Diversity in Storytelling and Me

I’m standing in Chapters, sun shining outside, laughter and joy in the air around me. Beside me, a young South Asian child and their mom are talking about books, and what two books are being showcased on the outer shelves right in front of them? Two amazing books by two amazing authors, based on Indian mythology. And I have never felt more happy.

Why? Let me rewind back a few years. To understand my happiness, and the point of this particular topic we’ll have to go to the beginning. While most people, and by most I mean white, grew up reading about characters which looked like them acted like them, talked liked them, had families like them, you get the picture right? I and many others did not.

We never got that experience of imagining ourselves at the centre of a story like Harry Potter.
*Note: Just because J.K. Rowling never explicitly stated what colour the characters are, doesn’t mean we could suddenly imagine ourselves as one of the main three. It was more like, even if they had a non-Asian sounding name we would try to emulate them in our imagination wearing our skin, but it’s not very often a brown person or other person of colour/First Nations Peoples is born with red hair.*
No, fantasy, contemporary, and every other genre of books for young children and even adults were almost always featuring exclusively white people.

Not So Diverse Childhood

I read mostly YA (young adult) novels, some middle school ones (is it my fault they put Rick Riordan novels in the 9-12 section even though all the readers are 20+?), and regular fiction novels. Young adult literature is where my heart is though.

I have been reading for as long as I can remember. No joke, the earliest I can remember reading is age 5, but knowing me I’ve probably been reading from the womb. I’m what is called a bibliophile. This is someone ‘who collects or has a great love of books” as defined by the Oxford Dictionary.

So imagine you have been reading since you were this young, and never once being able to find something which featured someone like you in the lead. Someone you could dress up for Halloween (without feeling a bit weird that you were brown and Sleeping Beauty is white), someone you could use for power if a racist ever attacked, etc.

It took five more years before this revelation happened for me, and even then it wasn’t quite right. I was 10 years old the very first time I read a story which featured a brown person as the lead. That too a Sikh boy. It wasn’t a woman like me, but I was still ecstatic. There was a fire burning in me at the thought that I would be able to finally be able to read a book featuring someone like me. The thrill I got from this, is one I remember to this day more than a decade later.

The novel was titled “Shabash!”, and was written by author Ann Walsh. Yes the first novel I ever read which featured someone like me in the lead was in fact written by a white woman. I have nothing against that, and she did a fabulous job portraying the culture and values which come along with being in the position our young protagonist is in; but I can’t help wondering from time to time how different the novel would be if written by a brown author. Maybe there would be a bit more about the Sikh faith, or some more on the immigrant experience, or a bit more on the hidden racism of Canada? A bit more authenticity?

The novel dealt with many of these issues, but only on a surface level. Published in 2006, the story is about a young Canadian born, SIkh boy named Rana. Rana lives in a small town in British Columbia and wants to play on the local hockey team. In his quest to join the team, and be the first brown player on the team he must face a lot of backlash from his team (including the coach), the community as a whole, and at home.

For more information click this link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1624281.Shabash_

You’d think after this I would have discovered even more books featuring POC/First Nations Peoples/LGBTQ2S+/Specially abled leads right? Hahaha... nope. From the ages of 10-16 I only ever found one other novel, and that was “Royal Diaries: Jahanara: Princess of Princesses, India, 1627” by Newbery Honour author Kathryn Lasky (again another white woman). The book was beautifully written and gave me another princess to see myself in, not just Jasmine (who is middle-eastern, but still when there are so few brown princesses we take what we can get). The novel itself is a mix of fact and fiction so I had to take all the information and descriptions with a grain of salt.

For more information click this link: https://www.amazon.ca/Royal-Diaries-Jahanara-Princess-Princesses/dp/0439223504

From the ages of 10-16 I kept reading diligently, not minding too much that there weren’t really any diverse characters. I read Percy Jackson and all the subsequent sequels, spinoffs, and more adventures. I read The Spiderwick Chronicles, and many others, constantly changing certain characters’ appearances to fit mine, or sometimes even adding a character of a different colour in my head to see if anything changed, or if they could bring something of value to these already absolutely amazing novels.

Now I feel like I should add, at a certain point I had given up consciously trying to find novels with POC characters. Instead this search turned subconscious in a way, hence all the colour changing and additions in my head. The years passed and then at age 16 another, bigger, revelation.

First Taste of Diversity

At age 16 I picked up a book called “Anna and the French Kiss” by the brilliant Stephanie Perkins. This novel has ended up being one of absolute favourites for many reasons and the one I am about to talk about is just one of them. I picked up this novel thinking it would be a fun and cute read, which it was, but it also opened a door for me. I opened the novel and in the first few chapters came across a side character named Rashmi.

That’s right a character named Rashmi who was Indian-American. She was smart, sassy, lived a modern life, had a boyfriend, younger siblings, and studied in Paris. All of it exactly like me-except for the boyfriend and living abroad, and being American. Other than that I was reading a book version of myself. For what was basically the first time I got to see myself represented. I didn’t have to change a characters colour and often names, something I forgot to mention above; the names were always Anglican so if colour wasn’t stated then through the name I would often think of the character as white. Thank you years of white-washing media.

Again I felt that fire course inside of me, that joy at knowing hundreds, thousands, of people around the world would be reading about a brown girl who was just like them (albeit a few cultural differences), a girl who didn’t sound like Apu, wasn’t just the token coloured sidekick, wasn’t someone like how the media on-screen and in some other novels portrayed (read Apu, even Ravi to an extent from that disney channel show with the nanny). No this was a girl who I saw in the mirror everyday, a girl who I saw in all my brown friends, Just your average Indian-North American girl.

It had taken eleven years (remember I’ve been reading since the age of 5) but it happened. Mid-way through my teens I finally had the first taste of proper representation.
For more information on this amazing novel here’s a link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6936382-anna-and-the-french-kiss

Now after this it took me another one-two years to find novels featuring more brown and other POC/First Nations Peoples/LGBTQ2S+/Specially Abled representation. That was my own fault though. My eyes weren’t open enough, but now they are so get ready!

*Part 2 will be posted tomorrow!