In the Stack, On the Page, On the Road

The other day I posted this picture on Facebook:

What's in your stack?

 It’s my current reading/just finished/next in the queue stack, and it elicited an exciting round of comments and book suggestions. (Yes: I’m one of those dorks who find a reading suggestion “exciting.”)

I have a strong love/hate relationship with Facebook and social media in general but if I can use it to promote books and authors and learn about great reads then, I’m in. So, at my sister’s suggestion, I’m going to post a monthly What’s In The Stack update to see what you all are reading and share what I’ve enjoyed. You’ll find it here on the blog, and also on my Facebook and Instagram pages.

My latest love is the young adult novel “Disappeared,” by Francisco Stork. It’s set in Juarez, Mexico, and is the story of two young people (a brother, Emiliano, and sister, Sara) trying to navigate the deadly violence of that city. It’s about choices, values, survival, friendship, and love. Yes, all the biggies. But in Francisco’s capable hands, all is possible.

 Okay, so now please imagine I’m standing on top of a high building yelling: “READ THIS BOOK! GIVE IT TO YOUR TEENAGERS!!”

Fiction begins with character. Great fiction is routed in the empathy an author has for a character, and conveys, dramatically, on the page. In all his novels (and if you haven’t read them, I encourage you to visit the website link provided above and at the very least read “Marcelo in the Real World” because it’s all of the wonderful) Francisco inhabits the beating hearts of his characters, and as a result Emiliano and Sara’s wrenching choices come alive for us.

I won’t spoil this book by saying too much except to add: we cannot engage in our nation’s current debate about immigration/the Wall/deportations without fully understanding all the complexities which would prompt families to risk their lives crossing a desert in order to come to the U.S. “Disappeared” gives us a snapshot of very real people negotiating a very dangerous world, and it’s a timely, important book that could spark great conversations among teens.

Okay, meanwhile, it’s been cold and snowy here in Maine which I love because 1. It’s much more fun to snap on the cross country skis and head out to the trails with the dog instead of trudging along salt-and-silt-strewn roads for her daily walk, and 2. I’m on deadline for a new novel and these days are THE BEST for staying indoors and writing. Think: woodstove. Coffee. The silence of snow.

View from my office window 2/2/18

 And speaking of writing: Algonquin Young Readers has contracted with me for a new novel! I’m guessing it’ll be out in 2019 … ? I’m thrilled/so happy/incredibly blessed to 1. Have a wonderful agent, Edite Kroll, who connected me with Algonquin and 2. be working once again with the Algonquin crew, esp. editor Kristina Lypen. That’s all I’ll say for now because this WIP doesn’t even have a final title yet …

When I'm not traveling for book talks, this is my schedule from now until June 1st.

 FINALLY, speaking of snow: next week I’ll probably be grousing about it, because I’m hitting the road and heading to magical Mt. Desert Island for a book talk in Bar Harbor and school visit at MDI High, all thanks to the fabulous Island Readers and Writers. If you’re in the area, please stop by!

Everyday Diversity

Twitter lit up yesterday with some hashtag called #WeNeedDiverseBooks.  Or maybe I simply noticed it yesterday … I don’t spend a lot of time on Twitter, and lately I’ve been immersed in putting together a workshop for writers interested in adding cultural diversity to their children’s books.  Which might explain why this caught my attention.

The half of me which could pass as “diverse” felt her skin crawl as I scrolled through all the posts. 

I applaud the intention, really I do, of those who want to raise awareness about the appalling lack of “characters of color” in mainstream publishing today.  Let’s just put it out there:  of 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, just 93 were about black people.  The numbers get worse when you look at Latinos, Asians, Native Americans … and when those sorts of characters do appear, they are often as representative figures from historical legacies about the civil rights movement or slavery or the Trail of Tears.  Or kids books about Cinco de Mayo.  Or World War II Japanese relocation sagas.

The only thing possibly worse than the numbers are the cardboard-cut-out depictions of non-white characters as downtrodden victims, as “other,” as “different-but-still-cool.” 

In our admirable quest to write “diverse” books, we need to be wary of creating the Separate But Equal Minority Genre.  We need to be careful that we don’t inadvertently intensify notions of “otherness.”  That we don’t create black/Hispanic/Asian/Arab characters who are "shining examples" of diversity.  That we do, as Walter Dean Myer’s urges us to do, in his essay published in the New York Times this past March, depict characters who are “an integral and valued part of the mosaic” of our shared American culture.

I recently stumbled upon the phrase, “everyday diversity.”  It was used by a children’s librarian in Hennepin County, Minnesota, who has put together lists of children’s books which she believes are diverse as a matter-of-course.  Books in which the protagonists might be non-white … but their non-whiteness is not the subject of the book.  The books are about making friends, getting into college, losing a tooth, visiting Grandma … and the characters doing all these things just happen to be named Abdullah or Jose.

Everyday diversity doesn’t ignore culture and race.  It relegates culture and race to adjectives, to parts of the complex background which define and enrich character, which adds depth to our characters without siloing them as “the black” or “the Native American” or “the Muslim.”

One of my favorite authors, the young adult novelist, Francisco Stork, does this brilliantly.  Stork’s characters are of Mexican descent, but that cultural detail is imbedded in his stories.  It’s one of many moving parts in complex depictions of well-wrought characters who defy stereotypes.  Read Marcelo in the Real World to see what I mean.

The writer Julia Alvarez puts it this way: “Stories are about the big circle, the gathering of the different tribes of the human family. Getting down into ethnic/racial bunkers of literature totally negates what stories are about.” 

In those two sentences, Alvarez embodies the goal … and the challenge … of writing any fiction, but especially for writing for young people today. 

Here's the hashtag I prefer:  #EverydayDiversity