It’s always hard for me to find books with characters that look like me.

I’m sure a lot of you can relate to this struggle. It’s great to see that there is more ethnic diversity in the YA book world, but there’s always room for improvement.

Today we’re going to bring attention to books that showcase ethnically diverse characters, and/or diverse authors, and share some messages from the writers and readers of our community.

 

 

I’m biracial. And I love it. I love my skin color and the diversity in my family. But I’ve always had a hard time finding books with African American characters (especially Christian books), and an even harder time finding biracial characters. Readers just want to see themselves in stories, to be known and seen and recognized. Because of the way stories have gone, a lot of readers assume characters are white unless they’re described differently.

To be clear, I have no problem with white characters. I just want to see books represent the beautiful ethnic diversity of our world. To consistently exclude some would be unrealistic.

I am so excited today to bring some attention to diverse authors and book characters today. I’m so glad to see the strong response you all gave and I’m thrilled that we can connect on this topic. Without further ado, let’s get into showcasing these books and authors…

 

|Books|

 

From Rachel Kovaciny…

 

Speak Easy, Speak Love by McKelle George

 

 

Black, White, Other by Joan Lester

 

 

 

From Merie Shen…

 

Enchantée by Gita Trelease

 

 

Within These Lines by Stephanie Morrill

 

The Stolen Kingdom series by Bethany Atazadeh

 

 

The Silence of Bones by June Hur

 

The Mission League series (Jill Williamson)

 

 

The Whitewashed Trilogy by Adelaide Thorne

 

 

My Hands Came Away Read by Lisa McKay

 

 

From Kendra (featuring some MG books)…

 

Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan

 

Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli

 

The Ghost of the Tokaido Inn by Dorothy & Thomas Hoobler

 

Elijah of Buxton by Christopher Paul Curtis

 

Farewell to Manzanar by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston & James D. Houston

 

The Endless Steppe by Esther Hautzig

 

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

 

 

From Alia…

Robot Wars by Sigmund Brouwer

 

Galaxy Agent by Charis Etter

 

Harvest of Rubies by Tessa Afshar

 

 

From S.J….

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Heroes of Olympus by Rick Riordan

 

Out of a Far Country by Christopher Yuan

 

Devils Within by S. F. Henson

 

Warcross by Marie Lu

 

To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before by Jenny Han

 

 

From Ribbon Ash…

Within These Lines by Stephanie Morrill

 

Winter by Marissa Meyer

 

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi

 

From Allyson Kennedy…

Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper

 

Within These Lines by Stephanie Morrill

 

From Jo…

With The Fire On High by Elizabeth Acevedo

The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas

Starfish by Akemi Dawn Bowman

Renegades Trilogy by Marissa Meyers

 

 

|Messages From the Community|

 

I think, like Shakespeare says, that books should “hold a mirror up to nature.” All mixes of people should be reflected in them. That doesn’t mean every book needs to have every kind of people in it, but that authors should be encouraged to reflect the world in which they live in their writing, and the world which existed in the past, and the world they hope for in the future. Books shouldn’t include a diverse cast just to cross items off a checklist (Black character? Check! Latina character? Check! Learning-challenged character? Check!) but should be written about all sorts of people in a natural way, not shoehorning anyone in or shoving anyone out. -Rachel Kovaciny

 

Too many people have the convenient excuse of “We just stick to what we know.” But that’s just a flimsy excuse, first of all because there’s no way you don’t have ANY relationships or experiences with ethnically diverse people; and second, if everyone only stuck with what they knew, then we would all be writing very boring books. Reading and writing are both adventures, and it’s not fair to exclude certain lifestyles and cultures just because you aren’t willing to do a bit of research or asking around. These people have stories to tell 🙂 -Merie Shen

 

Books are like doorways into other stories, worlds, AND… people’s souls. Katherine Paterson has a wonderful quote about how books are “eavesdropping on the soul”. You can literally walk inside another person’s shoes for a while; feel what they are feeling, experience what they are experiencing. No other type of media allows you to do that. That’s why its so sad, how there are so many people who just don’t read. They don’t gain that empathy that comes from books. And when there’s ethnic diversity in books, that empathy is all the more important, because no matter what the person looks like, where they’re from, what language they speak, what background they have… a chance to walk in their shoes, get to know them, and hear their thoughts, leaves no room for thinking that they could possibly be less than human. -Kenra

 

The white able bodied protagonist is fine, that’s what I am. But having people from all ethnicity and with disabilities creates for a more realistic, well rounded world and can help to change up a plot rather than make all books the same. But it has to be done well. Token characters make me put down books. -Alia

 

Before I moved back to my homecountry, Canada, I didn’t know anything about diversity in books. I simply read what was on the list for my homeschool books, which was consisted solely of classics and biographies. This actually laid the ground work in what I believe is true diversity, since I got to read in on my black heritage and the Japanese heritage in Japanese books, especially those about WWII. I got a perspective I never would have been able to acquire without these books. On YA diversity books, therefore, I have mixed feelings. Some books that deal with ethnical diversity handles it excellently so that the identity feels natural, but sometimes it is misrepresented, especially coming from someone who is of that ethnicity. Sometimes YA diversity is overrated and feels like something that has to be put there “for diversity”. Although I did enjoy finding people of colour or Asian people in YA, I think that shouldn’t be the end-all of diversity. It’s a broader range of representing people as they are in life. -S.J. Barnard

 

When a YA book shows diversity it also shows support of equality. -Ribbon Ash

 

As a reader of both Christian and mainstream YA books, I’ve noticed that there is a stark difference between the two when it comes to ethnic diversity representation. Mainstream YA fiction has broken ground in recent years with releases that celebrate ethnic diversity, such as Dear Martin, Opposite of Always and The Sun is Also a Star. Readers of all ethnic backgrounds are beginning to see characters like themselves in mainstream books, but what worries me is that the same representation in the Christian market, especially YA fiction, is unmatched. While I have come across a couple examples of ethnic diversity representation in Christian YA, such as Jes Drew’s The Ninja and Hunter series and Beloved’s The Daily Life of Hailey Grace, those are the only two that come to mind for me, and they’re both independently published. What does this reveal about the traditionally published Christian YA fiction market? A quick search on Amazon confirms my suspicions… there is a severe lack of ethnic diversity representation in Christian literature. As Christians, our calling is to be the light of Christ to the world. For Christian authors, this means writing stories that readers can relate to and hopefully spark a belief or increased faith in God. How are we as Christian authors going to accomplish this task if we are not including characters of all ethnic backgrounds in our stories? Fellow Christian authors and publishing houses, I implore you to take a look around your communities and realize that Christians come from all ethnic backgrounds, and that each and every soul is worthy of receiving Christ as their Savior. Imagine how many more readers could come to know Christ if we published more Christian YA featuring main characters of Black, Latino, or Asian ethnicity? God’s Kingdom is built with bricks of every color. -Allyson Kennedy

 

For all their willingness to insist on more stories of color, people seem to be very reluctant and even repulsed at the idea of books being written by POC about POC characters, and that just doesn’t seem right in a world that is already diverse. It’s not really hard to acknowledge we exist, but it is harder to let us speak for ourselves without wanting to make yourself heard first. Another thing that needs to be mentioned is one story featuring a certain ethnicity is not THE story for that entire ethnicity, so you shouldn’t pin all your knowledge of a people group and culture based on one book you read for fun. Token diversity is just as much a problem as the lack of diversity; it’s discouraging to be told that there will be a character that is like you, only to find out that character was mentioned one time and then treated like decoration throughout the story. -Jo

 

 

 

Writers making a difference…

 

I am releasing a book on July 28 that features 7 white orphans getting rescued by an all-Black wagon train. It’s set during the very real migration of Black people to farmland in the West in the 1870s. I’ve also written about a character with Native heritage in my book Cloaked, and I’ll be including Latina characters in an upcoming addition to the series. I write historical fiction set in the Old West, and that was a richly diverse place, so I want my books to reflect that reality. -Rachel Kovaciny

 

It’s actually always been pretty hard for me to imagine a life steeped in only a single culture! I have had interesting past experiences with people who didn’t understand being multicultural whose worldviews have DEFINITELY been affected by it. Through writing, I want to normalize multicultural people a bit, show my readers that humans are humans no matter where they live, and that other cultures are worth getting to know because they are fascinating and beautiful and really, how could you not want to explore the depths of human culture? I want to show them that different nations are not that far from each other, and things like history or politics should not define our opinions on the people. And it will always bring a smile to ethnically diverse readers’ faces to see their cultures reflected and represented in the stories they love. -Merie Shen

 

I’m actually dreaming up a story right now (partially historical fiction, partially fantasy) starring a Native American boy in 1890’s Arizona. So that’s one way. 🙂 -Kendra

 

I personally base many of my stories in Canada and Japan, since I can rarely find books based there that is accurately represented. I also include characters who are of multiple nationalities, who are typically wasian or blasian. If I happen to be writing a character of a different nationality from me, I try to dig in deep and research until I feel like the native there 😉 This way, for people of that nationality, they won’t be upset (like I was) when they read about someone who is supposedly from a certain nationality that doesn’t quite match the picture. For me, I wish there were more YA books about Japanese characters who are actually Japanese (sorry, I just can’t stand some of them that’s still stuck in the Edo era), so I hope to help establish that ground. I also think that Chritian YA are in dire need of diversity, so I hope that us Christian writers will be able to start closing in on the gaps. Like I said, I don’t think we should write diversity just for the sake of it. Diversity is the reality of God’s people, where one white person wouldn’t be the same from the next. (The first could be British, the second Ukranian.) A hispanic person may be having the same struggles with an arabic person. People are people, whatever the colour of their skin or belief. And that’s where God meets them, so we as writers should accurately capture that. -S.J. Barnard

 

Research on the customs of a group of people, and then giving them roles that fit them because of their background. -Alia

 

The main thing for me to pursue in this area is to create characters with ethnic diverse backgrounds, cultures and identities. And not as some side characters or as secondary characters, but as protagonists, as main characters, as antagonists, as villains (with respect of course) and as the whole cast even. Not mere characters there for some diversity. -Ribbon Ash

 

In the future, after my current series is written, I would like to write a book that features a character of a different ethnic background than myself as a main character, or someone with a prominent role in the book. I will research the ethnicity to try and write a character that is true to his/her background while still their own unique person. -Allyson Kennedy

 

As a POC, that’s my entire body of work already. Simply telling my story and working with fellow POC artists is how we make a space for ourselves to be heard. All we need is a willing audience. -Jo

 

 

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I hope that through this post you will discover new books that celebrate ethnic diversity, be encouraged by other writers and their messages, and find a community of people who see and respect your skin color, no matter what it may be. We shouldn’t train ourselves to see now color, but open our eyes to see all colors and respect each other and the beautiful diversity of our world.

 

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One more quick announcement…I’M HOSTING A GIVEAWAY! 😀 In celebration of opening my Redbubble shop, I’m giving away a spiral-bound notebook with my ‘Creative Genius’ design. Enter with the widget below, or CLICK HERE! 

 

 

 

What do you want to see more of in YA fiction?

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