M.M.: I came in with rice and beans!  R.J.P.: We had amazing teachers, too. They were not a diverse crowd themselves — mostly Jewish, white — but they got a kick out of the International Luncheon and inviting parents to talk to us about their immigrant journeys. They were so interested in our lives and compassionate about our experiences.  M.R.: Let’s talk about how that childhood and that education became for both of you the seeds of a career writing books for children.  R.J.P.: I was lucky enough to have two parents who passionately encouraged and fostered that love of reading. They were both immigrants from Colombia, very cultured. Our house was full of books. Thomas Mann. Faulkner. St. Augustine. My mother would read “The Little Prince” and the short stories of Oscar Wilde to me when I was little. It was a given, I think, that I would grow up to be some sort of artist or writer.  M.M.: My family didn’t understand that. My mother was college-educated in Cuba — but she was the daughter of a woman who rolled cigars. She was the first generation to be college-educated, so she certainly knew the value of reading. She would read books with me to practice her own English, and she encouraged me to spend a lot of time at the library. But she didn’t know the canon of children’s literature in the U.S. I had to discover that on my own. What I found in books was peace, and a place to make sense of things and have adventures. It was a place that was away from what my mother could touch and understand, which as you’re getting older feels important. Then when I grew up I became a teacher. I loved my students and I loved laughing with them, but what I loved most was reading and writing with them. Reading at that age is so much about self-discovery. So I feel like when I started to write, my whole life was pointing me toward writing for children. It seemed natural to go back to the place where it mattered the most.  R.J.P.: For some of us it’s a refuge. For me it was also an outlet for adventure and for being someone else — the drama I didn’t experience in my everyday life was there in “Little Women” and “The Hobbit.” There’s war and heroism and a sense of being transported from the world we live in. I did not, and Meg, you did not, grow up with a sense of the American children’s canon. We came to some of those books in school — we read “Charlotte’s Web” in school — but that experience of having a parent reading to you, for me it was a different framework, a more European classical canon. I didn’t read Dr. Seuss until I read it to my own son.  M.R.: How did you, Raquel, decide to write for children?  R.J.P.: “Wonder” came about because I had an experience seeing a child with a facial difference. So I wanted to write about someone who lived with that. But it also came about because my son was in the fifth grade, and that’s a very tender time, that transition between the preteen and teen, when they’re toggling back and forth between being independent and still needing their parents. It’s beautiful and painful, watching kids that age, their friends, transform into the adults they’re going to be, doing and saying things, at times, that you know they might come to regret. But the kids are doing it within this narrative that “all kids go through a mean stage,” like it’s a rite of passage. That’s a narrative I’ve always rejected, because I know kids have an abundance of nobility at that age, and all they need is a little reminding from the grown-ups around them to be kind.  M.R.: “Wonder” was published in 2012. In those five or so years the conversation about tolerance and kindness has in many ways come to center on ethnic differences, racial differences. So it’s interesting that you, Raquel, came at this issue not from the point of view of ethnic diversity. Yet you are what we now call a “diverse author.” Do you think if you were writing “Wonder” now, you might put more emphasis there? Your main character, Auggie, could be considered “diverse.”  R.J.P.: Auggie’s mom is Brazilian, his dad’s Jewish; to me he’s the epitome of diversity. But I don’t think I would have changed how I approached that. For me, diversity can be as much about celebrating differences as it is about normalizing them to the point where they really don’t matter, inasmuch as everyone is different. In “Wonder,” every character has something they think sets them apart. But compared to Auggie’s differences, all else pales. No one in the world looks like him. It makes everyone else seem very, very similar. The racial and ethnic differences between the others are nothing to him — because they all have eyes and ears and noses where they’re supposed to be.  M.R.: Growing up, did you have a sense of yourself as ethnically different?  R.J.P.: I honestly didn’t think about it that much. I identify as Colombian, and I’m proud and happy to be part of a rich and vibrant heritage that produced writers like García Márquez and dreamers like Simón Bolívar. I very much consider myself Latin-American — but I have never identified as a Latina, if that makes any sense.  M.R.: In the past couple of years we’ve seen the We Need Diverse Books movement alter the conversation about children’s books. What changes have you both seen?  M.M.: I’m not involved in WNDB day to day anymore — I’m on their advisory board — but what I like about WNDB is that it has done tangible things. We had a dialogue for decades about the need to diversify children’s books, and the needle didn’t move. But WNDB has funded internships at publishing houses, it’s created awards, it’s created ways to diversify the pipeline so that the change is going to be long term. We need not only books being written and illustrated that give the perspectives of all kinds of children, but we also need editors with wider sensibilities, marketing people, book reviewers, all of that. You don’t know your own blind spots. So it’s really important to have many voices at the table that can say, Wait a minute, have you thought of this?  R.J.P.: I haven’t been part of this movement, but that tangible aspect is something I really admire. I worked in publishing for more than 25 years before writing “Wonder,” and I can tell you that everyone in publishing wants diversity. I’ve seen the earnestness with which acquiring editors go about their acquisitions. They are trying so hard to do right and to represent as many voices and points of view as possible — especially in children’s books — and they can’t help that they were English majors at Vassar. They are what they are. But it’s not a closed group. It’s open to anyone. There’s no locked door or secret handshake to get in. What I think is most important is helping people who may not think this path is open to them understand that it is wide open to anyone who wants to work really, really hard for very little pay.  M.R.: Meg, do you worry about finding broad audiences? I know for some diverse authors, they are told by people in, say, white, suburban schools, “My students can’t relate to your books.”  M.M.: I think if you’re in a school that doesn’t have Latino students you probably need my books more than anyone else. Because that may be the best chance those students have to meet and consider a story through the eyes of somebody who’s different than they are. Nothing blocked me from loving “Charlotte’s Web.” I was there in Queens, I didn’t know anything about pigs or buttermilk or state fairs. I loved it because it was a friendship story, and a story about loyalty. I believe that children can identify with someone named Piddy Sanchez or Nora Lopez just as easily.  M.R.: Many people are also questioning authors who write about characters whose race or ethnicity they don’t share.  M.M.: People are asking harder questions about the books that are coming through. I think that’s exciting. People are asking: Is it written authentically? Are there mistakes? Are there representations that could be offensive? It’s not about having that intention — no one is setting out to write a book saying: I want to hurt children! I’d like to insult an entire group of people! Who says that? Nobody. But there can be a tone-deafness, because we haven’t been used to holding ourselves accountable for the more sensitive things. And now there’s a critical mass of people saying, Hold on there, I’ve had enough. There are so many stereotypes about Latina women. The fact is that I’m a Cuban woman, Raquel is a Colombian woman — whatever her experience was, that is the Latina experience for her. My Latina experience was different but just as valuable. We need more stories that expose all the experiences. The thing that holds them together is: Is it true about growing up? Does it shine some sort of light on what it is to be a human being who’s young, who’s trying to make sense of the world? So I find the conversation around diversity both exciting and painful, because good, kind people get hurt, and good, kind people hurt others without meaning to. It’s exhausting to be on the receiving end of criticism, and it’s exhausting to be the person who has to say, Hey, no fair. I can’t tell you how many panels I’m invited to speak on to represent Latino literature, and I find it daunting.  R.J.P.: I’m never invited to speak on this, probably because I don’t feel capable of representing, and I’ve never really sought to be represented. Even as a child, I never looked for books or stories about little Colombian girls living in New York City. I was Frodo Baggins, I was Jo March. These were the people I related to: a halfling and a tomboy.  M.M.: There’s not one of us who can speak for the entire group, and I accept that. If you want Latino literature, you have to understand it’s this collection of 20 countries. And yet for the kids who were born in the U.S. to foreign-born parents, that umbrella does have some meaning. The way I see it is this; I’m telling the story through this lens: What it is to grow up in the U.S. with parents who don’t speak English. I tell the story as truly as I can. But then what kicks in afterward is almost this idea of being a literary citizen. I’m in schools, I’m in libraries, not necessarily New York or L.A. — I’m in Arkansas, Oklahoma, where kids are feeling “othered,” struggling to learn English themselves, or they’re sitting in rooms where the TV is playing and someone is saying they’re rapists. So I think what is important for me to do is to advocate the humanity of everyone, their value, their story; that the language of their mothers and fathers is a beautiful one, that the stories of growing up how they did are significant. I have a feeling of being an ambassador to people who don’t have a relationship to people from other places, but mostly I want to help kids feel proud of where they come from. To know that they are enough.
The children’s books authors R.J. Palacio and Meg Medina talk to Maria Russo, The Times’ children’s books editor, about being — and choosing not to be — a Latina author.