Tales from teen book fest – our safe place in stories

First of all – is it possible to talk about “safe places” amid thousands of teens and preteens turned loose at a book festival? Aside from the abundance of hand sanitizer stations at last weekend’s North Texas Teen Book Festival in Irving, Texas, there was little evidence of worry about the COV-19 epidemic that occupies older minds. Worry about getting to the head of the line for favorite author signings, yes. And about grabbing snacks and restroom breaks between the dozens of panels and publisher events. Epidemics barely rated a yawn.            

What really scared young readers was finding a place to fit in. Especially if they were (or felt) a little different from the characters in the books they read. Luckily for them, authors of, and writing about, diverse ethnicities, cultures, and body and genre types abounded. Like Roshani (“the ‘a’ is silent!”) Chokshi (Gilded Wolves series), Melissa de la Cruz (Descendants series), Hafsah Faizal (We Hunt the Flame series), Marie Lu (The Kingdom of Back), and Marissa Meyer (The Lunar Chronicles series) at the Flights of Fantasy panel discussion.

“How can stories be used as a safe place?” moderator/podcaster (Adventures in YA) Sara Roberts asked the group, whose ethnic diversity – Indian American, Hispanic, Chinese, multi-racial, and Arab, as well as identifying as white – offered a springboard for discussion.

“(Fantasies are) safe places in that they do not minimize any emotion. That’s what I love about children’s literature,” Chokshi said.

image: Prawny from Pixabay

That’s because readers can explore “while immersing yourselves in a whole new world,” Cruz said. “A lot of fantasy is metaphor.”

Lu noted, “The journey of discovery of yourself always applies. (But) there were a lot of holes in fantasy that are now opening up and giving way to other voices.”

For Meyer, reading fantasy as a young person was escapist, a way to explore new worlds. “there’s so much explanation mirrored in these epic quests.”

Given the benefits of trying on these new worlds, “How important is it for young readers to see themselves” in books, Roberts asked.

As an Indian American, Chokshi said, even after she began writing as well as reading, “I took me a while to realize I was writing myself out of my stories. These stories read with a lot more urgency when you see yourself in them.”

“Maybe the beautiful queen can have dark hair instead of blonde,” Cruz said.

“My first efforts were very white,” Faizal said. “I wrote all white characters because I thought that’s what I had to do to get published. . . (Once) I realized what was wrong and got myself into the story, it took off.”

“Early on,” Lu also admitted, “I never ever thought of putting myself in these books. Growing up, I never saw a story with a Chinese character. I can’t imagine what it would have meant to me as a reader.”

Surveying her fellow writers, Meyer decided to address the elephant in the room. “So, I’m white,” she said, a statement that drew delighted laughter from her very diverse audience. “I came to this through anime and realized that even in anime, which is Japanese, a lot of the characters are white,” sparking the possibility of diverse characters in even the smallest details.

And although many stories emphasize the difficulties faced by characters (and readers and writers) of non-white ethnicities, “It’s really great to have stories about ourselves that are fun!” Chokshi said. 

***

Next up: Diversity goes to the movies, with body type and gender as well as ethnic variations, at the North Texas Teen Book Festival