Kids are Dying: Can Stories Help?

I blogged last week about the suicide of 15yo Billy Lucas after homophobic bullying. I also wrote about Seattle activist Dan Savage's "It Gets Better" project - a youtube platform to help LGBT teens hear the stories of adults who made it past high school, who are living happy and productive lives. In my mind, Savage, like YA writer David Levithan, is literally changing the narrative of what it meant to be an LGBT teen in America.

You would think one death would be enough of a wake up call. But in the wake of Billy's death, have followed others in a matter of days: Tyler Clemente, Seth Walsh, and Asher Brown each committed suicide after homophobic teasing and bullying. Yet, the press coverage has been relatively slim - except around the death of Tyler, a bright Rutgers University student. And here, the press has mostly focused on Tyler's roommate invading his privacy through hidden cameras - and then outing him on the internet. Rarely, is the mainstream press linking Tyler's death to Seth's or Asher's or Billy's. That is, except a moving, now viral video by Ellen DeGeneres that calls this spate of deaths a countrywide epidemic and a cultural failure on all our parts to protect young people from bigotry, harassment and violence stemming from intolerance. (hear hear Ellen!)

I too, in my own small way, feel compelled to speak again. Because, yes, the tormenters who provoked Tyler's death were Asian American young people. For those of us in the broader Asian American and South Asian communities, we must confront homophobia in our youth and in ourselves.

In addition, I want to ask out loud: If kids are dying, can stories help? Dan Savage's project, and my work these many years in the field of narrative medicine, convince me that yes, stories DO make a difference. This lesson, that SILENCE = DEATH, that THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL, that giving voice to our private experiences can galvanize social movements and create social change is a vital one handed down to us by the civil rights, feminist, AIDS activist and other movements.

So what is the responsibility of storytellers - novelists, poets, journalists, advocates? To speak and speak and speak again. I hope the YA writing community, of which I am a new member, can galvanize in the same way it did around the issue of book banning and free speech when Laurie Halsie Anderson's aptly titled novel Speak came under attack and at risk of being banned in one midwestern school district.

If kids are dying, what can stories do?

1. Raise awareness/Tell untold stories: Stories like Mitali Bose Perkins' Bamboo People raise awareness around issues that may not garner much U.S. press attention at all. In the case of Perkins' novel, that is the experience of child/teen soldiers in Myanmar (Burma).

2. Create communities of support/Galvanize Action: Ellen's video, which has been posted and re-posted in facebook and twitter, not only raises awareness about the spate of LGBT teen suicides, but it has galvanized a cybernetic community of responders. Some post links to anti-bullying bills, others call for community wide forums to discuss the deaths and show the "It Gets Better" video. Some colleagues at Columbia University are organizing such an event right now.

3. Name oppressions: By labeling the death of Tyler a result of primarily cyber-harassment, the mainstream press misses a chance to 'call out' homophobia and intolerance.

4. Change the Narrative: Stories that portray otherwise marginalized young people in a different light - ie. LGBT teens or teens of color - as not solely ostracized, depressed, oppressed, and suffering - change the narrative for us all. A prime example of a YA text that does this is David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy or his co-written Will Grayson, Will Grayson. Similarly, Malinda Lo re-imagines Cinderella as queer in her Ash -thereby creating a space in an otherwise heteronormative and traditional tale. She, like Levithan, changes the (cultural) narrative.

I hope that in my own small way, my narrative here contributes to a nationwide chorus of voices who call for a change in this cultural story. Voices that say one child dying as a result of bigotry is too many.

Voices that honor Billy, Tyler, Seth, and Asher and any other child who feels lost, silenced, voiceless by speaking up for them and with them and saying, no more.

Not a single child more.

Girls like Boogers, Boys like Romance: Let's Get Beyond Gender in Children's Books Already, People!

Well, cyberspace is all in a tizzy again. This time, it's a Wall Street Journal article called How to Raise Boys who Read. Hint: It's not with gross-out books and video game bribes.

I don't think the article is really that controversial. The writer, Thomas Spence, rants a little about Captain Underpants and the ubiquitousness of boogers and other bodily fluids in recent books aimed at boy readers. But the important part of his (ok, slightly old fashioned 'pro-classical education' flavored) message seems to be for parents to raise readers by turning off electronics and (*shocker*) having a lot of interesting books around.

But the cybernetic furor today among parents was palpable. The Scholastic blogging team at On-Our Minds (OOM) posted an also very reasonable response to the WSJ essay entitled Boys Should be Allowed to Read Books They Choose. The facebook posting of this article garnered 70+ comments within an hour or two - most of them to the tune of "Fart and poop jokes saved my son from a life of illiteracy -- God Bless Captain Underpants." (Ok, not exactly that, but something along those lines.)

The problem I have with both essays is as follows - neither challenges the assumption that there is something called a "boy book" and a "girl book." Call me an idealist (or just a mother of both a boy and a girl), but I think girls - if given the opportunity - like a good fart joke as much as the next XY chromosome. And my big reader boy can't get enough of 'girl' titles like the Betsy-Tacey books, the teensy-bit racist Little House series (as I blather about here), and lots of series that happen to have girl protagonists like Judy Moody, Ramona Quimby, and that annoying Junie B. Jones (boy am I glad that phase is over). Of course he also gobbles up Harry Potter, Septimus Heap, and Percy Jackson with just as much alacrity.

What's the big deal, y'all? Are we really that ridiculous?

Because, the other day, we went to a 9yo boy's house, where there happened to be a lot of Ramona Quimby covers in plain sight. To be friendly, I asked him "Oh, do you like the Ramona books?" (thinking he and my son could talk about them) The boy (who doesn't have a sister to blame) looks abashed - like he'd been caught in some criminal activity, and shook his head. Then his dad smoothly stepped in, saying "Oh, he loves the Diary of a Wimpy Kid and (yea, you guessed it) Captain Underpants books."

Say what? Are we so fixed on boy books and girl books now a days that big tough dads of schoolboys are ashamed if their sons read a little Beverly Clearly? What, are books with girl heroines too woosy to read or something? Because I clearly missed that parenting memo.

My son and I love the Franny K. Stein books - a girl who doesn't want to be a ballerina or a princess but a mad scientist with spiders and bats and zombies and stuff. How cool is that? I'm planning on handing my 6year old daughter the whole set when she gets up to reading them.

And right now, I'm writing a YA fantasy with a lot of boogers. And a princess. Who gets covered in boogers. In fact, I'd like to see more books about, say, farting butterfly fairies or zombie mermaids who fight evil (hm... evil fighting zombie mermaids...let me make a note of that idea) .

And let me tell you, my potty-joke and tri-wizard tournament loving son also loved it when Almonzo and Laura courted. Loved it. Big f-n deal, people.

I think the most important lesson I learned from following this cybernetic controversy today was that shared by a fellow comment poster on the OOM site. This poster brought the WSJ article to task for failing to recommend what I think is the one of the strongest predictors of raising book-loving boys and girls - which is for families to enjoy books together. (In fact, a while ago, I called for a nationwide reading streak where parents and kids read together at least 10 minutes a day. There were, like crickets chirping in cyberspace after that one...)

I don't think that we have to get our boys to wear cravats while they read, nor do I think we should limit them to doo-doo based literature because of some false fear of de-masculinizing them. Nor should our daughters only hold that bratty Pinkalicious or the fabulous yet uber-feminine Fancy Nancy as their only role models.

Boys like romance. Girls like boogers.

Let's stop segregating their books, already.

(Oh, and turn off the TV, take away their video games, and read together as a family while we're at it)

End of rant. Bow, bow. Clap, clap.

Story Rx: Why Postive LGBT YA Narratives Matter

Do stories matter? Can stories destroy lives? Can different stories save lives?

Yes. Yes. and YES.

Earlier this month, Greensburg, Indiana teen Billy Lucas took his own life after being harassed and bullied with anti-gay slurs. The narrative there? An old one, an awful one. Some lives are worth living, others aren't.

As a response to Billy's death, Seattle activist and advice columnist Dan Savage started a new online video channel called the "It Gets Better Project." The goal of the project is very literally to change the narrative for LGBT middle and high-schoolers by putting forth stories of gay adults who achieved joyous, productive, loving home lives - after living through the torturous years of high school. I just watched the first video - a charming 8 minute discussion between Mr. Savage and his partner of 16 years, Terry. The two (very cute, very happy appearing) men discuss the horrors of their high school years, but in contrast, the joys and adventures of their adult years - from meeting in a bar (and using really cheesy pick up lines on each other) to adopting their now almost 13 year old son, to going on black diamond snowboard runs as a family, to watching the sunrise in Paris.

Can their story make a difference? Yes. More importantly, this isn't one isolated story (like say, the story of a wildly successful LGBT celebrity like Ellen or Adam Lambert) - but a platform for a (hopefully) heterogenous group of stories. Such a multiplicity of voices - all different but all saying one unified message - "live through HS, because life can be great, life gets better" - can have enormous power because it changes the narrative. Such a project essentially makes concrete a future tense for teens whose present tense feels unbearable.

YA literature, I feel, has a similar responsibility. To create a platform for a multiplicity of narratives. And when it comes to the narratives of LGBT teens and teens of color - the publishing industry has a responsibility to publish texts that change the prevailing narratives of LGBT or teens of color as tortured, depressed, oppressed, and overall, a pretty sad and serious bunch. To allow for a multiplicity of narratives - happy narratives, sad narratives, kick-butt superhero narratives, mysteries, love stories, fantasy adventures, and on and on. David Levithan, the co-author of the brilliant Will Grayson, Will Grayson, has said of his whimsical 2003 debut novel Boy Meets Boy, "So much of gay teen fiction at that point was about misery and death and being the outsider... There was no room for happy gay kids. This book became what it was because of that." Similarly Will Grayson, Will Grayson makes room for a different gay teen narrative - full of usual teenage angst, but also full of romance, and whimsy, and three dimensional characters with full, complicated, funny, and touching lives.

Such texts change the narrative for LGBT teens - allowing a teenager to see him or herself in literature, and more importantly, see various possibilities for what an LGBT teen looks/feels/acts and lives like. But equally importantly, such books change the narrative for all readers (teen, LGBT, and otherwise). And the struggles of YA authors of color (LGBT and not), I think, is not only similar - but tied integrally to the struggles of LGBT authors -- to get our multiplicity of stories out there - not just exotic, serious, tortured, or anachronistic stories (check out these crazy Japanese Barbie dolls I just saw today -- I mean, say what?) but crazy, silly, adventurous, romantic, and kick-butt superhero stories too.

Hats off to you, Dan and Terry. Hats off to you too, David Levithan.

And hats off to you, the publishers, who understand the power of changing the narrative for us all.

Should we ban 'Little House'?: Racism in Classic Children's Texts

As we approach Banned Books Week (September 25 - October 2), the issue of book banning seems to be in the air. The YA writing community has been galvanized by one midwest community threatening to ban Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak - on the charge that discussing sexual violence is akin to pornography. This comes on the heels of another Missouri community officially banning Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian. And of course, this all is shadowed by 9-11-10, a day whose memory became tarnished when some hate-filled individuals suggested it be used as a day to burn the Qur'an.

I am obviously appalled by these efforts to dishonor the written word - efforts motivated by xenophobia, hate, and fear. I blogged recently about the writer's responsibility to protest, stir up controversy and conversation, and challenge society to push itself in more just directions.

But what about written works that do the opposite? What about written works that promote stereotypes, prejudice and fear? As a rule, of course, I would say that freedom of speech means freedom of all speech. But, as a parent and pediatrician, what do I think about those works of classic literature which teach our children prejudice, racism, sexism or xenophobia?

I got thinking about this more deeply after reading Philip Nel's excellent blog post about Censorship of Children's Literature. In it, he discusses Roald Dahl's portrayal of the Oompa-Loompas as 'tribespeople' brought in small crates from the deepest jungles of a far away land. Although the original 1964 illustrations - in which the Oompa-Loompas were dark-skinned - changed by the 1973 edition - by which time they were white - the colonial implications remain. The Oompa-Loompas are a "primitive" people who don't mind - nay, even welcome - their status as chocolate factory slaves. As Nel discusses, the removal of explicit racial signifiers doesn't prevent this from being a racist gesture -- as it doesn't change a child's ability to assume that a non-Englishspeaking 'tribesperson' from a 'deep jungle' might very well be from Africa. His discussion of Dr. Doolittle is similarly nuanced.

In my household, it was my 8year old's recent fascination with the Little House on the Prairie series that raised my neck hairs. To be honest, I LOVED these books as a girl, and was looking forward to sharing them with my children. That is, until we started reading them out loud and I began skipping large sections - first about hunting, then about gun care, then skinning animals, and finally -- yikes -- all that stuff about the half naked, frightening, primitive, violent 'Indians.' (Had I forgotten all that?) And how much Ma Ingalls hates 'them'. Why? Because -- well, they're half-naked, frightening, primitive and violent. (Oh, yea, and mad that the white settlers are taking over their land - but we won't talk about that.) Even Pa Ingalls' semi-tolerance of 'Indians' is more a tribute to how cool Pa is than anything else.

I edited out passages in our read-alouds, but as my child began to read the books himself, how could I edit his reading? I certainly wasn't going to cut out or blacken pages, nor was I going to stop him from reading these classic texts - which have a great deal of good in them -- girl heroines, love of family and nature, wonderful writing. Even if I could have - as a publisher, say - edited out those explicitly racist chapters from the Little House series, should I? Would such a gesture remove the overall colonial and racist history of Westward migration in the U.S.? Would such a gesture not re-enact the book banning/burning urges of those who oppose freedom of speech?

The only thing I could do was to explicitly discuss with my child my feelings about those parts of Laura Ingalls Wilder's books. As well as to make sure his literary diet was varied, and consisted of plenty of other images of people of color -- of course the lack of multicultural children's books with multicultural protagonists out there (and their lack of humor and variety) is a whole other blog post.

Now, this doesn't mean I'm not squeamish regarding the unquestioning portrayal of racism. A few months ago, when my kids and I watched Disney's Peter Pan on DVD and the film got to that awful Native American village scene -- yea, I still fast forwarded over that.

When my 6 year old asked me why, my 8 year old (Little House reader) told her, "It's because it's promoting stereotypes. And stereotypes hurt people."

Well said, my boy. Well said.

Story Rx: Be Like Yoda, not Indiana Jones

This week, I had the honor of joining Saul Kaplan, Carmen Medina, Keith Yamashita, Tony Hsieh, Richard Saul Wurman, Rita King, and many others at Business Innovation Factory's 6th Collaborative Innovation Summit (BIF-6).

Among so many leaders in innovation, entrepreneurship, and business, I felt a great sense of trepidation in drawing from my own storied past - the fluttering mosquito net under which my grandmother would tell me tales of flying horses, bone crunching demons, princes, princesses, gods, goddesses and all their foibles. I swallowed my fear and told the audience a Bengali folk tale my own children love - a tale in which truth can not be achieved when searched for alone, but can only be found in conjunction with another person.

During my 15 minute presentation, I urged the audience, as I have my medical students and master's of Narrative Medicine students in the past, not to think of stories as things but as relationships. In medicine, we tell medical students to "get the story" as if the story is an unchanging thing, an inanimate idol, and they are to dig the thing up like some kind of underpaid and overenthusiastic Indiana Jones -- running away with their unearthed booty.

What I didn't say, because, well, I was nervous and forgot, was that I've been realizing we story listeners - doctors, nurses, teachers, parents, legislators -- have less to learn from good old handsome Indy as we do from little, green, large eared Yoda. To me, that backwards talking little imp ("Do or do not, there is no try") embodies all that is best about the Eastern mystic -- both wise and skilled, and yet, simultaneously, childlike, open, full of awe and wonder. Exactly what any clinician, leader, innovator, professor should be like - wise and humble at the same time. Both a teacher and a student.

Let us approach stories, then, not as colonialists, or archaeologists -- digging up precious booty to cart away to our own countries of plenty. Let us instead approach them like little green movie stars, or rather, mystics...children. Let us receive rather than take.

Let us hear the narratives of others with wonder and delight, being filled up rather than draining, plundering, or polluting that endless stream of magical stories that nourishes us all.

*sigh*

Yea, I'm feeling pretty inspired today. And as handsome as Harrison Ford may be with his bullwhip and fedora, that little green Jedi dude is looking pretty good to me right now.

_______________

Our judges have spoken and the winner of last week's book giveaway is

**Drumroll please**

MAGGIE!

Stay tuned for more author interviews, story prescriptions, and book giveaways!

Story Rx: Reading about Racism

Today was my 6 year old's first day of first grade. And as it happened, it was only yesterday that we read Ruby Bridges Goes to School. It's not surprising, because it's one of her favorite books, and we read it at least once a week. But today, I couldn't help but be struck by the bravery of 6 year old Ruby Bridges, the first African American student at a newly integrated elementary school, whose first day of first grade those many years ago was so very different than ours today.

My daughter goes, again and again, to this slim nonfiction volume from Scholastic. She pours over the images, including racist "Whites Only" signs. Now that she can read, she struggles through the words too - including the word "segregation"... a word she pronounced clearly in her little, bell-like voice.

At first, I was nervous that the racism the book describes would be too much for my daughter to bear. We are of color, and discuss prejudice openly - the fact that some people are sometimes cruel to others based on their skin color. I am in fact in agreement with those educators who say that the most sure-fire way to educate anti-racist children is to speak explicitly about racism. Not simply niceties such as "everyone is the same" or "all colors are beautiful." But to articulate to children the realities of prejudice and your own feelings about it - that it is wrong, and that all human beings regardless of color must struggle against racism in all its forms.

And yet, I cannot help my maternal instinct - the desire to protect my littlest one from the cruel realities of this life. Luckily my daughter's own fascination with the story of Ruby Bridges wins out every time - and we return to the brave 6 year old's story again and again.

Today, I cannot help wonder at the bravery of Ruby Bridges' mother - the woman who walked, head down, among those grim-faced Marshalls, through the jeering crowds of bigots, right behind her beautiful, pig-tailed child. Would I have had the courage to send my most precious baby into such a place - no matter how just or righteous the reason?

Ruby Bridges Goes to School is one of our favorite books to talk explicitly about race. Another is Jaqueline Woodson's Show Way. What are yours?

Remembering 9-11: Writing is Dangerous, Writing is Freedom

I just read a powerful post on facebook by the YA author Ellen Hopkins. In it, she reminds all of us,

"In America, the First Amendment grants us the right to believe, to worship, to speak our minds as we please. There is a responsibility that comes with that, however. Responsible Americans do not burn books or flags or places of worship. Responsible Americans do not... use words to divide and make people hate each other simply because they’re different."

Writers have always known the power of words. Poets have been no less than lined up before firing squads for speaking the truth about their oppressive governments. Words of resistance have gotten authors banned, banished, killed, and fatwa-ed. Hear the words of Wole Soyinka who wrote that, "Books and all forms of writing are terror to those who wish to suppress the truth.” Ask American poet and writer Audre Lorde, who, in her iconic “Cancer Journals” reminded us all that “silence has never brought us anything of worth.”

Or ask Salman Rushdie whose words earned him a whole worldwide fatwa, and who said that “A poet's work is to name the un-nameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep."

Words are powerful. And sometimes dangerous. Yes. Writers can say things with which we don't always agree. Absolutely. But when we as a society begin burning books - books of worship, or any other book - in the name of freedom, we commit a grave act that threatens that very freedom.

Let us remember those who died, and those who are still here, by promoting a more just and peaceful world. Let us use 9-11 to search for a world where words are sacred - words we agree with, words we don't agree with, words from holy books, and words from everyday books.

In fact, it makes me proud to be beginning my journey as a children's writer on a day like today. Because as we know, sometimes, the stories of children -- stories of equality, stories of peace, stories of justice -- are the most subversive ones of all.