CBP Guest Blogger: Malathi Michelle Iyengar

One of the exciting things about having our own blog is the ability for us to feature the voices of our authors and illustrators, so that they can give our readers their first-person perspective on their books, on writing and art, and on whatever else it is they're thinking about. Today, we're happy to feature our first-ever guest blogger, Malathi Michelle Iyengar, author of Tan to Tamarind, our new release for the spring of 2009. Click through to read her entry!
 
Malathi writes: In becoming a Children’s Book Press author, I’ve entered a sphere inhabited by some of my all-time favorite writers and artists.  I can now say that some of my work has been published by the same organization that brought us children’s books by legendary figures such as the path-breaking poet and scholar Gloria Anzaldúa.  Anzaldúa, whose Borderlands / La Frontera made lightbulbs flash over my head when I first read it as an 18-year-old college freshman, had long-since passed into the ancestor realm by the time Tan to Tamarind came out, so I never got to use the CBP connection to try and meet her.  I have, however, met several other amazing CBP writers, notably the lovely Amada Irma Pérez, whose first title, My Very Own Room / Mi Propio Cuartito, has been one of my daughter’s favorites ever since she was a toddler.  I’m still angling for an introduction to Carmen Lomas Garza, whose artwork I’ve admired for years.  But that’s not what this blog entry is about.  What I want to explore here is this:  What do all these great Children’s Book Press authors and artists have in common with each other, and what do I think they have in common with other writers I admire?  And (of course) how do I hope my own new book fits in here?

Novelist Shashi Deshpande, one of my literary heroes, has said that most of her writing “comes out of my own intense and long-suppressed feelings about what it is to be a woman in our society…. My writing comes out of my consciousness of the conflict between my idea of myself as a human being and the idea that society has of me as a woman.”  At the same time, Deshpande takes pains to point out that her writing should not be mistaken for propaganda; she is well aware that, in a male-dominated world, many readers will be so busy seizing upon the woman-oriented nature of her work that they will actually fail to see its purely literary value.  I see her point.  A male-oriented novel that is a structural and linguistic masterpiece is regarded as a structural and linguistic masterpiece.  A female-oriented novel that is a structural and linguistic masterpiece is often dismissed as feminist propaganda.  I love Shashi Deshpande’s novels because of the stories, the language, and the deft yet subtle composition of them.  I also identify with Deshpande’s perspective on gender and power.  Now, I don’t believe that being able to critique gender and power makes one a great novelist.  And neither does Deshpande.  But, for me as a reader, the confluence of Deshpande’s literary genius and her ability to write from a perspective that values women’s lives, makes her novels incredibly important to me.  I think this same confluence appears in many of my favorite CBP children’s books.  I value the writing and illustration in these books because of the language (literary and/or visual), and I value the way in which these books bring us perspectives and values that depart from the Anglo-centric, Anglo-normative “mainstream” culture that surrounds us. 

Of course, we don’t have to agree with an author’s perspectives or assumptions about power in order to appreciate a literary work.  I don’t share the conservative political views of Mario Vargas Llosa, and if I were a citizen of Peru I certainly wouldn’t have voted for him when he ran for president of that country; nevertheless, I think his novels are great and I can’t put them down.  So I’m not suggesting here that a writer must depart from normative assumptions about power in order to produce a valuable literary work.  It does bother me, though, that so many folks have the knee-jerk reaction of dismissing literary and artistic work as soon as they sense that it may be coming out of a worldview that isn’t Anglo-centric, male-centric, etc.   These folks become blind to the creative value of the work, and reflexively dismiss the whole thing as “activism.”  Thus, for example, some of the work Carmen Lomas Garza did in college (as she tells us in her introduction to A Piece of My Heart / Pedacito de mi Corazón) was “criticized by the faculty and white students as being too political, not universal …” 

Why is it that creative expression coming out of an Anglo-normative perspective is considered “real” art, while creative expression coming out of a non-Anglo-normative perspective is labeled as ethnic activism?  I mean no disrespect to activists here.  What I mean to say is that it is telling that non-Anglo-normative art and literature is so easily dismissed as “too political” and “not universal”; this kneejerk dismissal speaks to how deeply ingrained the Anglo-centric worldview is in so many people’s minds. 

My aim in writing Tan to Tamarindwas to create a collection of poems that would be linguistically rich and structurally cohesive.  In that sense, the collection is no different than if I had written something like, say, “Sky to Sapphire: Poems About the Color Blue.”  At the same time, however, there is no denying the fact that, as a brown-skinned woman, I am committed to opposing the traditional Anglo-centric assumption that “White is pretty, brown is ugly,” and “White is Normal, Brown is Other.” 

Whenever I have a chance to talk to people about Tan to Tamarind – whether I’m speaking at a conference or just signing a book for one person – I always feel I’m confronted with a choice.  On the one hand, I do want to condemn the racial micro-aggressions and outright harassment I experienced as a brown-skinned girl growing up in a white-dominated culture.  I do want to acknowledge the fact that women and girls (and, today, even men) around the world – and mostly in the colonized parts of the world – are subjected to advertisements telling them to buy skin-bleaching products to lighten their brown skin, and that masses of people actually do buy these products, and in some cases people end up with permanent injuries from these products.   On the other hand, however, I also reject the double-standard whereby poems about blue sapphire and blue-eyed children are accepted without question as children’s literature, while poems about nutmeg and spruce and chocolate, and brown eyed/brown haired/ brown skinned children, are unthinkingly shoved into a box labeled “activist” or “political” or “ethnic” or “not universal”.  Which aspect of my work do I wish to emphasize?  And why do so many people still assume that literary merit and a departure from an Anglo-centric worldview can’t coexist in the same work?

Of course, everything I’ve said here relates to how adults may tend to react to things.  Are child readers – who are, after all, the intended audience for Tan to Tamarind and other CBP books – destined to adopt the same patterns of thinking?  Certainly not.  My hope is that children enjoy my poems, read them again and again, and appreciate the beauty of all the shades of brown around them.  That’s why I wrote the book.  And when I put it that way, there’s really nothing complicated about it at all!

Submitted by Childrens Book Press on Wednesday, April 22, 2009 10:37am