TOTW: Diversity in YA Tour in SF!!
The Inkpot could not be prouder of its very own Malinda Lo and Cindy Pon, who aren’t just some of the most wonderful writers around (Malinda’s Huntress and Cindy’s Fury of the Phoenix: two of the best fantasy reads of 2011!), but also have super-sized amounts of (1) HEART and (2) VISION.
They looked around, saw a gaping need for more diversity in YA fiction, and decided to do something about it: hence this month’s incredible “Diversity in YA” tour! (See their quite beautiful website at http://www.diversityinya.com/ -- a great resource.)
Hearing the kick-off event would be held at the San Francisco Public Library on Saturday, May 7, the Inkpot sent a reporter over to take a look:
To be honest, I was so excited I got there 40 minutes early and had to wait outside the room while Eastwind Books brought in its boxes of books and librarians fluttered about. A palpable sense of excitement in the air! Really, I wasn’t the only person hanging around outside the room. And when we finally got to go in and sit down - there were about 80 of us, a real crowd!
On the star-studded panel, left to right: Jon Yang, whose first book for kids is called Exclusively Chloe, Malinda Lo, author of Ash and Huntress, Cindy Pon, The Silver Phoenix and Fury of the Phoenix, and Printz-award-winner and high school computer science teacher Gene Luen Yang, author of American-Born Chinese.
Betsy Levine, teen librarian at the SF Library gave the panel and the audience a warm welcome, as did Ellen Oh and Claire Wright of the Kearney Street Workshop (a multi-disciplinary Asian arts organization).
Our Inkies did beautifully! Malinda Lo told the crowd that she had had no intention of writing a companion novel for Ash, but when the opportunity came up to explore the ancient history of the world she had built in Ash, she realized that she had always seen the characters wandering through her Celtic-inspired landscape as looking Asian. Writing Huntress gave her the chance to make the Asian influences explicit, and to continue the unapologetically lesbian orientation of her swoonable main characters. She read the opening of Huntress and left the audience shivering, and not just because the shore described was icy . . . . Nobody does longing like Malinda Lo!
Cindy Pon was up next, to read (with gusto and charm) a key racy passage from her “pre/se/quel,” Fury of the Phoenix (which does the split-narrative thing so incredibly well -- read this book now!). As she said about one of her main characters, the ambiguously evil but nonetheless attractive Zhong Ye: “Teenage eunuch? Let’s start that trend! He doesn’t sparkle, but he’s still pretty cool.” I’d say!
J. A. Yang (“Jon or Jonathan - my publisher wanted to hide the fact I’m a boy!”) had the crowd charmed with his description of his teen girl street creds, developed through years of growing up with his genuinely female twin sister and reading all her mags. His book Exclusively Chloe is about the daughter of celebrities who gets a “make-under” to find out how normal people live, and who happens to have been adopted from China (“Hey, I’ve also never been adopted, I’ve never been a celebrity--yet, but people always ask how can you write as a teen girl?”).
Then we went multi-media so that Gene Yang (no relation to Jon) could show us pictures from his latest graphic novel - actually, three different short stories written by Gene Yang and drawn by artist Derek Kim, housed in a volume called The Eternal Smile. It didn’t take long before Gene had us eating out of his hands - I think maybe his second sentence was “Sometimes you’re really proud and happy to be a geek; sometimes you have a bout of geek self-loathing,” as he explained a ten-year gap between the writing of the first story in the collection and the other two. “Fantasy can be a way of trying out a new personality.”
When asked about the question of diversity in fiction and when they had realized they needed to see more of it, the panelists came up with responses that were insightful, moving, and (sometimes) pretty funny. A common thread was never seeing “a person like me” in any books they read as children, although Jon Yang said he actually wanted to read books with characters who were “really different from me” when he was a kid. Malinda Lo said she’d been one of three Asian-American students in her high school in Colorado and was taken aback when a well-meaning teacher handed her Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: “’What was she thinking?‘ I thought. ‘My family’s not like this at ALL!’”
Gene Yang mentioned that Jeff Yang (still no relation) has a theory that Asians are drawn to superhero books because hey! Superman has two names, two identities, his family came to America early on . . . sound familiar?
There was a question about covers, too, and the industry belief that “white people won’t buy a book with people of color on the cover.” Malinda pointed out that since most covers come from stock photos, the selection of models is limited, diversely speaking. And Gene Yang had probably the best line here: “To be fair, werewolves sell better than white people!”
What a great event! It was lovely to see middle-school teachers and librarians in the crowd, all so committed to getting good books into the hands of all kids. The line for book-buying and book-signing was long, but full of good cheer, and this reporter left the SF Library with a backpack full of new books and a smile on her face. Malinda and Cindy, the Inkpot is proud to know you!
They looked around, saw a gaping need for more diversity in YA fiction, and decided to do something about it: hence this month’s incredible “Diversity in YA” tour! (See their quite beautiful website at http://www.diversityinya.com/ -- a great resource.)
Hearing the kick-off event would be held at the San Francisco Public Library on Saturday, May 7, the Inkpot sent a reporter over to take a look:
To be honest, I was so excited I got there 40 minutes early and had to wait outside the room while Eastwind Books brought in its boxes of books and librarians fluttered about. A palpable sense of excitement in the air! Really, I wasn’t the only person hanging around outside the room. And when we finally got to go in and sit down - there were about 80 of us, a real crowd!
On the star-studded panel, left to right: Jon Yang, whose first book for kids is called Exclusively Chloe, Malinda Lo, author of Ash and Huntress, Cindy Pon, The Silver Phoenix and Fury of the Phoenix, and Printz-award-winner and high school computer science teacher Gene Luen Yang, author of American-Born Chinese.
Betsy Levine, teen librarian at the SF Library gave the panel and the audience a warm welcome, as did Ellen Oh and Claire Wright of the Kearney Street Workshop (a multi-disciplinary Asian arts organization).
Our Inkies did beautifully! Malinda Lo told the crowd that she had had no intention of writing a companion novel for Ash, but when the opportunity came up to explore the ancient history of the world she had built in Ash, she realized that she had always seen the characters wandering through her Celtic-inspired landscape as looking Asian. Writing Huntress gave her the chance to make the Asian influences explicit, and to continue the unapologetically lesbian orientation of her swoonable main characters. She read the opening of Huntress and left the audience shivering, and not just because the shore described was icy . . . . Nobody does longing like Malinda Lo!
Cindy Pon was up next, to read (with gusto and charm) a key racy passage from her “pre/se/quel,” Fury of the Phoenix (which does the split-narrative thing so incredibly well -- read this book now!). As she said about one of her main characters, the ambiguously evil but nonetheless attractive Zhong Ye: “Teenage eunuch? Let’s start that trend! He doesn’t sparkle, but he’s still pretty cool.” I’d say!
J. A. Yang (“Jon or Jonathan - my publisher wanted to hide the fact I’m a boy!”) had the crowd charmed with his description of his teen girl street creds, developed through years of growing up with his genuinely female twin sister and reading all her mags. His book Exclusively Chloe is about the daughter of celebrities who gets a “make-under” to find out how normal people live, and who happens to have been adopted from China (“Hey, I’ve also never been adopted, I’ve never been a celebrity--yet, but people always ask how can you write as a teen girl?”).
Then we went multi-media so that Gene Yang (no relation to Jon) could show us pictures from his latest graphic novel - actually, three different short stories written by Gene Yang and drawn by artist Derek Kim, housed in a volume called The Eternal Smile. It didn’t take long before Gene had us eating out of his hands - I think maybe his second sentence was “Sometimes you’re really proud and happy to be a geek; sometimes you have a bout of geek self-loathing,” as he explained a ten-year gap between the writing of the first story in the collection and the other two. “Fantasy can be a way of trying out a new personality.”
When asked about the question of diversity in fiction and when they had realized they needed to see more of it, the panelists came up with responses that were insightful, moving, and (sometimes) pretty funny. A common thread was never seeing “a person like me” in any books they read as children, although Jon Yang said he actually wanted to read books with characters who were “really different from me” when he was a kid. Malinda Lo said she’d been one of three Asian-American students in her high school in Colorado and was taken aback when a well-meaning teacher handed her Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: “’What was she thinking?‘ I thought. ‘My family’s not like this at ALL!’”
Gene Yang mentioned that Jeff Yang (still no relation) has a theory that Asians are drawn to superhero books because hey! Superman has two names, two identities, his family came to America early on . . . sound familiar?
There was a question about covers, too, and the industry belief that “white people won’t buy a book with people of color on the cover.” Malinda pointed out that since most covers come from stock photos, the selection of models is limited, diversely speaking. And Gene Yang had probably the best line here: “To be fair, werewolves sell better than white people!”
What a great event! It was lovely to see middle-school teachers and librarians in the crowd, all so committed to getting good books into the hands of all kids. The line for book-buying and book-signing was long, but full of good cheer, and this reporter left the SF Library with a backpack full of new books and a smile on her face. Malinda and Cindy, the Inkpot is proud to know you!