Searching For Our Jeremy Lin

Jeremy Lin is a Taiwanese-American, Los Angeles born, Harvard educated, undrafted NBA point guard who rose to unexpected stardom on the New York Knicks (he’s now a member of the Houston Rockets). A little over a year ago, in February 2012, Lin had a moment in history that transcended sports and race and became a worldwide phenomenon affectionately referred to as “Linsanity.” This meteoric rise is best encapsulated in the CBS “60 Minutes” special that recently aired. In a nutshell: Lin went from bench-warming obscurity to international sensation as he led the New York Knicks on a winning streak that defied all odds. In his 12 starts before the All-Star break, Lin averaged 22.5 points and 8.7 assists, and New York had a 9–3 record. Jeremy Lin is one of the few Asian Americans in NBA history, and the first American of Chinese or Taiwanese descent to play in the NBA. 

Seeing, and Seeing Again

When the manuscript for Five Flavors of Dumb by Antony John came across my desk, I was immediately pulled in by the story of a deaf girl managing a high school rock band. It was full of characters I wanted to know more about, from Piper whose parents have just blown her college fund on a cochlear implant for her deaf baby sister, to Ed who has a secret crush on Piper, to Kallie who is the gorgeous girl with secrets of her own, to Tash, the angry punk-rock chick, to Josh and Will - twin brothers who couldn't be more different.

It didn't occur to me that this was a book about diversity when I first read it - to me it was about a group of teens going through the things that teens do, told in an authentic way. It's about self-expression and self-confidence, creating your own identity, standing up for yourself, falling in love for the first time, breaking out of your shell, being brave. Yet Piper is deaf, Ed is Asian, Kallie is biracial, and Tash, Josh, and Will are white. It is clear in the story that they are, but to me the story was never about them being only those things so I hardly even noticed that first read through.

Slam Poetry: Asking Authors to Get it Right

Below we'll show two clips of Rachel Rostad who, from her Facebook page, "is a sophomore at Macalester College, studying English, Anthropology, and Human Rights and Humanitarianism. She began slamming during her first year of college, and made the nationally ranked Macalester poetry slam team in 2012, when she was seventeen years old. That year, the team took 2nd place at college nationals. Now, a year and a half later, she is a two-time champion of the St. Paul Soapboxing Last Chance Slam and has performed her poetry across the nation".

The first clip is entitled: To JK Rowling, from Cho Chang.

A Skin Not Your Own

Originally posted on the Diversity in YA blog by Laura Goode

I like to call my YA novel, Sister Mischief, the world’s first interracial gay hip-hop love story for teens. It’s hardly news to anyone reading this blog that young adult literature has historically suffered a dearth of queer protagonists and strong, whole characters of color. Including those identities in my novel was important to me, but as a white woman who’s in a committed relationship with a man, part of me wondered, am I entitled to borrow these skins?

While I was writing SM, I thought a lot about a phenomenon I’ve come to call the Good White Person Syndrome (GWPS). GWPS involves not just being a honky with positive values about race, but more sensitively, figuring out how to convey to others, especially people of color, that you are not a racist like Bad White People are. To be a GWP, you must banish the following phrases from your vocabulary:

“Some of my best friends are [insert non-white ethnicity here].”
“Can I touch your hair?”
“[Insert non-white ethnicity here] babies are SO ADORABLE.”
“No, but where are you FROM?”

Forced Diversity?

Early on in my editorial career, I worked on a series that featured a group of friends. The characters were already somewhat diverse (I think out of five or six main characters, two were characters of color), but I suggested to the freelance editor the possibility of adding one more. She said she'd consider it, but was leaning towards not, because wouldn't it feel too forced and unrealistic?

I think as adults, we're perhaps too aware of examples of this "forced multiculturalism"--TV shows, movies, books where there's one black, one white, one Asian, one Latino character, etc. But as a kid, I never saw this as a bad thing--I wanted it, forced or not--and to many kids (and adults), it isn't unrealistic and it isn't forced. It's an accurate mirror of their own experience.
 

When I was in high school in Southern California, my group of friends included kids from almost every ethnic group. As a young adult working at Barnes & Noble in downtown Oakland, my group of bookseller friends was also very naturally diverse. One of my coworkers, who referred to himself as Chicano (he told me this meant he was the child of Mexican immigrants born in the United States--but as Wendy mentioned, it's ever-changing!), told me that when he was a kid, he had two best friends, one was black and one was white. Not a far cry from Bill Konigsberg's characters in Out of the Pocket.

Creating Book Covers As Both Mirror and Window

An It's Complicated! — Book Covers guest post by Laurent Linn, Art Director at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

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Laurent Linn

It’s simply a fact. We judge books—like people—by their appearance.

When looking for books, we like covers that have attractive/intriguing images and type, suggest genres we like, resemble books we’ve already enjoyed (but don’t resemble them too much as to feel derivative), and look new/current. Also extremely important is, for young readers, “Is this book about someone like me?” One little cover must carry a lot of weight.

With so many wonderful books published about kids of all types, it’s very possible for diverse kids to discover characters that resemble them. For this connection to happen, the cover design becomes incredibly important. But a cover doesn’t only need to appeal to kids (whose tastes and visual language are as diverse and evolving as they are), it has to meet the approval of art directors, editors, authors, agents, publishers, sales and marketing departments, book buyers and sellers, librarians, reviewers, parents, etc.—all of whom are adults, with their own ideas about what works. An interesting challenge, yes?

Finding Diversity in My Favorite Books

When I embarked on writing this post, I thought about sharing my favorite childhood books. Looking at the list, I was sad at first not to have a shining example that represented diversity. But when I took a closer look, I noticed that each book on my list does convey diversity, or a theme of feeling marginalized, something I experienced growing up. So I changed my focus from just listing my favorite books to examining why they were so special to me.

Sweet home (Huntsville) Alabama

I grew up in Huntsville, Alabama, at the tail end of the Appalachians. On one of the streets near my house, you could count ten churches, most of them Baptist, along a one-mile stretch. The Catholics were considered the liberals, Confederate flags were sold at Wal-Mart, and paddling (yes, hitting kids on their heinies with a paddle) was allowed in my middle school. When people learn where I grew up, they always ask, “There are Asians in Alabama?” To which I reply, “Yes. Four. My family.” I’d jokingly tell them about how the Asians lived in

yellow trailers and how I walked barefoot until I was fourteen. And oddly enough, sometimes people would actually believe me.

Truth be told, Alabama was just home to me, and I didn’t know anything different. It’s also worth noting that Huntsville wasn’t backwoods at all. It was a medium-sized city that was fairly diverse, with a NASA research hub and an Army base that attracted people from all over the world. It had a bustling downtown area with a children’s bookstore, owned by the mother of fellow children’s book editor and Huntsville native Sarah Dotts Barley (HarperCollins). It was definitely not the scary den of racism most people associate with Alabama or the Deep South. In fact, many residents considered themselves downright cosmopolitan. But even in the relatively open community of Huntsville, prejudice often hovered beneath the surface.

Interview with Grace Lin

I love this interview Grace did with Primary Source for their Asian American Author Video Series. What Grace talks about here is very much related to why the CBC Diversity Committee exists. I found her story about realizing that a character from one of her favorite books might hate her because of her race especially moving.

Go here to watch other videos with Grace Lin, Mitali Perkins, Jean Kwok, and G.B. Tran.