Diversity Archives - KS Mitchell

Thankfulness – Diversity

I knew I wanted to end my November thankfulness series by spotlighting diverse authors. I didn’t realize how appropriate that would be.

Last week Jacqueline Woodson won the National Book Award for Brown Girl Dreaming. When I finished Brown Girl Dreaming in October, I knew it was one of the best books I’ve read in years. Jackie’s skilled telling of her childhood combined with the racial tension and events occurring in the 1960s and 70s brought an even clearer picture of the struggle she and many others have faced.

Immediately after accepting her award, the emcee of the event, a fellow children’s author, made an inappropriate, racist remark thinly veiled as an attempt at humor. It sadly revealed that the very things Jackie wrote about in Brown Girl Dreaming are alive in America today.

A heartfelt, public apology was made and backed up by raising over $100,000 for the #weneeddiversebooks campaign. Although that’s a wonderful outcome, it doesn’t erase the initial remark or the hurt and humiliation it must have caused.

Last night a grand jury in Ferguson failed to indict a police officer for killing an unarmed black teenager. I’m not making a legal judgment on a case where I don’t have all the facts (does anyone?), but I am shocked by the lack of empathy I’ve seen and heard today as I interact on social media, read opinions and talk with others.

My mind goes back to Jackie’s book, to her struggles as a child, and the realization that the struggles continue for so many in our country while others remain blind to what’s happening. This is exactly why we need books like Brown Girl Dreaming.

So today, with a heavy heart for those who are facing situations like we’ve seen in Ferguson, for those living in a world where hardships and challenges are more common than privileges, a world where we must have a #weneeddiversebooks campaign to increase the diversity of our writing, I’m thankful for writers like Jacqueline Woodson, An Na, Sherman Alexie, Pam Muñoz Ryan, Julia Alvarez, Tina McElroy Ansa, Sandra Cisneros, Marjane Satrapi and so many more – writers who are writing about their diversity, their experiences, their stories for the next generation.

Your stories matter. Your words matter. Your lives matter.

And we need them.

Thank you.

How to write diverse characters.

Last month I blogged on why I choose to include diverse characters in my stories. Today I’d like to touch on how to do that.

How can you create characters who aren’t your own race, gender, culture or sexuality without falling into stereotypes?

I posed a similar question to one of my first professors at my master’s program. Jacqueline Woodson is known for her amazing characters and has reached across many boundaries to create them. I asked Jackie how I could produce characters like her (many of whom are African American). I’ve never forgotten Jackie’s answer. She returned my question with one of her own.

“How many black friends do you have?”

We laughed. “Not many,” I replied. Then I realized I did have other friends, Arab, Latino, Peruvian and from many other places and cultures.

The answer seemed so simple, yet at the same time, it’s complicated, isn’t it? If you want to write characters who are different from you, start with your own life. Who are you spending time with? Are your friends people just like you, raised in the same place, from the same ethnic group, with the same values? Or do you have friends who spoke a different language growing up, or grew up in a large city as opposed to a small town. Maybe your friends hold different political views. Those are the types of relationships that will help you begin to understand how to write from other people’s viewpoints.

This weekend I attended a literary festival where Jacqueline Woodson spoke about the themes that drive her work. The overarching themes in her books from the picture book Each Kindness to the young adult story If You Come Softly, focus on peace which comes through empathy for others, their lives and their experiences.

Empathy is a powerful word. When we create characters unlike ourselves, we’re imagining what it would be like to live someone else’s life. That’s something many of us probably don’t practice enough, but if you’re a writer wanting to challenge yourself by writing diversely, practicing empathy is key.

Of course, there are other actions you can and should take to create real, fully formed characters. Research has never been easier. You don’t have to imagine what the scenery looks like in Tibet. Google Earth will show you. Familiarity with the culture or people you’re representing is important, too. Can you find ways to spend time immersed in that culture? Can you use the connections you have with friends to help broaden your circle so the characters you create don’t become unhelpful stereotypes?

Finally, if you’re a writer representing characters from cultures or races not your own, ask friends of that race or culture to vet the book for you. No matter how hard you try, you’ll still stumble into some stereotypes, misuse the language, or misrepresent the culture. Utilizing your friends from these communities will challenge those misperceptions and strengthen your work and your characters.

Creating diverse characters can be scary at first, but it’s worth the effort to challenge yourself to work outside your own experiences. The kids we write for deserve to see a spectrum of characters as diverse as the world we live in.

“Boy Reading” and “Diversity” courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

“Read, Write, Live” by Natalie Mourton

Diversity in Children’s Writing

With Hispanic Heritage Month kicking off this week, and the continuation of the #weneeddiversebooks campaign, I wanted to write about my own reasons for including diverse characters in my stories.

Fact: I was born white and middle class in middle America. Nothing will change that. It’s my history, an essential part of who I am as a writer and a person. But I won’t let that fact completely define me, either. I choose how I live, who I love, and what I write. And more and more, I find the pull of diversity permeating what I do.

As a child, I was obsessed with penpals. I remember filling out forms with my hobbies and sending them to a company called Penpals International or some equally ubiquitous name and requesting penfriends from far away, exotic sounding lands. I’d eagerly await my penpal matches that arrived on colorful slips of paper. I’d try to pronounce the names and examine the countries – Zimbabwe, Ireland, China, Italy, and imagine what my new friends looked like and what life was like in their countries.

Sometimes an exchange lasted only a few letters. I exchanged letters with two girls, Chiara and Desiree, for years. Chiara was Italian and Desiree from Zimbabwe. To this day, I still wonder what these two girls are doing in life. Do they remember the letters we used to send in those wonderful white, blue and red airmail envelopes with an impressive amount of stamps showing off their own little tidbits of culture?

A deep love of languages and the amazing differences people can have from country to country took me to the Middle East for three years. It was here that I began writing, and my first character was not white, but Arab. And not a girl but a boy. An Arab boy. What made me think I could write about that?

In fact, the history, graciousness and humility of the people had worked their way into me, so that the first story to come to me was an Arab boy’s struggle to become a man in a land as ancient as any I’d ever known. It was completely foreign to my white, middle class upbringing, and yet, the struggle for my main character to transition from childhood to adulthood is familiar to anyone who’s experienced those tumultuous years.

I’ve returned to middle America, but increasingly my area of the country is giving way to a more diverse population which promises to bring a richer experience to all of our lives. And for young readers, I want to provide adventures that feature characters as diverse as the ones I’ve met on my travels, as varied as the children I teach here; characters who are a true reflection of where our nation is today, but even more, a picture of where we’re going.

So each day, when I sit down to write, I get to choose.

I’m choosing diversity. I hope you will, too.

Want more information on the #weneeddiversebooks campaign? Check out the official website http://weneeddiversebooks.org/

Photo credits: “World Communication” by digitalart at freedigitalphotos.net, “Yemeni Boy” by Kimberly Mitchell, “Read, Write, Live” by Natalie Mourton.