December’s New Books
Posted by Malinda Lo on Nov 28, 2011 in Blog, Featured, New Books | 11 commentsEvery month we feature all the new middle grade and young adult releases that include diversity. December is a pretty slim month for new releases, and we’ve only found two titles that (may) fit our guidelines. Those guidelines, all year, have been the following:
By “diversity” we mean: (1) main characters or major secondary characters (e.g., a love interest or best friend kind of character) who are of color or are LGBT; or (2) written by a person of color or LGBT author.
The first title is a major young adult release, Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare, the second in the bestselling author’s Infernal Devices trilogy.
Clockwork Prince has the distinction of featuring an Asian model on its cover — and more importantly, an Asian model who is clearly positioned as a romantic lead. We’ll have an interview with Cassandra Clare here next week!
The second title is the middle grade novel Something to Hold by Katherine Shlick Noe.
Here is the publisher’s description:
Can a white girl feel at home on an Indian reservation?
Based on the author’s childhood experience in the early 1960s, this debut novel centers on Kitty, whose father is a government forester at Warm Springs Reservation, Oregon. Kitty is one of only two white kids in her class, and the Indian kids are keeping their distance. With time, Kitty becomes increasingly aware of the tensions and prejudices between Indians and whites, and of the past injustice and pain still very much alive on the reservation. Time also brings friendships and opportunities to make a difference.
The description raises a question I’ve struggled with all year as I compile these lists of books. Should a book about a white main character encountering diversity be part of a list of “diverse” titles? What if the encounter is life-changing for the white main character? And even more questions arise for me: Is this kind of book meant for white readers or for minority readers?
I’m sure that some (many?) minority readers are sick and tired of reading about white people learning about them. But what if this kind of book opens the eyes of a white reader and changes their perceptions about the world and people who are different from them? These kinds of questions aren’t easy to answer, and I can see both sides — which has made putting these lists together more challenging than I expected.
So, what do you think? And are there any new releases in December that I’ve missed? Please do tell us in the comments.
Can we toss Melissa de la Cruz on the December pile, please? (Well not her, exactly, but her December YA release Bloody Valentine). Her books are a serious guilty pleasure of mine. I loved Angels on Sunset Boulevard and Fresh Off the Boat.
More about Melissa here.
Thanks for the heads up on Bloody Valentine!
(FYI, if your comment includes 2 links it will get sent to the moderation queue. So … future commenters, please take note.)
Oh and Anaru Bickford’s Aroha!
(1 link! Winning at comments! Woo!)
Sadly, I think, once again, it comes down to a unsatisfying subjective “sensibility” issue. I’m not interested in “white main characters learning a valuable lesson about race” … unless the book is really great or different in some new way.
But who gets to define that? Only minorities? White people too?
Sheesh, once again, it’s really complicated.
The first two books in Lynne Ewing’s Sisters of Isis series are being re-released this December as a single omnibus edition. Of the three main girls, only one of them is white. (Not sure if reprints count as a new release, but these books are amazing, so I figured I’d bring them up!)
Maniac Magee is a book about a white character encountering “diversity issues,” but most people would not consider it a diverse book.
It’s an interesting question, especially because the white author may include inaccurate and/or inauthentic portrayals of the people with whom the white character encounters.
The description raises a question I’ve struggled with all year as I compile these lists of books. Should a book about a white main character encountering diversity be part of a list of “diverse” titles? What if the encounter is life-changing for the white main character? And even more questions arise for me: Is this kind of book meant for white readers or for minority readers?
I really don’t think those books should be included in these lists. Straight white readers have plenty to read about straight white people discovering stuff about diversity to more or less good effect, you know? (I know. I wrote one. Two, now.) I think the most awesome thing about this website is that it shifts the focus away *from* that default towards works and readers that don’t fulfill it.
Dog Whisperer by Nicholas Edwards came out this month. I loved the first one so much. I’ve been waiting for a follow up for about three years. A must read for dog lovers.
I loved Maniac Magee would consider it diverse.
I agree with Karen. I mean, would you call The Help a diverse book? I actually haven’t read it, but one of the reasons I have no interested in reading it is because all the reviews and summaries I’ve read about it make it pretty clear that it is about white guilt and white people creating civil rights, not about PoC/LBGT characters being themselves without “assistance” from white people. Something To Hold sounds like it could be a very good book, but I’m not sure that it fits with your mission.
Also out this month is: African American Classics: Graphic Classics vol 22 by Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. Du Bois and Jean Toomer; Eureka Productions, Dec 27, 2011 23 stories and poems by America’s earliest Black authors, illustrated by contemporary Black artists.
There’s some really interesting social psychology research (by Cameron and Rutland) which provides evidence that reading stories about friendships between children from different ‘groups’ (e.g. children with and without disabilities) has a positive impact on children’s attitudes towards people from a different ‘group’. So yes, I think these books have an important role to play in combating prejudice and should therefore be included.
Having said that, they clearly don’t replace books where the main character is LGBT / a person of colour / has a disability (etc.) We need both! And of course, there is no reason why a book depicting such a friendship could not be told from the point of view of the character who is LGBT / PoC / has a disability.