Why I Love Diversity in YA

It's probably no secret to you guys that I'm Asian and that I love my Asian heritage. After all my blog is called That Hapa Chick and I do have a weekly feature called Kawaii Mondays. That's pretty dang Asian.

I may be only half Asian (Chinese to be exact) but I've always felt very close to my Asian roots. Growing up I lived in California near all of my Asian relatives and my mom fed us a lot of Asian food, we shopped at Asian grocery stores, and some of my closest friends were Asian.

The most interesting thing is that even from a young age I longed to see other people like me represented in culture. I remember when Mulan came out it was my FAVORITE movie. Why? Because it had a badass Asian heroine!

I loved that movie because the character was LIKE ME. Mulan was my role model when I was little. Seriously. And I really wanted to marry Shang. Even if he was a cartoon character.... >.<

When I hit Jr. High I moved from California to Arizona and the fact that I was a minority really became clear to me. I didn't have a lot of friends so I turned to books and this made me realize that there was a sad lack of Asian characters in literature. I longed to read books with characters that looked like ME and not just the stereotypical blonde/brunette caucasian chick.

Before I continue let me be clear: There is NOTHING wrong with caucasian protagonists! A lot of my favorite books have caucasian protagonists. But like every reader I think it's nice to read about a character that you can relate to on more levels then just their personality. :)

As I was saying: I wanted to read about characters like me.

That's when I discovered Linda Sue Park. You've probably heard of her before. She's written such awesome books as A Single Shard and The Kite Fighters. I devoured all of Linda Sue Park's books. I loved them. The rest of my family did too. The thing is a lot of Linda Sue Park's books are historical fiction. That's great but I wanted to read about Asian characters who were in the present and living life just like me.

And that's when I discovered Lisa Yee. OH MY GOSH I ABSOLUTELY ADORE LISA YEE'S BOOKS! Reading Millicent Min, Girl Genius and Stanford Wong Flunks Big Time was like reading about the life of me and my family. Everything about those books hit so close to home; the humor, the characters, the Asianness of it all. These books made me realize how much I was connected to my Asian culture and how much I really appreciated it.

After discovering the connection I had with Lisa Yee's books I couldn't wait to find that connection with other books too. At the Library I would check out any and all books I found that were written by an Asian author or happened to have Asian characters in them.

Which brings me to why I love diversity in YA (and all literature/culture really): Diversity helps people feel like they belong. It helps people realize that their little quirks and traits from their ethnicity or upbringing aren't so strange after all. Reading these books with Asian characters made me feel less alone in my Asianness. It helped me to see that there were others out there like me: That I wasn't the only teenage girl who had trouble making friends because she was smart or who happened to LOVE dim sum. When I read these books I didn't feel like a weirdo anymore. I felt like I fit right in. At least in Asian circles. >.<

To this day I still LOVE reading books with Asian characters or themes and there is always a rush of happiness when I find new Asian authors. On top of that I still get giddy with excitement when I'm reading a book and I discover that one of the characters is Asian. There's just nothing quite like having that "Asian connection" with a fictional character!

So what about you guys? Why do YOU love diversity in YA? If you're a minority do you find yourself drawn to books/characters related to your ethnicity or do you hardly notice? If you aren't a minority do you still like to read books related to minorities? And lastly what are some of your favorite books with diverse characters or themes?

Be sure to hit up the All Things Asian event page for all the posts and giveaways! Click HERE to see more awesomeness. (And no, you don't have to be Asian to participate!) And don't forget to check out iLive, iLaugh, iLove Books,  and My Words Ate Me today for more posts!


Julia :)

Character Interview: Mai from Tangled Threads by Pegi Deitz Shea

Today I get to share with you guys a character interview of Mai from Tangled Threads by Pegi Deitz Shea!

For the Hmong people living in overcrowded refugee camps in Thailand, America is a dream: the land of peace and plenty. In 1995, ten years after their arrival at the camp, thirteen-year-old Mai Yang and her grandmother are about to experience that dream. In America, they will be reunited with their only remaining relatives, Mai’s uncle and his family. They will discover the privileges of their new life: medical care, abundant food, and an apartment all their own. But Mai will also feel the pressures of life as a teenager. Her cousins, now known as Heather and Lisa, try to help Mai look less like a refugee, but following them means disobeying Grandma and Uncle. From showers and smoke alarms to shopping, dating, and her family’s new religion, Mai finds life in America complicated and confusing. Ultimately, she will have to reconcile the old ways with the new, and decide for herself the kind of woman she wants to be. This archetypal immigrant story introduces readers to the fascinating Hmong culture and offers a unique outsider’s perspective on our own.

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When I speak at schools and libraries, teens always want to know more about Mai. So here are Mai’s answers to some of the questions I get. Read more to find out how you can ask your own question.

Q. A lot of reality shows create problems and drama to entertain viewers. But you have had a sad life with your parents dying in a war. Do you watch these shows?
Mai: I like the reality shows that make competitors use cleverness and strength, like “Survivor,” “The Amazing Race” and “Man vs. Wild.” But I can’t stand the shows that have people fighting all the time and back-stabbing each other. I also don’t like violent movies or video games. The noises give me headaches and the images make me want to puke. If kids had ever lived through a war, ever really seen their family and friends die, or just had their family taken away, they wouldn’t get such a big kick out of killing.
 
Q. Do you like sports?
 Mai: I love volleyball! It was one of only things we could do for fun in the refugee camps. I play in a summer league. I’m a “setter” because I’m not very tall. I wanted to play on the high school team with Yer and Kachea, but I had to get a job to help my aunt and uncle.
 
Q. Who’s on your play-lists?
Mai: Hmong rock—rock in general, but I don’t like scream-o. Bruno Mars is adorable, Beyonce (even tho she’s getting old). I learn a lot of dance moves from her old videos, Pink—because she’s strong and not afraid to speak the truth. I like good lyrics. Adele—I hope her next album is happier! Lady Gaga is really talented. It would be so cool to sew costumes for her (except not meat ones).


Q.  Other than art class, which class do you like best?
Mai:  History. I know it’s a lot of wars and dates, but my teacher really brings the people alive. It’s fun learning about inventions, people creating things.

Q. How do you cope in high school? There are so many cliques!
Mai: Instead of trying to “be” someone, “do” something that makes you happy. I made lots of friends in art class. Start a club if there isn’t one you’d like to join. Don’t forget your old friends. In fact, they can help you meet new people. I go to Yer and Kachea’s volleyball games and now I’m friends with their team mates. Do nice things for other people, even ones you don’t know. Like offering your class notes to someone who was absent. If you’re having no luck in school, do stuff outside of school with other teens, like dance or youth group at church. Volunteer or get a job.

Q. Why do you like needle work? It’s so old-fashioned.
A. Lots of arts and crafts are old-fashioned. The cave women made clothes! And look at all the fashion magazines and tv shows today. So I use old-fashioned materials—threads—but I create something new every time I sew. Some people create with words. Me—I like cloth. So find a material and make something that could only come from your ideas.
That reminds me! My creator, Pegi Deitz Shea, would love to hear from you if you want to ask Mai any more questions or ask my creator anything about writing. You can email her at pegideitzshea@aol.com.  Thanks for tuning in!

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Thanks for sharing such an awesome interview with us Pegi Deitz Shea! If you want to learn more about Mai and Tangled Threads be sure to enter for a chance to win a signed copy here.

Be sure to hit up our All Things Asian event page for all the posts and giveaways! Click HERE to see more awesomeness. (And no, you don't have to be Asian to participate!) And don't forget to check out iLive, iLaugh, iLove Books,  and My Words Ate Me today for more posts!

Julia :)

Book Excerpts: Stitch In Time by Pegi Deitz Shea + Giveaway!

Today we continue in our celebration of All Things Asian with some book excerpts from Pegi Deitz Shea's new YA novel Stitch In Time!

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EXCERPTS FROM STITCH IN TIME, by Pegi Deitz Shea. This new YA novel is a sequel to the award-winning books, Tangled Threads and The Whispering Cloth. 

CONTEXT: In my middle grade novel Tangled Threads, Mai Yang, age 13 then, was finally leaving a post-war refugee camp in Thailand. She had developed a crush on another refugee, Yia Lor, a widowed teen father of a little boy. When they arrived in America, they were separated. Yia remarried in Springfield, Ma, while Mai struggled to adapt to life in Providence, RI. In the sequel, Stitch in Time, Mai and Yia meet five years later at a Hmong New Year celebration in Providence. That night, a tragic car crash kills Yia’s wife and injures him and his two boys. Mai helps rescue them and see them through the aftermath. Her crush on Yia becomes love and months after the accident, he falls for Mai. She must choose between going to art school and marrying him.
In this scene, Yia and Mai take his boys (7-year-old Koufing and 2-year-old Teng [Rooster]) to Roger Williams Park in Providence. They had spent very innocent time together before in Springfield, and this is the first time Yia and Mai kiss.


 “Down?” Rooster asked when he was all swung out. Yia walked him over to some other little kids playing in a maze of tubes.  
We sat on a bench and rested. I felt all heated up, so I tried to take off my hoodie. It kept catching on the knot I’d tied in my blouse. Soon I felt Yia’s hands touch my body. I flinched on instinct. Raum! But Yia tightened his grip on my waist and tugged at the sweatshirt with his other hand. Now it was completely covering my face!
“It’s the hoodie tie,” he laughed. “You didn’t loosen it enough.”
Searching for the string, his cool fingers grazed my neck. His fingertips played across my collarbones and shoulders and I gasped, all shivery. When he slowly lifted the hoodie clear from my face, his lips gathered mine in a velvet grasp. It was the most tender thing I had ever felt.
After a few luxurious seconds, he gently let go. But he didn’t pull his face away. His eyes were closed, and his smile lines flared out to his temples.
“Wow,” I whispered, before I realized how immature that sounded.
But he said, “’Wow’ is right.” He finished removing my pullover and kissed me again, longer. The tips of our tongues peeped out and—
“Dad!” Koufing was calling from across the play ground.  
I gulped. Did Koufing see us? What did he think? Did he call to stop it?
Yia cleared his throat. “Yes, Kou?”
“I’m ready to see the animals now. Let’s go.”
The rest of the afternoon, the boys ran from exhibit to exhibit, calling to each other, “Come see!” and “Hey, check this out!” I was so delirious that I had trouble keeping up. A few times, Yia had to trot back and pull me forward. As the little ones were spellbound at the tiger area, Yia pulled me into his arms, cupped his hands around my face and kissed me again. I tingled every place our skin met.  …
“Dad!” Koufing again.
I jumped at the sound of his voice. How could I have forgotten where I was and whose arms were around me? I opened my eyes to feel Yia being yanked away.
Koufing insisted, “Come on, Dad! The gorillas are around the corner.”
In camp, Grandma was the one to keep Yia and me apart. Was Koufing the new military police?

CONTEXT: In the following scene, Mai and her high school teachers are touring Rhode Island School of Design. (RISD, which is pronounced Riz-dee) Mai, a Hmong pa’ndau artist, doubts her own talent in textile art.
Intriguing works of art kept stopping us. Every building—every room—was a gallery. Here, a painstaking painting of a system of canals or roads. I read the name plaque for the title: “Red Maple Leaf.” Oh!  I peered closer. It was a leaf. A color photograph of garbage floating in a stagnant pond was actually beautiful. Strange. The one that moved me the most was a sculpture of a dolphin made out of fishing line. Was it trapped in the tangles, or was it—here-- free of them?
I recalled our fun in the craft store—how I’d said I’d be a dolphin in the animal world. The answer had popped out of me then. I’d never thought about it before. Now I understood a little. In my world, as I fixed my own ideas, my own stitches to cloth, pa’ndau let me swim in new waters. Dark, deep, yet open and free. And sometimes, like a dolphin, my needle leapt.
This is what Ms. Movar had meant—how my art had to evoke deep thought and emotion. This work in front of me hit me, it stopped me, it made me think and feel. Now, it lived in my brain, and would make me think and feel for years to come.

“Come along,” Ms. Movar said, linking her arm in mine.
She led us by some classrooms. In one, students were watching slides of old art, listening to a professor talk about light. One class was drawing a nude! My whole body flinched and I looked away. I’d heard about this. How could I possibly do that? Oh, what a prude I was. I’d seen almost as much skin on music videos and movies.
We took the stairs to the next floor. “This is my favorite room coming up,” said Ms. Movar.
We’d entered a space where eight huge looms were whacking and clacking back and forth, some of them worked by students, others hooked up to computers. It felt like I was inside an attack—machine guns whacking down villagers, hand-made spears clacking against each other. Suddenly, my knees buckled and my heart tightened.
Ms. Movar and Miss Susan guided me into a quieter room. Still I could barely hear Miss Susan, who was holding her ears too. “Boy, that was loud!”
“Did you notice that the students were wearing earplugs?” Ms. Movar pointed out. “Mai, open your eyes. You’re okay.”
My words sounded far away and jittery in my own ears. “I’ve worked on a loom before. But I’ve never seen so many, heard them, together like that.”
“Well, just sit a spell and look around you,” Ms. Movar told me.
“Ohhhh!” Shelves and shelves and shelves of spools and spools and spools. Most of them the size of a honeydew melon. There were even threads the color of honeydew. At fabric stores, the spools are neatly arranged like lipsticks, in tight boxed displays. Here, threads reached out to you like beckoning fingers, daring you to use them. I had to touch them!
I walked up and down the aisles, sliding my fingers along the spools. There was the blue aisle from midnight blue to robin’s egg. The yellows ranged from cream to buttercup. And the reds! From a child’s cheek to the hottest coal. One whole wall was covered in fancy threads—bright elastics, multicolored ribbon, lacey bands. Each giving my fingertips a new sensation.
Ms. Movar was standing near the door, her folded hands barely covering a wide smile. “I knew you’d love this.”
Soon, classes ended without any bells and students filled the halls. After it cleared, we entered the weaving room. Though silent now, each loom spoke its own language. One a furry wool blanket, another a fine flowered scarf. And one was hooked up to a computer that had a complex pattern on the screen. The loom’s threads matched the pattern exactly. Wow.
“You belong here, Mai,” Miss Susan said.
“I do,” I dared to admit. But does RISD think so?

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A HUGE thanks to Pegi Deitz Shea for sharing such awesome excerpts from her book with us! Be sure to check out her website here to find out more about Stitch in Time and her other books.

Now for the GIVEAWAY!

Guest Post: Fury of the Phoenix by Cindy Pon

Yesterday I had a super fun interview with Asian blogger Alison from Lost In Believing! Well today I have a guest post from her in which she reviews Fury of the Phoenix by Cindy Pon. Check it out!

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The Gods have abandoned Ai Ling.

Her mysterious power haunts her day and night, and she leaves home—with just the moon as her guide—overwhelmed by her memories and visions and an unbearable sense of dread. For Ai Ling knows that Chen Yong is vulnerable to corrupt enchantments from the under-world. How can she do nothing when she has the skill and power to fight at his side? A dream has told her where he is, the name of the ship he is traveling on, his destination. So she steals off and stows away on board.

The ocean voyage brings with it brutal danger, haunting revelations, and new friendships, but also the premonition of a very real and terrifying threat. Zhong Ye—the powerful sorcerer whom Ai Ling believed she had vanquished in the Palace of Fragrant Dreams—is trapped in Hell, neither alive nor dead. Can he reach from beyond the grave to reunite with Silver Phoenix and destroy Chen Yong? And destroy whatever chance Ai Ling has at happiness, at love?

(***Possible minor spoilers below)

Cindy Pon has written a phenomenal follow up to Silver Phoenix. If you thought the first one was good, you’ll be blown away with the sequel. I wish it had released earlier!

The story returns with Ai Ling trying to reach Chen Yong. But this time Pon also tells the story of Zhong Ye and Silver Phoenix. At first I didn’t know what to think about reading the enemy’s story because I really, really disliked him in the first novel. Instead of being disgusted, I was really intrigued with Zhong Ye and Silver Phoenix’s tale. I ended up rooting for those two and wanted to see more to their story than the book held.

Pon’s writing has strengthened and it shows through wonderful imagery in the novel. The finite details created beautiful scenes where all five of my senses were used. I inhaled aromas from the meals, heard the cry from The Poison Eagle and felt the longing from Ai Ling and Zhong Ye. Pon takes two different plots and executes it in such a way as to make it seem easy, as well as easily read.

I also applaud Ai Ling and Chen Yong’s relationship. I love how they joke around and are open with each other on certain subjects. These two have such a strong bond that by the end I couldn’t stop smiling. Read it and you’ll see what I mean… ;)

Go pick up the sequel if you’ve read the first book. For those of you who have not yet picked the series, I highly recommend you to! You are missing out if you haven’t!

Rating: 5 / 5

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I haven't read Silver Phoenix or Fury of the Phoenix yet but I'm thinking I really should because these books sound AMAZING!

If you want a chance to win Silver Phoenix or 7 other awesome books be sure to enter our All Things Asian kick-off giveaway here.

Thanks to Alison from Lost In Believing for writing such an awesome review. Be sure to head on over to her blog and show her some love!

Also be sure to hit up our All Things Asian event page for all the posts and giveaways! Click HERE to see more awesomeness. (And no, you don't have to be Asian to participate!) And don't forget to check out iLive, iLaugh, iLove Books,  and My Words Ate Me today for more posts!

Julia :)

Asian Blogger Spotlight: Meet Alison From LostInBelieving!

Today I have an interview with the awesome Asian blogger Alison who writes the blog LostInBelieving!

What do you look for in a book?
Truthfully, I don’t go around looking for specific things in a book. I pick up something that sounds interesting to me and just hope that it will have relatable characters and an intriguing plot…and most of the time they do!


What advice would you give to another blogger?
My advice to other bloggers is to be you. A lot of people will love this book, dislike this cover, etc. I admit that other people have influenced my thoughts on certain things. Blogging is something a person does for fun, and it’s not fun if the words on your posts are no longer your own. It also does not matter how many readers/followers you have; the quality of your posts are much more important than the amount of people who check out your blog.


If you could have any supernatural power, what would it be?
Is manipulating time a supernatural power? There are so many memories I would love to go back and relive or moments I would just love to pause because I didn’t want them to end. Fast forwarding sad/awkward/stressing moments would also be awesome…

Do you think there needs to be more diversity in young adult fiction?
I would love to see more diversity in YA, but I’m not sure if I think there needs to be more. Authors write the novel, but the characters are the ones that tell his or her story to the person writing it. I would love to see culture written into books more. There are so many novels with characters from different races, but that’s it. If a protagonist is Italian, I would love to see how his/her nationality affects his/her life in the novel.

How close would you say you are to Asian culture?
I don’t think I’m that close, but I’m definitely not that far. I’m the first generation of my family to be born in the United States, which I think is pretty cool. What stinks is that my parents never taught me Chinese and the only holiday I celebrate is the Lunar New Year. I do have Asian dishes for dinner about four times a week and eat rice all of the time. I feel like I’m half in and half out…

And now it's time for....

The part of the interview where we ask people whether they like this or that!

Sushi!

Dumplings!

K-Pop!

It really depends on what I'm eating... (:

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Thanks for such an awesome interview Alison!

Be sure to go check out Allison's blog LostInBelieving and give it a follow.

Did you miss out on the All Things Asian choose a book giveaway? Be sure to enter here.

Be sure to hit up our All Things Asian event page for all the posts and giveaways! Click HERE to see more awesomeness. (And no, you don't have to be Asian to participate!) And don't forget to check out iLive, iLaugh, iLove Books,  and My Words Ate Me today for more posts!


Julia :)