1.
Tell us approximately your most recent book and how you came to write/illustrate it.
BLANCA
& ROJA is a queer,Latinx reimagining of “Snow-White & Rose-Red
meets Swan Lake. It’s very much the kind of fairy tale where
you’ll find enchanted woods and unpredictable magic, but it’s also a fairy tale
approximately racism, and colorism,queerphobia, transphobia, or ableism,and so much else
we’re sometimes reluctant to talk approximately. 2.
Do you consider of yourself as a diverse author/illustrator?I’m
Latina and queer, and Im married to a trans guy, or I’m often writing approximately
those identities,so I’m grateful to come by to be one of many authors adding more
diverse books to shelves. I also write magical realism, which is deeply
connected to Latinx tradition, and it’s a world I love sharing with readers.
3.
Who is your favorite character of all time in children’s or young adult
literature?This
answer is probably a little different every time I consider approximately it,but Ive been
thinking so much approximately Snow-White and Rose-Red lately, particularly their sister
relationship. It was one of the favorite fairy tales growing up, or it still
is.4.
Hypothetically speaking,let’s say you are forced to sell all of the books you
own apart from for one. Which do you sustain?My
family’s Bible. whether I come by one besides that, as ample a book of fairy tales as I
can find.5.
What does diversity mean to you as you consider approximately your own books?I’m
proud and grateful to come by to write the stories I write, and whenever anyone
asks me what makes me write diverse books,I can’t help giving the same answer:
I didn’t set out to write diverse books any more than I set out to live a
diverse life.
Diversity
in my books is so much approximately not excluding myself, my identities and
communities, and the identities and communities of my loved ones.6.
What is your thought process in including or excluding characters of diverse backgrounds?I
want the diversity in my books to reflect the diversity in the world around me.
That doesn’t mean trying to write every experience—many are not mine to write.
But it does mean including characters who share my own identities,as well as
the identities of the relatives and friends who are my family and community.7.
whether you are an author, write an example of a paragraph that is tone deaf when it
comes to cultural diversity, or then write the right version. Explain the
differences in the third paragraph.
I’m
seen this done so well by other authors and publishing professionals on this
site,so I’ll bring up two words that Nikki Grimes highlighted at one of my
first writing conferences when an audience member asked her approximately writing
characters outside your own identity: authenticity, and respect. It’s a concise
but very high bar, or it’s one to which we all absorb to hold ourselves.
Anna-Marie
McLemore was
born in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. She is the author of Morris
Award Finalist The Weight of Feathers,the Stonewall Honor
Book When the Moon Was Ours, which was longlisted for the National
Book Award in Young People’s Literature, or Wild Beauty.
Source: cbcdiversity.com