Guest Post: Excerpt and Giveaway from THE FIRST LIFE OF VIKRAM ROY by Laxmi Hariharan

Today I’m handing the reins of my blog over to the super cool, very capable, but not quite so filthy – actually she’s not filthy at all – YA author and fellow ogler of sexy, tatted up men with loads of facial hair, my brown sister from across the pond, LAXMI HARIHARAN.

She has a new book in her Ruby Iyer series on the way so let me step back and allow her to do her thing.

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An exclusive excerpt from
The First Life of Vikram Roy

The Ruby Iyer Series—by Laxmi Hariharan

I hear the staccato of shots being fired, followed by yells and howls of pain. Then, the sound of something being smashed and everything goes quiet. The TV no longer chatters. I look to the open door. The recreation room is down at the end of the corridor. The sounds of shots get closer. Without giving myself a chance to think I make a run for the door slam it shut, lock it and it’s as if that’s a signal to the rest of the men to jump to their feet. Without a word, the ten of us scram to our bunks, pull on trousers and shoes.We get our hands on whatever weapon we can find. No guns, none of us have guns. So I grab my cricket bat. (As if that’s going to make a difference?)

Around me the others too are grabbing cricket bats and hockey sticks. Neil grabs an iron rod. An iron rod? Where did he get that from?  We drop to the floor, crouch and wait.

Should I hide under the bed? Nope, no way. Like, that is going to help.

And then a crash as the door is broken down, hacked by what looks like an axe till it’s in pieces on the floor and through it step through two men. One holding a machine gun, the other wielding an axe which he drops to the floor and instead grabs the the gun slung over his back. They are both wearing balaclavas, so we can’t see their features. Of medium height, they are muscular and dressed all in black: Black jeans and sweatshirts, their hair covered by the hoods. Their backs are to the door. They point their guns at us, signalling to us to put our hands up. I hesitate, not looking around but sense that the others too are not sure what to do. The first gunman points his gun at the nearest recruit … a boy just out of his teens and shoots him in the head.

There is a collective gasp from the room. A chill runs through me. Who are they? How did they break through the security measures of the force base? And then they are foolish enough to barge right into the heart of the training facilities of the force and shoot its cadets? Why? Why would they do that? The gunmen gesture to us and this time we follow their orders. We walk to the wall at the back of the bunkhouse and line up, hands on our heads, staring ahead.

An alarm rings out then. Finally! It’s been almost ten minutes since the shooting started. Still, the reinforcements should be here soon. Now all we need to do is keep these gun men distracted enough so they don’t kill us. As if reading my mind, the guy who’d shot the young recruit moves forward, his gun trained on us. I draw in a breath and hold it. The sweat trickles down my back. My heart is racing so fast I am sure if I look down I can see it leaping out of my chest. The gunman passes me, walks to the end of the line; then back to the middle where I am.

“You have no idea what this is about do you?” He asks.

He sounds young, as if he is barely a man himself. And something in his voice … muffled as it is, it sounds familiar. A faint recollection  grabs the edge of my mind, And then I forget everything because he leans close to Neil who is next to me, and smashes the butt of his gun into his stomach. Neil falls to the ground, moaning, holding his middle. I firm up my stomach muscles. I know I am next, I must be. I want to squeeze my eyes shut, but don’t. The gunman leans to the other side, and shoots another man in the head.

This chap collapses without a cry. What the fuck? I want to jump him right then, but that would be really stupid of me. I am not going to help anyone if I get killed will I? There are six of us left in the room now. One of the younger recruits lets out a sob, at which gunman no 2 holds his gun at him, so he shuts up immediately.

The gunman asks me, “Where are the plans?’

“What are you talking about?” I reply, trying to stay calm, struggling not to show how scared I am inside.

He only grins and in response, and without taking his eyes off me, holds his gun up and I know what what he is going to do and I scream. “No!” But it’s too late. This time he’s shot two more guys in succession. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. These guys are desperate, or crazy or both.

Besides me Neil stirs on the ground.

The gunman takes a deep breathe, as if trying to calm himself and says, “Don’t pretend to be dumb. If you don’t get me the blue prints of the security arrangements being planned by the force for Bombay; the one that you and your team mates are being trained for, then all the rest of you die too.”

Only six of us left now. Four young lives, gone just like that. I feel sick. What the fuck are these guys upto? And … and how do they know about the plans? This is top secret. The only reason I know about it, is because I’ve overheard the training officer speaking with the ACP about it on the phone last week. And only because I happened to be waiting outside his room then. And how does this gunman even know that I know the details?

Want to find out what happens next? Click here

Want to find out what happens next? Click here

About The First Life of Vikram Roy (Ruby Iyer Series)

His family is being held to ransom by a deadly mastermind.

Vikram never should have left his family, but when Vikram’s father brings his half-brother Vishal home, life will never be the same. Vikram thinks things will be better now that he’s gone. He’s met the love of his life, his future looks bright and then everything is shattered. Now, his family’s life is hanging in the balance, and only Vikram can do what needs to be done to save them. From the bestselling dystopian fiction author with over 200 reviews and ratings of her dystopia books across Goodreads, Amazon and other retailers. 

If you’re looking for books like Hunger Games, then this dystopia romance series, The Ruby Iyer Series is it.

About the origins of Ruby Iyer:

Growing up in Bombay, my daily commute to university was inevitably nightmarish. It’s just how public transport is here. The man behind you on the bus will brush up against you. You know you are going to be felt up on a crowded train platform. All you can do is accept it and get on. Or so you think. I did too, until, a young photojournalist was raped in the centre of Bombay in broad daylight.  It made me furious. Nothing had changed in this city in all these years. Then, I had a vision of this young girl who would not back down; who would follow her instincts, stand up for herself regardless of consequences.  Thus Ruby Iyer was born. Make no mistake, Ruby’s her own person. She leads. I follow. You can download the RUBY IYER DIARIES, the prequel novelette in the series free HERE

About The Many Lives of Ruby Iyer

2015 Readers’ Favorite (Bronze) YA Action

 YA Finalist 2015 IAN Book of the Year Award

Finalist 9th Annual Indie Excellence Awards

When her best friend is kidnapped, Ruby will stop at nothing to rescue him. 

Criminals run the streets of Bombay. Jam-packed with the worst degenerates. The city is a shell of the pride and joy it used to be. Ruby knows something must be done, but it isn’t until her best friend is kidnapped by the despotic Dr Braganza that she knows that she and she alone must save city, save her best friend, save the world from total destruction. Armed only with Vikram, a cop-turned-rogue they are about to embark on a road they may never return from. If you’re looking for fast-paced books like Hunger Games or dystopia fiction like Angelfall, the Ruby Iyer series is perfect for you.

GIVEAWAY

The First Life of Vikram Roy, The THIRD book in the RUBY IYER Series, launches this month. To celebrate the launch of the FIRST LIFE OF VIKRAM ROY I am giving away a $30 gift card. Enter HERE. Winner will be drawn, Oct 1, 2015, and announced in my next newsletter.

DOING MY BIT
All SEPTEMBER earnings from the RUBY IYER SERIES will be donated to SAVE THE CHILDREN: SUPPORT CHILD REFUGEES OF SYRIA. All the RUBY IYER books with their brand new covers, are on SALE all this month at 99p/c & Rs 69/49. Click HERE to buy them.

YOU can also donate to SAVE THE CHILDREN directly HERE 

I #SupportWNDB – The Series: EVOLUTION OF A QUARTER-SOMETHING

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Evolution of a Quarter-Something

Tehlor Kinney

When I was a kid I was proud of my grandma. Proud of how different she was, of her tostadas and her accent and the way she knew two ways to say everything. “Milk, mija? Leche?” she’d ask, and I’d roll the new words around in my mouth, trying out the sounds, the flavor, trying on her accent that was always stronger when she talked to her sisters on the phone. I’d flaunt my new words in show-and-tell, feeling special, like whatever was different about her was something I could share, like it showed.

I was a little older the first time someone scoffed: “You’re not Mexican, you’re white!” I looked down at my arms, pale and lightly freckled, puzzled. I’d never been aware that I couldn’t be both. The older I got the more frequent it became. A joke, something to chuckle at, to exclaim over like a funny contradiction, an anomaly. I stopped sharing the language I was becoming more proficient in by the day. Dropped the accent. Pronounced things awkwardly in Spanish class when I was called on. Like a white girl, because I was one, right? I felt embarrassed, ashamed, like I’d tried to take something that didn’t belong to me, like I’d worn an outfit that didn’t fit right.

Over time it faded, the memory of being proud. Over time my Mexican-ness became an inconsequential detail, a quirk that I rarely revealed. A boyfriend of six months would meet my Grandma and say “but you don’t LOOK Mexican!” and the feeling of fraudulence would return. I’d laugh and shrug, feeling small and strange, feeling like I’d left something behind. I knew it was mine, but I never learned to claim it.

Many years later I had a daughter with a man who is half African American. As I gazed at her dark skin I felt sad. She had something that I would never be able to share with her, I thought, she would live a life that I hadn’t lived. It took me months to realize we were the same, she and I. Quarter-somethings. I’d even stopped identifying with it myself. I’d let them take that much.

From that day on I promised, no more letting other people tell me whether I counted as Mexican. No more letting other people tell me anything about who I was or what I was allowed to identify with. In the great wide world of the internet I found more of us: the half-somethings, the quarter-somethings. The don’t-counts. The not-enoughs. I promised I would teach my little one to claim whatever she wanted from her patchwork legacy, and never to let anyone tell her differently.

To me, this is why we need diversity in our literature, in our stories. I never knew how to claim my heritage because I was the wrong color, I didn’t speak the language, didn’t fit the stereotype. Most of the time I’m still not sure how to do this, but through the stories of others I am learning how every day. I am retracing my steps.

More stories please, more experiences. More weaving of the tapestry that our young ones will look at and say “there I am. I am not alone.

Please consider assisting our efforts to diversify everyone’s bookshelf by checking out the We Need Diverse Books website and seeing how you can help. It’s super easy, just click —> HERE – it’s vital, folks.

#SupportWNDB

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Tehlor Kinney is a Portland, Oregon educator, mother, and wife. She spends her days spinning stories and her nights singing lullabies. Among her goals are published author, difference maker, and mother extraordinaire. She strives to reach them every day, shooting past them and falling short in turns. Every day is another chance to make the world better.

Want more Tehlor? You can find her here:

TWITTER

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I #SupportWNDB – The Series: EVOLUTION OF A WRITER

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Evolution of a Diverse Books Writer

Rebecca White

Evolution of a Diverse Books Writer or How I Went From, ‘Why Not Have a Dark-Skinned Character?’ to ‘Everything I Write for the Rest of My Life Will Include Diversity for the Sake of My Son and the Rest of the Non-White and Disabled People on Earth’.

Step One: Why Not? It was 2003, and I wanted to write a book. I’d had ideas developing in my mind for years, and it was finally time to put them down on paper, so to speak. The book’s largest theme would be the injustice and loss that follow nationalism, shown in a story about a girl who escapes one kind of inequality only to find herself in a country where she’s not only a minority, but a minority from a much hated race. The girl’s adventure, relationships, and character development would keep people reading.

It wasn’t until I started pounding out the first scene that I realized I needed to know what the girl looked like. As I sat there in the college library, trying not to listen to the conversations of some un-conscientious types, I decided that in order to move the plot properly, I needed my two nations to look very different from each other. Because of the world’s geography it made more sense to give my protagonist darker skin, so I wrote a brown-skinned protagonist, and that was that.

Step Two: White People Need to Get Over it. Almost ten years after I began writing my first novel, Kergulen, I had given up on traditional agents and publishers and gone indie. (I had absolutely NO idea what I was doing, but that’s another blog post for another time.) When I started passing around the cover art/font for feedback, I was ASTOUNDED to hear that ‘people won’t buy a book with a picture of a black girl on it’. I heard this from light and dark-skinned people alike, and I just couldn’t believe it, naïve me. My response was to be stubborn and insist that there is no reason why white people shouldn’t read books about non-white characters. It’s ridiculous. If my son (who is black) can be expected to read books about white people, why can’t white people read about people of color? They need to get over it.

Step Three: What? Almost All Books Are About White People? Being a European-American, I had never thought about it before. I only became aware of the issue when I finally started looking for markets that might be more open to the book I’d published and the sequel I had in the works. I learned that there are LOTS of people craving a good, non-white lead to read because they just can’t get their hands on enough of them. I began looking at diversity as something we need, not just something white people needed to accept. Many of the characters in my second book, Kings of the Red Shell, are various shades of brown and tan. The heroine is no longer a minority.

Step Four: My Son Could Use a Hero. Our son has diverse role models in real life, but it finally sunk in that he might very well want to read about characters who look like him when he gets older. They should be powerful, believable characters who overcome struggles and still embrace life with gusto. In Kings of the Red Shell, my main character has grown much stronger, more confident, and pro-active. She still has doubts and things to work through, of course, but she’s more courageous and selfless than ever. She’s the kind of character we wouldn’t mind our young people emulating.

Step Five: Huh. Disability is Part of Diversity. My son has a severe physical disability that renders him ventilator dependent when he’s sick or sleeping. A condition like that would be hard to reproduce in a fantasy, electricity-free world, but other disabilities could easily work. And that is why one of my more interesting secondary characters was dealt a disabling blow near the end of book two. Despite being an amputee, he’ll return as an important character in book four. I’ve also been thinking over other ways to incorporate disabilities without making the stories about disability any more than they’re about diversity. In the future, I also intend to include adoption.

Step Six: Everything I Write for the Rest of My Life Will Include Diversity for the Sake of My Son and the Rest of the Non-White and Disabled People on Earth. This statement is only partly true. Everything I write will include diversity, but not just for the sake of the non-white and disabled. All of this evolution has brought me back to the beginning, the belief that diversity is good for everyone. Maybe if we produce quality diverse content, diversity will become the norm. Then my original motivation for writing a non-white heroine would be sufficient. Why not?

Please consider assisting our efforts to diversify everyone’s bookshelf by checking out the We Need Diverse Books website and seeing how you can help. It’s super easy, just click —> HERE – it’s vital, folks.

#SupportWNDB

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R.A. White grew up in the Pocono Mountains, sharing her childhood with as many as six siblings and foster siblings at any given time. In her early adult years, she spent two years living in Moscow, Russia. More recently, she and her husband, both white Americans, adopted an African American child. Growing up in a racially diverse family, living as a foreigner, and raising a child through trans-racial adoption all make her well suited to write novels about the complexities of multiracial communities. A lifelong love of the fantasy genre led her to set her story in an imaginary world.

Want a little more Rebecca? You can find her in all these places:

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I #SupportWNDB – The Series: Diversity Now

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Diversity Now

Zoraida Cordova

 

Diversity Now

Or, a call for authors to write more diverse characters.

In a recent Guardian article the question is “are diverse characters only OK as long as they’re not too diverse?”

I personally think that nuanced diversity is a good thing. When the chat over #WeNeedDiverseBooks started in May, a friend asked me “so then you want to take away what makes a character different and then just white wash them?”

Again, no.

When you spend so much time being singled out as being different, sometimes you just want to fit in. What the hell do I mean by this? I’m not talking about denying who you are as a person. I’m talking about being a teenager in popular culture. For me, I grew up in a working class family and neighborhood in Queens, NY. I was born in Ecuador, but I started my American education in first grade. In that sense, I assimilated right away. I remember when I started not just speaking English, but exclusively thinking in English. It’s so totally weird to think of your brain just switching languages. But anyway, my assimilation happened.

In school we were given books like HOW THE GARCIA GIRLS LOST THEIR ACCENTS, and THE HOUSE ON MANGO STREET and all I wanted to read were vampire books. My being Ecuadorian doesn’t affect my day to day life. I’m not Catholic. I don’t cook. I live alone. But when I’m with my family, I enjoy Ecuadorian food and speaking in broken Spanish. In fact, I worried less about my Ecuadorian-ness in high school, than I do now when people point it out the most.

This is why I think it’s important for kids to see themselves in stories that right now don’t represent diversity in leading roles. I want a brown Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a mixed Bella Swan just because. You don’t have to whitewash a POC in order for them to be a leading character of a “non-issue” book. Not everyone has a problem with their race. The problem is society.

Look, I know that there are still kids assimilating, and not all third generation kids ignore their roots. But if we don’t write them, then you can’t hope that someone else is going to.

To play devil’s advocate, maybe changing the ethnicity of a character wouldn’t make a title an astronomical seller. Would The Fault In Our Stars have been the same if Agustus was a Black urban teen and Hazel was Asian-American? If Katniss has been portrayed by an “olive skinned” actress like the books describe her as opposed to J Law, would it be a #1 movie?

Right now, we don’t know because over and over the leading ladies can be portrayed by the same girl. And book covers are whitewashed, ambiguous, and silhouetted.

In a world where people don’t understand the importance of race in cases like Mike Brown vs America, how do we even begin to place diversity in books just because? Where white people think Latinos are dangerous? How do we begin to accept casually placing POC in “regular” roles?

I don’t have the answer. Except, maybe, write my own.

The fundraising campaign for We Need Diverse Books is closed but there are still plenty of ways to work to diversify our bookshelves. Please visit their site and see how you can contribute to making the stories out there ALL of our stories by clicking –> HERE – it’s vital, folks.

#SupportWNDB

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Zoraida Córdova was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, where she learned to speak English by watching Disney’s The Little Mermaid and Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker on repeat. She studied English Lit at Hunter College, and The University of Montana before finding a home for herself in the (kinda) glittering world of New York City’s nightlife. She prefers her whiskey neat, her bacon crispy, and her men with a side of chivalry. She is the author of The Vicious Deep Trilogy (YA) and the On the Verge Series (NA). Visit her at www.zoraidacordova.com

You can find her here:

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Zoraida is the author of

THE VICIOUS DEEP (YA Fantasy)

THE SAVAGE BLUE (YA Fantasy)

THE VAST & BRUTAL SEA (YA Fantasy)

LUCK ON THE LINE (Contemporary Romance)

LOVE ON THE LEDGE (Contemporary Romance) Coming 5/5/15

LIFE ON THE LEVEL (Contemporary Romance) Coming 9/8/15

ENCANTRIX (YA Fantasy) Coming Fall 2015

I #SupportWNDB – The Series: No Angel

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No Angel

Zetta Elliott

 

In 2000, I taught a creative writing class in an after school program on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. One of my students was a girl whose mother was incarcerated; she was angry about the situation and her classmates teased her, which led her to act out violently at school—and sometimes in our class. I searched for a book that could serve as a mirror for that girl, but I couldn’t find anything and so I wrote a story for her. That story became my first novel for young readers, An Angel for Mariqua.

 

Here’s a summary:

Christmas is coming, but eight-year-old Mariqua Thatcher isn’t looking forward to the holidays. Mama’s gone and Gramma doesn’t know what to do with her feisty granddaughter. Almost every day Mariqua gets into a fight at school, and no one seems to understand how she feels inside. But things start to change when a mysterious street vendor gives Mariqua a beautifully carved angel as a gift. Each night Mariqua whispers in the angel’s ear and soon her wishes start to come true! Mariqua begins to do better at school, and she even wins an important role in the church pageant. But best of all, Mariqua becomes friends with Valina Peterson, a teenager who lives in Mariqua’s building. Valina helps Mariqua learn how to control her anger, and reminds her pretend little sister that “everyone has a story to tell.” Their friendship is tested, however, when Mariqua discovers that Valina has been keeping a secret about her own mother. Can the magic angel make things better?

I was in graduate school when I wrote this story, and my studies focused on Black women in the US. I was frustrated by the way issues that directly impact Black women and girls never seem to receive the attention they deserve, and are perceived—even by many Black women—as less important than the challenges facing Black boys and men. So with this novel I was trying to do two things: 1) provide a mirror for the many children whose mothers are absent due to incarceration, and 2) bring attention to the devastating impact of HIV/AIDS and incarceration on Black women, their families, and the Black community in general.

December 1 was World AIDS Day and these sobering statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) paint a grim picture of the disease’s impact on my community:

• African Americans accounted for an estimated 44% of all new HIV infections among adults and adolescents (aged 13 years or older) in 2010, despite representing only 12% of the US population; considering the smaller size of the African American population in the United States, this represents a population rate that is 8 times that of whites overall.

• In 2010, African American women accounted for 6,100 (29%) of the estimated new HIV infections among all adult and adolescent African Americans. This number represents a decrease of 21% since 2008. Most new HIV infections among African American women (87%; 5,300) are attributed to heterosexual contact. The estimated rate of new HIV infections for African American women (38.1/100,000 population) was 20 times that of white women and almost 5 times that of Hispanic/Latino women.

• At some point in their lifetimes, an estimated 1 in 16 African American men and 1 in 32 African American women will be diagnosed with HIV infection.

I look at these statistics and wonder why I waited so long to self-publish An Angel for Mariqua. Writing the novel wasn’t difficult, but getting it published by a traditional press proved almost impossible. For about a decade I sent the novel to various editors (some of whom are vocal supporters of WNDB) and had it repeatedly rejected. In 2011, a writer friend introduced me to her prestigious publisher; my agent sent her the manuscript and received this response: “I do love Zetta’s writing but the story is a little tough because Mariqa (sp?) comes across as an unsympathetic character…I understand why M is acting this way, but you do want readers to connect with her too.”

I think a lot of kids can relate to being raised by their grandmother, and living in a household that’s struggling to make ends meet. I think plenty of kids know what it’s like to be bullied or teased at school, and many of those kids probably learned—as Mariqua did—that fighting doesn’t solve anything. I doubt that young readers will find Mariqua “unsympathetic” if they try to put themselves in her place—and isn’t that what books teach kids to do?

So after more than a decade, I have decided to self-publish this book. I wish I could say we’ve made progress since 2000, but the rates of Black women’s incarceration (up 800% since 1986) and HIV infection have actually increased. Still, I cling to a quote from the Combahee River Collective, “Black women are inherently valuable;” they deserve our love, support, and understanding. Our families and communities will not thrive unless we recognize that all Black lives matter. I never got a chance to share this book with the girl whose life story served as my inspiration, but I hope she found someone to help her channel all that pain and rage into something constructive.

Right now Black women are marching alongside Black men to protest the non-indictment of two white police officers who killed unarmed teen Michael Brown and street vendor Eric Garner; every three or four days a Black person in this country is killed by law enforcement, but where are the books that explain this reality to young readers? We don’t just need diverse books—we need a publishing industry committed to social justice rather than the symbolic annihilation of kids of color. We need books that affirm the fact that BLACK YOUTH MATTER.

The fundraising campaign for We Need Diverse Books is closed but there are still plenty of ways to work to diversify our bookshelves. Please visit their site and see how you can contribute to making the stories out there ALL of our stories by clicking –> HERE – it’s vital, folks.

#SupportWNDB

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Born in Canada, Zetta Elliott moved to the US in 1994 to pursue her PhD in American Studies at NYU. Her poetry has been published in several anthologies, and her plays have been staged in New York, Chicago, and Cleveland. Her essays have appeared in Horn Book Magazine, School Library Journal, and Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures. She is the author of thirteen books for young readers, including the award-winning picture book Bird. Her urban fantasy novel, Ship of Souls, was named a Booklist Top Ten Sci-fi/Fantasy Title for Youth and was a finalist for the Phillis Wheatley Book Award. Her own imprint, Rosetta Press, generates culturally relevant stories that center children who have been marginalized, misrepresented, and/or rendered invisible in traditional children’s literature. Elliott is an advocate for greater diversity and equity in publishing. She currently lives in Brooklyn.

Download free posters and watch video testimonials at http://www.Kidlitequality.com

Follow Zetta on Twitter: @zettaelliott

Visit her website: http://www.zettaelliott.com

Zetta’s book Ship of Souls was a 2012 Booklist Top Ten Sci-Fi/Fantasy Youth Title and a finalist for the Phillis Wheatley Book Award. It also received a starred review from Booklist: “Urban fantasies are nothing rare, but few mesh gritty realism with poetic mysticism so convincingly. By turns sad, joyful, frightening, funny, and inspirational, Elliott’s second novel is a marvel of tone and setting.”

The Deep is a companion book to Ship of Souls.

 

 

I #SupportWNDB – The Series: Being A Better Writer Means Being Diverse

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How Diversity Makes You A Better Writer

Christa Wojo

 

Living in Panama for nearly a decade, I’ve learned what it feels like to be isolated from the rest of society. Now I’m more or less at home and speak Spanish well, but when I first moved here and didn’t know the language. People stared at me, a tall blue-eyed blond girl, like I was a Sasquatch. I was a minority in a world of Salsa and juega vivo. I was gringa.

I hid in the house and watched CSI reruns because that was the only show on in English. I remember one time I was listening to the radio while waiting for my husband in the car, and in the midst of reggaeton and obnoxious screaming DJ, a song by The Strokes came on. I think I almost cried. I felt like I was with old friends. It was as if Julian Casablancas said, you are not alone American girl!

So what does this have to do with writing fiction?

 

“We all suffer alone in the real world. True empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with a character’s pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with their own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might just be that simple.”

 – David Foster Wallace

 

What Diversity Really Means

When attached to a book, the words ‘diversity’ and ‘multicultural’ usually make one think of race; but the scope is much greater. These terms also encompass gay and lesbian fiction, as well as books featuring characters with disabilities such as blindness or autism.

Writing diverse books is writing for real people. Heroines don’t always have to be beautiful and thin, and heroes don’t always have to have bulging biceps and washboard abs. Diverse books strive to develop complex iconoclastic characters that the world’s many individuals can identify with.

Brave authors and advocates, like the #WeNeedDiversBooks movement, are calling to attention the importance of diversity in literature. With the advent of independent publishers and authors, books that may have been held up in the traditional routes because they didn’t have mass appeal are finally being released into the world, creating niche genres for the enjoyment of all readers. Exciting, isn’t it? Go indie!

The covers and concepts of books are changing too, and more writers are realizing that in order to portray a compelling setting, diversity is key. Fleshing out unique characters is part of writing any good book, and even if a writer is not publishing in what would be considered a multicultural, gay, or other diverse sub-genre, he or she should still avoid token characters, stereotypes, and worn out tropes.

 

Tokenism is Not Diversity

What is a token character? “Tokenism is the practice of making a perfunctory gesture toward the inclusion of members of minority groups. This token effort is usually intended to create an appearance of inclusiveness and deflect accusations of discrimination.” Wikipedia

Token characters usually fill no other purpose in the story except to be there for diversity’s sake. It’s a lazy way of writing in minority characters; just sprinkling them here and there for a little variety.

 

Stereotypes vs. Tokenism

“A stereotype is a thought that can be adopted about specific types of individuals or certain ways of doing things. These thoughts or beliefs may or may not accurately reflect reality.” Wikipedia

Stereotypes are seen often in movies and TV shows. For example, the stereotype that women are poor drivers, that lesbians are butch, or that overweight people are lazy.

It’s important for writers to break these habits and stop perpetuating lazy characterizations that keep society from breaking shallow assumptions about others. Furthermore, these are tired and lazy devices that make a book fall flat.

 

Writing Diverse Books

It’s tricky to write without resorting to tokenism or stereotyping because it’s so ingrained in our culture most of us don’t know we’re doing it.

I may be a white writer, but the people in my life are diverse to the extreme. My husband is Panamanian, Greek and Chinese. I never think of it, but most people would consider ours an interracial relationship. When we stand next to each other we are like day and night. Most of my in-laws don’t speak English. Half live in Singapore and half live in Panama. Some of my best friends are L,G,B, or T. My little sister is blind and I have mixed cousins.

Still even I forget to deeply diversify my writing. I’m in the middle of revising my first series of novels, and yes, I have black, white, Asian, Latino, gay, and mentally ill characters. I’ve also got a cornucopia of freaks, but when I analyze their relationships closely, I see I’ve forgotten to intermix them in a way that truly reflects life–my life.

No one likes cookie cutter characters. They are boring and washed out. Furthermore, relationships between people and families are more complex than at first sight. Why don’t any of my characters have mixed cousins? How come the only blind person is on the sidewalk asking for change? Why don’t I give my MC’s crazy long Polish names like mine? These are the questions writers must ask themselves.

So writers, be aware of the clichés and take time to imagine a full palette of characters for your book and to research their backgrounds, their culture, and their experiences. Put yourself in their shoes. Draw from you own life. It’s probably more diverse than you realize. You owe it to your characters, to your writing, and to the modern generation of readers.

Diverse books ensure that no one will feel isolated from society. As an individual, when you find a book with characters that tell your story, it is like that old familiar song you hear on the radio that says…

You’re not alone.

Somebody understands you.

You have an important role in this world.

There are only a few days left of the campaign, so please consider assisting our efforts to diversify everyone’s bookshelf by donating to We Need Diverse Books fundraising campaign by clicking —> HERE – it’s vital, folks.

#SupportWNDB

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Christa Wojo (short for Wojciechowski) was born in New Jersey and raised in Florida where she fell in love with a handsome Panamanian and escaped the US in 2006. Since, she has lived a lush life in her wild new country, traveling with her husband and working as a freelance internet marketer.

Christa devotes her free time to wine, yoga, outdoor sports, and classic literature. She’s also mother to an epileptic Rottweiler, a mutt with a phobia of boots, and a Red-lored Amazon parrot who hates her.

When Christa’s not on the road, you’ll find her in dog hair covered yoga pants, writing from her home at the foot of Volcan Baru in Boquete, Panama. There, she either sips coffee or Cabernet and tries to figure out the meaning of life through the mysterious process of writing.

Christa Wojo is the author of The Wrong David and is working on a series of novels that explore abuse, addiction, art, and existentialism. She also runs My Sweet Delirium, a blog about creativity and assorted weirdness, and is developing a menu of internet marketing services for authors.

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I #SupportWNDB – The Series: Ferguson, Diverse Books, and Empathy

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Ferguson, Diverse Books, and Empathy

Batool

Thank you, Madhuri, for giving me the opportunity to express my opinion on such an important topic.

I have been asked to talk about why We Need Diverse Books is such an important movement to me. To do this, I will refer to the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri.

On November 24^th, 2014 the decision to not indict Officer Darren Wilson was made. Despite the fact that he killed an unarmed eighteen year old, a boy only one year older than me, he was released and given the opportunity to continue living his life as he had before. However, Michael Brown, the murdered teen, will never walk on this earth again. His family and friends will have to live with the pain of his loss forever embedded in their hearts and minds. And they have not given been justice.

What horrifies me almost as much as this failure on the part of the American judiciary system, however, are people’s reactions to it. While there are many wonderfully outspoken people who work to spread awareness of the injustice that has occurred, there are also people who do the opposite. There are people who attempt to dehumanize Michael Brown and the Black community in general. I have seen racist slurs being used, I have seen African American people referred to as “it”, and I have seen people commending Darren Wilson for what he has done.

Along with these people, there are also people who are simply indifferent. They see this as something that does not affect them personally, and so they cannot be bothered to care. Quite honestly, these people are the people that anger me the most.

This is why I believe that we need diverse books.

Children and teenagers in our world need to grow up seeing people of different skin colors and backgrounds in their literature. They need to read about characters whose life experiences are different than their own. Many people have never experienced racism and probably never will, and thus they find it difficult to empathize with someone who has. Literature about discrimination can be that bridge between such people and empathy. It can connect them to a better understanding of the struggles that other people faced.

I cannot count how many books I’ve read about white protagonists. I love these books, and I have nothing against them, but I can’t help but wonder how lovely it would be to read a book about someone from the Middle East, like me. Or someone living in a Native American reservation. Or a homeless person. Or someone from the “dangerous and scary” parts of the United States that the media portrays as breeding grounds for killers and drug dealers.

I am privileged and lucky enough to live in a nice house in a nice city in a nice state, but not everyone has these luxuries. What about those people? What are their lives like?

I remember when I was in the fourth grade I read a book about a little African American girl named Addy who lived in the 1860s. In the book, Addy goes out to buy something from a store near her house. She enters the store, finds what she needs, and approaches the counter to pay the clerk. The clerk then takes one look at her, scowls, and refuses to take the money from her small outstretched hand. He yells at her to put it on the counter and leave, and she does.

The reason I’m recalling this book is because it is one that has stayed with me throughout my entire childhood and teenage years. It is through stories like this one that children and young people can be taught valuable lessons about experiences that they may never have themselves. This story shows me why indifference towards racism and injustice is so horrible. At the time, this story opened my eyes to the discrimination that other little girls my age had to face, and it upset me. This book took the struggles of the African American community and put it into one little story. It, of course, was not reflective of all the horrors that African Americans endured, and continue to endure, but it was enough to make an impact on me that stayed with me throughout the rest of my life.

If books like this one become more common, I firmly believe that a sense of empathy and understanding can be spread through the youth of the world.

It is only by actually living through an experience that we can gain sympathy for someone else. And while reading about difficult experiences is not the same as living through them, diverse literature can still increase tolerance and have an impact on the way we view other people around us.

There are only a few days left, so please consider assisting our efforts to diversify everyone’s bookshelf by donating to We Need Diverse Books fundraising campaign by clicking —> HERE. It’s vital, folks!

#SupportWNDB

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Batool is a teenage bibliophile who loves art (in pretty much all of its forms). She loves to read and talk about books with other people, and dreams of writing her own book someday. She also enjoys learning about other cultures and having conversations about social rights. She aspires to learn as many languages as she possibly can during her lifetime- currently, she only speak Arabic, English, and some Spanish.

If you want, you can catch Batool here:

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I #SupportWNDB – The Series: LET’S!

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*This post does not directly hit upon the series’ theme of the importance of diversity in literature, but after recent societal punches to the gut, heaves, and shoves, I was so moved by the simplicity and soothing cadence of Jena’s poem that I asked her if I could post it as part of the series. Lucky for me, and all of you, she was kind enough to say yes.

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Let’s

Jena Schwartz

I can’t bring myself to comment or post right now about what goes on. About injustice and rage and whose lives matter and racism and national regression (was there progress?) and despair and privilege and ignorance and talking to my kids and eye contact and really seeing each other and listening and power dynamics and no more no more not one more.

I am sharing these little rhymes at the risk of sounding trite or trivial. They came out of the writing group I’m feeling so honored to be witnessing; its participants are reminding me that community is a powerful and necessary healing force. 

Every one of us has stories, all of equal realness and value. And some lives are not worth less than others.

I am so sick about the story this country continues to write about itself. Let’s rewrite it. Let’s let’s let’s let’s.

Let’s blow this joint
let’s ditch this town
where nothing changes
no one comes round

let’s scratch the ticket
win ten bucks
fill up the car
and call it luck

let’s sit in silence
then make some noise
let’s get all sexy
lacy coy

Let’s call in sick
but go be well
spend the day
playing show and tell

let’s burn the rules
and draw new maps
at three o’clock
let’s take a nap

let’s trust the path
on which we’re walking
let’s say hell yeah
and now you’re talking

let’s soon forget
to disagree
I look at you
you look at me

let’s blast the tunes
and set out west
gain ten pounds
forget the rest

let’s start our days
with lists of five
and holler to
the empty sky

let’s muse about
how time gets old
like dying stars
whose light is bold

let’s riff and raff
and polygraph
let’s not forget
it’s good to laugh

let’s fill our room
with twinkle bulbs
paint signs on hearts
that say we’re sold

let’s love this life
for all its giving
and say this song
is for the living

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Poet Jena Schwartz thrives on mega doses of vulnerability, chutzpah, and connection. She leads online writing groups designed to encourage practice by nurturing creative freedom, curiosity, and community. Her first self-published collection, “Don’t Miss This,” traces her journey through marriage, motherhood, and coming out. Jena lives and writes in Amherst, MA, with her rockstar wife, Mani Schwartz.

If you want to catch up to Jena, you can find her here:

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There are only 5 days left, so please consider assisting our efforts to diversify everyone’s bookshelf by donating to We Need Diverse Books fundraising campaign by clicking —>HERE. It’s vital, folks!

#SupportWNDB

I #SupportWNDB – The Series: I’M THE OTHER CHARACTER

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I’m Not A Sparkly Vampire – I’m The Other Character

Stephanie Swint

As a kid we tend to think our experience is everyone’s experience.  I know some adults who still believe that.  Usually, at some point in life something shocks you into realizing everyone has a slightly different if not crater sized difference in perspective than you.

When I was a child I associated myself with the character in the story who took action.  This is usually the protagonist but not always.  This, I now realize, was something carefully cultivated by my parents and not commonplace.  I didn’t see the differences in race, gender, etc. as a center of focus.  I was covertly taught these factors were less important than what someone did because my parents didn’t pay attention to them.  I wanted to be a knight instead of a princess.  My poor mother tried to figure out what to do with a girl who wanted to take fencing and archery lessons.  I got archery lessons and quit when I was supposed to shoot Bambi.  My nine year-old-self couldn’t do it.  We never found fencing lessons.  Finding someone who is willing to teach children to wield swords are hard to find…for good reason.  My parents are pretty amazing, but there are a lot of amazing parents out there that open the world up to their children outside of societal norms.  While growing up I found a few like-minded souls but Science Fiction and especially Fantasy books weren’t popular.  I knew my love of fantasy was strange to my friends and my choice to read during lunch and recess stranger.  It, however, didn’t exclude me.  I had the option.

Some people will say everyone has the option to see a world a different way.  That is true but I was taught to be able to craft the way I see it.  I was a waifish brunette white girl.  I am now a curvier*cough* plumpish *cough* brunette woman.  If I was a child reading YA fantasy now I would be in high heaven.  Someone who looked like me is in nearly every book as the protagonist.  I’m not a sparkly vampire…  Damn! A look- a-like of me, however, is popular in YA.   Blondes are to conformist,  and non-white characters  to edgy.  Brunette girls are safe, and they have flooded the YA market.  I remember how nice it felt to read these characters that started popping up all over the place.  I didn’t think about it at first, but I felt a kinship to them.  Some were a little more helpless than I would have liked them to be, but they were main characters and they were at the center of the action.  I still didn’t pay that much attention to it.

After Hunger Games was made a movie and I, like many, were shocked to see that Rue was interpreted as Black it made me think a lot harder.  My first reaction was, “Collins never said she was black.  Why wouldn’t she say it?”  My second reaction was, “Collins mentioned that her skin was a dark brown.  Why wouldn’t I consider her being black as a possibility?”  Part of the reason is we tend to see characters similar to ourselves in our mind unless we are told otherwise, and I am white.  The second reason is unless a character is specifically stated to be of a different race, gender, sexual orientation, etc we assume that the character will fit the societal default norm and movie/gaming franchises default to the majority.

It may not seem that detrimental but if I enjoyed getting to read characters that are like me, and let’s be honest I am a default norm, how would it feel to read about a character who was like me if I wasn’t.

I worked in gang intervention with AmeriCorps.  Much of the time was spent in after-school programs and shadowing students.  Most of them didn’t enjoy reading and a few hated it.  The teenagers I worked with were mainly white and black because of the demographics of the city I was working in.  The biggest correlation the kids had was they came from low income families and had little parental involvement in their lives  When I tutored them I had a hard time getting them to read anything and spent the majority of time running after them. One kid, however, made an excellent point on a days he only chose to argue with me rather than run from me.  He said, “Why the fuck do I want to read about a bunch of rich, white kids?  This shit has nothing to do with me.” Well, that was hard to argue with.  I started looking for books that he could relate to.  Because of his personal circumstances his teacher and I had him read ‘Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America’ by Nathan McCall instead of the curriculum book he was supposed to be reading at the time. Teachers had more freedom at the time.  He actually read it.  I don’t know how to convey what a victory  this was. ‘Makes Me Wanna Holler’ is an amazing book but it wasn’t easy to find and I had a whole community helping me find it.  It is a story of redemption. It isn’t a road I want, nor a road the author wants, every young black man to relate to.  There needs to be options.  We need nerdy Native American Magicians and popular Asian football players.  I recognize it’s not common but if the option is never seeded in a child’s mind they aren’t likely to try that path.  It’s not impossible, and we don’t have to make it harder than it needs to be.

My experience only made me nerdy.  I wasn’t wearing pretty princess gowns or baking cakes but gender equality had come a long ways before I was a child, and I had involved parents who guided me to see alternate options available to me.  If we want children to break stereotypes and break societal norms we should give them some examples of what they can do.  If we want children to read we should give them characters that relate to their experience.  Those books, TV shows, games etc. are raising children.  For some children the books, TV shows, and games are more involved in their lives than their parental figures.  Unfortunately, if all a person sees in these mediums are people who are unlike them it can ostracize them.

In the workplace there is substantial focus on indirect discrimination.  This looks at factors that create unintended negative effects that contribute to creating a more homogeneous population of people in a workforce.  A lot of focus is aimed at fixing these issues including federal programs that require an Affirmative Action Plan yearly if a business takes more than $50,000 in government contracts.  If adverse impact is present then you must create a written plan to fix it.  There are large fines if action isn’t taken.  The expectation is that the employer hire the most qualified individual but where do those qualified individuals come from? Qualified diverse candidates aren’t always available. This program may be necessary but it is reactive not proactive.  We need to take proactive steps to create qualified candidates.  Why wait until a government plan is created with a process and punitive measures?  That structure will restrict the creative process and would be more detrimental than helpful.  I can’t imagine one writer who would be willing to be restricted so.  There are other options.  Writers etc. can take responsibility in their own hands.  I ask you to think about your audience and who you want them to be.  Once the creation process is over there is little you can do to change it but you are a God when you are writing it.  Take that power and do something amazing.

Please consider assisting our efforts to diversify everyone’s bookshelf by donating to We Need Diverse Books fundraising campaign by clicking —> HERE – it’s vital, folks.

#SupportWNDB

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Stephanie Swint is both a Book Reviewer and Human Resources Director.  You can read her reviews on her blog bookishswint.wordpress.com and on Goodreads. Her main interest is fiction and has a passion for fantasy and science fiction. As long as a book is involved she is happy.

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I #SupportWNDB – The Series: WELCOME TO THE REZ

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Welcome to the Rez

Jess Dukes

 

In 2007, one of my favorite books won the National Book Award in young adult fiction. In accepting the award, its author said, “The first book I loved was Ezra Jack Keats’ A Snowy Day. I vividly remember the first time I pulled that book off the shelf in my reservation library…I was always intrigued by that little boy. That black boy, a brown boy, a beige boy. It was the first time I ever looked at a book where someone resembled me.”

Sherman Alexie goes on to say, “A couple decades after that, when I was 20 years old, my first creative writing teacher handed me an anthology of Native American poetry called Songs from This Earth on Turtle’s Back. I had never read a word written by another Indian.” (http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2007_ypl_alexie.html#.VHNvKfnF_Zc)

Can I repeat that? Alexie loved books for almost 20 years before he read anything written by someone like him. Can any of you say the same? It was such a powerful experience that a single line of poetry from this single book inspired him to be a writer.

Since 2008, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, winner of this National Book Award (and many other national honors), has been banned in school districts across the country, mostly for one scene in the book that mentions teenage masturbation. Nevermind that it’s one of the few YA novels with a contemporary American Indian narrator, that it shows us an unromanticized and largely ignored picture of life on the rez, or that Alexie elevates teenaged Indian fears and triumphs to Everyman status which is not something that readily happens with any minority much less one that has been the target of so much genocide here in our own back yard.

Alexie and I both have strong feelings about how Indians are depicted in the media, and about who is creating those depictions.

I also have two young children, full of energy and questions. My oldest is now reading longer books, and I see her mind stretching with every book she opens. When she avoids going to bed until she gets to the end of a chapter, I let bedtime slip. She’s a reader, and if her excited retelling of her latest story is any indication, these books matter to her.

They matter to me too, because our family is mixed. I’m mixed, my husband is mixed, and my children are growing up in a city where our crew doesn’t trigger a second glance. We’re black, white, red and we live in a beautiful bubble of acceptance. I know this won’t always be the case, though. When it comes to preparing my kids for the ugliness of the world, talking about their books (or any other media) is at the top of my bag of tricks.

It’s my job to make sure they see sensitive boys and ass-kicking girls in their library books. It’s my duty to make sure they see people from all groups being friends, having intelligent conversations, and standing up for each other. It’s important that they acknowledge the authors of these books. And it’s an honor to be the one who corrects the historical myths that pervade children’s books like I do every Thanksgiving.

In my house, we have age-appropriate but real-talk conversations about assassinations, marriage laws, and poverty. My oldest doesn’t understand why someone would want to kill Dr. King, or why some people hate President Obama. She’s positively floored that the U.S. has never had a woman president, and that men typically make more money than women for doing the same job. As a parent, being able to give her a book full of smart girls matters. Giving my son picture books with a cast straight out of a United Nations council meeting matters. Knowing how to even recognize a lack of diversity in a comic book matters.

Three years into the ongoing ban of his book, Alexie wrote a jaw-dropping reaction piece for the Wall Street Journal, titled “Why the Best Kids’ Books Are Written in Blood” in which he breaks down why diversity in literature is so important: “When some cultural critics fret about the ‘ever-more-appalling’ YA books, they aren’t trying to protect African-American teens forced to walk through metal detectors on their way into school. Or Mexican-American teens enduring the culturally schizophrenic life of being American citizens and the children of illegal immigrants. Or Native American teens growing up on Third World reservations. Or poor white kids trying to survive the meth-hazed trailer parks. They aren’t trying to protect the poor from poverty. Or victims from rapists. No, they are simply trying to protect their privileged notions of what literature is and should be. They are trying to protect privileged children. Or the seemingly privileged.” (http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/06/09/why-the-best-kids-books-are-written-in-blood)

Believe this: a scene or two about teenage sexuality will never keep a book like Part-Time Indian out of my kids’ hands. I’m trying to raise some thoughtful and helpful humans over here. I hope everyone else is, too. But they can’t thrive in (or improve) a world that they’re not allowed to see.

Please consider assisting our efforts to diversify everyone’s bookshelf by donating to We Need Diverse Books fundraising campaign by clicking —> HERE – it’s vital, folks.

#SupportWNDB

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Jess Dukes is a writer, editor, and content strategist in New York City. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

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