When I began the research for Last Night at the Telegraph Club in earnest, I knew that I needed to know more about those lesbians of color. More specifically, I needed to know what it was like to be a Chinese American lesbian in San Francisco in the 1950s, but they were nearly invisible in the historical record.
Read MoreAlthough few people know of Dr. Margaret Chung today, her death was major news when she passed away in January 1959. In its front-page obituary, the San Francisco Chronicle described her as “‘Mom’ to thousands of veterans of World War II and show business celebrities,” but nowhere was it mentioned that Chung was probably gay. Had that been widely known, it’s unlikely that she would have been as publicly beloved.
Read MoreWhen did you first see yourself in a book? Ever since diversity and inclusion became a major part of the book world discourse, I’ve been asked this question over and over. I’m often tempted to say Little Women or Anne of Green Gables, but I know that I’m expected to respond with a book about a character that shares my race or sexual orientation.
Read MoreA major part of the background research for Last Night at the Telegraph Club involved learning how Lily’s Chinese American identity would have been experienced by her and how it would have been perceived by others—not only her family and community, but by whites and other non-Chinese.
Read MoreLast Night at the Telegraph Club opens on July 4, 1950, at the Chinese American Citizens Alliance Independence Day Picnic, which featured a Miss Chinatown beauty pageant. The scene in the novel was inspired by the real-life beauty pageant that took place on that date in Los Altos, a suburban community south of San Francisco.
Read MoreThe word important and how it’s applied to children’s and young adult books—especially “diverse books,” which is the way the publishing industry has come to describe books about marginalized characters, e.g. characters who are of color, LGBTQ, disabled, and/or from a marginalized religion—has been bothering me for some time. All of my books are about queer girls, and some of them are also Asian. My books have often been described as “important,” and while I understand that this is meant to be a compliment, it’s one that often grates on me.
Read MoreOver the weekend I caught the tail end of a Twitter discussion centered on the hashtag #dontselfreject, created by writer and editor Rose Lemberg in response to an essay by writer and editor Nisi Shawl in the literary quarterly The Cascadia Subduction Zone. Nisi Shawl’s essay, titled “Unqualified,” is about how difficult it is for writers of color, and particularly African American writers (Nisi is African American, among other identities), to develop the confidence to try to get published — essentially, how hard it is to believe that their stories are valuable and worth it.
Read More“I can’t help but feel that as I white girl that it’s hard for me to write from the POV of a person of color. I realize that’s probably completely and utterly ridiculous, but I was wondering what you thought? Is it insincere for white YA authors to write from the POV of a person of color?”
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