Cindy Pon: No, I can’t! It is crazy!

Malinda: I know! Can you believe Diversity in YA is over?

Cindy: Well, that I can. We’d been planning it for so long—it was really great to finally see it all come together. I’m sure I can talk you into doing it again, right? ☺

Cindy Pon (left) and Malinda Lo in October 2011

Malinda:Haha! No comment. You remember when we started thinking about this project, we decided to do it for one year.

Cindy: Yes. You did such a fantastic job on the website too, Malinda!

Malinda: Thank you! It was fun, but a lot of work. So I’ll be glad to take a break from this in 2012.

Cindy: Well, the site will remain online, but we will not be publishing new content in the foreseeable future.

Malinda: Yes, everything we’ve done will stay up here for the next year at least. We’ve done a lot! Can you remember when we first started inviting authors to be part of the tour? Who was the first author you invited?

Cindy: Gene Yang. I ended the email by saying: Please say yes! And he replied, yes! Later he said, how could I say no? You said please say yes! (If only I could get my way in Real Life so easily like this always, ha!)

Malinda: I think that’s how you got a lot of authors to say yes. You asked nicely. ☺

Cindy: Ha! I did! Thank you Gene, for being the very first author to take the leap with us. He was part of our kick off Diversity in YA panel in San Francisco at the public library and we started the tour to a packed house.

DiYA San Francisco, L to R: Jon Yang, Ellen Oh (Kearny Street Workshop), Malinda Lo, Betsy Levine (San Francisco Public Library), Cindy Pon, Gene Yang, Claire Light (KSW)

Malinda: That event was so great. It was amazing to see a whole room with so many Asian American faces! That was definitely due to our partnership with the Kearny Street Workshop. And it was fun to do the panel with Gene and Jon Yang; I think it might be one of my favorite panels. What other authors do you have fond memories of inviting?

Cindy: Dia Reeves! I’d been a friend of hers online for quite some time. Then I read her debut, Bleeding Violet, and officially became a fan. Dia, however, is notorious for being a bit shy and reluctant to do author events. But of course, I had to ask. And she said yes! It wasn’t until the actual event in Austin that I found out she had flown to be there, and that it was her first official author event. I was gob smacked.

DiYA Austin, L to R: Guadalupe Garcia McCall, Dia Reeves, Varian Johnson, Jo Whittemore, Bethany Hegedus, Cindy Pon, Malinda Lo

Malinda: I know! I couldn’t believe it! That was when I realized that Texas is really big, because Dia also lives in Texas. I thought she’d just drive!

Cindy: I was so thrilled she came. Dia totally held her own during the panel and afterwards said she had a lot of fun. Let’s do it again some time, Dia? ☺

Malinda: I think one of your favorite invites, though, had to be Francisco X. Stork.

Cindy: Yes! I was reading and being amazed by Francisco Stork’s Marcelo in the Real World, when I happened to flip to the back flap with his brief author bio, which indicated that he lived near the Boston area. We had just decided on locations of the tour, and I somehow knew in my heart that the Diversity in YA tour was something Francisco would want to participate in. He replied within a day to say yes.

Malinda: That was so great. I think that we were both honored and thrilled by the enthusiasm all these authors showed in agreeing to be part of our tour.

Cindy: We literally built the tour one author at a time. With one librarian (thank you San Francisco, Cambridge and Poway!) and one bookseller (thank you BookPeople, Barbara’s Books, Books of Wonder and Yellow Book Road!) at a time. Without all the support, the enthusiasm, and the yeses along the way, this endeavor never could have been.

Malinda: What were some of your favorite moments of the tour?

Cindy: I’ll never forget meeting Nnedi Okorafor for the first time, and having the pleasure of hearing her read from Akata Witch. Then discussing writing and craft with her after our signing. I was so thrilled for her when Who Fears Death won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel this past October. I clapped loud for Nnedi!

Malinda: Nnedi is a formidable woman! I really enjoyed meeting her, too.

DiYA Chicago, L to R: Claudia Guadalupe Martinez, Nnedi Okorafor, Cindy Pon, Malinda Lo

Cindy: The Cambridge stop was probably one of my favorites. And meeting Kristin Cashore beforehand was amazing! She was so nice to attend. I think the photo of you, me and Kristin Cashore was one of your happiest smiling ones, Malinda. Hee!

Malinda: That was probably one of my top moments. I was so amazed she came! And you know I’m a huge fan. ☺ The Cambridge stop overall was great.

DiYA Boston, L to R: Sarah Rees Brennan, Francisco X. Stork, Deva Fagan, Malinda Lo, Holly Black, Roger Sutton, Cindy Pon, Maya Escobar (Cambridge Public Library)

Cindy: To be on a panel with so many authors whom I considered friends and whose books I loved and writing I admired. While being asked incisive questions by Roger Sutton of The Horn Book.

Malinda: Shout out to Roger Sutton! We also tried to lighten things up by adding these “lightning rounds” of questions at the end of the serious talk, remember? We came up with these silly things like “Jacob or Edward?”

Cindy: Yes! I’ll never forget moderating the panel at the LGBT Center in NYC, and trying to facilitate a fun lightning round where the authors gave one- or two-word answers, but it somehow turned into the “pausing round,” much to my exasperation. (It was pretty hilarious.) Jaqueline Woodson said she had to ask someone who Jacob and Edward were. Haha! (And I vote Jacob, of course.)

DiYA at the NY LGBT Center, L to R: Malinda Lo, Cris Beam, Jacqueline Woodson, David, Levithan, Cindy Pon

Malinda: Yeah, we all were probably thinking: I will never have the chance to edit my response. Hmm. [pause] I really enjoyed the LGBT Center panel, too. It was really fun to get to talk about queer YA with other queer YA authors — that doesn’t happen too often. And the event at Books of Wonder was great, too!

Cindy: Being invited to Jacqueline Woodson’s lovely home after our largest panel in NYC was such a highlight. And chatting with Rita Williams-Garcia, Matt de la Pena and Cheryl Klein (who moderated wonderfully); I felt such camaraderie with my fellow writers and book lovers. And also very relieved after a staggering week of travel that it was all over, but so proud. Our tour schedule was brutal. And it went without a hitch!

The audience at Books of Wonder (click to enlarge)

Malinda: Yes, New York was the end of our May tour, and I was totally exhausted, too. And then, several months later in October, we did a last event in San Diego! I think that event featured the absolute best question from an audience member on the whole tour. Remember that?

Cindy: Um, highlight of my career as an author! When the most adorable thirteen-year-old boy raised his hand and asked: “What’s a eunuch?” And Holly Black leaned over and whispered: “You so deserve that.” Haha! Then the same boy got Silver Phoenix signed after our talk.

Signing books at the Poway Library, San Diego

Malinda: That was hilarious. Thank you, Cindy, for organizing so much of the tour and harassing—I mean inviting—all those fabulous authors to join us.

Cindy: Ha! Thank you for being a wonderful friend and co-conspirator through it all. I can’t think of a better person to have tackled this fun and challenging project with! *fuzzy hug*

Malinda: *fuzzy hug? gives in* It’s because you’re such a Virgo! I couldn’t have done it without someone who couldn’t make all those numbered lists.

Cindy: Ha! I don’t know, you’re pretty organized yourself as a Leo. I loved reading all the monthly round ups of diverse books and the guest posts for the website, Malinda. I still remember just choosing a logo and tagline… So when do you think we should do it again? ☺

Malinda: No comment. ☺

Cindy: Never say never! It couldn’t be worse than a fuzzy hug? *grins*

Malinda and Cindy would like to thank all of you book lovers, from all walks of life, for supporting the Diversity in YA tour in 2011. It truly couldn’t have been as much of a success without your help and enthusiasm!

I wanted to make “diversity” on this site mean something that was just plain awesome. I wanted to position these books as stories you’d want to dive into because they were about a great character, or had a fascinating premise, or were written beautifully. I wanted the books to be celebrated on their own merits. A year later, my concept of diversity in middle grade and young adult books has been challenged and reshaped in many ways.

Cindy and I knew that this yearlong project could be a daunting one, so we did our best to manage both the tour and the website in ways that would enable us to fulfill our obligations elsewhere as well as here. I volunteered to manage the website because I have experience in that (before I was a YA writer, I was the managing editor of AfterEllen). But because Diversity in YA was a volunteer gig that I fitted in around my other deadlines, I could never do as much with this website as I wished I could.

The concept of diversity is complex, messy, and charged. It means different things to different people. Every week on this site, I attempted to wrangle it into a blog post, whether it was a guest post that I invited another author to write, or in the lists of new books I posted every month. Some things became clear quickly.

My goal of celebrating books solely on their own merits clashes pretty directly with the goal of celebrating them for their diversity. This is fairly obvious, right? Creating a site that focuses on “diversity” in middle grade and young adult books means that the books that we feature are called out because they check the boxes of what Cindy and I identified as “diverse” for the terms of our site (featuring a main character or major secondary character of color, or who is LGBT; or written by a person of color or LGBT author).

We were forced to define what we meant by “diversity” so that we’d have some parameters to work with when choosing books to feature on the site. This was a practical matter that was, nonetheless, weighted with lots of meaning. We chose to focus on race and sexual orientation/gender identity because those were the areas we felt most knowledgable about. Many readers and visitors to the site have noted that these parameters don’t include disabilities, but they also don’t include countless other characteristics that could be included under the umbrella of “diverse.”

I found this to be somewhat amusing when, later in the year, I was asked to participate in a “diversity” in YA panel that involved a bunch of authors of books about white characters. The “diversity” in this case meant “variety” — as in, there is a variety of young adult fiction being published these days.

So, diversity. A slippery and imperfect word, but one that we must work with nonetheless.

I think that slippery, imperfect feeling has followed many writers who have written about non-white and/or non-straight characters — especially if the writer herself is not a person of color or LGBT. This theme came up over and over again in the guest posts that I invited. Many white writers wrote about overcoming their fear of getting it wrong when writing books about characters whose lives are different than their own.

I really appreciate writers who write outside their racial experience or sexual orientation. For one thing, there are many more white writers being published these days than writers of color, and if white writers can contribute to increasing the representation of people of color in the book market, I’m all for it. Second, I believe part of a writer’s job is to write about people who are different from her. I think it’s important that we do that. That we seek to tell stories that challenge us as writers on many levels — whether in characters or in plot or in style. Otherwise, we don’t grow as writers; we become mired in stories we’ve retold so many times they wear a groove in the stairs of our imaginations. I think that in order to truly fly, writers must do things that can cause us to crash and burn.

But I understand why writers are hesitant to write about characters who don’t share their race or sexual orientation. Cultural appropriation is real, and many of the guest posts about white/straight writers doing their research and attempting to get to the heart of their characters are, I think, sincere efforts to avoid cultural appropriation. I applaud that awareness, because I’ve read books that have been insanely popular, but have turned me off completely because they felt so much like cultural appropriation. (That’s not to say that what I felt was cultural appropriation definitively was. Just like “diversity,” I think “cultural appropriation” can be in the eye of the beholder.)

I also really appreciate writers who write from a place of personal experience. There’s something very satisfying to me about reading a wonderful book featuring diverse characters that is written by an author who shares her characters’ background. They are representing in a way that, frankly, a white or straight author cannot. I want more books like that. I certainly don’t believe that an author should be required to represent their own background in their books, but when they do, I really value it. There aren’t enough of those (our) voices out in the world. There just aren’t.

So, writing from personal experience is important. Writing about people who are different from you is important. These two beliefs sound like they’re contradictory, but they’re not; they’re complementary. Diversity is complex. It’s slippery. I think there’s room for more than one way to negotiate it — something that is both wonderfully flexible and frustratingly difficult.

The slipperiness of it troubled me particularly when I put together lists of new books each month. I formed those lists by reading publishers’ catalogs and attempting to figure out — from covers, jacket copy, and sometimes from reviews — whether a book was “diverse.”

This was sometimes like taking a Rorschach test. Jacket copy is not always clear, and coded phrases that may or may not indicate queerness or race are sometimes the only hint you get that a book includes diverse characters. Sometimes it frustrated me to no end that jacket copy didn’t just come out and say whether the main character was black or Latino or Asian American. It felt as if publishers were being coy, or as if they were attempting to mask the protagonist’s racial identity so that it wouldn’t turn off readers who avoid books about people of color (which, yes, I believe sometimes happens).

But I also realized that sometimes, a character’s racial identity really doesn’t matter to the story, and it makes sense for that identity to be omitted in the jacket copy. At the same time, it’s those books especially where I want to know the character’s racial identity. Personally, those are the kinds of books I want to read: stories in which people of color are the main characters, but the story is not about their race.

This brings me back, full circle, to my original goal for Diversity in YA: To celebrate great books that also happen to be about characters of color or LGBT characters. To steer the conversation away from one that edges toward the negative connotations of quotas, to one that edges toward the positive connotations of inclusiveness. Away from the narrowness of “authenticity,” toward the infinite possibilities of personal experience.

Whether or not I succeeded in that endeavor, I can say that after a year of working on Diversity in YA, my own awareness of diversity has shifted immensely. I think about books differently. I think about writing differently. I actively notice whether a book is about a person of color or not. I’ve seen where my own fears and assumptions have limited me, both in my writing and in my everyday engagement with race and sexual orientation/gender identity.

Coming into this project, the beliefs I had about diversity were largely shaped by my experiences as an immigrant American who is marked as Asian, and who goes through the world as an out lesbian. I grew up deeply enmeshed in the mythology of the American dream, and to some extent, I still believe in it. I know there are many problems with it. But as a dream, the idea that you can create your own success story is a powerful and inspiring one.

I think that some of that dream is in the work I’ve done this year at Diversity in YA. The dream that you can create your own reality. The dream that you can make a difference, that your voice counts. The world is often very cynical, and I’m sure many people would dismiss my beliefs as naive. But this is what I think: the world changes one person at a time. I don’t believe that one year of Diversity in YA has created a publishing industry or reading public that will rush out to buy novels about people of color or queer folks. But I believe that a few more people might give them a second look now. I believe that Diversity in YA has contributed positively to the broader conversation that has been active for years at fine blogs like the Brown Bookshelf and American Indians in Children’s Literature and Reading in Color and more. I’m very proud of that.

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Malinda Lo‘s first novel, Ash, a retelling of Cinderella with a lesbian twist, was a finalist for the William C. Morris YA Debut Award, the Andre Norton Award for YA Fantasy and Science Fiction, and the Lambda Literary Award. Her second novel, Huntress, a companion novel to Ash, was published in April 2011 and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly. Her two-book young adult science fiction series, beginning with Adaptation, will be published in fall 2012. Visit her website at www.malindalo.com.

I asked Alvina about her thoughts on the state of diversity in publishing children’s and young adult books.

Malinda Lo: This is a question I also posed to Stacy Whitman, Editorial Director at Tu Books. While there have been New York Times children’s bestsellers that feature main characters of color (e.g., Rick Riordan’s Red Pyramid and Simone Elkeles’ Perfect Chemistry series), I think there is still a perception that books about minorities are a tough sell to New York publishing companies. What do you think?

Alvina Ling: Well, I think there’s a huge range between “a tough sell” and “a NY Times bestseller”! Plenty of books about and by minorities are profitable, although I do agree that there needs to be more on the NY Times bestseller list! I can’t speak for other publishers, but at LBYR, I’ve never heard this perception verbalized, and minority protagonists have never been a reason for turning a project down. In fact, I feel lucky to work at a company where books featuring a main character of color would actually be considered a selling handle.

But in general, the books I get on submission that feature minority main characters don’t tend to be the most commercial conceptually—they tend to be more “edgy” or issue-driven, or “quiet literary” books. They’re rarely the paranormal romances or MG action-adventure mysteries that are selling right now, and this may play a role in the perception that these books don’t sell. But, of course, it’s hard to say what the causal relationship is, if any. Regardless, I’d like to work towards eliminating this perception.

ML: There is also a perception out there that putting people of color on the cover of a book leads to lower sales, which implies that books about minorities are a tough sell to readers. What do you think?

AL: Covers are tough no matter what, and there are so many factors involved in publishing that it’s hard to say what makes a book not “work.” There are plenty of books with white people on the cover that also don’t sell!

I do think that the recent “whitewashing of covers” controversy has been productive in terms of opening up honest dialogue within the Design, Editorial, Marketing, Publicity, and Sales departments, and more. I believe this perception is already changing, and I think we’re going to see more and more people of color on books covers in the future.

In fact, for the upcoming YA novel Boy21 by Matthew Quick, the face of a black teen is featured prominently on the cover. There are two protagonists in the book, one white and one black, and the narrator of the book is white, and yet when two versions of the cover were shown at our jacket meeting, one with a white teen, the other with a black, it was the black teen that was unanimously chosen. I found that heartening.

ML: As Editorial Director at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, you are one of the most prominent women of color working in children’s publishing today. How has your background influenced the way you acquire books, both in the past and now in your role of shaping the L,B list?

AL: Am I? Wow, I don’t know if anyone has stated my role this way before!

I think that every editor’s background influences the way the acquire books. Editors from the south are drawn to southern settings. Editors who grew up playing sports are more likely to be drawn to sport books. And editors who live in fantasy worlds (ha!) will be drawn to fantasy books. I’m drawn to books that reflect my experiences.

When I was first trying to break into the publishing industry, part of the reason I was interested in working in children’s publishing specifically was because children’s books were such an important part of my life, and also because I did feel that there was a lack of diversity in the books I was reading. I very very rarely saw Asian Americans in children’s literature, and the depictions I did see were mostly telling the immigrant story, which was not my experience.

Although it wasn’t my primary goal, I did want to acquire books that featured underrepresented characters. I wanted to acquire the type of books I wished had existed when I was a child, the type of books I thought other children would wish for. And I’m proud that I’ve been able to do just that so far! I’m proud of my diverse list.

As for how this influences me in my current role of helping shape the L,B MG and YA list, that remains to be seen! I’m still new to the position, but I do know that diversity is supremely important to me and to others at LBYR, and will no doubt inform how we do our jobs.

ML: Are there a few new/upcoming Little, Brown middle grade or young adult novels that feature diverse characters that you’d like to tell us about?

AL: I edited a debut YA coming out in February called DJ Rising by Love Maia. It’s about a half black, half Puerto Rican teen boy who dreams of becoming a professional DJ. It’s a wonderful, heartwarming read, by an author of color who I hope will have a bright future writing YA.

And as I mentioned above, Matthew Quick’s second YA novel, Boy21, is about the unlikely friendship of two teen boys, one black and one white.

Grace Lin has two MG novels coming out next year. Dumpling Days will be published in January—it’s a continuation of her books Year of the Dog and Year of the Rat. In this book, Pacy and her family travel to Taiwan for a month. Her second novel is Starry River of the Sky, and is a companion novel to her Newbery Honor-winning Where the Mountain Meets the Moon.

And, of course, your new novel, Adaptation, will be out next fall!

ML: Where do you see the children’s and young adult book market going in the future with regard to multicultural and/or LGBT titles?

AL: I hope to see more books featuring diverse characters covering a diverse range of genres. I’d like to see more books like yours where the protagonist’s background does not inform the plot, necessarily. Books that feature diverse characters that are not simply about their diversity. The demographics of our country are rapidly changing—we are becoming a more multicultural population, and therefore I believe that books featuring multicultural and LGBT characters will continue to grow. We still have a long way to go before the media reflects our reality, but we’re making progress. I’m hopeful for the future!

Alvina Ling blogs regularly at Blue Rose Girls and at her personal blog, Bloomabilities. For more on Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, visit LB-Kids or LB-Teens.

Of course, that meant that I had to deal with slavery, which is an even bigger can of worms than the Civil War, but writing a novel is like that sometimes. One decision about setting or plot can lead you into places you never thought you’d go. Political places. Dangerous places. Places that make you face things that are hard to tackle. Like the history of race in America, and how the ghost of slavery still haunts our laws and customs and daily lives. Like how otherwise kind and thoughtful men and women can believe that certain classes and kinds of human beings are not as sensitive, intelligent, hardworking, worthy, human as they are themselves. Like what it must have been like to live every day knowing that you were property, barred by law from resting when you were tired, going where you wanted to go, complaining when you were unfairly treated—in some cases, from living with your own family.

Ideally, I would have liked to talk to people who had experienced both sides of this issue, but there is no one left alive who remembers at first hand what it was like to be a slave (or a slave-owner) in the old South. There are, however, plenty of records and lists and letters and memoirs and reminiscences written by both slave-holders and slaves, many of them published in easily-accessible books, many more lurking in libraries and manuscripts and files of yellowing newsprint. In one of these files, among a handful of advertisements for runaway slaves, I found a notice about a young woman. “Blond and blue-eyed,” it read. “Could pass as white.”

Could pass as white.

Because, of course, she was, to look at. Because slavery had as much to do with money and class and fear of difference as it did with skin color.

I have long believed that racism, prejudice and oppression have their roots in class, in history, and most poisonously, in fear of difference. What I tried to do in The Freedom Maze was to demystify that difference, to make the experiences of one group emotionally accessible to everybody, to show what happens when human beings are focused on “us” and “them” rather than on everybody—not to erase differences, but to look beneath them to our common humanity.

Oh, and tell a good and exciting story.

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Delia Sherman writes stories and novels for younger readers and adults. Her most recent short stories have appeared in the young adult anthology Steampunk! and in Ellen Datlow’s Naked City. Two novels for younger readers, Changeling and The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen, are set in the magical world of New York Between. The Freedom Maze is a time-travel historical about ante-bellum Louisiana.  When she’s not writing, she’s teaching, editing, knitting, and cooking. When not on the road (one of her favorite places to be), she lives in a rambling apartment in New York City with partner Ellen Kushner and far too many pieces of paper.

The first installment of this prequel trilogy, Clockwork Angel, brought us a new heroine, Tessa Gray, who learned that her brother was embroiled in some shadowy dealings that turned out to involve clockwork creatures and, of course, Shadowhunters. In this sequel, Tessa continues to unravel the mysteries of the Shadowhunter world, as well as deal with her feelings for two boys: the sarcastic but sexy Will, and the kind but sickly Jem — who is also half-Chinese.

I asked Cassie about her inspiration for Jem, the challenges of representing an Asian love interest on the book’s cover, and her secrets for creating sexy YA love interests.

Malinda Lo: What was your inspiration for Jem?

Cassandra Clare: I think, as with so many things when you’re writing,  Jem is a mash-up of ideas and archetypes that fascinate me. I knew from the get-go I didn’t want the whole cast of TID to be white, despite its setting. I’d been to an exhibition at the Rijkmuseum in Amsterdam showing paintings of Eurasian families — white men, Dutch and British, with their Indian, Indonesian, and Chinese wives, and their biriacial children. I became fascinated with the lives of those children, who really were caught between two worlds. I also knew I wanted to write about two boys, one physically broken but emotionally strong and the other emotionally broken but physically strong, and they became Will and Jem, Will being the latter and Jem the former.

I’ve also always been fascinated with the Keatsian figure of the beautiful, dying poet — coughing up blood into white lace handkerchiefs, the whole nine yards. In the nineteenth century, “consumption” was thought to make you more beautiful and creative even as it killed you — it would make your eyes bright from fever, flush your cheeks, and make you slender. It probably didn’t actually make anyone more creative but Keats was a very romanticized figure. But I didn’t want Jem to have TB — too mundane!

I also have a fascination with the Opium Wars and the fact that at one point, the British Empire was the biggest drug dealer in the world. So I decided that what Jem had was an addiction, rather than a disease, and that his forced addiction would parallel the history of opium in China and the fractured relationship of Britain and China. As for the violin playing, that was a nod to my favorite literary drug addict, Sherlock Holmes.

ML: What were the challenges, if any, in writing a half-Chinese character set in the 19th century?

CC: Well, you’re always worried you’re going to screw it up. And I’m sure I have in a myriad of ways! But I tried.

I knew sitting down to write Infernal Devices that there was going to be an enormous amount of research. I entered into this crazy project where for six months I didn’t read any books that weren’t either written during or set in the Victorian era, or somehow dealt with that period. I read whole slang dictionaries cover to cover, cookbooks, bought rare maps and prints.

The thing is that while there’s an enormous amount out there about Victorian London, it’s harder to track down sources about China at that time period, specifically Shanghai. Stella Dong’s Shanghai: The Rise and Fall of a Decadent City was helpful as was Maurice Collis’ Foreign Mud. I also dug up as much as I could in the way of contemporary resources and first-person accounts: The Shanghai Almanac and Miscellany published in 1856, by the North China Herald, gives exhaustive information for anyone living in Shanghai — including a list of all foreign residents in Shanghai, so if you wanted to know, for instance, who the silk inspector for Blenkin, Rawson and Co. in 1855 was it would tell you it was Edward Clarke and how to find him.

I also unearthed maps and sketches (a lot of them resembling this one and from about the same period) of Shanghai from The Map House in London, which is on Beauchamp Street and has everything. But it was a lot of work, and probably of what I learned, I only used about 10%, to fill in Jem’s background. But I felt like I needed to know it, so I could know him better.

ML: I don’t remember the last time I saw an Asian male on the cover of a YA novel — until Clockwork Prince. Can you tell us a little about the cover design process for Clockwork Prince?

CC: I believe that the cover of Betrayals by Lili St. Crow features three characters, one of whom is an Asian boy. That’s all I can think of but I’m not a cover expert; still, you hardly have to be one to see the lack of Asian male representation on YA covers.

As for the cover design process for Clockwork Prince — I knew it was going to be Jem on the cover. And while I had little input into my covers when I first started out, this is my sixth book with Simon and Schuster, and the cover design process involves me more now. I was upfront from the beginning that they were going to have to find a biracial model for Jem and that he was going to be hot.

I can see how that last bit might seem sort of silly but there is such an erasure of Asian men’s sexuality in media, and Jem, though a good, sweet person, is also supposed to be sexy and hot. (I mean surely I cannot be the only person into consumptive, brilliant musicians.) I went through modeling sites and found examples of gorgeous half-Asian male models and sent them on, and the photographer selected one whose look he liked.

I would say the only bump was that when they sent me the first set of comps, Jem was wearing a hat that was pulled down. I think the idea was to go for an insouciant look but it obscured the whole top half of his face. I was like, “No hat. I will die on the hill of this hat. We have to see his whole face.” I don’t know if they had to do reshoots or not, but the hat went.

ML: Magnus Bane is one of a very few bisexual male characters in YA (if not the only one), and he seems to have a very vocal fan base. Did you expect that? Why or why not?

CC: My best friend while I was growing up — she’s still my best friend — is bisexual, and while I don’t want to compare growing up with someone GLBT to being GLBT yourself, you do see what they experience, and feel that discrimination at a remove.

I always felt bisexuals were never given a real fair shake — I knew she felt excluded both when it came to the heteronormative straight community (“well, if you could date girls or boys, why not just date boys?”) and that the gay community was not as welcoming as she had hoped. So I thought, why not a bisexual  character who is proud of it and secure in it? (One sort of interesting note: Magnus wasn’t created initially for Alec to date — I knew Alec was gay, and Magnus was bi, but their relationship evolved very organically over the course of the series.)

And no, I never thought Alec or Magnus would be that popular; I think those are things you just don’t consider when you’re writing that first draft. Readers always surprise you.

ML: What advice would you give to the writer who is afraid to write beyond their own personal experience, whether it be in race, culture or sexual orientation?

CC: Research as much as you can. Learn as much as you can. Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward’s workshop on Writing the Other now has a companion book, and a good, honest, varied critique group is always helpful. Lastly, when your portrayal of those who are different from you, whether because of their race, sexuality, or anything else, is criticized, it can be hard to hear and spark a sense of defensiveness but the best thing to do is stay quiet and listen. And keep trying harder.

ML: All of your books contain plenty of smoldering romance, and arguably you are the queen of bad boys in YA. Do you have any tips for creating a really sexy love interest? (Good abs?)

CC: Well, abs of steel are always helpful! Honestly I think there are two things that are key to a sexy love interest: the first is that they should be good at what they do. There is little sexier than watching someone excel at something they do extraordinarily well — the difference between a bad boy is that they know they do it really well and that it’s turning you on; the good boys don’t. And there should be a dash of vulnerability. Your boy doesn’t have to be tormented but the girl or boy who he loves has to be able to get under his skin and pierce that armor, or it’s no fun.

Clockwork Prince hits store shelves tomorrow, on Dec. 6. Find out more about Cassandra Clare on her website, tumblr, or twitter.

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.

— From the Star Trek: The Original Series episode, “Is There In Truth No Beauty?”

It’s been about a year now since Malinda Lo and Cindy Pon launched the Diversity in YA website and blog. It’s been wonderful and inspiring and beautiful to see all the posts about diverse fiction here on the DiYA blog, to read lists each month of the new books released, and to see all the events bringing together readers and authors to draw attention to this cause. And it’s made me think about how representations of diversity can shape our vision — our expectations — not just of the world today, but of the future.

Because you may have guessed from the quote at the top of this post, I am a science fiction geek. And when I was a kid, this was the shape of the future:

I devoured Star Trek novels, especially the ones featuring Uhura, my favorite character. She was classy, and beautiful, and smart, and musical! And she was exploring the universe!

Of course not all science fiction deals with the future, or with space exploration, but those were my favorite topics within the genre. Though stories of the future present warnings, they also presented opportunities to dream: of understanding the mysteries of the universe, of exploration, of encountering alien lifeforms and learning how grand creation can be.

I recently read a post on the wonderful geek girl blog The Mary Sue about why society needs sff that included a fabulous anecdote that I want to share with you guys, because of how wonderfully it shows the POWER of diverse stories to change the world.

It’s a passage about Mae Jemison, the first African-American woman in space, from a 1996 issue of Stanford Today (note, link is a pdf):

Who cared that, in reality, every U.S. astronaut was white and male at the time? She looked no further than the USS Enterprise. After all, right there on the screen, week in and week out, who could miss Lt. Uhura, the starship’s stylish, self-assured communications officer — and a black woman, no less. For little Mae, a child of the ’60s, the make-believe image was more potent than any dispiriting fact of real life. “Images show us possibilities,” the Stanford graduate says. “A lot of times, fantasy is what gets us through to reality.”

Stories do have power to change the world!

If you’re interested in learning more about Star Trek and in particular Lt. Uhura and actress Nichelle Nichols (including a fantastic account of how Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. convinced her to remain on the show) I highly recommend listening to these two episodes of the podcast StarTalk Radio, hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson: A Conversation with Nichelle Nichols and NASA and Nichelle Nichols.

And if you’re interested in reading some diverse science fiction for middle grade and young adults, check out some of these titles! Not everything here presents an entirely optimistic view of the future, but all of them include people of color in that future.

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Middle Grade

• The Animorphs series by K.A. Applegate
• Circus Galacticus by Deva Fagan
• Galaxy Games: The Challengers by Greg R. Fishbone
• The Boy at the End of the World by Greg van Eekhout
• The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex

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Young Adult

• Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (technically I think may be considered adult, but I think it would work for the right reader)
• The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm by Nancy Farmer
• The Shadow Speaker (and others) by Nnedi Okorafor
• Tankborn by Karen Sandler
• Earthseed by Pamela Sargent
• Across the Universe by Beth Revis
• The Comet’s Curse (and the rest of the Galahad series) by Dom Testa

I’d love to hear about any MG or YA science fiction that includes LGBT characters, as I’ve had a harder time finding examples of those. And if you have any other suggestions please share them in the comments!

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Deva Fagan is the author of tween science fiction novel Circus Galacticus, the story of Trix Ling, an Earth girl who runs away to join an intergalactic circus, as well as other fantasy books for younger readers. Learn more about Deva and her books at her website, www.devafagan.com.

The answer to that question is yes! People who are not indigenous have been doing that for a long, long time, but that does not mean their stories accurately portray the experience of Indigenous people. Those who do it well are closely connected to Indigenous people. A case in point is Debby Dahl Edwardson. She is married to an Inupiat man and raised a family in his community. Her newest book, My Name is Not Easy, is a beautiful journey into her husband’s childhood. I say beautiful because of her evocative writing. Here’s an example:

“My name is hard like ocean ice grinding at the shore…”

The story itself is heartbreaking for what it tells us about government programs that, in this case, used Native children as subjects for scientific experiments. Debby’s book is inspiring, too, because it also tells us just how strong Indigenous people and our Nations are, in spite of all the governmental programs designed to “kill the Indian and save the man.”

Debby gets it right in terms of a story that resonates with Indigenous peoples, but she is an exception. A visit to American Indians in Children’s Literature provides examples of writers whose work has not fared well with critics who study the ways that Indigenous people are portrayed in their books. Take, for example, Ann Rinaldi. Her My Heart is on the Ground: The Diary of Nannie Little Robe was soundly critiqued by a group of nine Native and non-Native women. Rinaldi did a lot of research in order to write her book, but research is not enough. A lot of sources writers use are unreliable because they originated with people who were outsiders to Native communities. If you’re part of the community, as Debby is, you’ll learn all of that insider knowledge about how those sources are viewed.

I recommend My Name is Not Easy and I hope it wins the National Book Award. I’ll return though, to the books I recommend: those written by Native writers. They offer another dimension to literature studies. Youth who read them may be intrigued to read about the author, thereby learning about that writer’s Indigenous Nation. In various ways, Native writers teach their readers about sovereignty. A big word, but it is at the heart of who American Indian Nations are in today’s United States. Though we are often categorized amongst the multicultural populations of the United States, that categorization obscures the fact that, as sovereign nations, we are self-governing and have things like tribal elections and our own police departments.

There’s a lot to learn about who we are, and literature can help with that learning. Here’s my short list of books by Native writers. The writer’s tribal nation is in parenthesis.

MIDDLE GRADE

Hidden Roots and Skeleton Man, by Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki)
The Birchbark House, The Game of Silence, and Porcupine Year, by Louise Erdrich (Ojibwe)
As Long as the Rivers Flow: A Last Summer Before Residential School, by Larry Loyie (Cree)
Indian Shoes and Rain is Not My Indian Name, by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Muscogee Creek)
My Name is Seepeetza, by Shirley Sterling (Salish)

YOUNG ADULT

Night Flying Woman, by Ignatia Broker (Ojibwe)
Moccasin Thunder: American Indian Stories for Today, edited by Lori Marie Carlson (not Native)
Stories for a Winter’s Night by Maurice Kenny (Mohawk)
Men on the Moon: Collected Short Stories, by Simon Ortiz (Acoma Pueblo)
Blue Horses Rush In, Luci Tapahonso (Dine)
The Night Wanderer, Drew Hayden Taylor (Ojibwe)
The Lesser Blessed, Richard Van Camp (Dobrib)

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Debbie Reese is tribally enrolled at Nambe Pueblo in northern New Mexico. A former elementary school teacher, she taught in the American Indian Studies unit at the University of Illinois for several years. She is currently in library school at San Jose State University with the goal of establishing a tribal library at Nambe. She publishes the blog American Indians in Children’s Literature, which is required reading in children’s literature courses across the United States and Canada. Her publications appear in children’s literature journals (Horn Book and School Library Journal) and books about children’s literature.

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. Unfortunately due to time constraints we are unable to include each book’s summary, but we encourage you to click on the book covers to be taken to Indie Bound, where you can read a description of the book.

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Middle Grade

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Young Adult

Did we miss any new books? Tell us in the comments!

After careful consideration, we are excited to announce the winners of the Diversify Your Reading Challenge!

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Library Challenge

The winning library is …

The Howard County Library System in Columbia, Maryland!

Here’s how librarian John Jewitt described what they did:

We produced a sign for a display in the teen section at each of our six branches, and then asked the teen specialist at each branch to create and maintain a display that reflected the diversity in our community. Our goal was to enable all of our teen readers to see themselves represented in our collection, and also to encourage teen readers to develop an inclusive and open concept of their community.

And check out their awesome displays:

Congratulations, Howard County Library! You’ll be receiving all of these fantastic books to add to your collection.

But of course we couldn’t stop at just one library! We’ve decided to give an Honorable Mention to the Baxter Memorial Library in Gorham, Maine, which organized a discussion group for teens. Here’s how librarian Kathy Stevens described it:

Baxter Memorial Library and the Gorham Recreation Department’s Teen Extreme program partnered this summer for several different projects. One such project was our diversity discussion and display. The teens participated in a discussion, with the youth services librarian and identified ways that they could foster tolerance and appreciate the diversity they encounter at school and in their neighborhoods.

Here are the teens and their display:

Congratulations, Baxter Memorial Library, you’ll also be receiving a box of books for your Honorable Mention!

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Blogger/Reader Challenge

The winning blogger/reader is …

Angie Manfredi of Fat Girl Reading

Angie wrote a wonderful post, I Am a Good Liberal — Rita Williams-Garcia’s “One Crazy Summer” & Reflections on Diversity in YA, that really dug into the meat of the question we asked you to consider: how did reading these books affect you as a reader? Here’s part of what she said:

Reading One Crazy Summer did much more than just cause me to go look up Bobby Hutton and find out more about him.  (though I am grateful this book afforded me the opportunity to do that!) That’s too simple an answer to “how this book affected me as a reader.”  Bobby Hutton, One Crazy Summer, the question about what any of can do to change the country we live in and the world we’re a part of – reading this book was a reality check for a good liberal like me.  I know there’s always more for me to know, but I honestly wasn’t prepared to find it in a children’s book about the 1960s. …

It was more than a reality check: it was a reminder that the best books about “diversity” do more than fulfill check boxes in an effort to educate you.  The best books about diversity, like One Crazy Summer, get straight to your heart and your brain and open the world up to you – they make you, like Delphine,  ask questions about Bobby Hutton that are more than “So, who was this guy?” and are, instead, “What did he mean?  What can I learn from his life?  How can his life make my  life better and more meaningful?”

Congratulations, Angie! You’ll be receiving all of these fantastic books for your collection.

Because we received so many great entries in this portion of the contest, we’ve also decided to name three Honorable Mentions:

• The Brain Lair: Diversify Your Reading – My Summer Foray
• Diary of a Would-Be Writer (And Mildly Deadly Cook): Diversify Your Reading Challenge
• Keeping Time: Diversity Reading Challenge Essay

Honorable Mentions in the blogger/reader category will also receive a box of book prizes!

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Finally … We’re coming to San Diego this week!

Last but not least, just as the Diversify Your Reading Challenge has drawn to a close, our Diversity Tour is also wrapping up with one final event this week in San Diego.

Thursday, Oct. 27 at 7 p.m.
San Diego County Library Poway Branch
13137 Poway Rd.
Poway, CA 92064

Highlighting YA fantasy and science fiction with authors Holly Black, Cinda Williams Chima, Karen Healey, Malinda Lo, Cindy Pon and Greg van Eekhout

If you’re in the San Diego area, please come out and talk diversity with us one last time. We hope to see you there!