NEA’s Read Across America

I don’t think any of our bookshelves are complete yet. I think that we’re in a moment where we are inviting a lot of voices to publishing, that were not invited before, that were specifically excluded before. And so one of the delights is to see historical fiction opening up, to see Native fiction and Latinx fiction and Black American history reflected in our books in more expansive, deeper ways then we’ve seen in the past.

Our historical cannon has tended to be a little bit about the Revolutionary War, a little bit about the Civil War, maybe a little bit about World War Two and then some Civil Rights thrown in without a lot of exploration of sort of the individual lives and experiences of people who were not white, who were not heroic in the grand way we think of heroes, right? People who changed the world and might have a biography written about them.

It’s just as powerful to read about a young person who stood up for what they believed in in a really difficult time. And so I think we’re seeing a lot more of those kinds of narratives. We’re seeing a lot more narratives that celebrate regular people who stood up for something important. And often those people were non-white, often those people, you know, were marginalized in one way or another.

And so we’re seeing more stories about marginalized people; people who are part of historically marginalized communities being able to tell their story. And for me that just expands our bookshelves enormously.

Yes, when people talk about Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s work, and she talks about books being windows and mirrors, and sliding doors for children to be able to, not just see themselves, but to see their peers in the world around them.

What I am very conscious of is whoever is the subject, whether that’s in my fiction work, like At the Mountain’s Base, which is a 111-word poem about a family waiting for their family member who is a female pilot in battle to come home. Or non-fiction — the Mary Golda Ross biography Classified, or We Are Grateful, or We Are Still Here — I’m looking to center who is depicted in that story, and making sure that I am providing as authentic a representation as I know how to.

And that’s not just me as the person, that’s also consulting with other people, and other sources. As I’m always saying, bookmaking is a team sport. And so I am one person in the team, I am not the leader of the team, I am literally one person, and a lot of times I feel like I’m the information gatherer, the fact gatherer. I’m going to kind of put things together and organize it, but then other people are going to take parts of it and run with it. 

If that book is about Cherokee people, then I want whoever opens that up to feel like they see themselves. 

And knowing that we all have experiences and things, but there are a lot, there are commonalities, right? My hope is that there is also universality in what I’m talking about and so that others will be able to not just learn something about a person, or an experience, or an event that they may not know about, but they are able to tie that to their own lives. And so I think about Indian No More that my late friend Charlene Willing McManis wrote, and I finished and got published.

That book is looking at a young child who is forced to move in the late-50s from her tribe’s reservation in Northwest, what is now Northwest Oregon to Los Angeles. The majority of children in this country, because we’re such a mobile society, have had experience with moving, even if it’s just in the same town, right? But they may have ended up in a different school. Somehow their life has been disrupted. 

And many children, especially once you start socializing outside of your house, have experiences with meeting other people who don’t do the same thing as you or things that you don’t even know are cultural practices that you have, other people may think very different things or receive very different messages about the things that your family does. And so then you start hearing that feedback and it’s wild. [chuckles] You know, as a child to think like, ‘What? Where did you get that?’ 

After my son was born, I started looking at the collection of children’s books, because I had collected children’s books since I was an undergrad. One of my classes was looking at what is the representation of children of mixed-race backgrounds in books. And so I was looking at, well, how are Native children represented in books?

Because when I was a kid there really wasn’t representation of us by us. You would see characters in a book, let’s say Little House on the Prairie books, or things like that. I didn’t find those books interesting to read, so I didn’t read much past the first one, and I was a prolific reader. But, when I would read about those characters they looked nothing and acted nothing like my community or what I knew, so I was like, ‘Well these must be some folks somewhere else because they don’t seem like anyone I know.’

And of course it wasn’t until later that I realized that these folks have no real knowledge of Native people. Like, they’re not trying to show our full humanity, our complexity as fellow humans. 

What we’ve seen I would say even in the last five years has been just tremendous in terms of a variety of voices coming. Are we anywhere near where we need to be? Unfortunately, we are not. But all I can do is bring my background and skills and abilities to try to address the problem. You know, that’s how I was raised. If you see a problem, how can you be a part of the solution?

And part of that is helping to mentor and bring other Native writers or artists as illustrators into the field. So really that goes in line with my Cherokee identity — we are to be part of the community, we are to uplift other people, and provide that helping hand where it’s desired. 

My boys love, love, love the book, and they take a lot of pride in it getting to see a character as a superhero who’s also a Vietnamese, a Vietnamese boy. One of the fun parts about working on the story is when I started doing, writing the Green Lantern story, I wanted to make sure that this character, even though they were new, fit within the Green Lantern universe. So, I emailed my editor, and I was like, could you send me some of the back matter so I can read and research and make sure that what I’m writing is consistent? 

And they sent me boxes of like all the Green Lantern back copies. So, my boys and I just spent like a summer just reading everything. I was like I don’t know how this happened, but I am getting paid to read comics, so I’m just living the dream. So yeah, my boys have gotten a lot out of being in the world of, world of comics for sure.

I have a book called Martina the Beautiful Cockroach. And when I first say the name to children they all go, “Ewww!”, because they’re kids, and are like, “Tell us more.”

Because they love things that are disgusting. And the idea of a beautiful cockroach? Oh, please, how could that be? That’s what’s wonderful about that story. When I researched that story, as it was nearing publication, I wasn’t comfortable with what I’d found. Yes, it was a Cuban folktale because it was told in Cuba from the time even my grandmother’s time and before. But it was also Central American.

And then I find this fantastic little book of folklore. It’s out of print and it was Persian folktales. And inside there’s a story called Mistress Cockroach. And there’s Martina. Only in the Spanish version and Central and South American version she has a peine (a hair comb) and a mantilla, a lace shawl, and she sit on a balcon (a balcony).

In the Persian one, she had a purple dress made from the skin of an eggplant used often in Persian cooking. It’s marvelous. But the story’s the same. It’s wonderful, wonderful. So why are these stories wonderful? I think they connect us, that’s one of the things. They remind us we’re part of one human family, with one narrative that changes clothes or eggplants from one place to the other.

It changes manner of dress. It travels now to, maybe to the U.S. And now the story becomes about a South Georgia farmer and he has a cockroach that keeps getting into the corn pen. And he sees he one day seated out there in her beautiful scarf and his fan and that, “How you doing this morning?”

Patricia: When I started writing a number of years ago, there were very few books for, by and about the African-American experience for children in picture books, beginning readers, novels, fiction or non-fiction: Virginia Hamilton, who was my mentor and… quite helpful; Jim Haskins, who had almost single-handedly documented the stories of African-American musicians; and Walter Dean Myers, whose juvenile novels brought young boys to reading.

So there were some African-American writers out there, but they alone could not represent all the stories that should be told — needed to be told. So when we entered the scene, what we tried to do was to fill a niche.

And our niche was that time period between 1800 and 1900 — that’s pre-Civil War, Civil War, post-Civil War, up through and until the Harlem Renaissance. And we just carved that out as our niche and we worked very, very hard to try to tell that story. And I hope that what we’ve done is to make our history a little bit clearer — something that doesn’t make the children feel ashamed or hurt.

It is not designed to point a finger or to make some child in a classroom feel responsible for all that happened back then, but we can’t shovel it under the rug and say that those things did not happen — they did. But let’s tell it by telling an even-handed, well-researched, well-documented story and that’s what we tried to do in Days of Jubilee, Rebels Against Slavery, and Goin’ Someplace Special. And even the whale men, White Hands, Black…I mean, Black Hands, White Sails.

We need diverse books because children should be able to see themselves and their world in the books that they read.

We need diverse books because we need books in which children can find themselves, see reflections of themselves. I wrote a piece maybe 1990 it was published which I called “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.” And I think that’s really why we — children need to see themselves reflected.

But books can also be windows. And so you can look through and see other worlds and see how they match up or don’t match up to your own. But the sliding glass door allows you to enter that world as well. And so that’s the reason that the diversity needs to go both ways. I mean it’s not just children who have been underrepresented and marginalized who need these books.

It’s also the children who always find their mirrors in the books and, therefore, get an exaggerated sense of their own self-worth and a false sense of what the world is like because it’s becoming more and more colorful and diverse as time goes on. So, I think that’s why.

My very first book, The Ugly Vegetables, is a story about a girl and her mother. Her mother grows Chinese vegetables in her garden while everybody else in the neighborhood grows flowers. And the little girl is very embarrassed because they’re obviously Chinese-American or Asian-American in the story. This is very much based on my childhood. I think one of the things when I wrote my first story was to write what you know. Following those old mantras, write what you know.

After I wrote this book, it was actually a relative success. I was really, really proud of it. But what happened was I started getting letters, or parents who say “Oh I’ve been looking so hard for a book just like this. An Asian-American character where there is somebody who looks just like my daughter. Or just like my son.” Then I started thinking about myself, and I started thinking about how I grew up. I remembered how I used to feel very much alone because I grew up in upstate New York where there was not a lot of Asians, the fact we were the only Asian family in our neighborhood, I was definitely the only Asian girl in my classroom. Most of the time I just forgot about it, most of the time I just pretended I wasn’t Asian. In fact I remember walking past a window and I would see my reflection in the window and I would go “Oh, there’s a Chinese girl.” I’d be like “Oh wait, that’s me.”

Because most of the time I would just forget that I was Asian. So, I think one of the reasons I did that was because I loved books when I was younger. And all the books that I read never had anybody that looked like me in them. And I realized that if that had been maybe I wouldn’t have felt so alone. I wouldn’t have wanted to forget I was Asian so much. And so that’s something that is a mirror, these books are very much a mirror of my life when I was younger.

And as a window, I hope as a window, when I was younger, I tell this story quite often. As I said, I always tried to pretend that I wasn’t Asian, I’d always try to forget that I was Asian. Most of the time that worked. Most of the time, I just forget that I was. I thought I was just like everybody in my classroom. And then my fifth grade class decided to put on the play “The Wizard of Oz”. And everybody, all the girls in my class wanted to be Dorothy. And I really wanted to be Dorothy too. So, every day, out on the school-yard, we’d all sing “Somewhere over the Rainbow” over and over and over practicing for the audition.

Finally on the day of the audition. We are standing in that circle, one last time, practicing. And I turned to the girl next to me and I said “Hey today’s the audition, do you think they might choose me to be Dorothy” And she looked at me and she said “But you can’t be Dorothy. Dorothy’s not Chinese.” And I remembered I felt so stupid. And I remember feeling like oh my gosh she’s right, I’m Asian, I’m Chinese. There’s no way I could ever be Dorothy. And when it was time for the audition and they called me name, I didn’t even try out. I just shook my head and said “No, no, no. Forget it. It would be so stupid for Dorothy to be Chinese.”

So my hope for my books is not only is it a mirror of my childhood so that kids who were like me could see themselves and not feel so alone. I also hope that it’s a window for those who are not Asian who are not of a minority race. And they can see other, other races and realize oh they are just like, just like, even though they might look different. So that’s kind of how I feel my books are both windows and mirrors.

Diversity in children’s books is going to flourish when we are able to have it just accepted as a normal part of schooling and librarianing if there’s such a word. So, one of the things that I would hope people do is to really integrate diverse literature into whatever it is they’re doing.

So, when you want to read aloud, find a book by an African American, find a book by a Latino, you know, read Pat Moore, read Walter D. Myers, read out loud and read those books. When people are doing their little research projects, I often look at the bibliography.

There’s the study of we use these books to do X. So, I look at the end to see the bibliography. What were the books that they used? And so often there are no books that from underrepresented groups that are a part of that project. I think that’s something. I think you have to also demand, if you will, people, publishers, marketers will respond to a demand.

So, if parents go into Barnes & Noble and say I want to see books about X, Y, and Z or I want to see these specific books, that I think they’ll begin to show up. With the book clubs I think they can certainly be encouraged to include more diversity in the selections that they offer the children.

But basically it’s that business of being diligent about making sure that classroom libraries are diverse and that those books are not just pulled out during February or during whatever month we celebrate American Indians, October, but that it’s a part of all year round, any time. It’s just a natural part of what happens in the classroom.

I think there’s always gonna be a gap for young people looking for images of themselves in the literature, and I think, partly, it’s because everything’s changing so quickly. I think at the same time, the essence of childhood doesn’t change.

What young people want are stories that deal with issues of them trying to figure out who they are in the world. They feel isolated, they feel like they’re the only ones like that, that their crazy family is the only crazy family like that, and that their longings are the only longings like that.

I think they’re going to they find their way. I was talking about this yesterday, young people are hungry, and their brains are huge, and they are going to find their way the way we found our way. And I think there’s going to be the literature that helps.

I think there’s always a need for more stories. I get constant emails about why there isn’t more literature targeted at gay/lesbian/transgender youth? Why isn’t there more literature targeted at biracial families?

More literature that’s targeted at single-parent families and parents. Of course, with all the foreclosures, what does it mean to suddenly lose your home and that whole issue of displacement which we weren’t dealing with so much in the ’70s and ’80s and ’90s as we are dealing with now.

How does the shaky ground keep them steady and how do they move with it? I think that there’s always going to be a hunger. They’re always going to have a hunger because that’s what adolescence is, and there’s always going to be a certain sorrow to their existence because they need to live in that world.

When I was a young girl, I remember these moments, having my 4th grade textbook and seeing just the shaded parts and wondering, you know, “Where were the women in these textbooks? Where are the stories about people who were like me? Where are the girls?”

As I began to write stories, I always found myself drawn to history, and I found myself drawn to the stories that I hadn’t found when I was a young reader. And those are the stories that I’ve come to write about.

I always felt that it was important to share African-American history because I enjoy it. I find it very interesting and I think that we don’t really get a lot of it in our schooling. I think one of the great ways for me to learn and share is by painting it.

One of the things that I really enjoy about it is that when it comes to the artwork that I do, I’m telling human stories, and they’re essentially human truths. I think that once we’re able to see that — whether it’s represented in artwork that shows African-Americans or other ethnic groups — as long as that essential human truth is there, we’re going to understand it. So that’s what I’m hoping comes across.

Everyone understands these different human emotions that we have. And when you can see it in a piece of artwork, you relate to it. You emotionally respond to it. And that’s what’s going to draw you to it, and that’s where I aim. That’s my aim when I’m creating artwork.

All of my favorite books were, for me, exotic stories. I would include in that something like A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I was a Midwestern, suburban girl. I lived in a small town near cornfields, and Brooklyn was exotic to me. It was this big city, which I had never lived in, and Francie Nolan lived in this tenement, which was a very different setting for me. And, yet, she loved the library, and she loved to read. So, finding something in common with people who lived in very different circumstances was by far the most rewarding thing for me.

And I think that’s what books can do for young people. They’re a bridge. They’re a way to get to know people who are very different and to say, “But wait. In a lot of ways, they are like me.”

It wasn’t until I was grown and had children of my own that I realized, “Oh, there’s probably just a treasure trove of stories in my own family that I’ve never looked into.”

Some young people may come to that much sooner than I did, and they may well be interested in, “Grandma,” or, “Grandpa, tell me about when you were young.” “How was it different in whatever country you lived in?” And if that’s the case, wonderful. Write them down. Oftentimes, it’s grandma and grandpa, or even your parents who can’t write in English, or can’t speak in English, and can’t share those stories in the way that you can. You can help, even if it’s only writing down a story or two of your grandparents that you then just show to the rest of your family.

I would have to say all of my books are probably based on family stories. But remember, I was raised in a household where the old members of my family lived with us. And there was something wonderful about sitting at their knee and listening to how things were. And now it’s interesting — that’s what I’ve become in my family. I’m the one who now tells them how things were. It gave us a sense of our place. It gave us a sense of our birth order. It gave us a sense that we were loved long before we were ever born.

Besides the books being about African-Americans, they are about urban issues. And you’ll find that when you go through books for young people, you don’t find that many books take place in cities. It’s a very strange thing. You find books that take place in suburbia over and over again, but you find very few books that take place in cities. And even on television, you find city living only on cop shows. Everything else is only within the apartment. But in my books there are fences, brick buildings, and fire hydrants. So many kids are attracted to that urban experience.

I get tons of letters from young readers. Many of them relate to the characters and say, ‘I have a similar problem or circumstance.’ They think they relate because the characters are like them. But really I think they’re relating because of the environment. They recognize the environment. They’re drawn to the books because they hear a language they are familiar with. They hear names and circumstances that are familiar things, so the book becomes a friendly place to be. And they write to me and say, ‘Oh we love your books. I’m just like that person. This person reminds me of my cousin.’ That makes me feel good.

We need diverse books because those are great stories and we need to fill our lives with great stories.

For more author interviews, please visit ReadingRockets.org.

We need diverse books because we have a beautiful diverse country and there are so many wonderful stories that we all want to read.

We need diverse books because every story is valid and needs to be heard.

I guess what I’ve been thinking about lately is about kind of gaps I history, and as an Asian-American, you don’t always feel like you’re part of it. You don’t feel like you’re part of that history, but there are tremendous roles that Asian-Americans have played at different points in history, and I would say that you should challenge your students to look for the gaps and to look for the empty spaces, and they might be surprised at what they find.

We need diverse books so that tomorrow’s classics reflect the diversity of today’s society.

We need diverse books so that we can all connect together, we can all realize that we have a shared universal experience. We need diverse books not just for diverse readers, but for all readers, so we can understand our heritages, our backgrounds, our differences, our similarities, and we can join in solidarity and bridge the gaps between our communities.

I think diversity in books for kids is vital because a child needs to see herself reflected in a story just as much as we need to learn about other people. It’s mirrors and windows, but I think the trend toward more diversity in books, own voices and seeing different cultures represented is fantastic because our country’s changing; our world’s changing, and kids need that.