Uncreated Conscience

Last week I swore that this week I would blog about race in fiction. I absolutely intend to adhere to my resolutions, but I will need help in the coming days. Today I am going to blog about representing race in fiction, what I’d like to see, what I think (and hope) works, etc. However, after that, I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to blog about. So please, suggest things to me! Ask questions!

Anyway, before I get into the “heavy” stuff, two things of note! The first is Psychic Roommate and I completed our first 5K race this past Sunday! She ran hers in 30 minutes flat, I clocked in at 31:05. Needless to say, we’re quite proud of ourselves.

The second is I saw Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland dressed like this:

Yes, I'm dressed as Alice. And I'm seriously considering going platinum blonde. Yes? No? Bad idea?

Of the movie? Eh. But I’ve always been a huge Alice fan and to date I’ve never come across an adaptation I’ve liked. (Excepting the Disney version, which I apparently watched so often it destroyed the VHS tape. YES, VHS. I’M THAT OLD, OH MY GOD.) As per usual with Tim Burton films, I enjoyed the visuals, Johnny Depp, and Helena Bonham Carter. As per usual (of his recent films), I wasn’t impressed with the rest. It hurts to be a fangirl, sometimes.

Anyway, back to the point: representing race in fiction. I will be upfront in saying that a lot of my impressions come from a YA-bias as that’s mostly what I read outside work, and I was in the age group to grow up with the genre.

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Pretending to be Edie Sedgwick.

So I have a confession to make.

For most of my life, I refused to identify myself as Asian-American.

I know, right? In hindsight it seems silly, because, well, look at me. Or rather, look at who I wished I looked like. I’ve always wanted to be a gamine pixie sprite, with big eyes and short hair. Essentially, I wanted to be Edie Sedgwick. Or Audrey Hepburn. Or Natalie Portman. (I also wanted to be green-eyed and blonde, but that’s another story.)

I was never one to deny my ethnicity–in fact, I’m quite proud of it–but for a very long time, I struggled with how to describe myself. Because the word “Asian” comes with a lot of baggage and the term “Asian-American” even more so.

Why? Oh so many reasons. I’ve written before on the need for a cultural conscious shift because the way “people like me” (a loaded phrase in itself) are represented in fiction and media contributed a lot to my existential angst.

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Ich lerne Deustch jetzt. Warum? Because I’m a geek, that why. And if you think this is at all related to Der Glöckner von Notre Dame, then you would be absolutely correct. Also, because I want to be able to end conversations with tchüß! and auf wiedersehn! without sounding pretentious or like I’m putting on airs.

Just do it.

But my desire for polyglotism aside, an interesting topic came up in today’s editorial meeting that sort of sparked a blog post. And, knowing me, it will run on for 1000 words or more, but I think it’s pretty important: branding.

In publishing, the craft and artistry of a “novel” as a concept often overshadows the notion of a “book” as a product. We are in the business of selling books, which includes specific “brands”, i.e. the author. In particular, we were discussing a really talented author who had some decent sales but was hard to “pin down”, so to speak.

Said author wrote a few novels in one genre, then another, was published in trade paperback original, then single title hardcover, etc. Author’s previous publishing house didn’t effectively “brand” the writer and our challenge (should we take this person on) was to figure out a way to, well, “sell the brand”.

There are lot of interesting psychological studies on “branding”, but I want to discuss this tricky idea of an author brand.

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Der Glöckner von Notre Dame

So last week I blogged about how much I really love Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame (before delving into a too long; didn’t read post about gothic fiction) and mentioned somewhat facetiously that I would love to see the musical Der Glöckner von Notre Dames brought to Broadway.

After having done some research into it, I would now like to change the sentiment from “facetious” to “absofuckinglutely in earnest”. A few weeks ago, while watching Newsies for the umpteenth time with some friends, we mentioned how much we wanted to see Newsies on Broadway. I would like to see this on Broadway even more than that, that’s how much I want it.

I listened to the original Berlin cast recording so many times this past weekend that I now know the words for “sanctuary” and “monster” off the top of my head (zuflucht and scheusal respectively). Thoughts beneath the cut.

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