Gossip Girls Read SHINE

I've received many requests for the backstory to the above pictures, and I'm finally getting my behind in gear and putting it down for you.

As some of you know, my husband works on the show as a camera assistant. Back in March, when my book first came out, he was blabbing about it all over the set. The girls, Blake Lively, Jessica Szohr, and Leighton Meister, had mentioned that they wanted a copy of SHINE, COCONUT MOON shortly after it came out. Several of them wanted to come to my book launch last March at Bluestockings in New York -- Jessica, in particular, was hoping to make it, but had a Dove commercial scheduled the same night.

So, recently, Gossip Girl was shooting at McNally Jackson Books in Manhattan. My husband decided to ask if they happened to have a copy of SHINE, COCONUT MOON. And they did--face out!

The hubs exclaimed, "Hey, look! They have a copy of my wife's book!" People began clapping and there was some excitement from the cast and crew (SO sweet).

One of the crew members bought a copy and asked if I would sign it. Jessica flipped through his copy (the bookstore said they had sold out) and asked if I would sign one for her, too.

Then Blake and Leighton asked for their own copies, as well. The hubs texted me immediately and asked if I would sign copies for them. Duh *grin*.

Of course, I signed the copies, and the next day the hubs got these pictures when they were shooting at Sotheby's on the Upper East Side.

The girls were incredibly warm and said they couldn't wait to read SHINE. Jessica also said she'd get back to me with her thoughts when she was finished reading.

Another of the girls, Yin Chang, who plays the character of Nelly Yuki on the show, also designed a custom onyx and moonstone necklace for me to wear for the SHINE book launch at Bluestockings Bookstore. Yin bought her copy at the launch and read it the week after--she said she missed her stop on the train because she was so absorbed in the story!

So there you have it: the story behind the images. The girls are terrific and I'm delighted for their success on the show.

Speaking of Picking Your Battles...

If you didn't watch the VMA awards last night and haven't seen the headlines, here is the low-down: Taylor Swift won the award for best female video. She went up, all excited and dressed up and cute, to accept her award. Kanye went up, grabbed the mic, and said, "Beyonce had the best music video of all time." Here is the video, if you haven't seen it.

Later, when Beyonce won her award, she went up and asked Taylor to join her on stage so the girl could finally get her moment.

There are so many gender and race dynamics at play here, but I'm going to respond from an emotional place and not an entirely head place on this one. There is no doubt that racism is rampant in the music industry. I've seen the effects of it on music videos and in the lyrics of the songs my girls come home singing. But there is a way to effect real, lasting, industry-wide change. And picking on teenage girls is NOT going to get you what you're looking for (which is justice and equality, right?--not publicity stunts and personal gain???).

Exchanging one oppression for another -- as in silencing women in exchange for a platform on race -- is not going to move anyone forward. Lasting, systemic change means taking small actions that result in real, deep changes at the decision-making and gate-keeping levels. It means raising consciousness and awareness, and connecting with like-minded souls who share in your commitment to social/economic justice and equality. Bull-in-china-shop methods succeed only in short-term venting (which has its place, but bulldozing over another's success on stage is not one of them).

Though he has issued a public apology, it's that sense of entitlement that I'm referring to whenever I write/speak about privilege. The idea that it is completely okay to flatten someone and believe yourself justified. It's the kind of single-mindedness that comes with being completely self-absorbed and seeing only your reality, and projecting it as THE reality.

What I love, though, (besides Beyonce's display of warmth and solidarity) is that Pink had to be physically restrained from going after Kanye afterward.

Aesthetics

I've been thinking a lot about aesthetics lately.

It's not a secret that publishing is a highly subjective business. What gets bought, promoted, and sold has a lot to do with opinion. Someone, somewhere along the line, connects with a particular book, maybe thinks it's "big," and puts their heart and soul into convincing everyone else it's big, too. Plenty of editors and agents will accept manuscripts that need work, if there is something in the manuscript that they connect with. And what they connect with obviously has much to do with their personal experience, preferences, what they relate to, their values, what they consider funny or touching, and which characters they identify with.

So this is why I'm thinking about aesthetics. "Subjective" means it's all about what one likes. What one is drawn to, attracted by, and dazzled with enough to lay down money for it. I've seen the "color-blind" argument over and over again -- that it's not about the race/ethnicity/gender/sexuality of the author, but the story. That a good story and strong writing is what wins out in the end. While I agree with this in part, I also maintain that the race/ethnicity/gender/sexuality, etc. of the author affects the story and the writing.

The way we write, what we write about, how we write about it -- all of these are infused with the sensibility of the writer. And the sensibility of the writer is informed by who that writer is, the sum of their experiences, and how they respond to those experiences.

Let's take language, for instance. I grew up speaking and thinking in Punjabi. My writing has (and always has had) layers of Punjabi thought, fluidity, and lyricism underneath the English words because it's what I know. It's where I go when I ride those emotional currents because so much of my early life and formative years were in Punjabi. I see it in the work of other South Asian authors, as well. There is the thread of a faint, but recognizable tradition in the fiction of my fellow South Asian diasporic authors. I feel it, smell it, hear it in the words they lay on the page. It's something I know.

I also find it not surprising in the least that so many books written by Women of Colour incorporate themes of spirituality, both implicitly and explicitly. Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Amy Tan, Linda Hogan, Suheir Hamad, Maxine Hong Kingston, June Jordan, Isabelle Allende, Sandra Cisneros, and fellow South Asian women writers such as Mitali Perkins, Uma Krishnaswami, Arundhati Roy, and Shauna Singh Baldwin, among others, have all infused themes of spirituality throughout their texts at one point or another. My own novel, SHINE, COCONUT MOON, as well the two novels I've written since, JAZZ IN LOVE and INTO THE WISE DARK, have varying degrees of spiritual awakening, questioning, and/or understanding woven throughout. The fact that so many women of Colour have elements of spirituality or faith in their works is not a coincidence. It is a shared aesthetic. It is the aesthetic of struggle, born from the effects of colonization, imperialism, slavery, bearing witness to egregious injustices, and finding a way to break the silence; finding words to resurrect what is destroyed and bring back the dead beloved.

If we look at representations of women in the fashion industry, we see the "aesthetic discrepancy" clearly in terms of gender. The fashion industry is overwhelmingly dominated and controlled by men. The focus is not on what women value, but on what men value. Most women would choose comfort over pain; therefore, stilletoes and thongs would make a hasty exit. I, for one, would never go looking for a permanent wedgie and neither would any of the women I know. Stilletoes not only hurt, they do serious damage to the spine, heels, and feet. The women's fashion industry is a mega-gazillion-dollar industry based on the fostered insecurities of women. If women were dominating the fashion scene and shaping it to reflect their own aesthetic (one that has not been distorted by, or replaced with the aesthetic leanings of men), I am confident that what is produced would look drastically different from what is produced now.

Just as an experiment, I urge you to rent and watch several films written and directed by women, then compare them to several films written and directed by men. To make it even more relevant, you might try picking films that have similar themes and were released around the same time. Can you spot the differences in aesthetic? Is there a difference? I would argue that yes, there absolutely is.

Try these: Sunshine Cleaning, written by Megan Holley and directed by Christine Jeffs, The Piano, written and directed by Jane Campion, Daughters of the Dust by Julie Dash, Born in Flames by Lizzie Borden, The Waitress by Adrienne Shelly, Real Women Have Curves by Josefina Lopez and directed by Patricia Cardozo, or the films of Deepa Mehta, Mira Nair, and Gurinder Chadha. Keep in mind that I'm referring to films written by women, not just directed. But even the films based on books written by women, but directed by men, would work for this little experiment. Films like Fried Green Tomatoes (Fannie Flagg), Juno (Diablo Cody), Anywhere But Here (Mona Simpson), Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Thelma and Louise (Callie Khouri), and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (Ann Brashares).*

Noticing any patterns? That's an aesthetic, or a sensibility. It takes exposure and effort to develop an appreciation for an aesthetic that is vastly different from what one is used to. It's like learning to appreciate a foreign food or music. Many people can't stand the high-pitched voices of some South or East Asian songstresses. But when you spend years listening to different songs, learning what the lyrics mean, and discovering just how much practice and talent goes into those voices, it's easier to appreciate the beauty in their melodies. I grew up in a household where western music was scoffed at, while at school Eastern music was made into a joke. Again, it's about an aesthetic we become accustomed to.

In terms of representations of People of Colour: An experiment by psychologist Kenneth Clark in 1954 revealed that black children preferred white dolls over black dolls, saying the white dolls were "nicer" and "better." When this experiment was recreated in 2005 by a teenager, the results hadn't changed much.

Beauty that resembles white, European ideals is what sells and is promoted in mass media. Images of PoC are habitually air-brushed to be lighter, with straighter, finer, more Europeanized features. Beauty outside of that accepted ideal takes more work to integrate, promote, and sell. This was the reason a Black Is Beautiful movement was necessary in the 1960s, and the Dark Is Beautiful campaign in India is necessary now. It is also the reason campaigns like Dove's widely publicized "Campaign for real beauty" are hugely popular. They strive to develop a new aesthetic. To pump images of a new way of seeing into the world. A new system which exalts what has previously been devalued, or under-valued.

Let's bring it back to the writing. We are not encouraged to be aware of our own privilege. In fact, it serves to keep the inequitable balance of power in place if we remain oblivious to what we have at the expense of others. If you've been following the recent discussions on race, representation, and equitable distribution of resources in the YA/children's lit blogosphere, and it is important to you to help shape a more just world for our children (and ourselves!), you'll have to do your own research.

Zetta's heartfelt post, Something Like An Open Letter To the Children's Publishing Industry, on the disparities inherent within the (children's) publishing industry and discussion threads on forums have me reaching deeper for reasons why PoC are not getting published and/or promoted. There are tons of writers of Colour out there who have been honing their craft, reading books on writing, and submitting work to agents and editors for years. And yet, there are disproportionately more books by and about White folks than there are books by and about PoC. I'm wondering now if part of this could be the lack of appreciation or understanding for an unfamiliar aesthetic.

And because the images of a dominant, all-pervasive aesthetic seep into our bones, we emulate its ideals (think: Michael Jackson). We become the strongest upholders of that which subjugates us. So it's not surprising when things like that now-forgotten case of plagiarism rise up to remind us that all is not perfect in YA/kidlit world. Writers are desperate to make our dreams a reality and many of us will (happily) sell family members to see it happen. We'll write whatever you want! And if that means catering to an aesthetic that is not in keeping with our histories, traditions and upbringings, so be it!

Let me just say here that every single one of us comes from and subscribes to some sort of tradition -- not just PoC. There are Nordic traditions, Celtic, and even feminist and LGBTQ traditions. The point is that the powers that be (TPTB) have historically favoured a particular set. And those of us writing outside of that have had a much tougher time being seen, appreciated, heard, and valued unless we, in some form, adhere to the dominant aesthetic. Sherman Alexie once said that any amount of mainstream success means you've had to compromise something, in some way. I think this is what he was referring to--bending yourself and your work to fit a tradition, ideology, or aesthetic that is not innate, or indigenous to who you are.

And until and unless there is exposure to different aesthetics and an effort to understand and appreciate what is unfamiliar by TPTB, OR, until and unless the ranks of TPTB more accurately represent the reading/consuming public, what we see on the shelves will continue to reflect the dominant ideals and currently upheld aesthetic.

*Just want to note that, although there have been some great strides in recent years, women directors and filmmakers are still few and far between in the field of filmmaking -- which remains overwhelmingly male-dominated.

Spotlighting Jennifer Jabaley's LIPSTICK APOLOGY

As part of the Debs Blog Tour, I'm spotlighting Jennifer Jabaley's LIPSTICK APOLOGY today. Jennifer is a fellow debut 2009 author and her book sounds terrific. Here's a little summary:

Four little words written in lipstick mean Emily must say goodbye to everything she knows. Emily Carson has always been a good girl. So when she throws a party the night her parents leave for vacation, she's sure she'll get busted. What Emily doesn't know is that her parents will never return. That their plane will go down. And the only thing left amidst the wreckage will be a tray table with the words: Emily please forgive me scrawled in lipstick - her mother's last words.

Now it's fall in New York City and Emily's trying to pick up the pieces of her shattered life. Her public tragedy captures the attention of more than just the media - and soon two very different boys at her new school are pursuing her: the cute, popular Owen, and the quirky chemistry partner slash pastry-baker-by-night, Anthony. But even with such delicious distractions, Emily can't let go of her mother's mysterious apology. Does she have the courage to face the truth?

With help of a whole new kind of family - one that includes a make-up artist to the stars, a teen hand model, and a wacky hairdresser - Emily must choose between the boy who makes her forget it all, and the one who encourages her to remember, and ultimately, heal.

A little bit about Jennifer: Jennifer Jabaley was born in New York and raised in Bridgewater, New Jersey. She graduated from James Madison University with a degree in chemistry and received a doctorate from Southern College of Optometry. A part-time optometrist and mother of two, Jennifer began writing her first novel after a phone call from her sister sparked an idea for a story that lingered in her mind and stirred her creative juices. LIPSTICK APOLOGY will be released in August of 2009 by Razorbill. Jen lives in Blue Ridge, Georgia and is currently at work on her second book.

Here are Jennifer's answers to the Thorough Three . . .

NM: What is the age of your protagonist/s?

JJ: Emily is sixteen

NM: What is the single, most important bit of advice you'd give to the You that was the same age as your protagonist/s?

JJ: Don't sweat the small stuff

NM: Complete the following sentences:

Everyone should definitely, for sure _____________.

You should NEVER, EVER ___________. But if you absolutely must, make sure to ____________.

JJ: Everyone should definitely, for sure pursue their passion.

You should NEVER, EVER wait to apologize until you're on your death bed. But if you absolutely must, make sure to not write it in lipstick.

Thanks, Jennifer! For more information about Jennifer and her work, go here. To order a copy of LIPSTICK APOLOGY from Amazon, go here; and from Indiebound, go here.

Chris Crutcher Gets It

Since writing characters of colour seems to be the topic du jour (both by White writers and Writers of Colour), I want to spend a little time looking at WHALE TALK, by Chris Crutcher. As some of you know, Mr. Crutcher is white, and male. He writes believable, multi-dimensional characters of colour while exploring issues of race head-on. In this YA novel, the protagonist is a young man of colour navigating teen life and school, and exploring the concepts of identity and family. In the same novel, Crutcher also takes a brutal look at how racism affects the life of a young biracial girl (white mother, black father).

What makes Crutcher's portrayal of characters of colour so effective in this book is quite simple: he gets it. Mr. Crutcher's background is in social work. He was a therapist and child protection advocate. He directed a "last chance" alternative school for at-risk K-12 students for almost ten years. I have no doubt he would agree that among the first steps to self-actualization are self-acceptance and self-love. And isn't self-actualization what we're trying to do? To fulfill our highest potential? To shine our light -- to be as great as we are capable of becoming?

Mr. Crutcher has obviously been around young people of colour and knows, quite intimately I'd imagine, the issues they face in school and at home. As anyone who has worked with or been around young people of any colour knows, they are working out issues of--among other things--identity. Young people of colour are working these issues out with the added element of race.

Obviously, all teens face issues of self-esteem at one point or another. But teens who fall outside of the social power hierarchy (teens of Colour, LGBTQ, and working class teens, as well as teen girls) are particularly prone to bullying, alienation, ostracism, and plummeting self-esteem because of the added layers of oppression.

Crutcher doesn't skirt around the topics of neglect, abuse, racism, and class. He slams into them without fear, picks them apart and looks at the way they function on a micro level. He connects all of them and brings them home, to the personal.

In one scene, the young biracial girl scrubs her skin raw because she is trying to "wash the black off." This is heart-breaking to read for so many reasons, but specifically, 1) what a devastating place for any child to be; and 2) this is, tragically, not uncommon.

Most PoC know what it's like to be compared to a beauty ideal that is often not only unrealistic, but completely impossible. White skin and/or light skin are ideals in countries where brown people live the world over, including countries that are predominantly non-white. "Non-Asian" eyes have become a beauty ideal for Asian women, and the practice of blepharoplasty (surgery to create a double eyelid fold) has become a profitable venture for many plastic surgeons. Women everywhere struggle to accept body shapes that deviate from the Vogue and Cosmo norm. Magazine, film, and television images featuring one idealized type of beauty affect the self-esteem of PoC and women, and are tremendous obstacles to overcome when working toward self-love and self-acceptance,* and thereby impeding self-actualization. In children, these types of self-hatred work themselves out in the most devastating ways.

Crutcher not only displays an understanding of the fact that all teens struggle to accept themselves, but that this battle is exponentially amplified for teens and children who are on the margins of mainstream society (as depicted in the "reality" of television, books, and mainstream media).

WHALE TALK shows a grasp of two critical elements: 1) all teens (and people) are essentially the same; and 2) all teens (and people) are not operating on a level playing ground. In other words, yes, on a personal level we are all the same. We have the same emotions, similar struggles, and want the same basic things out of life. But on a systemic, political, and economic level, we are not all the same. And this reality affects our personal lives -- advantaging some over others, with the advantaged never having to acknowledge or be aware of their unearned privilege.

These two elements are not only beautifully incorporated into Crutcher's fiction, they allow his characters to breathe on the page. Combined effectively, they create life-like, believable characters who are "other" to Crutcher's experience, without "otherizing" them. He is with them as an insider, not looking at them as outsiders. And when we read them, we experience them as intimate as family; we rejoice in each character's triumphs as we would our own family, and we share in their pain as we would with our own loved ones.

This is an accomplishment for any writer, indeed. WHALE TALK is believable, it is compassionate, and it is a must-read, IMO. I'm also thrilled to note that the cover now features a model who is more obviously multi-racial, to reflect the main character. Here is another review for this book by teen blogger, Miss Attitude, who runs the blog, Blackteensread2.

I'm hoping to feature more writing of the "other" that is multi-dimensional, layered and nuanced, and effective. I want to explore what the author did that worked exceptionally well where other writings may fall flat. It helps us all understand what makes us different and what makes us the same. It helps us all understand, period.

*For those of you still insisting that not all White people experience white privilege, this is yet another of the unacknowledged benefits of being white. It is part of the "knapsack" of white privilege that Peggy McIntosh describes in her most excellent essay, though she does not list "beauty ideal" specifically -- the closest her list comes is with numbers 6, 26, and 50, which, to me, are along the same lines.