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I’ve often commented on how I wish there were more positively portrayed latino characters in fiction, but it’s really a different issue than that of wanting to identify perfectly with a character. As a kid and as an adult, I had no problem reading about and walking in the shoes of female characters and anglo characters. I want to see latinos as characters because I don’t want kids of all cultures growing up with the unchallenged notion that heroes are always white, and that latinos are always comic sidekicks or drug dealers. I want those characters to exist for the latino kids to see, yes, but also for the *white* kids to see. (And I *don’t* want one work to be the “definitive” book with good latino characters. I want latino protagonists in proportion to the number of potential latino readers out there, and of all different types so that we learn to take it as understood that “latino” is not any kind catch-all.)

I can only imagine it’s similar for people from other minority backgrounds.

But if a kid asks you for a book recommendation and you don’t look past the color of his or her skin when coming up with something, then you’re not looking very far at all!

These are two different, albeit closely related, conversations, I think.

My thoughts when reading Lo’s post were that Readers Advisory is a nuanced business that cannot be reduced to checking boxes and pushing a submit button to get a recommendation. We’ve talked about the importance of seeing ourselves in books. That can mean seeing someone who looks just like me, or it can mean seeing someone who seems to feel like I do inside. So my feeling is there’s no rubric that works a hundred percent of the time. You have to ask questions and listen to the answers and then make suggestions. It takes time, attention, and experience. I love librarians who do good RA, but I’ve run across a lot that are really embarrassingly bad at it. (Really. Embarrassing.)

I’d like to encourage people who love their local librarian to send their library directors or their school principals letters that say so. (IANAL by the way.) I think librarians are pretty self-effacing and people take the work they do for granted.

Recent guest posts have suggested that there are “not enough” YA books with a character of X race or Y sexuality getting Z results… but Malinda coherently outlines why even when those books exist, the smallest minority is really the individual and one may not relate with one’s “group.”

So what should librarians do–recommend books with Asian characters to Asian students, books with queer characters to queer students, books with male characters to male students…

..or not?

@Vendela – That’s so interesting about the translation thing. I do agree that books about difference tend to fit into a narrative about difference — e.g. many, many Asian American books following the model of Joy Luck Club. It’s a mixed blessing. It means people want to read that stuff (I guess), but also, they push aside other experiences of difference.

@Julia Rios – I tend to read more Asian American memoirs than fiction, actually. I remember enjoying PAPER DAUGHTER by M. Elaine Mar, though it’s been several years since it was published. It’s about a Chinese girl who immigrates to Denver. Memorable!

@Gillian – Just: WOW.

@A. Grey – Interesting! A good reminder to think carefully about our assumptions.

@Kristan – I have read JOY LUCK CLUB, and I admit I did not care for it. I know that many millions have loved that book, and actually I really enjoyed the movie. I think partly because it was such a novelty to see an entire cast of Asians on the screen! But the book … didn’t work for me.

@Tansy – Hmm, I think that people’s perceptions of me as a Chinese American may have led them to believe there would be Chinese American characters in the book, which … is a big enough topic for a whole other blog post.

No end of assumptions based on all the same stereo-types though… I hope one day this changes for all of us…
thanks to writers like you eh?! Goodonya…

Like snowflakes – or patterns in the Mandlebrot set (fractals), we mirror the whole, but are uniquely ourselves. Our characters are the same.

Perhaps the well-meaning librarian didn’t intend you to find yourself in the pages of Warrior Woman, but rather to discover another unique POV, with an ethnicity that matched yours.

Thanks for a very provocative post. I am very excited to read Ash!

the book is set in san francisco, i’m born and raised there so i was kind of nit picky when i read the details of the places in the city & of public transportation. she did a pretty accurate job, just tiny details that stuck out that only locals would know about.

on the other hand, i read the woman warrior when i was a sophomore in high school and i found it to be fantastical, scary and very interesting and sad. i think i did relate to some of the details, like burning paper clothes and money for my deceased relatives but it’s definitely not the defining book for chinese-americans. i can’t say any book about an ethnic group is, and i think it sucks that people latch onto what kate marshall said about “the single story.” which is why we need more stories! for me, growing up in san francisco with a big asian and latino population, going to a high school with the majority of chinese-american kids is definitely a different experience than yours malinda.

This post also reminded me of a speech made by Chimamanda Adichie called “The Danger of a Single Story”. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg) Because the Chinese culture has lots and LOTS of stories to tell, and yet what we get access to may be only one and that this one story may be considered to be representative of the whole culture erases the other varied and diverse voices that are also part of the cultural experience, and um, Adichie says all this better than I can, so I recommend that people watch the video instead of reading this ineloquent babble. ^^;

Thanks for a great post. I really liked Ash – turning fairy tales inside out and showing alternative ways of telling those stories is one of my favourite things, and giving your Cinders an alternative to the prince was very gratifying (I have developed over my life a deep loathing of the Prince Charming concept).

Have people’s perceptions of you as a Chinese American affected the way they received or reacted to Ash?

Those are my initial thoughts, anyhow, and I’m leaving the issue of well-meaning teachers for another train of thought. On a side note, I did quite enjoy Ash, and would have loved it in indecent ways in high school.

I ask because I’m half-Taiwanese (my mother was born & raised there) and I too didn’t really identify with The Woman Warrior, but Joy Luck Club? God, that was like someone taking my innermost thoughts and turning them into a story. Ditto some of her other books (Bonesetter’s Daughter, Hundred Secret Senses).

So I was just curious.

Regardless of your answer, thanks for this great post. I had very different experiences (went to Chinese school, had lots of Chinese friends, *wanted* to feel more Chinese but instead always felt not-Chinese-enough) but I agree with your points all the same. No book is going to represent the experience of every group it encompasses. (For ex. I’m sure not all Dominicans feel Junot Diaz’s Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao is representative of them; I’m sure not all Anglo-American women feel Allison Winn Scotch’s Time of My Life is representative of them.) But it’s important to have things both to accept and to reject.

(Also, I’ve heard great things about Ash, so congrats! It’s on my to-read list. )

And it persists even now, because my sis is married and expecting her first child and I’ve never even dated.

I’ve noticed more and more that twins are showing up in books right now, but oddly enough, most of the people writing those books (not all of them) have no idea what being a twin is like. They have no actual experience with twins. Which makes it very strange to me that they would write about it. I don’t have anything against these authors, but it makes reading the books weird, especially since most of those twin characters fit perfectly into the ‘twin’ stereotype, when there really is no such thing.

I’m not arguing that queerness is the same thing as race, of course–it’s frequently very annoying and frustrating to pass, but it’s a privilege as well. One of my areas of research is in translations of books written in two languages (like Oscar Wao) and one of the things I’m beginning to see (hardly a revolutionary insight) is that the chosen translated novels tend to be a certain kind of ‘different’ narrative, which in itself is conformist–giving the audience the story they expect, and this is often furthered by the language of the translation as well. And I don’t mean that the novels chosen are necessarily the wrong novels, but that a diversity of stories might need to mean more than offering alternative POVs that are made to sound more like each other, if that makes sense. As if the subject matter is more important than the language of the text; as if Dominican-American authors sound the same as Indian ones.

In essence, I want more stories. Always. *grins*