Diversity in YA (any genre, but mostly UF)

Not sure I can help out too much - but Reading In Color http://blackteensread2.blogspot.com/ may have just what you need - if not maybe check out their links to other blogs which may?

ETA Thebooksmugglers just posted to the gay in YA week. Check out the link in this review which will lead to more reviews of diverse fiction.
http://thebooksmugglers.com/2011/04/gay-in-ya-vintage-a-ghost-story-by-steve-berman.html

I'm going to cite Michael Grant's GONE series for probably the third time this week...its cast includes but is not limited to blacks, Latinos, Asians, lesbians, and special needs kids. Also there are superpowers and talking wolves involved. You really can't go wrong.

Bleeding Violet and Slice of Cherry by Dia Reeves.

strawberryblondie said:

Bleeding Violet and Slice of Cherry by Dia Reeves.

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Thiiiiiis! She is seriously one of my favorite newer writers now, I love how dark and creepy her stuff is :x

Cindy Pon writes YA fantasy with a female hero in a fantasy-China sort of setting. Plus the others mentioned above, and Huntress, the sequel to Ash. Eon is fantasy with a transgender character, I believe. Brent Hartinger's latest novel Shadow Walkers is LGBT fantasy (I think, but my stupid library doesn't have it). There's a new gay vampire YA out called Gemini Bites that my stupid library likewise doesn't have yet. I don't know why fantasy/UF in general tends to be so hetero/white as you point out, especially given that fantasy is the genre with the most possibilities for character/plot/setting/awesome stuff. Sometimes it feels like the UF genre (not individual writers, just UF as a monolithic marketing label)especially seems to glorify sameness as opposed to uniqueness or distinctiveness.

There's a halfway decent selection of more diverse protagonists in YA contemp--characters of color, LGBTQ chars, chars who aren't from the US. I try to seek them out in particular. And I think there are more all the time. What I'd love is more YA and fantasy stories with "diverse" protagonists that aren't issue books.

If you want a great UF type movie, watch Were The World Mine: the only gay kid in a small town utilizes magic from Midsummer Night's Dream to turn everyone in town gay so they stop being so cruel to him, and then he has to try to put things right again (and of course win the affections of the captain of the rugby team).

Ooh, love the recs in here. It's YA fantasy, not urban, but Shannon Hale's "Book of a Thousand Days" is fantastic and non-white.

Also Thirsty, by M.T. Anderson, is often considered a metaphor for coming out, which is at least a step in the right direction even if it doesn't go the whole way.

http://www.diversityinya.com/!

I don't read much UF so I can't think of any titles in that genre specifically... only, in White Cat by Holly Black, the main character's grandfather was Indian, I think?


Oh, and please let's not start a flame war, but: you can see why people were upset that all the leads in the Hunger Games film are played by white people. Black hair, olive skin = OH FINALLY IT MIGHT BE A PERSON OF COLOR. Oh well.

Another fantasy (but not UF) author is Nnedi Okorafor. She writes for various age ranges, but 'Zahrah the Windseeker' and 'The Shadow Speaker' are YA.

@lenore X: At least they got Rue and Thresh right...Suzanne Collins approved of all three leads, so I guess I can't complain too much, but I admit I pictured them much swarthier myself.

Their pigmentation should be pretty dark, seeing as how the upper atmosphere has been stripped off and they're getting bathed in more UV light than we do today...but whatever.

Diversity isn't just important because it enriches out lives and expands our horizons. It's also important because it lets us tell stories that wouldn't exist otherwise, and it'd be a shame to let those stories go untold.

I think diversity for diversity sake is a bad thing.

Here's why, I just moved to a small village, there are maybe 20 residents there. All of them white, most of them middle aged, most of them middle class farming types. If I wrote a book set in my village and out of those twenty people there were three gay men, two latinos and south korean, it just wouldn't fit.

I think that the diversity of the characters should fit the location and social groups that the story is set in.

Having every character from a different culture or sexuality just for the sake of it really winds me up, and when I read books like that I feel like the author is trying too hard to shove diversity down my throat.

So, yes, be diverse, but bear in mind the social and cultural makeup of your chosen setting.

No one is asking that you misrepresent your village, Shaldna. The OP merely asked for reccomendations of YA lit that reflects the diversity of life as most of us lead it today. There's no reason you can't write an all white, all straight cast of characters based around your village. But here's a fact, I live in a small village in Ireland. There are black, Asian and latino kids in my kids school. Despite the school having a Catholic ethos there are Muslim, Buddhist, Christian and 'other' students. If I chose to write a modern YA book based in my small Irish town I could cast it with a diverse range of characters and still be realistic. As it is, I chose to write fantasy books populated with talking cats and ghosts, with werewolves and shapeshifters, and also with a cast including French Arabs, Black Africans, French, Irish and Italian Whites, gays, straights, Christians, Pagans, Muslims and non-believers. Its not so hard to do without making an issue of it. You just reflect on the world you actually live in, then include it in your stories.

Gary Clarke:
No one is asking that you misrepresent your village, Shaldna. The OP merely asked for reccomendations of YA lit that reflects the diversity of life as most of us lead it today.

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Shaldna and I don't normally agree on a lot, but here the OP is asking a wider question about views on diversity in YA fiction and I agree with Shaldna's view that books need to reflect location and setting.

cherita:
Do you agree or disagree? Don't care or don't think it's a big deal? How do you define diversity? Etc. I'm just wondering why there's so little - is it market demand (I can buy that)? The publishing industry slow to embrace a wider worldview (I can buy that too)? More authors who write in the genre happen to have this background and are simply writing what they know (this, I have a little more trouble believing, but it could be)?

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I think that there is more of a market acceptance for the need for diversity in fiction and there's definitely more of it appearing at the moment.

I was at a UK SCBWI event last year where a lady who ran an imprint for a major commercial publisher was describing how she came to set up her company and it was precisely because she was disturbed at the lack of books about black and other groups and wanted to put out books where kids would recognise themselves in the pages. Because her books proved so popular, her company got bought out by a major player but she was saying that she had to prove to publishers that the colour of the character did not stop children from other groups wanting to read it. I found that terribly sad.

For me, I'm writing a YA UF set in London so having characters from different races and sexualities was a no brainer. I was also (being frank) bored shitless of books with short white girls as the MC (and I say that as a short white girl), which was why my MC is mixed race (black mother, white father). On top of that I have Russian, Chinese, Indian, German and Swedish characters, plus a couple of lesbians and a man who runs a gay sex shop in Soho.

The one thing I would say (and I wonder if this also affects other authors) is that I've had a lot of angst about writing a MC from an ethnicity different to mine - only because I didn't want to stray into cliches. I hope/think I've hit a balance but it does actually cause me sleepless nights.

MM

Point taken re Shaldna.

Momento Mori said:

I think that there is more of a market acceptance for the need for diversity in fiction and there's definitely more of it appearing at the moment.
MM

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There may be a market acceptance, but I still think there is something of a publishing confusion about what is an is not 'acceptable' to include. I had an editor who seemed to have no problem at all with the gay romance in my book, but on the other hand, went through the entire trilogy and removed most of my descriptions of a character's curly hair, dark skin and black eyes (I insisted they be put back.) If the ed had had the same problem with my descriptions of other character's pale skin, blue eyes and wavy sandy hair I would have just thought they were allergic to descriptions in generel. But no, it turned out this ed saw one as being a legitimate description of character (the white characters) and the other as a problematic description of race ( the dark characters) I entirely lost the battle to refer to one of my characters as 'black' BTW, and had to remove the word 'slavic' from a description of another. As a first time published author these were difficult subjects to broach and handle as you are never certain how far you can or should go with things and what a knock down drag out battle with an ed might do for your rep or your career.

charlotte820 said:

I'm going to cite Michael Grant's GONE series for probably the third time this week...its cast includes but is not limited to blacks, Latinos, Asians, lesbians, and special needs kids. Also there are superpowers and talking wolves involved. You really can't go wrong.

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I wasn't impressed by this book at all tbh. The MC is the epitome of what society expects a white male to be and the love interest accepts her gender role which is thinly disguised by being the genius. This also applies to Mary and the girl who runs the sickbay (Dahra?).

I have completely missed any lesbians, or I've just forgotten. Who was it?

Coupled with problems not related to diversity, I'm struggling to finish it. Does it get better?

I will give it credit for Edillio, because while he's a sidekick he is a good dude and Mexican, and not a cliche Mexican at that.

EDIT: I've just remembered Lana, who is the exception amongst the girls. She is fantastic.

Perry Moore's Hero is the only YA UF with a gay MC that I can think of, but Kitty is a much better resource than I.

As I recall, there a couple of teens of color as peripheral characters in Hero, but I thought it was essentially a white, middle class gay story.

(I kind of hate peripheral minority characters. It's like those TV or movie scenes where there's some big get together, and a few token black people thrown in to show that the main cast has "diverse" friends. The alternative--no people of color--is problematic too, since there's the perception of eurocentrism/white-centrism. But push to shove, I'd prefer the cast of characters stating authentic, as cited above).

NoGuessing said:

I wasn't impressed by this book at all tbh. The MC is the epitome of what society expects a white male to be and the love interest accepts her gender role which is thinly disguised by being the genius. This also applies to Mary and the girl who runs the sickbay (Dahra?).

I have completely missed any lesbians, or I've just forgotten. Who was it?

Coupled with problems not related to diversity, I'm struggling to finish it. Does it get better?

I will give it credit for Edillio, because while he's a sidekick he is a good dude and Mexican, and not a cliche Mexican at that.

EDIT: I've just remembered Lana, who is the exception amongst the girls. She is fantastic.

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1. Mm fair point. The relationship gets less Hollywood in the sequels, but the other two stay pretty much the same. It would have been interesting if a guy could have had one of those roles.

2. The lesbian was a black girl named Dekka. She had antigravity powers (maybe she's not in the first one...I can't remember; it's been awhile).

3. That might just be a matter of personal taste. It is a huge book. I know I got tired of all its pop culture references, some of which are already dated, but I remember liking how realistic some of the characters seemed, and the end being pretty exciting action-wise (and it ends on a cliffhanger, so I was, okay, now I have to keep reading).

4. Yes Edilio is one of my favorite characters. I like how he deals with racism but it's not his defining characteristic or anything.

Gary Clarke said:

You just reflect on the world you actually live in, then include it in your stories.

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This is exactly what I was trying to say.

Before we moved here we lived in Belfast, and Belfast has a massive Chinese community. There is also a huge Polish and Indian population. If someone wrote a story about Belfast with those demographics, I would believe them.

But if that story was populated entirely by Tongans and black Southern women, then I would struggle with it because those people are not common in Belfast.

Does that make sense?

I mean, yes, be diverse, but be REALISTICALLY diverse for the setting and time period.

Things are changing though, and the demographics now are not what they were 10 years ago, and in 10 years time they will be different again.

I think the problem has less to do with demographics and more with who stories tend to focus on. I never really see anyone arguing for diversity for diversity's sake. It's that the protagonists of YA books are overwhelmingly white, which is not representative of the world's population.

To put it another way, if a story takes place in a small village where everyone is white, fine. I don't think anyone would demand shoehorning some people of color in there. But if a story takes place in a major city, chances are staggeringly high that the main character is white, even though there are plenty of people of color there. Why aren't more YA novels focusing on people of color? Why are the heroes almost always white, no matter where the book takes place?

Another problem is that most YA authors are white. So right there we're limiting the range of voices that are heard in this genre.

shaldna said:

I think diversity for diversity sake is a bad thing.

I think that the diversity of the characters should fit the location and social groups that the story is set in.

Having every character from a different culture or sexuality just for the sake of it really winds me up, and when I read books like that I feel like the author is trying too hard to shove diversity down my throat.

So, yes, be diverse, but bear in mind the social and cultural makeup of your chosen setting.

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"Too much diversity" is a minute miniscule eensy eensy weensy problem compared to the problem of almost all books and movies and shows being way too whitewashed (and straightwashed, if that is a word). Seriously. About 95% of new books and shows and movies I come across are still entirely white/hetero or have a token minority supporting character. Yet most settings in US and UK are much more diverse than that.

And the solution to not enough diversity is not "black best friend" or "gay best friend" or rainbow cast of characters--it's more minority protagonists, period. Western culture has really, really not reached a point where our "excessive diversity" is even remotely as big a problem as our excessive whitewashing.

By the way, if someone wants to write an urban fantasy about a black Southern woman in Belfast, I'd read it, just saying.

Oh man, Kitty, I should have waited a few more seconds to post because you said it better than I did!

OT, but your guest post at YA Highway is brilliant, and I'm going to link it from my blog.

Let me give another example: I am not a person of color so I cannot speak to that experience too much (though my partner is so I could give you a rant about how we are unlikely to find a book or film about a black english jewish lesbian). But, I am gay. I would sometimes like to watch a movie or a show about someone like me, a lesbian, only more exciting, you know, romantic melodramaz, fighting crime, hunting werewolves, captaining space ships, etc. Instead, these days I can choose between:
1. The Black Swan-psycho murderous lesbian (this trope should have died a horrible death decades ago, and yet here it is)
2. The Kids Are All Right--lesbians secretly want the cock. Um really? A lesbian movie about a straight white dude? Awesome! We need more movies focused on straight white dudes as they are inherently more interesting than the rest of us!
3. Grey's Anatomy--Yay Callie/Arizona! Cutie interracial lesbian couple FTW! But out of a 43 minute weekly program, they get about five minutes of screen time, competing with Mcdreamy, Mcsteamy, hunky ginger guy, and whatever guest star is dying horribly that week. Still, those five minutes a week are PURE MAGIC!
4. Rizzoli and Isles--This is the lesbiest show on tv, though it's only on during the summer. And the title characters are straight. I'll say that again. This is a show about two straight women and yet it is still the best portrayal of lesbians on tv. Make of that what you will, but it comes down to the fact that I am absolutely starved of characters like me.