Freedom to Read Week in Ottawa and Boxing Books in Tuscon

From the Frozen North (okay, from Ottawa), my VCFA faculty colleague Alan Cumyn reports that he is participating in Freedom to Read Week. To observe the week against book censorship, banning, and challenge, the Ottawa Citizen asked several Ottawa writers to read from works that have been censored, banned or challenged. Videos of those readings are posted on the Ottawa Citizen web site.

Alan's reading from a YA novel, Mexican WhiteBoy by Matt de la Peña, a book that ran into a little trouble in Tucson Arizona some time ago. So was it banned? Challenged? Censored? Come on, that's so 90's. With the recent events in Tucson, a new word entered the banned-books lexicon: boxing.

Yes, that is correct. Matt's book is one of many that were "boxed" and taken off shelves in the Tucson Unified School District. Apparently Arizona has banned ethnic studies programs in its schools. As if that were not enough (heavens! Those people might just learn the truth about their own histories!) the district sent out a list of books to be removed from classroom shelves. Here's the list. It includes works by Leslie Marmon Silko, Paulo Freire, and Shakespeare.

Is this bizarre enough already? Shakespeare? Wait. I thought he was part of the Dead White Guys' Canon! If you're as confused as I am, check out Debbie Reese's comprehensive series of posts on the developments in this ongoing saga over at American Indians in Children's Literature.

In this video, teacher Chris Acosta talks about the now dismantled Mexican American Studies Program.

Read the American Library Association Resolution Opposing Restriction of Access to Materials and Open Inquiry in Ethnic and Cultural Studies Programs in Arizona.

The Echoes in Stories

With Hugo carrying five Oscars, it seems a good time to think about ways in which the literary and artistic past can create and sustain echoes in stories. Take the work of Dianna Wynne Jones. She had this wonderful ability to take ordinary characters, often quiet outsiders in some way,  place them in bizarre and wondrous and terrifying situations, and stir it all up into pure magic. But what always strikes me about her work is how it seems to have, for lack of a better word, a story lineage.  In Howl's Moving Castle, Sophie, the young hatter, has powers she herself is unaware of, until she's cursed by the Witch of the Waste--hear the echoes of Oz there? There are so many other intertextual references in this book. Tolkien, Shakespeare, Alice, Arthurian legend, can all be found in little asides, in signs on walls, in the names and aliases of characters.

In Miyazaki's charming Studio Ghibli version, the castle comes to life in a wonderfully three-dimensional way, as home, fortress, motorized vehicle and portal between layers of reality. The people are entirely enchanting, and notably, the warts have disappeared from the characters. Even Calcifer the fire demon has lost a little of his caustic edge. It's all quite lovely, however, and the visuals are magical all by themselves. What's lost is some of that complexity that make the books of Dianna Wynne Jones so delicious. And a few of the literary references, the ones that can only show up in narrative. On the other hand, much has been retained, and something has also been gained, in the passage of this story from book to film, from England to Japan. You don't have to know Japanese to feel the creative leaps made when the story crossed linguistic borders.

In very different vein, I just read Susan Orlean's biography of the legendary silent film dog hero, Rin Tin Tin. I  enjoyed the book for many reasons, but this passage on p. 137 seemed to be speaking to the whole notion of how story endures:

"The question of pedigree is, in a sense, rhetorical....in the continuing story of Rin Tin Tin, pedigree doesn't seem as important as the idea of a character continuing, and lasting, across time. In that regard, the issue of bloodline seems like a will-o'-the-wisp, a distraction, a technical issue. The unbroken strand is not one of genetics but one of belief."

That's how it is with stories. Howl and his castle, Sophie and her dreams. Readers and viewers create meaning from the creative illusion of text, and image, whether that image is in illustration or film. It's all about belief. Whether the page or the screen captivates, and how it does so. But somewhere in the mix, the evidence of that strand offers a little assurance. It offers connections both temporal and emotional, a nod to those who get the embedded code and maybe a little invitation to those who don't. Stick around, those echoes seem to be saying, in Roland Barthes-ish mode. When you're ready you too can click on this link.    

CBC Diversity Committee

Welcome news! 

 

Following on the heels of years, literally years, of conversations at conferences as well as on child-lit and other forums, a group of editors have come together under the auspices of the Children's Book Council, in a Diversity Committee, with the common goal of increasing diversity in children's publishing in the US. Since this is a goal to which I've more or less dedicated 20+ years of my writing and teaching life, I am especially thrilled to read this on the CBC Diversity blog site:

The CBC Diversity Committee is dedicated to increasing the diversity of voices and experiences contributing to children’s literature. To create this change, the Committee strives to build awareness that the nature of our society must be represented within the children’s publishing industry.

And this:

We endeavor to encourage diversity of race, gender, geographical origin, sexual orientation, and class among both the creators of and the topics addressed by children’s literature. We strive for a more diverse range of employees working within the industry, of authors and illustrators creating inspiring content, and of characters depicted in children’s literature.

"Creators of" and "topics addressed." Yes! This is a thoughtful and meaningful recasting of a conversation that in the past has been all too prone to degenerate into polarized rhetoric about the right to write.

The committee is calling to all within the industry to become partners, spread the word, and participate in a variety of ways, including through social networking. I'm not sure how writers and illustrators can weigh in at this time, beyond blogging and adding a Twibbon, but I just want to applaud. This has been a long time coming and I'm so glad it's happening now.

Katie Davis on How to Promote Your Children's Book

Katie Davis is the only author-illustrator I know who has not one but ten-count-em-ten versions of her bio on her web site. Including a rebus version.

That is so Katie. She's a rare combination of inventive, fearless, and infinitely flexible. She makes this promo stuff look natural, sensible, and maybe even fun. So it's lucky for the rest of us she's written How To Promote Your Children's Book: Tips, Tricks, and Secrets to Create a Bestseller. The book has 30 chapters, 217 pages, each with homework to help you get motivated and started on your path to promote your book and build your career. Over 60 authors, illustrators, and librarians contributed countless (Katie tried but lost track) pieces of advice to promote your book and support your career. The book includes resources, links, and videos. Here's Katie herself, in an interview that is part of her blog tour with this book.

[Uma] What made you decide you needed to put your wealth of promotion knowledge and skills into a how-to for others?

[Katie] I truly believe the title of Chapter Six: Give More Than You Get and You'll Get More Than You Give. The more outward looking I've become and the more I help others, the better I feel and the stronger my career becomes.

[Uma] That I understand! I've always felt that way about teaching and mentoring other writers. But promotion? Talk about why you believe authors and illustrators need to quit being promo-chickens.

[Katie] Legend has it that there actually was a time an author or illustrator could sit back and the publisher would do all the promotion. If you still believe that then I've got 2 bridges and a bestseller printing machine for sale.

True or False?

1. Promoting your book means standing on the corner hawking, "Get yer terrific tome right heah!"
2. You have to be the life of the party to promote your book.
3. You don't need a "platform."  
4. A shy writer has nowhere to turn!

Answers:

1. False. You can promote your book via a blog tour - hey, like I'm doing right now! - and never have to actually talk to a single person.
2. False. You don't have to have a big personality. Just be yourself. Real and humble is more compelling anyway.
3. False. Yeah, you kind of do. But you can decide on the kind of platform you want. Do you write science books? If that's what you love it becomes fun, not the shudder-inducing word, "branding." On your blog you can include an experiment of the week. On your YouTube channel you can use your webcam to create videos of experiments. Interviewing someone else is a great way to get comfy in front of the camera and takes the pressure of you. And btw, if you don't have a YouTube channel, why not? It's the second biggest search engine, which'll bring a lot more eyeballs to your site, and is connected to the biggest, Google.
4. False! Check out the fantastic blog, Shrinking Violets Promotions and of course, How to Promote Your Children's Book has lots of great ideas to help you. But the most comforting thing to remember is to just be yourself and your platform will evolve organically.

[Uma] I like that. You don't have to do things that make you shudder but you don't have to feel paralyzed either. I love how the boundaries between building community and promoting one's own work are permeable in so many of the ideas you suggest. Talk about that as a concept.

[Katie] Say you do a recipe exchange with your neighborhood friends because you're all interested in cooking. You're great at desserts so you talk about dessert recipes a lot, and you share tips and secrets for the best ones. Soon you're known in the neighborhood as the Dessert Lady (or Guy). Social media is the same idea on a larger scale. And you become known for your particular strengths, and you share them. You're not pushing them, you're sharing them. You're helping others. Take advantage of the accessibility we now have, make a neighborhood through Twitter, Facebook, Google+ … wherever you are most comfortable, and connections will be made. The operative word in Social Media is social, and reciprocity rocks!


And so does Katie Davis. Look at what editor and children’s editorial & publishing consultant Emma Dryden of drydenbks LLC, says of Katie's book:

Katie Davis has done an excellent job with this helpful book - including interviews with and examples from loads of children's book professionals - and it ought to prove a helpful, timely marketing tool for children's book creators! As a children's book editorial and publishing consultant, I'll definitely be recommending this eBook to my clients.

Here's Katie Davis speaking to Emma Dryden in a podcast.

Here are all the stops on the Katie Davis How to Promote Your Children's Book blog tour:

Feb 1  E is for Book
Feb 2  Elizabeth's Banana Peel Thursday
Feb 3  Chris's Creative Spaces
Feb 6  Deborah Halverson's Dear Editor
Feb 7  Right here on WWBT
Feb 8  Shutta Crum
Feb 9  Sharron McElmeel
Feb 10  Kerem
Feb 24  Christine Fonseca
March 1  Julie Hedlund's 12x12 in 2012
 
And finally, you can comment on this post to enter a drawing for a free download of How to Promote Your Children's Book (in PDF format). Just comment. Easy. Social. Reciprocal. And very Katie.

Or if you want to buy the e-book for Kindle or Nook, Katie's web site features links for both. Thank you, Katie!

Challenge, Counter, Controvert: Subverting Expectations

In Michael Ondaatje's novel, Divisadero, the narrator says, "I look into the distance for those I have lost, so that I see them everywhere."

Elsewhere he writes of a steeple:

"Built in the thirteenth century, the belfry had been constructed like a coil or a screw. It had one of those unexpected, heliocoidal shapes--the surface like a helix--so that as it curved up it reflected every compass point of the landscape."

It's the surprise in this text that keeps me reading. How can you look into the distance and see those lost people everywhere? How does so expansive a word as "everywhere" manage to loop me back so close to the narrator's consciousness? How can "everywhere" conjure up personal, proximal space? The belfry, too, curves up in a single sharp, clear image. Yet its multiple reflections seem created purposefully, to reflect "every compass point" and thus to distract the reader's mind into attentiveness.

So how does all this internal contradiction work in narrative, given how much we're taught to prize logic and order? Shouldn't the work of crafting a story be all about trying to figure out what makes sense?

I will admit that I love complication and contradiction. I love the places in books where meanings rub up against one another and create new and mind-boggling patterns. Always did, even as a kid.

I'm writing this from India where continuum and contradiction are present in tandem: Republic Day flag-buntings and traditional rice-flour kolam on thresholds and sidewalks, the whir of ceiling fans and the shrieking of tropical birds at daybreak. Here, controverting meaning is part of daily life.

Take the other day, for example, when I went to the bank. A young woman was seated at a table as people came and went. She was creating mehndi designs with henna paste on customers' and bank employees' hands. A caricaturist was working away in a back room. A bank employee directed anyone who caught her eye: Mehndi? Quick sketch? Naturally, I volunteered.

The bank, it turns out, is celebrating its 10th anniversary. This birthday bash could last a week, a couple of weeks, or a month. No one is quite sure, but a party is promised at some point soon.

This mega-promo deliberately sets out to disrupt your sense of what is normal, so you're compelled to ask, Why is this happening? What could it mean? That asking keeps you guessing, and more to the point, it keeps you from walking out. Maybe you'll open a new account, or refer a friend. See the parallel with a reading experience?

The henna went on cool and dark green. Within an hour the leaf paste had flaked off, leaving a pale orange tattoo. A few hours of later, it turned a deep, glorious brick-red, the pattern having been fixed by the heat of my palm.

So it is with challenge, countering and controverting. It heats text up. It shifts expectations. It disturbs the rhythms of normalcy. When it's done right, it can keep us turning the page.

Taraneh Matloob on Susan Fletcher's Shadow Spinner

I was at the ChLA conference in June 2011 when I met Naomi Wood, Associate Professor of English at Kansas State University. During the course of a conversation about writers and writing, she mentioned that one of her graduate students had written a paper on Susan Fletcher's Shadow Spinner. Thanks to Naomi's e-introduction, I was able to read that paper and correspond with its writer, Taraneh Matloob.

[Uma] What drew you to consider Shadow Spinner as the subject for your paper?

[Taraneh]  The first time I heard about Shadow Spinner I was in my home country, Iran and I came across an article in a children’s literature scholarly journal. The name of the article was “How I met Shahrazad, the storyteller.” It was an interview with Susan Fletcher by Hossein Ebrahimi Elvand, the translator of the book in Iran. I was fascinated by Fletcher’s respect and passion for a culture different from her own and was inspired to know more about outsiders who set their story outside the mainstream culture. Initially, I started my research in the field from my own reading and writing and continued my study when I was awarded three months fellowship at International Youth Library of Munich. There, I had access to invaluable resources and also had the chance to meet scholars in the field. After being admitted to Children’s Literature graduate program in Kansas State I chose multicultural literature as the main subject that I want to study further, purposefully and passionately. Continuing my research in the field I realized that Susan Fletcher’s Shadow Spinner is the best case to examine cultural authenticity. In my first and second reading of the book I was not consciously aware of the cultural elements interwoven to the story but I was certain that the book is an authentic representation of the Persian culture so I started working on that with a critical perspective.

[Uma] You take the position that rather than place the telling of culturally grounded stories out of bounds for those outside the culture, we should instead recognize writers like Susan, in your words an "outsider, practicing to develop an insider's eye." I'm fascinated by this, because really, this is what all fiction is about, the creation of illusion. In your view, what are the dangers for the unwary writer of navigating that coral reef of culturally grounded story when the culture is not the writer's own?

[Taraneh]I believe there is a serious concern when a book provides an incorrect picture of the other culture. As Edward Said discusses, inaccurate information about the East can change established theories and concepts through the history.  Of greatest concern is that those authors from the dominant culture, mastered in authorship, apply their imagination to create an appealing but an inaccurate and a distorted view of the dominated culture. However, avoiding of everything to do with the West and in other words encouraging anti-Orientalism may have a more negative consequence than Orientalism because it brings a deadly dominant silence. So, although as Alcoff correctly indicates speaking for others is arrogant, vain, unethical, and politically illegitimate the solution is not simply restricting the practice of speaking for others to speaking for groups of which one is a member. Indeed, the fault of the Western authors who fail to respect the rights of people of minority groups cannot be responded by prejudice against any effort to speak because as Fletcher indicates,  if “we don’t share our stories—trading them across our borders as freely as spices and ebony and silk—we will all be strangers forever” (132).

[Uma] Conversely do you have thoughts on the dangers for the insider writer of failing to take the broadest possible audience into account?

[Taraneh] In Iran we are introduced to the Western culture mainly through translation; Iranian authors rarely write about the West from their point of view.  However, it is important to have Iranian multicultural authors who write about the West from the outside position because Western audience needs to know how their culture is viewed from the East. Conversely, this is true for the Westerners who write about the East. Marjan’s story is a tale never told in the history of storytelling in Iran and every culture needs the stories that have not been told. It does matter to hear those stories, both from the inside and outside. It is important to hear Fletcher’s voice who is outsider, practicing to develop an insider’s eye.  Iranian young adults are eager and have the right to know how Western societies have understood and interpreted their life, culture, and country. Meanwhile, it is the responsibility and commitment of outsiders to not write unless they are confident that they know the culture enough and this confidence is achieved mainly through experiencing and having a conversation with member(s) from the other culture. Every culture has very specific characteristics that may not be captured by the outsider’s first attempts and therefore the work needs to be critiqued by insiders’ eye before publication.

[Uma] Anything else you want to add?

[Taraneh] I believe multicultural children’s literature is a new and very fragile field and portrayal of the other culture is the responsibility of every author, who is sensible of the great diversity rooted in different cultures and seeks to develop heightened sensitivity and understanding of others. In so doing, what matters is not to project the sense of nationality but to promote the sense of humanity, what is in danger of being lost in a battle between cultures.



[Uma] Thank you, Taraneh, for shedding this new and interesting perspective on an old and often contentious debate.

Ensorcelment By Story: Susan Fletcher on Shadow Spinner

Hardcover edition, Shadow Spinner

 I first heard Susan Fletcher speak about her writing journey with Shadow Spinner when she was an alumna guest speaker at VCFA and I was still relatively new on the faculty. At first I was skeptical. Sure. Another white writer romanticizes the Middle East--what's new about that? But as I heard Susan speak, I became more and more convinced that she was about to make me shift how I thought about the telling of story across cultures. Here was a writer, I could see, who had done the work and done it with humility, serving the story and not herself. I was moved, and that was something I hadn't expected. I'm happy to say that Susan is now a friend and colleague on the faculty at VCFA.

It's my great delight to open 2012 with this interview. Welcome, Susan Fletcher.

[Uma] What were the delights and dangers for you of daring to place this coral reef of a story on the page?

[Susan] When I remember what it was like to write Shadow Spinner, I can’t help but think of the character Richard Dreyfuss played in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I’m not saying that aliens took over my mind – exactly – but I definitely felt in the grip of an obsession. It started when I was still drafting Sign of the Dove, and entire paragraphs of Shadow Spinner sprang full-blown into my head. I would minimize the page I was working on, take down the words I was hearing, then go back to Sign of the Dove. The obsession kept hold of me throughout the year and a half it took me to write Shadow Spinner and didn’t release me even after I finished. So I wrote a speech about Shahrazad and the importance of stories. I sketched out a sequel. I took a class in storytelling. It became annoying after a while. I couldn’t wait for the obsession to let go, so I could move wholeheartedly into my next project. Confession: Now I’m longing to be ensorcelled like that again.

I did worry about the fact that I was writing outside my culture. I read a lot of books, took a class, and asked for feedback from an Iranian friend and an Arabic woman who had worked for a princess in a royal harem.  Also, I had the stunning good fortune of meeting the sister-in-law of renowned Persian scholar Abbas Milani, who is now Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford. Abbas was generous way beyond anything I expected or deserved. He vetted the manuscript for accuracy – twice – and recommended more books for me to study.  He read Shadow Spinner as if it were an emergent poem, directing my ear to the faint ringing chimes of local metaphors and suggesting that they might resound throughout the whole.

[Uma--aside] And they do, they do! Watch this blog for an interview with Taraneh Matloob, whose research led her to Susan's work and who, like me, was taken with the loving care that Susan exercised in her research and her literary choices.

[Susan] Another thing that gave me the courage to write this book is that the 1001 Nights, on which Shadow Spinner is based, is such a cultural mélange.  Some scholars claim that the tales originated in India; many others believe that they originated in a lost, pre-Islamic Persian book of fairy tales called Hazar Afsaneh, or “Thousand Stories.” From Persia, the collection moved to the Arabic world, morphing into new cultural articulations and accumulating new tales.  The various translations we have today include stories from ancient Mesopotamia and India, early medieval Persia and Iraq, and Egypt of the late Middle Ages.  A couple of the most famous tales have no known precedents before Antoine Galland translated the Nights into French around 1704. So the 1001 Nights is imbued with the perspectives and contributions of many different cultures over more than a thousand years.  Moreover, it is a story about a woman who tells stories from many different cultures.  In a way, those of us who have retold or re-interpreted parts of the Nights (including  Robert Louis Stevenson,  Jorge Luis Borges, and John Barth, among many others) are simply adding another layer to these many-layered tales…and carrying on the tradition of Shahrazad.

[Uma] In juxtaposing the tale of young Marjan with the story of Shahrazad, you open it up to the world--there is a world of young girls in the kingdom, anxiously waiting to see if the Sultan will like each night's story, and spare its teller's life, and thus possibly their own. By implication, and by giving agency to a young girl who has herself been deeply wounded in body and spirit, you offer hope to all young girls everywhere. It was a transcendent moment in the book for me when I arrived at that understanding and yet it came very simply and naturally; it came from within the story. What was the line you had to walk between story and message, and how did you manage to stay true to story?

[Susan] I usually have no idea what the themes of my books are going to be until I’ve worked my way through to a story that seems to hold together.  Then I ask myself, “What is this book trying to say?” With Shadow Spinner, I knew that “Stories can save your life,” would be one of the themes.  But the idea of giving agency to a girl who’s been deeply wounded came through working out the story. 

I thought about the world of Shahrazad, in which the king takes a new girl as his wife every night and kills her the next day.  I thought about the mothers of girls inside the city and wondered what desperate measures they might take in order to protect their daughters.  I thought about Shahrazad’s having to come up with a new story each night for nearly three years. What if she got storyteller’s block?   What if she forgot which stories she’d already told? 

As a writer, I’m always more interested in story situations in which a child is the primary actor.  So I imagined a girl who begins collecting stories out of admiration for Shahrazad, whom she idolizes for having saved the lives of so many girls in the city.  And I imagined that the girl’s mother does what she feels she has to in order to protect her daughter.

[Uma] Would you like to say something about the process of having this book translated into Farsi and published in Iran?

[Susan] The first I knew about the Farsi translation was when Abbas Milani called to tell me about it.  The Persian translator knew how to contact Abbas – but not me. The translator, Hossein Ebrahimi (penname: Elvand), invited me to a conference in Iran, but for various complicated reasons, I was unable to attend. I was thrilled to learn later that Shadow Spinner was popular with children in Iran. And eventually I went to Iran to research my other Persian novel, Alphabet of Dreams.

Over the years, Elvand and I became friends. He was an extraordinary man. Both Elvand and Abbas vetted Alphabet of Dreams.  Elvand and I corresponded by email as he translated Alphabet of Dreams into Farsi.  I’ve written about Elvand in The Horn Book Magazine, March/April, 2009.

More on Shadow Spinner before the end of the week. Look for an interview with Taraneh Matloob, writer of a children's book in Farsi, and currently a doctoral student in children's literature at Oakland University in Michigan.