Free Author Skype Visit

From the Mixed Up Files of Middle Grade Authors is having a Winter Skype Tour of Middle Grade Authors. The author up for a visit this week is ... me! So if you have a class or group interested in India, folktales, or Indian folktales, come on over to From the Mixed Up Files and leave a comment to win!

 

Story Water: The Cultural Wellsprings of Storytelling

From Hunger Mountain's Magic and Mystery of Identity Issue:

Tapoor! Toopoor! Rain drops fall
The rivers swell with tides
Lord Shiva’s getting wed
to three pretty brides

One bride eats all day
One likes to cook
One bride has headed home
without a backward look

—from The Demon Slayers and Other Stories: Bengali Folktales by Sayantani DasGupta and Shamita Das DasGupta

Gather ‘round, children, and I will tell you a story.

It is a familiar scene. The storyteller is a village elder, or a grandmother, or a wandering minstrel. The passel of eager-eyed children, and perhaps some adults, sit close. It is the still evening, under the fluttering mosquito-net; or perhaps mid-day, in the shade of an old acacia tree; or a darkening and cold afternoon, by the light of a roaring fire.

The stories too are familiar: princely quests, cautionary tales of greedy merchants, creation myths of how humans came to be, or explanatory stories of why the tortoise has such a hard a shell. They tell of djinn and rakshas, orphans and angels, cunning foxes, and wise spiders.

Yet, while they share these commonalities, each such “stream of stories” (to borrow a phrase from Salman Rushdie) is sprung from a culturally specific source, and each teaches us something particular about that community, culture, and history. The sweet waters from Bengali, Hebrew, Finnish, Mandarin, or Igbo stories might all quench a listener’s thirst, but in fact, they each taste a little different.

Take, for instance, a story my father told me when I was young to help me understand the death of a family member. Although, like many such tales from many different cultures, this story helps explain death, it is based on the Hindu Upanishads and is consistent with a religious tradition of reincarnation. This story could not belong to a culture that believes in heaven and hell, or the permanent connection of one unique body to one unique soul. While it holds truths for any reader, it also teaches us specifically about the beliefs of a particular region of the world and a particular people from that region.

The story itself went like this: You must imagine life’s energy as a mighty river, my father said to me. Those flowing waters represent all the souls of all the creatures in all the universes. Our bodies, he explained, are mere vessels holding that precious soul-water for a limited amount of time. Like clay vessels, our bodies are impermanent. When we die, it is simply a process of pouring our vessel’s liquid back into the eternal streams of life. Thereafter, our individual, personal life force may be indistinguishable from the rest of the rushing river, but it never disappears. It simply returns to its original source.

I like to imagine storytelling as a somewhat similar process—of dipping one’s drinking gourd into the eternal stream of stories. The storyteller gives the tale shape and form, but the essential life force comes from somewhere else entirely.

To read the rest of this essay, please visit Hunger Mountain! 

Why Are We Still Whitewashing?

Images matter. They matter a lot. Images on magazine and book covers not only reflect what we, as a society, think is beautiful, but they seep into our individual and collective consciousness – urging us to emulate those thinner, younger, taller, richer and yes, whiter images.

Race is a critical part of the images we see. Not to say that there aren’t models or celebrities of color gracing covers and starring in movies, but rather, that standards of beauty change slowly – and not always in a more diverse or more inclusive direction.

Consider this much bru-ha-ha-ed Beyoncé album cover featuring the blonde, almost unrecognizably pale singer. Now, it is unclear if Beyoncé (or her staff, producers, etc.) made this decision purposefully to have her appear lighter than she is in real life, or if this is due to the lighting used that day on set, or some other factor as yet unknown. However, similar critiques have been made of a L’Oreal campaign featuring the singer.

Why should we care? Certainly, Beyoncé has a right to portray herself any way she wants, and the woman is, without a doubt, stunning whatever her skin tone. Yet, as author Yasmin Alibhai-Brown said,

“Too many black and Asian children grow up understanding the sad truth that to have dark skin is to be somehow inferior… when black celebrities appear to deny their heritage by trying to make themselves look white, I despair for the youngsters who see those images.”

Similar to ideals of extreme thinness, the whitewashing of beauty standards affects women of color in significant ways. In addition, the charged nature of skin tone isn’t a U.S.-centric issue. In South Asia, where multinational companies are hopping on the skin whitening cream market, Bollywood actress, model and former Miss Universe Aishwarya Rai Bachchan is reportedly thinking of suing Elle Magazine for lightening her skin and hair in a cover shot.

To read the rest of this essay please visit Adios, Barbie

Can Feminists Dig Darcy?

Can feminists swoon for Jane Austen's quintissential romantic hero Mr. Darcy? Or does such an act require one to burn her membership card?

Similarly, can someone concerned with classism and class politics also adore Julian Fellowes' early 20th century miniseries Downton Abbey without feeling the need to "Occupy the BBC?"

How do those of us with deep commitments to progressive politics reconcile our tastes in film and books - if those tastes include things that are not (at least on first glance) progressive?

I ask all this because there seem to be a lot of us out there. Progressive activist folks who also read, say, a Georgette Heyer once in a while (not to by any means compare Miss Heyer, that writer of light hearted regency romances, to my beloved Miss Austen), or get twitter injuries while watching Mad Men or Downton Abbey. And I don't mean making commentary on how sexist or classist the characters on those shows might be, rather, nerding out on their costumes or the dowager countess' fantastic one liners like this terribly classist one I just tweeted yesterday:

"Don't be defeatist, dear... it's so middle class."

So how do we do this? Do we, as a progressive friend of mine recently suggested, give certain authors or shows a "pass" because they are from a certain period or written so well? Do we shut off our internal social critic? Do we, as Zeta Elliot has suggested, forget about a certain part of ourselves while we read about such dissimilar characters -- to the point that we don't even recognize this erasure of self? Consider the words of Elliot (as quoted on the bookslut blog),

"Because I so rarely saw black characters in books when I was a child, I learned to relate to protagonists who didn’t look like me -- but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t identify with their struggles, triumphs, etc. It did mean, however, that I started to erase aspects of myself when I read -- I couldn’t consciously be black and read a lot of those books because then I’d realize there was no place for me in that imaginary realm. I didn’t pretend to be white, I just didn’t acknowledge my own erasure from the scenes that delighted me so much."

Along a similar vein, I recently read this post on Reading in Color called "Is Jane Austen only for white people?" Now, although my family is from a (postcolonial) part of the world that adores Austen and pretty much all sorts of British literature, and I am personally an Austen addict, I think the question is a compelling one.

So, dear friends and readers, what are your thoughts? How do we reconcile progressive politics with a love of, say, Austen? Now, I don't mean to say that Austen is somehow anti-feminist; in fact, her novels are imbued with a deep sense of women's worlds and women's lives - but of course these are a certain kind of women's worlds and lives.

In the end, whatever the reason, my social politics and my love of Mr. Darcy seem to co-exist quite happily together. As deeply committed as I am to feminist or anti-ractist activism, I am still quite likely to swoon over the intricate folds of Mr. Darcy's cravat.

The only explanation I can come up with is that life is complex and we humans are perfectly capable of multiple, seemingly contradictory commitments and passions.

What do you think?

Are You an Ugly or a Pretty? Technology, Nature and Beauty in Scott Westerfeld's "Uglies"

What if everyone was beautiful? No, I don’t mean inner beauty, prettiness that shines from the inside out. I mean, wide eyes, perfect noses, proportionate bodies, and symmetrical faces. The same approximate height, weight, skin color? Could making everyone look the same even the social and economic playing fields?

But human variety is important—it would be boring for everyone to be conventionally pretty, you say.

Well, what if we upped the stakes? What if making everyone beautiful could help stop bullying or eliminate eating disorders? What if it eradicated racism, prejudice, or even brought an end to all war and conflict?

Would it be worth it then?

Young adult (YA) author Scott Westerfeld spins these possibilities, and more, into his novel Uglies. In so doing, he follows in the tradition of other science fiction/speculative fiction writers who use settings on different planets or in future dystopian Earths to examine sociopolitical problems in our present day lives. African American sci-fi legend Octavia Butler used many of her short stories and novels to examine race, gender, power, and slavery; similarly, The Handmaid’s Tale novelist Margaret Atwood imagined sexism taken to the extremes of reproductive terrorism in her novel—a world where women are literally reduced to being walking wombs.

In Uglies, Westerfeld seems to be undertaking a similar project but with body image politics. His novel is set in a futuristic world where everyone on their 16^th birthday undergoes an extreme makeover, the super-duper plastic surgery edition. Until they have this bone-crunching, face-rearranging operation, teens are “uglies” and have to live in (the slightly unimaginatively named) “Uglytown” watching the glamorous post-surgical “pretties” across the river in high tech “New Prettytown” leading wonderful lives of (competition-less, racism-less, prejudice-less, aggression-less) happiness and endless partying.

In a sense, Westerfeld’s dystopian world is teen reality writ large—the feeling of being on the outside looking in, waiting for your life to start, wishing one could be ‘like everyone else.’ And in that sense, the novel is about learning to be ‘happy with oneself,’ and embracing one’s autonomy rather than following the herd.

At the beginning of the novel, Westerfeld’s 16-year-old protagonist, Tally, can’t wait to turn pretty. But when her new friend Shay runs away, she faces a serious choice: to either join her friend in a rag-tag community of people who have chosen to remain “ugly forever,” or turn in these rebels to the authorities in exchange for her coveted operation.

To read the rest of this essay, please visit Adios, Barbie

Tina's Mouth: Shizz Brown Girls Say to Dead White Philosophers

So in light of that S*** Girls say to ... subversive meme that's been all over the interwebz lately (see this round up on Racialicious if you missed it or were having an extra-long cyber-blackout protesting SOPA or something), I was thinking that Keshni Kashyap's delightful Tina's Mouth  could potentially be subtitled "s*** brown girls say to dead white philosophers."

Actually called an "existential comic diary," the coming-of-age graphic has been compared to both Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis and Gene Luen Yang's American Born Chinese. In it, the titular Tina writes to the occularly challenged French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre ("I like your face and your wandering eye, which makes you seem as if you were looking in two directions at once.")  as part of a high school class in existentialism, and Mon Ami JP ends up bearing witness to the break up of her deep friendship with an ex-Mormon named Alex, her crush on a flakey skateboarder, her role in the school play (Kurosawa's Roshomon!), and her interactions with the Indian community (including an Auntie affectionately called "Hook-dat-S***-Up" Auntie for her "superhuman matchmaking abilities."), among other existential high school adventures.

I absolutely loved the book, and found myself laughing out loud at several points. And in part, that might have been why I loved it so much - what was the last book about an Indian American girl that was so laugh-out-loud funny? (there are a few, but should I really be able to count them on my fingers?)

The expectation seems to be that brown girl coming of age stories will be more angst-ridden, more sweeping and epic, more to do with Cultcha (with a capital C) than everyone else's coming of age stories (as the aforementioned meme might say "You're so, like, exotic. Like, jai ho, you know?") Tina's Mouth addresses race, racism, and immigrant community dynamics, yes, but with an equal dose of humor, intellect and wacky surreality.

The Hindu legend says that as a baby, the Lord Krisha was very naughty. As he was playing in the dirt one day, his mother saw him eating a good amount of soil. Now, she knew that -  whether blue skinned and divine or not - that couldn't be good for his tiny godly digestive track. But when his mother Yashoda went to scold him, and get that e-coli outa there, she was startled to find the entire universe inside her infant's mouth. Swirling planets, stars, galaxies within the body of a tiny babe.

So is explained (or perhaps made more confusing) many aspects of Hindu philosophy - the child as guru, the interchangeability of inner and outer space, the interconnections between of the universe and the individual, the mystery and ambiguity of life itself, the deep lessons in the every day, the presence of the divine in the mundane.

In Keshni Kashyap's new book, there are galaxies of insight - about race, about teenage life, about love and life and family and friendship and romance, and really bad high school theater - swirling around within the body of her fictional heroine's story. Both enlightening and off the hook hilarious, the book is simply divine.

Go on, Keshni, hook dat s*** up. Like, jai ho, y'all.

'Differences' as Superpowers in Middle Grade Novels

I have a confession to make. I fully intended this post to be about body image in middle grade novels. I had recently written about various issues of body image in YA novels, and, remembering fantastic MG books from my own childhood like Paula Danzinger’s The Cat Ate My Gymsuit and Judy Blume’s Blubber, I wanted to explore the many current day middle grade novels tackling the tricky issues of weight, disordered eating, body difference, and self image.
But I couldn’t find them.

I begged my brilliant fellow Mixed Up Files bloggers for suggestions and found this great site on body image in picture books as well as MG and YA novels. Although some of the middle grade titles suggested look fascinating (including Susan Shreve’s Jonah the Whale and Pamela Todd’s Pig and the Shrink), the truth is, most of the books we immediately thought of, including Allen Zadoff’s Food, Girls, and Other Things I Can’t Have, Robin Brande‘s Fat Cat, Erin Dionne‘s Models Don’t Eat Chocolate Cookies and Carolyn Mackler‘s The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things were actually young adult novels.

I kept searching, growing increasingly frustrated, until I stepped back and decided to re-examine my assumptions. Certainly, there are middle grade novels out there portraying characters with disabilities. Last year, I posted here at From the Mixed Up Files on the topic, and since then, have found several other fantastic book lists of disability in children’s literature, including this one at YA highway (MG novels included here).

But it occurred to me that while there are surely some middle grade books out there dealing with body image in the same realistic way as Danzinger or Blume (please feel free to share them below!), many are choosing to take difference (both within the realm of ‘different’ able bodies and disabilities) and put it on its head, such that kids’ ‘non-normative’ bodies, abilities, or conditions aren’t problems, but assets.

Consider Rick Riordan’s choice to have his protagonist Percy Jackson’s ADHD be a sign of his demi-god status. What’s called hyperactivity in modern life is in fact the quick reflexes required for battling gorgons and monsters. And Percy’s dyslexia? Why that’s of course because his brain is wired to read ancient Greek, not English. Even secondary characters in Riordan’s series have disabilities that in fact mask their superpowers. Percy’s wheelchair bound teacher is the mythical centaur warrior Chiron (whose special chair magically hides the fact he has the the lower body of a horse), and his best friend Grover’s leg braces and crutches mask the fact that he has goat’s fur and hooves, because he is a satyr.

Or consider Michael Buckley’s N.E.R.D.S (National Espionage, Rescue and Defense Society), in which braces and headgear, buck teeth, asthma and a tendency to eat paste all become secret weapons – the ability to walk on ceilings, for instance (the kid who eats paste, Agent Name: Gluestick) or fly around using an asthma inhaler and nebulizer (Agent Name: Wheezer). Similarly, Ross Venkur’s titular hero in The Autobiography of Meatball Finkelstein is an overweight, socially ostracized vegetarian who discovers that eating meatballs actually gives him superpowers.


To read the rest of this post, please go to From the Mixed Up Files of Middle Grade Authors!