An essay by Nicole Chung on The Toast:
What Goes Through Your Mind: On Nice Parties and Casual Racism
And a chaser: 21 Racial Microagressions you hear on a Daily Basis on Buzzfeed.
Category: Race
It starts so early…
You can’t do that! Stories have to be about White people. An essay by Darren Chetty in the UK, about the moment he realized what he was up against.
Speculatively yours
Racism and Science Fiction — classic essay by Samual Delany, an essential text from 1998.
Zen Cho on fantasy — an article from the Independent.
It’s okay to admit that Lovecraft was racist — an article on Salon.
Black to the Future — Philadelphia Weekly reports on the Ferguson is the Future symposium on speculative fiction. Click on that link and you’ll be listening to amazing speculative fiction writers take on questions of race, of voice, of philosophy, Afrofuturism and so so much more.
More on Asian American Kidlit
Why do authors write what they write?
- Race & Representation in Asian American Kid Lit Author Zetta Elliott (she’s African American) surveys five Asian American authors exploring why there’s a fairly high percentage of Asian American writers who write about white characters.
- “Asian Pride” in Kid Lit Further exploration.
“Positive” Stereotypes. Asian Americans. Pressure. Invisible.
- Why stereotypes are bad even when they’re good. An article in The Guardian.
- 8Asians 8Asians is a collaborative online publication that features original, diverse commentary by Asians from around the world on issues that affect our community.
- The Model Minority Myth: What 50 Years of Research Does and Does Not Tell Us by Dr. Nicholas D. Hartlep for Diverse Issues in Higher Education.
- Post-Magical Thinking America. An article on The Offing by Matthew Salesses. Aren’t we afraid to say the wrong thing because we indeed have a sense of what the wrong thing is and a sense that we might say it?
- Paula Yoo website
Good Enough
Good Enough by Paula Yoo is the story of Patti Yoon, a senior in high school juggling parents with (extremely) high expectations, a crush on a boy who’s sending (very) mixed signals, and a new awareness of how much her music–long thought to be a means to the Ivy League–truly means to her.
Recommend to readers who love gentle reads, who will enjoy the lively church setting of some of the plot. The novel is a quick read for any kid who knows all about parental pressure. The author’s note at the end indicates the novel is semi-autobiographical, and the warm tone that wraps you up in this story feels like home. Recommended for 6th grade and up.
Diverse content: The main character is Korean American. She’s is active in her church youth group, which doesn’t seem to be as common in kidlit as it is in actual life. She calls it “Korean church” to indicate the entwining of heritage and religion.
Study this for gentle humor and sly use of various literary devices — lists and recipes, schedules and test questions.
