Who's Allowed
Now that my book cover's out in the world, I've been getting some interesting questions. Am I latina? Half-latina? Did I live in Mexico or in the southwest? Did I study Mexican folklore? The answer to all of these is "no" (I'm Russian Jewish by way of a north suburb of Chicago) and there's a little pause afterwards that sounds a lot like, "Then why...?" In that space there is a lot said and unsaid and honestly, the first thing it makes me think of is grad school.
There was a class, one of those life-changing classes, where I finally found a word for the thing I'd been searching for all my life: the idea that different people perceive the same things differently due to their associations and experiences, and that's called hermeneutics. Everyone there were educators in training and "differences" had become synonymous with "diversity" which, for good or bad, had become synonymous with "race" (which further was synonymous with "black and white" and that was discussed at length in class, too). This was a class full of fireworks! Imagine: a group of people dedicating their careers to the topic of teaching others and trying desperately to wrestle with a lot of Big Thoughts that brought up a lot of personal anxiety, frustration, biases and, let's face it: prejudices, in a safety zone where we all knew that we were trying to understand one another and be understood in the best of possible terms. There were bouts of shouting and sometimes tears, but no one left that class without having their envelope pushed.
I loved it!
But one thing that stuck with me was when one classmate appealed to each of us that when we were with our friends, to stand up for her and her friends (who were African-American) as if they were there with us and not to let prejudicial jokes or stereotyping slide.* I raised my hand as a penny dropped in my head. "Do you think that my friends are all like me?" She looked surprised. Weren't all my friends white, Jewish people? And that's when it hit me: people presume that however you categorize yourself is who you associate with and that those divisions were based on race or religion. I laughed. How ridiculous! Maybe it was just me, but I don't think I ever had a group of friends where the majority were white, liberal, Jewish girls from the Midwest. So I started paying attention to just who shared my world.
This weekend was my daughter's birthday, a Mad Scientist party with nearly (gulp) 40 kids in attendance and two professors in their glory. One was my father-in-law, a jolly man of 70 whose research won the Nobel Prize in Physics and was happily spilling liquid nitrogen beads on the floor, shooting lasers through dry ice smoke, and shattering frozen flowers to the delighted squeals of a mass of seven-year-olds. He is a white, Jewish man from Long Island. The other gentleman helping me explain heat transfer and make homemade ice cream for tiny root beer floats is my best friend from college, an East Indian 30-something from Tennessee who is a professor of bio-genetics with a passion for computer programming and pecan pie. He was there with his beautiful wife, baby daughter, and his mother-in-law. They are Hindi and live an agonizing 40 minutes away from us. The room was filled with children, the majority of whom were girls and there was a prevalent pinkness to the skin and brownness of the hair, but the surnames ran the gamut and only one of the girls had her own menorah in the window at home. I phoned a friend recovering from surgery. She is a smart-as-a-whip CPA with dry humor to match. She is Republican to my Democrat, Christian to my Jew, and loves Rush Limbaugh while I...don't and knows more about politics than I know about YA lit. She loves to knit. I love to bake. We have fascinating (and sometimes frustrating) conversations that are rarely dull.
The truth is that these are only a few ways to divide folks up into nice, neat categories, which doesn't even begin to touch upon who they really are, right? The truth is that my friends are all creative, passionate, often darkly-funny people who are smart, caring, and interesting and yes, that is who I want to write about and write for. Why did I write a story about a latina teen with paranormal powers? The real reason is because that was the story that was gifted to me by Maggie or a higher power with a twisted sense of humor, but the other reason is that she is a smart, creative, interesting and caring person who is searching for her passion in life. When she finds it, she's a supernova. She's unstoppable. She's a superhero.
She's the sort of person I'd like to know.
* I took this to heart and let me say that it's really not easy to call someone on being inappropriate without coming off like a PC jerk. However, I long ago decided that I'd rather be PC-jerky than give the impression that it's okay to say something derogatory around me.
There was a class, one of those life-changing classes, where I finally found a word for the thing I'd been searching for all my life: the idea that different people perceive the same things differently due to their associations and experiences, and that's called hermeneutics. Everyone there were educators in training and "differences" had become synonymous with "diversity" which, for good or bad, had become synonymous with "race" (which further was synonymous with "black and white" and that was discussed at length in class, too). This was a class full of fireworks! Imagine: a group of people dedicating their careers to the topic of teaching others and trying desperately to wrestle with a lot of Big Thoughts that brought up a lot of personal anxiety, frustration, biases and, let's face it: prejudices, in a safety zone where we all knew that we were trying to understand one another and be understood in the best of possible terms. There were bouts of shouting and sometimes tears, but no one left that class without having their envelope pushed.
I loved it!
But one thing that stuck with me was when one classmate appealed to each of us that when we were with our friends, to stand up for her and her friends (who were African-American) as if they were there with us and not to let prejudicial jokes or stereotyping slide.* I raised my hand as a penny dropped in my head. "Do you think that my friends are all like me?" She looked surprised. Weren't all my friends white, Jewish people? And that's when it hit me: people presume that however you categorize yourself is who you associate with and that those divisions were based on race or religion. I laughed. How ridiculous! Maybe it was just me, but I don't think I ever had a group of friends where the majority were white, liberal, Jewish girls from the Midwest. So I started paying attention to just who shared my world.
This weekend was my daughter's birthday, a Mad Scientist party with nearly (gulp) 40 kids in attendance and two professors in their glory. One was my father-in-law, a jolly man of 70 whose research won the Nobel Prize in Physics and was happily spilling liquid nitrogen beads on the floor, shooting lasers through dry ice smoke, and shattering frozen flowers to the delighted squeals of a mass of seven-year-olds. He is a white, Jewish man from Long Island. The other gentleman helping me explain heat transfer and make homemade ice cream for tiny root beer floats is my best friend from college, an East Indian 30-something from Tennessee who is a professor of bio-genetics with a passion for computer programming and pecan pie. He was there with his beautiful wife, baby daughter, and his mother-in-law. They are Hindi and live an agonizing 40 minutes away from us. The room was filled with children, the majority of whom were girls and there was a prevalent pinkness to the skin and brownness of the hair, but the surnames ran the gamut and only one of the girls had her own menorah in the window at home. I phoned a friend recovering from surgery. She is a smart-as-a-whip CPA with dry humor to match. She is Republican to my Democrat, Christian to my Jew, and loves Rush Limbaugh while I...don't and knows more about politics than I know about YA lit. She loves to knit. I love to bake. We have fascinating (and sometimes frustrating) conversations that are rarely dull.
The truth is that these are only a few ways to divide folks up into nice, neat categories, which doesn't even begin to touch upon who they really are, right? The truth is that my friends are all creative, passionate, often darkly-funny people who are smart, caring, and interesting and yes, that is who I want to write about and write for. Why did I write a story about a latina teen with paranormal powers? The real reason is because that was the story that was gifted to me by Maggie or a higher power with a twisted sense of humor, but the other reason is that she is a smart, creative, interesting and caring person who is searching for her passion in life. When she finds it, she's a supernova. She's unstoppable. She's a superhero.
She's the sort of person I'd like to know.
* I took this to heart and let me say that it's really not easy to call someone on being inappropriate without coming off like a PC jerk. However, I long ago decided that I'd rather be PC-jerky than give the impression that it's okay to say something derogatory around me.
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