Diversity 101: Blurring the Lines Between Familiar and Foreign

Part II—A Focus on Dialogue

Contributed to CBC Diversity by Uma Krishnaswami

My Personal Connection

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.

In that category, Rumer Godden gave me permission to write. Kipling 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.

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.

Diversity in the News

March 7^th – March 14^th, 2013

ON OUR RADAR

• HarperCollins and Lee & Low create winning proposals for First Book’s Stories for All Project 
• The Diversity in YA Tumblr, managed by YA authors Cindy Pon and Malinda Lo, is back!
• On Goodreads: Best YA Books with Non-White Protagonist
• Lovely interview with Grace Lin for the Girl Scouts’ Storyteller Series
• The CBC’s visual Ode to Ezra Jack Keats, who would have been 97 on 3/11/13
• For Women’s History Month, Open Road Media spotlights Virginia Hamilton (author of 41 books, including M. C. Higgins, the Great): Virginia Hamilton, The Great 
• PW KidsCast: A Conversation with Alaya Dawn Johnson on the cultural, technological, and musical influences that helped shape the futuristic Brazilian setting of her new book. 
• Two Rappers’ daughters are working on a YA novel: Lil Wayne's daughter Reginae Carter and Birdman's daughter Bria Williams have teamed up to write, "Paparazzi Princesses" – set to be published in June by “Cash Money Content.
• An Interview with Harlem’s Little Blackbird Author Renée Watson on Watch. Connect. Read

Creating a New Narrative

An It's Complicated! — Book Covers guest post by Joseph Monti, a once bookstore buyer, editor, and now prominent literary agent at Barry Goldblatt Literary.

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I'm writing today, discussing middle grade and young adult book covers, as a former children's fiction buyer at Barnes and Noble, Inc., and thus this is not wholly my opinion, but also fact based upon sales numbers at the largest bookstore chain in the world. That said, I am not speaking for the company in any capacity, just my personal experience.

The simplified truth to the quandary about book covers is that good covers sell books, and bad covers hurt book sales. A good book with a bad cover may overcome it, but it will not reach the sales potential it could have had with a good cover. A mediocre book with a good cover will increase sales. The marriage of a good cover and a good book is what I am going to showcase.

A Discussion about Tikki Tikki Tembo

Over on the Blue Rose Girls blog, Grace Lin has posted a very interesting and illuminating discussion about the book Tikki Tikki Tembo by Arlene Mosel, illustrated by Blair Lent. This book was one of my favorites as a kid, because it was such fun to repeat the long, complicated name, and like many other children, I took pride in being able to say it really quickly. But I never saw it as part of my culture, and somehow I loved it despite knowing it wasn't true--the sounds in Tikki Tikki Tembo's name sounded nothing like the Chinese words I knew. As has been documented, the story may have originated from a Japanese folktale.

Grace reposted the piece "Rethinking Tikki Tikki Tembo" written by Irene Rideout, who outlines the reasons why the book is racist, but offers some productive solutions to keeping the book on shelves. Please do go read the post in its entirety, but I thought I'd highlight this paragraph here:

When I read online forums and discussions about the potentially offensive nature of Tikki Tikki Tembo, I am disappointed because so frequently the responses are dismissive. People say, "Oh, lighten up, it's just a fun story for kids." There is, of course, a difference between INTENT and IMPACT. I feel pretty confident in surmising that the author and illustrator of Tikki Tikki Tembo did not set out to offend anyone. In fact, the INTENT may even have been to honor the Chinese culture by sharing a charming story of their understanding of China. But the IMPACT is that an entire culture is misrepresented, and it is not unreasonable that people within the misrepresented culture might feel offended. It's understandable that some people may have happy and fond childhood memories of this book, but their positive experiences with this book does not make other people's negative experiences any less valid.

Personally, I think it's a beautiful book, and I do have happy and fond childhood memories of reading it, although hindsight does make me cringe. I would encourage the publisher to reissue the book with a new foreword.

Many years ago, I had investigated the possibility of publishing a new version of the "folktale," but because of the confusing origins of the story, discovered it would be tough to do. But perhaps it would be worth republishing a version as a Japanese folktale.

What do you all think?

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.