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Just read Saenz for the first time, "Sammy&Juliana in Hollywood

Loved it and plan on reading more by him.

Oh, I really wish I could go!! I'm a little far away here on the West coast. :) But I've got Skunk Girl on request at the library, at least.

I wish I could ake it!! It's so close yet so far!! Ugh. That's so sad. :-(

I wanted to let you know that I'm with your agency, Mitali! I hope for good stuff in the future. :-)

<3Nisha

Shine Coconut Moon and Skunk Girl are great books. Only $5, that is a serious bargain.

Congrats, Mitali! What an honor!

Warmly,
Lori
www.loricalabrese.com

Congratulations, Mitali!

Thank you, too, for introducing me to so many other multicultural titles.

YAY, Mitali! I'm so happy for you!

Congrats on the award! That's awesome!!

<3Nisha
http://www.nisha-sharma.com/blog

hi mom we are so proud of you, you gave us lots of satisfaction in our life . love mom

Thank you all so much. Mom, I'm glad!

This is great stuff, Mitali. I love and truly appreciate that you keep this discussion open. On the surface, the MC of my WIP "matches" me--a Jewish-American daughter of immigrants (my mother came here as a young girl), and in who's life religon plays no role--my family hasn't practiced in generations. Still--because the story takes place almost 100 years ago, and I WASN'T there, I feel a bit like some of your commenters are talking about--as though I'm trying to write a story/person I am NOT. Maybe that's what this is all about. None of us are writing ourselves as the main character, so we all have to stretch--in the way that feels right for our story and for ourselves. I don't know if I will ever say, in the story, what she is or how the balance of religon or non-religon plays in her life, but I guess its important for me to KNOW it.

I'm not sure about the responsibility to include everyone in our stories. I think we do have a responsibility to represent the world as it is (or WAS!), and--yes, honestly--I'll say that it's too easy for some of us to see past the small piece of the world we live in and remember that we're not all white or all Jewish or all anything. But I think the true responsibility is too our stories--what world are they inhabiting and what is the reality there. If we're hesitating to include someone for fear--either that we aren't QUALIFIED to include them or that they might make a conflict in our world that we don't YET know how to handle, I think we have to push ourselves past that fear and see how things play out. So, I guess that's what I'm shooting for. I'm writing my WIP remembering that Chicago was at once a HUGE melting pot and that, at the same time, the areas of that pot had pretty solid boundaries between then. There have always, though, been people--great, strong exceptions--who crossed those lines and I want to remember them in the story as well.

Not sure this is making any sense, but what the heck!

Shoot. I don't want to sidestep what Becky said (which I agree with), but I do want to answer your question about the words put in italics -- at least the ones I used.

"White"/"People of color"/"African-American" -- they are all racial terms that don't really describe the groups properly. White people come in all shades and have as much color as people of color. African-Americans can have ancestry from every populated continent in the world. Yet these terms are used to divide up who we are. So what do these terms mean?

The terms are colonial and reflect that bias. I was taught that white usually refers to people of European ancestry, although not usually of Spanish or Portuguese ancestry. People of color usually refers to people whose ancestry is other than European and encompasses all continents plus Spain and Portugal. African-American usually refers to people who have some ancestry from the African continent, although usually not from Arabian-African portions of the continent.

I'd love a better way to speak about people that is easily understood and less loaded with problematic history.

Sorry, I posted before finishing.

"Cultural appropriation" -- My understanding is that it's applied to situations where someone uses elements of another culture than their own, for their own use -- e.g. dress, or music, or language -- without regard or understanding of the source. I have only heard this label used in derogatory ways. I have seen it applied to writers who attempt to write about people who are not from their cultural background (e.g. a white writer writing about African-American characters, or a North American writer writing about characters from Pakistan).

I just want to add one, though maybe it was there and I didn't notice it. Minority. Lately I want to put it in quotes, because it feels -wrong. A group of people who are in the minority in this country, aren't so in their country of origin. And what does "country of origin" even mean to people who were born in the U.S.? And when we're poised to hit a point where the groups of minorites actually now form a majority, it all becomes even murkier.

I love the dialogue you kindle. I'll say that sometimes I worry when we get too caught up in terms. I see your point about it being important to define terms, but on the other hand, it makes broaching the subject of race and culture even more difficult. A lot of people don't like difficult. (Even this email was a lot harder to write carefully than my usual tossed off garble.)

Definitions can be regional, too. I had an African-American friend in New Mexico who used to get a big kick out of being called "Anglo" -- because there were only 3 choices: Anglo, Hispanic or Indian (the Native American kind). You had your blond, blue-eyed Hispanics and your dark-skinned Anglos and yet this all made sense to people.

(more on that thought) ...Which I guess goes to show that we make up our terms of ethnicity and race based on where the tensions in the culture lie. If the local tension is all along Hispanic/Anglo lines, you don't bother labeling other differences.

Mitali, I deeply appreciate the dialogue you encourage. I can't always articulate these things well, and the fact that you keep opening the door really helps.

I always joke about the show Friends when I talk about including other ethnic groups in a storyline -- I don't think that was a realistic racial makeup at ALL, yet it reflected their shallow dip into the big melting pot of New York. So be it. I don't think every race has to be represented in our writing -- or we'll end up with those U.N. looking Star Trek episodes that seem extremely contrived -- ! However, I do think that at least showing different people in a grocery store, in a street scene, etc. can give a novel a balanced, realistic feel. Diversity goes both ways, after all. A U.S. city would rarely be completely one race or another, and if so, there's a reason for that which may need to be part of the work.

I agree with the idea E.B. Lewis has about there being no such thing as an African American painting, however, that doesn't seem to translate to books. Just like there's really no such thing as YA -- it's all marketing smoke and mirrors -- publishing houses live and die by those terms, and now, so do we. I fear very much that my work will never be African American enough to meet people's expectations, and that my own ambivalence about ethnic issues will translate into my books not finding a home with African Americans, because they're not African American enough, nor with anyone else, because they're not written by a majority culture author.

Hmm. And none of that is a question helpful for your panel. I'm sorry. I'll think about this some more...

When I read these conversations, I think of some of my favorite books about with African-American characters/protagonists that were written by Anglo writers: Mina in the Tillerman cycle books (esp. Come a stranger) by Cynthia Voigt, and The moves make the man by Bruce Brooks. Not to put to fine a point on it, how many books with female protagonists have been written spot on by male writers and vice versa. Gilead (an adult novel with a male protagonist written by a female novelist.) Artists are chameleons. It's part of what it is to create art--to enter a world that might not be your own, populate it with characters...

What does it matter if more outsiders than insiders write an ethnic story if they do their research?
Isn't basing an award on ethnicity/race an essentialist practice? Who decides who can be "ethnic"?

How much is it a publisher's responsibility to publish multicultural books? And from there, how much should they be actively seeking authors and illustrators of color?

Will the term "multicultural literature" be obsolete someday? Is that something to be hoped for, or avoided?

These are great! Exactly what I was hoping. Keep them coming.

How do you meet the challenge of most agents/editors/publicists/etc. not being multicultural themselves, and yet being gatekeepers between writer and reader?

--Erin Murphy

How can librarians influence publishers and authors to create books by and about children and teens of color? Our patrons demand it; we don't have enough options to give them. Thanks, Mitali, for asking.
Jean Canosa Albano

As a white librarian, how do I make sure that my voice as an ally counts? The library world and the publishing world are very white. The world is not. How can white librarians successfully advocate without seeming to be speaking for?

E.B. Lewis, winner of numerous Coretta Scott King awards for his p.b. illustrations (which, BTW, are drop dead gorgeous) has said that there's no such thing as an African-American painting. There are African-Americans who paint. Couldn't this also be said of writing?

The corollary to his statement about paintings is that when asked by art students why he paints so many books with characters of color, he turns around and asks, why haven't you made more paintings with people of color? The question to the panel: doesn't everyone bear the responsibility of including everyone in their art? And just as paintings can visibly include all people, shouldn't writing? And doesn't that mean that white people must write about people of color?

Which then leads to my last question: what should we do to make everyone bolder about including other cultures without fearing the label of "cultural appropriation?"

Why don't more books for early readers reflect a diversity of names? Tim, Sam, Sid, Todd, Gert, and so on are "foreign" to many of the first graders I read with. Can't we do a better job of pulling them into a story (however brief it is) by including names of people like them?

Hey, Mitali! Please ask the panelists to address the statistics posted by the CCBC--why do less than 3% of published children's books have black authors? Since so many editors--even at a multicultural press--are white, what steps are being taken to at least achieve a level of (multi)cultural competence to aid in negotiations with writers of color? How can the publishing industry produce "authentic" stories told from diverse perspectives when there's so little transparency (who ARE the gatekeepers? who is NOT getting through?) and such homogeneity among editors?

As a writer of a culturally diverse book, with Chinese, German, Latino and African American cultures represented, I've caught flack because I don't belong to any of these minorities, so here's a tough, political heated question. Do you think one must be of a minority to write about them, or use their culture in a book?

How do we promote reading across cultures among people of color?

How do we educate readers,educators and the publishing industry that multicultural literature provides universal themes and characters all readers can relate,too?

How do we dismantle stereotypes such as all AA fiction is historical, issue driven, focused on strife or the setting is otherwise foreign to mainstream readers?

When it comes to including characters from a range of backgrounds, is there a difference between true multiculturalism and tokenism?

Great questions so far!! And Susan asked mine, so I won't repeat or burst my brain trying to think of a new one since so much has been covered so well in the previous questions.

Mitali, I'm looking forward to hearing how the panel goes.

Your essay in Paper Tigers was beautiful, and pointed out a few titles I hadn't seen before but are now on the family must-read list! Thank you for sharing, Mitali!