things before I begin a novel, however. I want to create memorable characters with strong connections to family and community. And I want everyone to find themselves in my stories.<br /><br /><a href="http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1337711883l/13492511.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1337711883l/13492511.jpg" width="130" /></a>I have a reputation for creating diverse characters: A teacher with an unusual birth mark. A 16-year-old boy about to be married. A struggling reader and star wrestler in love with a gifted, disabled student.<br /><br />My characters arise from my willingness to be authentic and my refusal to stereotype or limit them. In many ways, they probably have the courage I wish I had in my youth. They voice their thoughts without reservations, in clever, understandable ways that keep readers engaged. Because of their forthrightness, young readers feel empowered to open up and be themselves also. Take the elementary school student who formed a group for gay students called <i>The Skin I’m In</i>. Or the Caucasian girl who said one of my African-American male characters was her hero. She felt he had given her advice about boys her absent father hadn’t.<br /><br />Here’s what I know for sure. To be true to oneself and create authentic stories, a writer must begin from a place of love and appreciation. Love for the craft. Love for the characters and places she or he wishes to write about. They must also develop an appreciation for imperfection and hard work. For to create good stories, takes all of this and more, even using and coming to terms with the parts of ourselves that are still smarting. That feels small, little and inauthentic--the real ‘us’ behind the stories we craft.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Sharon G. Flake was born in Philadelphia, PA, and have resided in Pittsburgh, PA, for thirty years. She graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1978, with a B.A. in English. Flake was once a house parent, a counselor with youth placed in foster care, and a public relations representative. She is the author of eight books: </span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>Pinned </i>(2012), </span></span></i></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">You Don't Even Know Me (</span></span></span></span>2010), The Broken Bike Boy and the Queen of 33rd Street</i> (2007), <i>Bang!</i> (2005), <i>Who Am I Without Him? Short Stories About Boys and the Girls in Their Lives</i> (2004), <i>Begging for Change</i> (2003), <i>Money Hungry</i> (2002), and <i>The Skin I'm In</i> (1998)<i>.</i></span></span></div>
CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-4186050926484901442013-09-17T09:33:00.000-04:002013-09-17T09:33:27.886-04:00First, Know Yourself <a style="position:absolute;top:-99em;" name="more"></a>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><b><i>An It's Complicated! — Authentic Voices guest post by author, </i></b><b><i>Diana López</i><i>.</i></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">“Write about picking cotton,” my family said when they heard I wanted to be a writer. “Write about how we used the fabric from flour sacks to make our dresses, and how Grandma hates fish because that’s all she ate during the Depression, since it didn’t cost anything for them to go fishing for food.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Closely examine my family, or <i>any </i>family, and you’ll discover all the drama of a <i>telenovela</i>. Naturally, I wanted to write about being chastised for speaking Spanish, about living on a ranch in San Diego, about my grandmother being “Rosita the Riveter” during World War II. I tried to write those stories. But my only experience working the land comes from fifteen minutes in a field off Old Robstown Road where my parents showed us how to pick cotton. It was interesting to feel the texture, so unlike a T-shirt, which is what I had imagined.<br /> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">My grandmother might have hated fish, but I loved it. We had a boat that we’d take to Laguna Madre, where we’d compete to see who could catch the most, the biggest, or the strangest. (Once, my brother caught a seagull when it chomped on the bait as he cast.) Back home, Dad filleted the fish in the backyard, the cats begging and fighting over scraps. Then, Mom used cornmeal batter to fry the fish, and we ate, delicately picking meat off tiny bones. <br /> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">All this to say that my family’s experiences and the emotions associated with them are not exactly mine.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">So what do I know about writing from an authentic Mexican American perspective? Of course, I <i>do </i>write from that perspective because that’s who I am, but one of the struggles I’ve faced is matching the expectations of two groups of readers—brown and white. Interestingly, both often expect stories about characters who are recent immigrants, who speak Spanish, who are gardeners, maids, or nannies, and when I write stories about people who fall outside these categories, they are judged as “too mainstream” or “not Mexican enough.”<br /> </span></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tdlYSI2ea38/UjhZc77Im1I/AAAAAAAAAbA/3dwaJtJ-cq0/s1600/Mood+Ring.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tdlYSI2ea38/UjhZc77Im1I/AAAAAAAAAbA/3dwaJtJ-cq0/s200/Mood+Ring.jpg" width="135" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">While writing about the “authentic” Latino experience is important, I fear that sometimes other, equally authentic stories get overlooked. For me, these are the stories inspired by my own childhood and by the experiences of my students and <i>sobrinos</i>. Like me, they don’t know what it’s like to work in a field, to go hungry, to use the fabric from flour sacks to make their dresses. Like me, they don’t know what it’s like to speak Spanish beyond a few phrases, and they feel saddened by the inability to have deep conversations with their Spanish-only grandparents but also proud to be fluent, even persuasive, in the English they hear at school, in the neighborhood, on TV.<br /> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I used to worry that I wasn’t fulfilling my obligation to write what would be unquestionably categorized as Mexican American literature. But then I had this insight. The Latinos in this country are wonderfully diverse. They come from Mexico, Cuba, and Columbia; they come from San Antonio, Los Angeles, and Winston-Salem. They are gardeners, maids, nannies, dentists, engineers, and mayors. <br /> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For those aspiring writers out there, accept that your experience may not fit neatly into a category because in order to write an authentic story, you must first understand and be true to yourself.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ruygPG4cD40/UjhYjuuEifI/AAAAAAAAAa4/CXvhNbF0kZM/s1600/Lopez_caller+times.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ruygPG4cD40/UjhYjuuEifI/AAAAAAAAAa4/CXvhNbF0kZM/s200/Lopez_caller+times.jpg" width="70" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Diana López, author of <i>Confetti Girl</i>, <i>Choke</i>, and <i>Ask My Mood Ring How I Feel.</i></span></span></div>
CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-87839948738429291242013-09-16T15:52:00.000-04:002013-09-16T16:06:45.444-04:00It Doesn't Have to Be True to Be Truthful<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="more" style="position: absolute; top: -99em;"></a>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">An It's Complicated! — Authentic Voices guest post by <span style="font-size: large;">auth<span style="font-size: large;">or, Alex London</span></span></span></span></i><i>.</i></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Authenticity, that vicious guard-dog of truth, bedevils a teller of stories every step of the way. It is not enough to feel the truth of what you write or even to know it. The reader must feel you are right in the telling of it. An inauthentic voice can make even an honest memoir feel like a lie, while an authentic voice can make a whole pack of lies seem true. Just look to James Frey’s first book for proof of that.<br /><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uO-83uHlzRs/UjcIlL8EFqI/AAAAAAAAAag/JQ0JpbH8-TE/s1600/PROXY_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uO-83uHlzRs/UjcIlL8EFqI/AAAAAAAAAag/JQ0JpbH8-TE/s200/PROXY_cover.jpg" width="131" /></a>In writing my YA debut, <i>Proxy</i>, I struggled with authenticity early on. As a gay man who was once a gay teen, I had no trouble with my protagonist’s sexuality. I well-remembered the unrequited longings, the suppressed desire for a kiss that sometimes broke out as rage, and the feeling, ever-present, that my sexuality did not define me and that I could not let the world tell me it did. <br /><br />Syd, one of two main characters in <i>Proxy</i>, contains much of the truth of my own experience and the challenge there was the common challenge to all writing: to make sure I rendered him as vividly as I would want to be rendered myself. I had memories to draw on, fragmented conversations with my straight best-friend, felt truths that I could, with effort, put into words.</span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />The tricky parts were those other pieces of the puzzle that inform the identity of my protagonist, Syd. He is poor, orphaned, dark-skinned. I am none of those things. I share much more in common with the privileged pretty-boy of the story, Knox, who, other than being (quite) heterosexual, resembles young me far more than I’m comfortable admitting. I wrote his privilege to explore, question, reconcile, and problematize my own. <br /><br />But Syd…we share so little in common. Just because we might have the same romantic inclinations, I couldn’t presume his way of being in the world was anything like mine. To do so would have done the character, and the countless young people in our world whose lives do, to an extent, resemble his, a great disservice. Though set in a dystopian future, I drew much of the world of <i>Proxy</i> from my experiences as a journalist in refugee camps and urban slums around the world, where poverty, power, and competition crash into the free market and send earthquakes through the lives of millions of our world’s young. Syd shares more with those real-life children than with any ghosts of my own teenage years.<br /><br />So how to write him authentically? At first, I imagined myself a reporter, working once more with the young people I’d met and written about, the child soldiers in the Eastern Congo, the migrants along the Thai-Burma border, the isolated Roma of Kosovo and Bosnia. I began writing Syd for them, with as much empathy and imagination as I could. I quickly realized I could not write this character as a stand-in for any assumptions I had about any group. He’d be a hollow cut out of a person. While those years of research helped me capture the feeling of the slum I invented for Syd to live in, I had to make the character himself whole, with contradictions and complexities born of his circumstances but also born of his unique humanity. He would be ‘authentic’ if I could make him live. <br /><br />I found my way to Syd’s voice and to all the voices within <i>Proxy </i>the same way any character is conjured from the ether. I tried to imagine him fully. He was not me, nor a stand in for anyone else. He was himself. <br /><br />It was in writing Syd that I truly came to understand a secret to writing authentically is not to have lived the life your character inhabits—which is impossible in science fiction, and ridiculously limiting in all creative story telling—nor can it simply be produced by years of research—although research sure does help. Authenticity may be the guard-dog of truth, but it can be tamed by a simple technique that’s as challenging and necessary in fiction as in real life: empathy. Authenticity is the end result of writer putting in the work of empathy.</span></span><br />
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<br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-68nqXbhr6Mc/UjcJDajFpuI/AAAAAAAAAao/dEWrL6w4ZzU/s1600/cal+author+pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-68nqXbhr6Mc/UjcJDajFpuI/AAAAAAAAAao/dEWrL6w4ZzU/s200/cal+author+pic.jpg" width="130" /></a>Alex London, the author of <i>Proxy</i>, writes books for adults, children and teens. At one time a journalist who traveled the world reporting from conflict zones and refugee camps, he now is a full time novelist living in Brooklyn. You can visit Alex London at <a href="http://www.calexanderlondon.com/">www.calexanderlondon.com</a>.</span></span></div>
CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-89222267413133003002013-09-16T11:11:00.001-04:002013-09-16T11:40:05.840-04:00It's Complicated!: Authentic Voices Series Continues<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="more" style="position: absolute; top: -99em;"></a>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">One week down, one more week to go! </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Last week this It's Complicated! series highlighted
authors who wrote brilliantly from outside of their perspectives
including <a href="http://www.cbcdiversity.com/2013/09/parallel-heartbeats.html" target="_blank">Graham Salisbury</a>, <a href="http://www.cbcdiversity.com/2013/09/write-what-you-know.html" target="_blank">Elizabeth Kiem</a>, <a href="http://www.cbcdiversity.com/2013/09/character-development_2850.html" target="_blank">Walter Dean Myers</a>, <a href="http://www.cbcdiversity.com/2013/09/what-is-personal-perspective-really.html" target="_blank">A.S. King</a>, and <a href="http://www.cbcdiversity.com/2013/09/taking-risk-and-taking-heat.html" target="_blank">Patricia McCormick</a>.</span></span> Some great takeaways?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>A writer writes, and doesn’t really worry much about
complaints, anyway. We’re seeking the dramatic and emotional intricacies
of life wherever and however we can find them. Our job is to explore
them, enlighten ourselves, and try our best to move our readers. We may
all look different, but we are all intimately and infinitely connected.
We are one. We are beings with parallel heartbeats. The only race out
there is the human one.</i>--<span style="color: #f1c232;">Graham Salisbury</span>, <i><a href="http://www.cbcdiversity.com/2013/09/parallel-heartbeats.html" target="_blank">Parallel Heartbeats</a></i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><i>My central characters all have some aspects of my personality. I don’t
intend to write this way but it’s inevitable. I know I can use my
personal view to create a character of depth, but I have to vary that
character so that I’m not constantly writing the same book over and over
again.</i>--<span style="color: #f1c232;">Walter Dean Myers</span>, <i><a href="http://www.cbcdiversity.com/2013/09/character-development_2850.html" target="_blank">Character Development</a></i></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>My characters are me. I couldn’t write them if they weren’t.
None of my characters are autobiographical, but every one of them is
human and so am I. In the end, we all have too much in common to go on
separating ourselves. We eat and we poop. We are born and we die. We
struggle through. While diversity is a celebration of every type of
human, I am most interested in that humanness that connects us.</i>--<span style="color: #f1c232;">A.S. King</span>, <i><a href="http://www.cbcdiversity.com/2013/09/what-is-personal-perspective-really.html" target="_blank">What is Personal Perspective, Really?</a></i></span></span></blockquote>
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It's Complicated!: Authentic Voices continues this week by looking at insider authors who craft outstanding stories featuring protagonists that in some way relate to a part of their personal identity. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">First up? Alex London, author of the new dystopian novel <i>Proxy<i>. </i></i>Get ready for some truth bombs later today. To get you started, here's a teaser from his upcoming post<i> It Doesn't Have to Be True to Be Truthful</i>:</span></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Just
because we might have the same romantic inclinations, I couldn’t presume his way
of being in the world was anything like mine. To
do so would have done the character, and the countless young people in our
world whose lives do, to an extent, resemble his, a great disservice. </span></span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As always, we look forward to reading your comments and questions that are brought up by any of the posts you read on CBC Diversity. Let's keep this conversation going, shall we?</span></span></div>
CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-64084159633513826982013-09-13T11:10:00.003-04:002013-09-13T11:38:44.197-04:00Taking the Risk and Taking the Heat<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="more" style="position: absolute; top: -99em;"></a>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">An It's Complicated! — Authentic Voices guest post by <span style="font-size: large;">auth<span style="font-size: large;">or, Patricia McCormick</span></span></span></span></i><i>.</i></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">When authors try to write about experiences far outside our own, we
run a number of risks. We’ll be accused of getting it wrong, of slumming
in someone else’s pain or, worst of all, of being insensitive or
patronizing. But for me, it’s only through trying on the experience of
another human being that I’m able to recognize the limits of my
imagination – and, more importantly, my unconscious biases.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.alicemarvels.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/c_sold.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://www.alicemarvels.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/c_sold.jpeg" width="133" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For instance, in <i>Sold</i>,
a novel based on my interviews with young Indian and Nepali women who
were sold into prostitution, I chose to include a white American
character. He is a photographer, based on the real-life activist who
introduced me to the issue of human trafficking. It was a thank-you to
that young man. But the inclusion of an American character was also a
way to give my primary audience a character with whom they could
identify.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Some readers criticized the book for repeating
the myth of the noble white American rescuer in the land of savages.
And upon reflection, I have to plead guilty. If I were to write the
book over again, I’d probably base the ‘rescuer’ on the women in India
and Nepal who are fighting trafficking. Or on the male police officers
now doing that work.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Lesson learned.</b></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">My most recent book, <i>Never Fall Down</i>,
about a boy who survived the genocide in Cambodia by playing music, is
based on the true story of Arn Chorn-Pond. Arn is now a very
accomplished man with a college degree. But when he speaks about the
genocide, it’s almost as if he becomes that terrified young refugee all
over again. Trying to capture that voice was like trying to bottle a
lightning bug. When I imposed standard grammar and syntax on it, the
light went out. So I chose to mimic that voice in the book.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/harperimages/isbn/large/1/9780061730931.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://www.harpercollins.com/harperimages/isbn/large/1/9780061730931.jpg" width="132" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Some
readers complained that the voice was hard to get used to. Some said it
was ‘pidgin English,’ a criticism that implies that those who speak
non-standard English are somehow intellectually inferior.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But
to me, Arn’s voice had a kind of poetry. If anything, it conveyed his
keen intelligence, his heart and his humor more than the King’s English
ever could. And most readers have said that it’s that voice – that
innocent, terrified, lively, funny, lyrical voice – that gets them
through the worst of the story.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The danger there was even
greater because it risked reducing a real person to a stereotype. But in
the end, I think it brought readers closer to him. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I’m
currently working on a story about a Haitian girl who lit the spark
that ignited the only successful slave revolution in recorded history.
As a white woman, I run the risk of getting it wrong, perhaps in ways
that a Haitian author might not. But it’s an idea that sprang from my
imagination, and something about this story of defiance speaks to me. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">It’s
a risk, writing outside one’s own racial, socio-economic, gender or
ethnic experience. I try to be mindful of criticism of my earlier work;
those responses help keep me honest. But the limitations of my own
experience pretty much guarantee that I’ll make a mistake somewhere
along the way.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In my view, though, it’s precisely by
taking those risks – and making mistakes -- that we become aware of our
blind spots. It’s only when we inhabit someone else’s experience, we see
our limitations and biases. And it’s only in stretching the limits of
our empathy and imagination that we are able to find what’s universal.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Patricia McCormick, a two-time National Book Award finalist, is the author of five critically acclaimed novels – <i>Never Fall Down</i><b>, </b>a novel based on the true story of an 11-year-old boy who survived the Killing Fields of Cambodia by playing music; <i>Purple Heart</i>, a suspenseful psychological novel that explores the killing of a 10-year-old boy in Iraq; <i>Sold</i><b>, </b>a deeply moving account of sexual trafficking; <i>My Brother’s Keeper</i>, a realistic view of teenage substance abuse; and <i>Cut</i><b>, </b>an intimate portrait of one girl’s struggle with self-injury.</span></span></div>
CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-19187415989624035192013-09-12T10:16:00.001-04:002013-09-12T10:16:44.421-04:00What Is Personal Perspective, Really? <a style="position:absolute;top:-99em;" name="more"></a>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">An It's Complicated! — Authentic Voices guest post by <span style="font-size: large;">auth<span style="font-size: large;">or, A.S. King</span></span></span></span></i><i>.</i></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Writing outside of my “personal perspective” is easy because I am fascinated by human beings, and not particularly fascinated by myself. <br /><br />And what is personal perspective? Is it the body I am in? This physical, sometimes smelly, sometimes sunburnt, sometimes arthritic shell? Is it the color of my skin? The house I grew up in? The amount in my parents’ bank account in 1984? Is it my family’s traditions during holidays? How often we went to church—or the fact that it wasn’t often? This question of personal perspective concerns me because it seems to be the thing a writer is supposed to transcend when he or she writes a novel. It’s also the thing a writer is supposed to plug into. It’s tricky like that.<br /><br />When thinking about my characters and how they relate to me and more importantly, how they don’t relate to me, I find the dissimilar parts the least important. For example: I am not a young man. I never have been a young man. I am also not a child from a poor home, I’ve never lived in a trailer park, neither have I lived in a gated community of mini-mansions. So how do I write authentically from the point of view of a young man? How do I write authentically from the point of view of a poor girl who lives in a trailer park? A boy who lives in a mini-mansion?</span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />My personal perspective is far wider than my childhood, my skin color, or my sexuality. Every one of my characters is a part of me. Not my shell, but my emotional experience. Emotion knows no race, gender, or tax bracket. When a human being is sad, they are sad, and sadness is not limited to any one type of person. The same goes for love, happiness, anger, jealousy, and list-all-other-emotions-here. Emotions are universal. <br /><br />I think we live in an allocated world. We like to have sections and subsections and keep everyone in tidy little boxes. I suppose I would fit in the white, raised middle-class, straight box. What is sad about these boxes is that once we put a human inside of one, we take away the possibility of them having experiences outside of the box we assigned to them. This is silly. And dangerous. In life, it leads to being a single-minded, judgmental meathead. In writing, it leads to stereotypical characters. Inventing authentic characters is about a lot more than what we can see from the outside. What’s important, like in life, is the character’s interior. And every one of my characters connects directly to my interior and my emotional experiences, of which I have had many.<br /><br />My characters are me. I couldn’t write them if they weren’t. None of my characters are autobiographical, but every one of them is human and so am I. In the end, we all have too much in common to go on separating ourselves. We eat and we poop. We are born and we die. We struggle through. While diversity is a celebration of every type of human, I am most interested in that humanness that connects us. <br /></span></span><br />
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<br /><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kK6TNjG2SRA/UjHEn40PGuI/AAAAAAAAAaQ/sA_dnFv7tdo/s1600/A.S.+King+author+photo+(new-low+res).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kK6TNjG2SRA/UjHEn40PGuI/AAAAAAAAAaQ/sA_dnFv7tdo/s200/A.S.+King+author+photo+(new-low+res).jpg" width="80" /></a>A.S. King is the author of the forthcoming <i>Reality Boy</i> and the highly acclaimed <i>Ask the Passengers</i>, which received six starred reviews, appeared on ten end-of-year “best” lists, and was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist and a Los Angeles Times Book Prize winner. Her previous book, <i>Everybody Sees the Ants</i>, also received six starred reviews, was an Andre Norton Award finalist, and was a 2012 YALSA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults book. She is also the author of the Edgar Award–nominated, Michael L. Printz Honor Book <i>Please Ignore Vera Dietz</i> and <i>The Dust of 100 Dogs</i>, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. When asked about her writing, King says, “Some people don’t know if my characters are crazy or if they are experiencing something magical. I think that’s an accurate description of how I feel every day.” She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and children, and her website is <a href="http://www.as-king.com/" target="_blank">www.as-king.com</a>.</span></span></div>
CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-88878118133297219362013-09-11T10:58:00.001-04:002013-09-11T10:59:26.498-04:00Character Development<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="more" style="position: absolute; top: -99em;"></a>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">An It's Complicated! — Authentic Voices guest post by <span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;">2012-2013 National Ambassador for Young People's Literature, Walter Dean Myers</span></span></span></span></i><i>.</i></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What I knew about the character I wanted to create was that he was based on the Moroccan hero Tarik ibn Zayad. In late April, 711, Tarik led his soldiers across what is now known as the strait of Gibraltar onto the Iberian Peninsula. My problem was to keep the book as time specific as possible while making it interesting to today’s young reader.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Knowing the subsequent influence of Islamic and Moorish culture in Spain, I decided to take the trip to the areas I would be writing about. I took my usual research assistants – my wife Constance and our son Christopher. We flew from Newark Airport to Malaga where we spent a few days checking out the food and staring at the people. Christopher noted that many seemed to be of mixed race. We then rented a car and drove to Granada. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Granada is flat out beautiful, and I knew I wanted to include the lush scenery in my book. So throughout the book I made references to the vegetation and thus gave Tarik a careful and interesting appreciation of the wonders of nature. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Tarik, in my story, is on a mission of vengeance. His family has been killed by Visigoth raiders and he is angry. But, needing to control that anger I gave him martial arts training from two people, one who teaches him to fight and the other who teaches him self control. His character is coming along nicely, thank you. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">My character is angry but self-controlled, and I lend him my feelings about his family. If my parents were killed by some tyrant I would be driven to avenge them. Off he goes looking for the bad guy who I make into kind of a hyper-evil dude who doesn’t even have a clear sexual grounding. But my character is too good. He’s pure and wonderful and I need to add some spice to this dish. I find it in a second character, Stria, who is as ferocious a fighter with a sword as is Tarik, but she is almost blinded by her rage against the Visigoths.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">My central characters all have some aspects of my personality. I don’t intend to write this way but it’s inevitable. I know I can use my personal view to create a character of depth, but I have to vary that character so that I’m not constantly writing the same book over and over again. In this story there are clear variations. The setting is 8th century Iberia rather than my familiar Harlem. Tarik’s weapon is a sword, rather than a gun. And the largest variation for me, the antagonist is the larger than life figure of an evil conqueror. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We traveled by car (my wife drives, I don’t) from Granada down through the Moorish influenced villages to the southern tip of Spain. We then took a ferry across the strait of Gibraltar into Tangiers, where, allegedly, Tarik once lived.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In Tangiers we mingled in the marketplaces, ate in charming little restaurants, and took pictures of everything. Chatted with grade school boys who called me ‘Ali Baba’ and had a great time. One brown skinned youngster with dark eyes offered me a thousand camels for my wife. I said no. The images I would later use in the book. But more than anything I would use the contrasts between Tarik and the mindless villainy of the Visigoth baddies to create what I hoped would be a memorable character.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Walter Dean Myers is a critically acclaimed author of books for young people and the <a href="http://www.read.gov/cfb/ambassador/" target="_blank">National Ambassador</a> for the 2012-2013 term. His award-winning body of work includes <i>Sunrise Over Fallujah</i>, <i>Fallen Angels</i>, <i>Monster</i>, <i>Somewhere in the Darkness</i>, <i>Harlem</i>, and <i>Scorpions</i>. Myers has received two Newbery Honor Awards and five Coretta Scott King Awards. He is the winner of the first Michael L. Printz Award (for excellence in young adult literature, given by the American Library Association) as well as the first recipient of Kent State University's Virginia Hamilton Literary Award for Lifetime Achievement. He is considered one of the preeminent writers for young people, having written over 100 books.</span></span></div>
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CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-12503979292357819342013-09-10T09:44:00.002-04:002013-09-10T10:06:32.199-04:00Write What You Know<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="more" style="position: absolute; top: -99em;"></a>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">An It's Complicated! — Authentic Voices guest post by <span style="font-size: large;">auth<span style="font-size: large;">or, Elizabeth Kiem</span></span></span></span></i><i>.</i></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Last month, as the release date of my Cold War thriller <i>Dancer, Daughter, Traitor, Sp</i>y drew near, these were the things I worried about: <br /> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Would Russian readers question why I nicknamed Marina, my heroine, ‘Marya’ rather than the more usual ‘Marinka?’ <br /><br />Would American readers check Google earth and find that the building where Marya lives is not as close to the riverbank as I implied? <br /><br />Would anybody notice that Marya flies out of Moscow on a Tupelov 134, which is actually an unmanned drone?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />In other words I worried that readers might question the authenticity of my story, my setting, or my props. But it never occurred to me that I might be challenged on the authenticity of my character – a Russian ballerina with a psychic streak and a lot of family baggage.</span></span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I have been preoccupied with Russia since I was a pre-teen. I wrote my first paper on ‘Détente and Perestroika.’ In college I studied Russian Imperial History and the Great October Revolution. A month after the Soviet Union collapsed I moved to post-Moscow where I lived for four years and watched as monuments toppled and lifestyles crumble. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />But as I experienced Moscow in real-time, I remained fascinated with the not-so-distant past … and with the youth of my new friends. Every trip to the <i>dacha </i>was a voyage in time; every visit to an antique shop, a glimpse into another generation. When Olga bent my ear about her love life, it was a cultural epiphany. When Stas and I split a bottle of lemon vodka I internalized a new ideology. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Writing Marina was as easy as writing Olga and Vika and Dima and Stas – friends whose Soviet childhood became so familiar, I sometimes felt it was my own. I enveloped her in the nostalgia I had been leant and placed her on streets I knew. Her embrace of these comforts is what made her real to me.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />When, in the course of my story, I moved Marina to Brooklyn, I had to invite another model. She had gone from being the personification of an era to a girl out of her element. For the remainder of the book I allowed her to be the character I had initially created, but informed by experiences that were my own. (No – I have never been a fugitive and I am not more extra-sensorily perceptive than most – but I know very well the discomfort of feeling ignorant in a new land; and I also know how dance can remove almost any discomfort.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />So, there you have it – I’m a dancer and a Russophile. I have lived in Moscow, I have Russian friends, I love Russian movies, and I have real-life experience and passionate research in my arsenal. I’m also a Brooklynite, so I know Brighton Beach like the back of my hand. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Is that all I need tell the story of a Soviet teen defector?</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />It is if she is me … in another life.</span></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6Ox9OxdsI7w/Ui8efMMKf6I/AAAAAAAAAZw/vh0KY-fVIG0/s1600/Elizabeth+Kiem.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6Ox9OxdsI7w/Ui8efMMKf6I/AAAAAAAAAZw/vh0KY-fVIG0/s200/Elizabeth+Kiem.jpg" width="75" /></a>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Elizabeth Kiem studied Russian language and literature at Columbia University and writes novels, essays, reports, reviews, grocery lists and more. She has lived in Brooklyn for more than 15 years, and before that she lived in Moscow as it entered a new era, immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Besides Brooklyn and Moscow, her favorite places are Alaska (where she was born), Istanbul (where she understood that all great cities straddle the water), and Haiti (where life itself straddles the water). In Russian, she is Elizaveta Ivanovna. <i>Dancer Daughter Traitor Spy</i> is her first novel. </span></span></div>
CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-40151049177640521702013-09-09T11:00:00.000-04:002013-09-09T11:07:58.578-04:00Parallel Heartbeats<a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="more" style="position: absolute; top: -99em;"></a>
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<b><i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">An It's Complicated! — Authentic Voices guest post by <span style="font-size: large;">auth<span style="font-size: large;">or, Graham Salisbury</span></span></span></span></i><i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: large;"></span></span></span></span></span></span>.</i></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">My second novel, <i>Under the Blood-Red Sun </i>(1994), is about the power of friendship as seen through the eyes of two young boys in Honolulu when Pearl Harbor is bombed. One is Billy, a white boy, who’d moved to Hawaii from California, and the other is his best friend, Tomi , a Japanese boy born and raised in the islands. I wrote the first draft of this novel from Billy’s point of view, figuring, well gee, I’m a white guy … I had to write it from Billy’s point of view. <br /><br />But that first draft wasn’t working; the editorial letter said, in effect, “This novel has no heartbeat. Try again.” </span></span><span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b> </b></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Wow. </b></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />So … should I start over, or chuck the three hundred pages and move on to something else? That may sound like a tough decision, but it wasn’t, because I realized that my problem was really quite simple: I’d written the book from the wrong point of view. This was Tomi’s story, not Billy’s.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />But could I, a Caucasian, write a novel in first person from the point of view of a young Japanese-American boy? I had an audience of young readers that would very likely believe that I actually was Tomi, and must be Japanese. If they were to ever actually see me they might feel betrayed! And what about reviewers and other adults? “The nerve!”</span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />Still, the idea of changing point of view made perfect sense. The problem with my first draft was that I knew very little about a boy from California. And I knew close to everything about a Japanese boy in Hawaii, because I grew up there and had Japanese friends. I knew Tomi. I knew what he ate, how he spoke, what his traditions were, how he treated his family, even his dog. Eventually, I knew his hopes and dreams. In effect, I became Tomikazu Nakaji. <br /><br />This was exciting! And scary. I could get clobbered for thinking like this.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #f1c232;"><b> </b></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #f1c232;"><b>But so what? </b></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />I felt such an urgency to tell Tomi’s story that I jumped into his head and began an entirely different novel. I shared it with Japanese friends in Honolulu to make sure that the details of culture and language were correct, and that I hadn’t written anything that a Japanese-American reader would find offensive. <br /><br />The book was well-reviewed, and won the Scott O’Dell Medal for historical fiction, among other prizes. I‘ve published about twenty novels so far, and <i>Under the Blood-Red Sun</i> remains the most popular, with hundreds of thousands of copies sold … all because getting into the right character’s head, no matter what his cultural background, gave it a heartbeat.<br /><br />Tomi’s story inspired a group of stand-alone novels about Japanese-Americans from Hawaii during World War II, which includes <i>House of the Red Fish</i>, <i>Eyes of the Emperor</i> and the forthcoming <i>Hunt for the Bamboo Rat</i>. I plan to write at least two more books under the overall series title of “Prisoners of the Empire.” <br /><br />I’ve been waiting twenty years for someone to get all riled up at me for thinking that I could write “outside of my race,” and I have yet to receive a single complaint about any of these books. <br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GPKuyNU2M0U/Ui3fAqFRd3I/AAAAAAAAAZY/DG4tHIFha8A/s1600/Trouble+Magnet+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GPKuyNU2M0U/Ui3fAqFRd3I/AAAAAAAAAZY/DG4tHIFha8A/s200/Trouble+Magnet+cover.jpg" width="137" /></a>When I created my Calvin Coconut series, I had the same problem. I wanted my lead character to be multi-racial, as many, if not most, kids are in the islands. I wanted to write about them. They deserved to be represented in the world of literature for young readers. Again, I became my character, and it was so easy because I was a lot like Calvin as a kid growing up in Hawaii. For me, what really matters is what a writer is made of, that he/she speaks from an earned place of authenticity where faking it is forbidden, if not impossible. <br /><br />A writer writes, and doesn’t really worry much about complaints, anyway. We’re seeking the dramatic and emotional intricacies of life wherever and however we can find them. Our job is to explore them, enlighten ourselves, and try our best to move our readers. We may all look different, but we are all intimately and infinitely connected. We are one. We are beings with parallel heartbeats. The only race out there is the human one.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EOYyxxO6Vzo/Ui3geRptEQI/AAAAAAAAAZg/VDllUH7YWg8/s1600/Graham+Salisbury.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EOYyxxO6Vzo/Ui3geRptEQI/AAAAAAAAAZg/VDllUH7YWg8/s200/Graham+Salisbury.JPG" width="83" /></a>Graham Salisbury’s family has lived in the Hawaiian Islands since the early 1800s. He grew up on Oahu and Hawaii and graduated from California State University. He received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where he was a member of the founding faculty of the MFA program in writing for children. He lives with his family in Portland, Oregon. </span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">You can visit him at his website <a href="http://www.grahamsalisbury.com/">www.grahamsalisbury.com</a>.</span></span></div>
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CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-47267310466396965472013-09-06T14:14:00.000-04:002013-09-06T14:14:50.571-04:00CBC Diversity Newsletter: September 2013 v.1<br />
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CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-13732436816492877602013-09-06T09:40:00.000-04:002013-09-06T09:43:56.157-04:00Take Four! A New, Two-part "It's Complicated" Conversation <a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="more" style="position: absolute; top: -99em;"></a>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">As part of CBC Diversity's ongoing effort, we're pleased to present the fourth dialogue in the "It's Complicated!" blog series starting next week, and for the first time, it will run over two consecutive weeks, starting on Monday. This time we've invited five authors to share their thoughts about writing inside their cultural perspective, and five authors to discuss writing outside their cultural perspective.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I think most would agree that in an ideal world, the diversity depicted in books and of their creators would match the diversity of our world. But I know some might disagree on the best way to get there--what if that's not immediately possible? Is it better to have white/straight/able-bodied, etc. authors write books about non-white/LGBT/disabled, etc. characters? Can those characters truly be authentic? What if the only way authors of color can achieve commercial success is by writing books with non-diverse characters? And can those books be authentic, too? Are there any topics that should be "off-limits" to outsider writers? Do you trust an author you perceive to be an insider more than you would an outsider?</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Calibri;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As an editor, I've worked with authors writing both inside and outside of their cultural perspective, and don't feel that one group of books is more authentic than the other. I'm more confident editing a book about, say, an Asian-American girl that's also written by an Asian-American author, but perhaps I'm not as careful--</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">in some cases, when the author is an "outsider", I'm perhaps more strict about getting additional readers and fact-checkers to make sure depictions feel authentic to an "insider." I am well aware that one reader can't always represent their entire group, but it helps us "get it right" as best we can.</span></span></span></div>
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I1M3antid_E/UilJgVd20lI/AAAAAAAADEA/TTIDYTPaHMo/s1600/NBTT.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-I1M3antid_E/UilJgVd20lI/AAAAAAAADEA/TTIDYTPaHMo/s1600/NBTT.jpg" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">In my experience, even when an author is writing a book from an "inside" perspective, the book may still be criticized for somehow "getting it wrong." <i><a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780316011310" target="_blank">Nothing But the Truth (and a few white lies)</a></i> by Justina Chen is a book about a half Taiwanese, half white teen girl. Her mother is super strict, and has a very strong negative reaction when she finds out her daughter is dating a boy whose parents come from mainland China. Now, this is a very real, very true-to-life reaction of many Taiwanese parents Justina and I know personally. And yet she still had someone tell her that the depiction of the mother was unrealistic. </span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Isn't "authentic" such a nebulous thing to recognize and define? What is authentic to one reader will ring false to another. (And for the record, Justina and I still maintain that the depiction is realistic--and our mothers would agree!) For me, this is all to say: if you're writing as an outsider, don't be overly paranoid about getting it wrong. As long as you do your research, are thoughtful about how and what you're writing, and get appropriate readers, be confident that you've done what you need to do. Because no book can be right for all readers.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">There will always be some debate regarding who has the authority to write certain books. <a href="http://www.cbcdiversity.com/2012/05/writing-outside-your-perspective.html" target="_blank">Cheryl Klein</a> and <a href="http://www.cbcdiversity.com/2012/05/prayer-to-silent.html" target="_blank">Cynthia Leitich Smith</a> covered much of this debate in their posts for our very first "It's Complicated" series, as have many others here on this blog. Because this is such a layered topic, we decided to double the fun and spread this new series over two weeks. Week one will focus on the outsider perspective, and we're excited to have authors <a href="http://www.walterdeanmyers.net/" target="_blank">Walter Dean Myers</a>, <a href="http://www.as-king.com/" target="_blank">A.S. King</a>, <a href="http://grahamsalisbury.com/" target="_blank">Graham Salisbury</a>, <a href="http://www.sohopress.com/bea-video-with-elizabeth-kiem-author-of-dancer-daughter-traitor-spy/2585/" target="_blank">Elizabeth Kiem</a>, and <a href="http://patriciamccormick.com/" target="_blank">Patricia McCormick</a> speak to their experiences of writing outside of their own cultural group.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">Week two will focus on the insider perspective with authors <a href="http://www.sharongflake.com/" target="_blank">Sharon Flake</a>, <a href="http://www.dianalopezbooks.com/" target="_blank">Diana Lopez</a>, <a href="http://www.bilwright.com/" target="_blank">Bil Wright</a>, <a href="http://www.calexanderlondon.com/" target="_blank">Alex London</a>, and <a href="http://www.mitaliperkins.com/" target="_blank">Mitali Perkins</a>.</span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: small;">I look forward to reading what our esteemed panel of guest bloggers have to share with us, and I guarantee that whatever they write will be scintillating. Please join us!</span></div>
alvinalinghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04503984086482905226noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-85575727998096608802013-08-30T13:19:00.000-04:002013-09-06T11:00:38.733-04:00CBC Diversity Newsletter<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">For your viewing pleasure, the Diversity in the News you've come to know and love has updated its style! All the same content will now be found in this beautiful magazine-style offering. Don't forget to <a href="http://bit.ly/15jSGAb" target="_blank">sign up</a> to get the digest in you e-mail inbox every week with a link to the formatted version at the bottom of the e-mail.</span></span></div>
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CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-59615070889601590982013-08-27T09:35:00.000-04:002013-08-27T09:54:18.063-04:00Microaggressions: Those Small Acts that Pack a Big, Negative Punch <a style="position:absolute;top:-99em;" name="more"></a>
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<i><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Guest post by children's lib<span style="font-size: large;">rari<span style="font-size: large;">an <span style="font-size: large;">at Bank Street College of Education</span></span></span>, Allie Jane Bruce.</span></span></b></i>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">More and more, the word “microaggression” is cropping up in the world of children’s literature. A “microaggression” —a term coined by Harvard professor Chester M. Pierce in 1970 — is a tiny act of bigotry. Examples include crossing the street when a dark-skinned stranger appears, giving a groan when the word “Feminism” comes up, or using “homo” as a synonym for “uncool” (Pierce used it to describe only race-related acts, but the word has evolved to encompass bigotry in general). Viewed individually, these acts are almost negligible; taken as a whole, they constitute an evolution of the very nature of bigotry, from overt, conscious and public bigotry to a more nebulous form that is hard to identify and even harder to acknowledge (Sue et al, 2007).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />We who work in the field of children’s literature—librarians, teachers, booksellers, authors, illustrators, bloggers, publishers—must be aware of microaggressions. We constantly read aloud, recommend books, and do everything in our power to <a href="http://video.pbs.org/video/2262568011/" target="_blank">turn kids into bookworms</a>. As fervently as we extoll the benefits of reading, we must also consider whether the books we love confirm kids’ dignity and worth as human beings, in ways small and large.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />What one person perceives as a microaggression may be a non-entity to another. At what point does an incident become a microaggression? What responsibility do I, as a librarian and teacher, have to filter out potentially harmful books? Is it better not to read something hurtful—or to read it, and then discuss it? These were questions with which I wrestled after a read-aloud incident a few months ago.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The book I chose was Betsy Lewin’s <i>You Can Do It</i>. There is much to love in this story of an alligator who, cheered on by a good friend, overcomes a bully to win the race. But a seemingly-miniscule element—a hair ribbon—produced a heartrending effect on a member of my audience.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">The kindergarten group I read to included a girly-girl. A <i>very </i>girly girly-girl. We’ll call her Charlotte. Charlotte loves to read, has a shy smile, likes a good hug, and almost always wears ribbons in her hair. As I held up the book, she observed the ribbon-wearing alligator and smiled. I showed the title page and cleared my throat, but before I began reading, an argument broke out. Which character was saying “You can do it!”, and which was the “doer”? The differences of opinion arose because although the cover makes it clear that the alligator wearing the ribbon is saying “You can do it!”, the title page suggests the opposite; it appears that the bare-headed alligator is leading the be-ribboned alligator to something that she will, presumably, do. Charlotte was adamant that the alligator with the ribbon would be the “doer”. “Let’s find out,” I said, and we began.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">As we read, the kids who had guessed correctly—the ribbon-less alligator is the “doer”—celebrated their victory with smiles and “yes!”es. Most of those who had guessed wrong gave a little groan and then recovered. But Charlotte’s face grew dark. Her chin dropped. Her eyes found the floor. Her whole body curled inward. And she gave a tiny, angry tug at the ribbon in her hair.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Charlotte’s reaction cut straight to my bone. I wondered what was going on in her head. Anger at being wrong? Probably, but was there something else? Was it shame that she was, due to a fashion choice, now classified as a cheerleader rather than a doer? Did she now believe that to have any chance of winning a race, she must remove her ribbon? Or did she extrapolate that girls en masse (after all, the presence of the hair ribbon does, to the casual reader, indicate gender) have no business being doers? </span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I tried to salvage it. I pointed out that we didn’t know whether the main character was a boy or girl. Maybe they were both girls! No luck. In the world of picture books (reinforced over and over again, particularly with animals), the clothes make the gender. And even if we did accept that both alligators are female, Charlotte might have been thinking, “female alligators can do it, but not those who wear ribbons”.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">I do not know what was in Charlotte’s head, and if not for the look on her face and her extreme body language, I would not have engaged in any sort of analysis after reading this book to the class. It is possible that my response is overly sensitive to Charlotte’s reaction, or that Charlotte’s reaction had to do only with guessing wrong. Ultimately, when analyzing for microaggressions (or, for that matter, macroaggressions), the question is “what effect does this have on its audience?” In this case, <i>You Can Do It</i> positively affected most of the children in my group, who enjoyed the fun, inspiring story. My impression of Charlotte, however, was that she seemed to feel devalued and type-cast. And this reaction—even if it was just Charlotte’s—is valid and deserves consideration. It may or may not rise to the level of “microaggression” classification but, either way, it is a helpful place to start an important conversation because seemingly small slights sometimes pack a disproportionately big punch.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />In my opinion, the most dangerous thing about microaggressions is that the dominant group (eg white people, straight people, men, highly educated people…) often can’t see them at all. They see only a person from the non-dominant culture go to pieces or start a fight over something that looks negligible. They say, “Wow. ______ people are so sensitive!” or “Why do you have to be so angry?” Those who experience such feelings then start to believe that their anger is not legitimate, that they are overly sensitive, that the smothering blanket of microaggressions they are wrapped in is their rightful burden.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />Teachers, librarians, and parents: Have you ever had an experience similar to the one I describe? How did you handle it? What conclusions did you draw? Microaggressions are hard to think about and harder to talk about. But we need more conversation, not less. Let’s get started. <br /><br /><u><b>References</b></u><br />Pierce, C. M., Carew, J. V., Pierce-Gonzalez, D., & Wills, D. 1977. An experiment in racism: TV commercials. Education and Urban Society, 10, 61–87.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><br />Sue, D.W., Capodilupo, C. M., Torino, G. C., Bucceri, J. M., Holder, A. M. B., Nadal, K. L., & Esquilin, M. 2007. Racial microaggressions in everyday life: Implications for clinical practice. American Psychologist, 62, 271-286.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">Allie Jane Bruce is Children’s Librarian at the Bank Street College of Education. She began her career as a bookseller at Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington, D.C. and earned her library degree from Pratt Institute. She tweets from <a href="https://twitter.com/alliejanebruce" target="_blank">@alliejanebruce</a> and blogs at <a href="http://bankstreetcollegeccl.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">http://bankstreetcollegeccl.wordpress.com</a>.</span></span>CBC Diversity Committeehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02210096489191130439noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-62612352167169976242013-08-21T16:28:00.000-04:002013-08-27T11:20:31.100-04:00Industry Q&A with editor Phoebe Yeh<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Please tell us about the most recent diverse book you published. </span></span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><i>The School for Good and Evil</i><br />by Soman Chainani</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">For the purposes of this response, I propose that we define “diversity” in a more expansive way. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;">I suggest that “diversity” should mean more than issue based books by authors of color about protagonists of color. (While I believe that these books are still needed, the definition of diversity in the 21st century needs to be broader. I encourage all of you to read Christopher Myers’ excellent <a href="http://www.hbook.com/2013/08/opinion/young-dreamers/" target="_blank">Horn Book piece</a> for more on this subject.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;">Please consider the work of the debut novelists Korean American Ellen Oh and Asian Indian Soman Chainani. They are part of a growing number of authors of color who are breaking boundaries with regard to the diversity of book content and genre. </span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: small;">In <i>Prophecy </i>by Ellen Oh, our heroine is a girl soldier/demon slayer. Oh based her research on Genghis Khan and feudal Korea. Readers may pick up on the nods to Asian history and culture, or they can be content with reading an action packed adventure with a strong heroine. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"> <i>Darius & Twig</i> by Walter Dean Myers, is about the friendship of an aspiring writer, Darius and a runner, Twig, set against an urban landscape. Myers sets the standard for challenging himself as a writer and for giving voice to young people, their fears and frustrations, but also their hopes and dreams. But do not be fooled. These are not “just urban novels for urban teens.” Pay more careful attention, dear reader. Myers’ message is about universality. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;">In T<i>he School for Good and Evil</i>, Chainani skillfully upturns our notions of the good, bad and ugly. Readers will find the travails of Sophie and Agatha uproariously funny but I also like to think that the novel offers another perspective, a broader perspective about identity that maybe, you may have taken for granted. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"> All three novels were acquired with the slightly subversive intention of pushing us along just a little bit farther as readers.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">What is one factor holding you back from publishing more diverse books OR what’s the biggest challenge for publishing companies who want to feature more diverse titles?</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I started in children’s publishing in 1986. What was true then still holds true today. Someone needs to buy the books. We can continue publishing the books if people are buying them. All of us who wish to see more diversity in publishing are collectively responsible. So borrow the books from local libraries or purchase them. Fewer sales, fewer books. It’s that simple. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If you accept my more expansive definition of diversity, the
news is happier. A glance at the New
York Times bestseller list from Aug 18
shows a range of books by authors of color, not necessarily writing about
protagonists of color. <i>Dork Diaries</i> by Rachel Renee Russell is
an illustrated novel, a popular genre avidly consumed by middle graders. I suspect that <i>Out of My Mind</i> by Sharon Draper is garnering strong institutional
sales. Incidentally, Draper
intentionally did not specify the ethnicity of her protagonist. <i>A Long
Walk In Winter</i> by Linda Sue Park, is based on a true story. The aforementioned <i>School for Good And Evil </i>by Soman Chainani is a post fairy tale
fantasy. It is nothing like <i>The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian</i>
by Sherman Alexie but both novels are hilarious. And everyone knows, funny books sell. To my mind, the success of these novels is an
indicator that there is a book for every taste, every sensibility. And popularity and diversity aren’t mutually
exclusive.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Who would you consider to be a diversity pioneer in children’s and/or young adult literature? </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The one and only Walter Dean Myers, our current <a href="http://www.read.gov/cfb/ambassador/" target="_blank">National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature</a>. Why is he a pioneering genius? He has mastered both fiction and non-fiction
in all age genres: picture book, middle grade and teen. And all subjects: it could be a war novel
(upcoming <i>Invasion</i>), a screenplay (<i>Monster</i>), sports fiction (<i>Kick</i>), opera (<i>Carmen</i>). And all formats:
short story, novel, poetry. He’s a
skillful poet with a range that spans poetry for the very young (<i>Brown Angels</i>) and prose poetry that is
Whitmanesque in scope (We Are America). Since we aren’t bean counters, we won’t enumerate all his awards
here. Suffice to say that he has won
every single major award in children’s literature. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Walter Dean Myers has changed the way we write and publish
for young people. And he continues to
set the standard for excellence. Because
kids deserve it.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">His upcoming novel, <i>On
a Clear Day</i>, which will be published
on my debut Crown list in 2014, is one more example of how Myers consistently
pushes himself as a writer. Set in 2035,
Myers meets Orwell as his Bronx heroine teams up with an ex rocker, an ex con ,
an ex athlete. Then throw corporate
greed and a young adult terrorist into
the mix.</span></span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></span> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Tell us about your editing process. When you edit cross-culturally, how do you ensure that the book gets a culture with which you might not be as familiar "right"? </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Anyone can write whatever they want but it is not easy to
get it right. My job is to advise the
author, to remind him or her about what to watch out for and occasionally this
may mean rethinking the ethnicity of a character or a plot development. I should be questioning and double-checking,
and making sure s/he is doing the
research alongside. I consult
others. And the author must do likewise.
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">You need to leave no stone unturned. And even then, you don’t always get it
right. It’s about collective
responsibility. But here’s one of the
first things I learned on the job. I am
a first generation Chinese American New Yorker with a 60s childhood. I have had the good fortune to work with
Laurence Yep, a San Francisco Chinese American with a very different background
that includes a parent who was raised in West Virginia and a parent who
immigrated via Angel Island. We both come
from Chinese heritage but it’s still not the same difference. Being mindful of the difference is key.</span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #f1c232;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">If you could receive a manuscript about one culture or subculture that you don't normally see, what would it be? </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">This summer I read <i>Crescent</i>
by Diana Abu-Jaber. I was embarrassed
that somehow, I had missed Ms. Abu-Jaber’s work until now, some ten years after
publication. When you consider the children’s book genre, it was a timely
reminder that there are far too few books about the Arab American experience.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Photo Credit: <span style="color: #1f497d;"><br />Michael
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">After seventeen years at Harper Collins Children’s Books, Phoebe Yeh<b> </b>moved to Random House where she is VP/Publisher of Crown Books for Young Readers. She is launching her first list in Fall 14 with titles by Lou Anders, Suzy Becker, Jon Meacham and Walter Dean Myers. From editing the Magic School Bus and the Big Nate series, she knows what kids like. And she plans to foster diverse new talent in this vein. </span></span></div>
C de la Sunhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16592430883633291590noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6214531909685193256.post-43043099897321539132013-08-13T11:55:00.001-04:002013-08-13T15:56:45.361-04:00Finding Diversity and My Voice with a Flashlight and a Pen <a href="http://www.blogger.com/null" name="more" style="position: absolute; top: -99em;"></a>
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<i><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Guest post by author Angela Cervantes</span></span></b></i>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I am an original flashlight girl. You know the type. Hours after parents called for bedtime; I was still up under my bedcovers with a flashlight reading a favorite book. Many times, those books under the covers with me were the <i>Chronicles of Narnia</i> by C.S. Lewis, <i>Little House on the Prairie</i> by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby books. The fact that the heroines of these books were white and I was Mexican American didn't stop me from enjoying these books and rereading them several times. However, the more I fell in love with reading the more I questioned why there weren’t books like these with Latino characters. At the time, I remember thinking of all the girls in my neighborhood who were just as funny, spunky and adventurous as Ramona, Lucy and Laura. Surely there were books about them out there, right? </span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Not so much. </span></span></b><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As a child, I often sat in front of a bookshelf in the children’s section of the public library and searched for books with characters and authors that had last names like mine. Latino last names like Gomez, Ortiz, Zuniga... but I didn’t find those books. At school, I asked my fifth grade teacher, Sister Judy, to help me find books “about girls like me,” but she couldn’t find any either. She must have apologized to me a hundred times for that. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Twenty some years later, a lot has been said about the disparity of Latino characters or diversity in children literature. There’s been a well-known <i>New York Times</i> article, “<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/education/young-latino-students-dont-see-themselves-in-books.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0" target="_blank">For Young Latino Readers, an Image Is Missing</a>” by Motoko Rich and a probing blog by Jason Low: “<a href="http://blog.leeandlow.com/2013/06/17/why-hasnt-the-number-of-multicultural-books-increased-in-eighteen-years/" target="_blank">Why Hasn’t the Number of Multicultural Books Increased In Eighteen Years?</a>”. With all this insight as a call to arms for diversity, I’m not sure that I have much to add to the discussion. All I can offer is my own humble experience as a Latina child with a flashlight who grew up to be a children’s author. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I decided a long time ago, when I used to stare at bookshelves in the public library, that I was going to be a writer. It was as if those bookshelves were my Mount Sinai. I had received a spiritual calling to go to my <i>comunidad </i>with pen, notebook and an honest heart and bring back stories. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">As I set forth to write my first middle grade novel four years ago, I knew I would write about my neighborhood, <i>mi familia</i>, and my world. Even though I had heard a rumor from other writers that publishers didn’t publish Latino authors, it never dawned on me to write about anything else. I had a flashlight and lots of passion. I refused to be discouraged. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Today, I’m a debut author whose first book, <i>Gaby, Lost and Found</i> (Scholastic, 2013) is about a modern, bilingual Latina heroine who won’t stop in her quest to find shelter animals a forever home even as her own family life unravels. It turns out that the lack of diversity in children’s books, although disheartening to me as a child, had motivated me as an adult to create change. And I’m not alone. I’ve read interviews of authors like Malín Alegria (<i>Border Town</i> teen series) and Diana Lopez (<i>Ask My Mood Ring How I Feel</i>) who have expressed the same experience and responded with great books. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The way I see it, children’s stories featuring Latino main characters are worth telling and NOT just because census data tells us that the Latino population is the second largest ethnic group in the United States and the fastest-growing segment of the school population. Even if the Latino population wasn’t growing rapidly, these stories would still be important. They have a place on the bookshelf because these books are not written just for a Latino audience; they are written for all children. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In my book, <i>Gaby, Lost and Found</i>, the main protagonist transforms from a victim of a bad immigration system that splits up her family to a protector and advocate for shelter animals. Gaby is an empowered character that any reader can cheer on. It doesn't matter that she also happens to be Latina. Nor does it matter that she comes from a mixed-status, mixed-culture family. She’s a risk-taker, funny and kind. These are characteristics that any child could relate to, regardless of ethnicity. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I’m grateful to be a newly published children’s author. I do not take this responsibility lightly. Today, children are growing up in a much more multiethnic America than I experienced as a child. This is a beautiful thing. And the role children’s books play is crucial. Children’s literature remains one of the first encounters a child will have with the world. I’m honored to be a part of that. I believe Sister Judy would be proud.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Angela Cervantes is a writer and poet. Her poems and short stories have appeared in <i>The Kansas City Star</i> and <i>Chicken Soup for the Latino Soul</i>. She currently lives and writes in Kansas City where she founded the Latino Writers Collective. Visit her online at <a href="http://www.angelacervantes.com/">www.angelacervantes.com</a>. </span></span></div>
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