Grace Lin

By Frank Boles

On November 27, children’s author Grace Lin spoke to a large audience in the Sarah and Daniel Opperman Auditorium in the Park Library. Grace Lin is a nationally recognized author and illustrator, but her topic for the evening was not exactly what you would expect an author with her reputation to discuss. She discussed how she grew up wanting to be white, like her classmates, and eventually embraced her Asian heritage.

Grace Lin was born in upstate New York, the daughter of Chinese immigrants. She and her two sisters were the only Asian children in their K-12 school classes. Grace desperately wanted to fit in, but slowly realized she was “different.” What finally made her realize this was her experience after the class decided to put on the play, “The Wizard of Oz.”

Grace, like a number of other girls, very much wanted to play Dorothy. They would gather daily on the playground to practice singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” a successful rendition of which was seen as a sure ticket to being cast in the role. On the day of the play audition, Grace asked a friend if she thought Grace had a chance at the role. The friend responded, directly and with devastating simplicity, “of course not – Dorothy isn’t Chinese.”

Grace decided she wouldn’t be Chinese either. She refused to learn the language. She refused to participate in “Chinese” customs at home. At college at the Rhode Island School of Design she studied western art, and eventually studied art in Italy. Sitting in a café one day in Rome, an Italian acquaintance asked, “so you’re Chinese, right.” Grace quickly set the man straight – she was American. When her companion looked puzzled, she went on to explain that her parents were Chinese. This led to another puzzled look, and to a question Grace had no answer to, “so okay, they're Chinese but why did they immigrate to the U.S., and how did that change you?”

That question led Grace to discover a new sense of self. She could draw beautiful depictions of European art, but as she noted ruefully on the auditorium stage, “let’s be honest – look at my package.” She began to study Asian art and also began to think about a career as an illustrator.

Like most struggling young children’s illustrators the road to her first book was torturous, but eventually she published The Ugly Vegetables, based on her own experiences with her mother. Unlike her upstate New York neighbors, who grew flowers around their homes, Grace Lin’s mother grew nothing but vegetables, Chinese vegetables.

The book was a reasonable success, and her publisher asked if she had an idea for a second publication. She most certainly did – a book about how her sisters learned about science, with sidebars that clearly explained the piece of science the girls were struggling to master. The publishers had several suggestions, the most important being that books about science that featured girls didn’t sell well – she should make the lead character a boy; a Caucasian boy. Lin didn’t mind too much the advice about what sold and what didn’t, which is certainly something a publisher would know – but why a white boy?

The publisher was as brutally honest as Grace’s grade school friend. “Your first book was ‘multi-cultural.’ That’s fine, but if your second book is also classified as multi-cultural you will be pigeonholed as ‘merely’ a multi-cultural author.”

As it turned out, another, much larger publisher approached Lin about a book before she really began working on the science publication. Dim Sum for Everyone sold well, and true to her first publisher’s advice, “classified” Lin as a multi-cultural author.

Lin admittedly candidly that this classification caused a crisis in her own work. Was she a children’s author and illustrator, or an illustrator and author who worked with Chinese themes? Was she valued for her work, or for her ethnicity? For a period of time, she refused to do another “Chinese” book, instead publishing volumes using animal characters. What she found, however, is that when she went on book tours, what parents and children showed up with to have signed was not her animal books, but her multi-cultural publications.

Perhaps the turning point was a signing at which she was approached by an Asian-American couple who asked for her autograph and tearfully thanked her for writing books in which their children could see themselves and their lives. The children in Lin’s books looked like them. That moment brought back to Lin her K-12 experience; that Dorothy couldn’t be Chinese, and by implication Lin wasn’t like the other girls and had nothing to offer them.

Lin realized her unique contribution to children’s literature was not drawing animals, but embracing her ethnicity, and through that embrace, allowing children growing up as she did to understand that they too were not only part of the American experience, but had their own enviable characters who looked just like them that other children would want to be.

In her award winning, Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, Lin tells the story of ten-year old Minli, who saves her village with the help of a dragon she befriends. What ten-year old wouldn’t want to save their village with the help of a Chinese dragon? And any well-read ten-year old knows that while Dorothy has a lot going for her, what with being acquainted with a wizard, and a scarecrow, and a tin man, and a lion, there aren’t any dragons to befriend in either Kansas or Oz. For that story to be told, the school play needs to be set in China, and the lead character becomes Minli.

It was an evening of true learning for many of those in the audience, who saw the world through a very different lens.

Sue Ann Martin Speaking Wednesday, October 7

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Fall Speakers at the Clarke Library

by Frank Boles

On November 3, the last of six programs sponsored this fall by the Clarke Historical Library was held. The speakers offered their audiences a great deal of information on a wide range of topics.

The Clarke’s current exhibit, Photography: Process, People & Preservation, was opened on September 18 with a lecture about pre-digital photography by CMU Professor Al Wildey. Professor Wildey, who also generously loaned cameras from his personal collection for our exhibit, highlighted a variety of photographic processes used through time, noting how each played a role in the development of photography.

On September 25, Janice Harrington demonstrated why she has performed at the National Story Telling Festival in Washington, DC, as she enthralled her audience with story, personal narrative, and an impromptu poetry reading. She discussed where she drew inspiration for her children’s books and the process through which an idea eventually became a book. The poetry reading came about when Professor Harrington met the founder of the David M. and Eunice Sutherland Burgess Endowment, which made the evening’s event possible. Ms. Burgess expressed her admiration for Professor Harrington’s poetry. Although it wasn’t planned, the evening ended with a Harrington reading a few poems, among them one of Ms. Burgess’ favorites.

On October 1, the focus shifted to barns as Steve Stier, one of the state’s leading experts on the subject, presented an illustrated lecture describing Michigan barns. A basic introduction to barn architecture and styles flowed seamlessly into a discussion of the people who built Michigan’s barns. The photos reminded the audience of the poses, none of them likely to meet contemporary OSHA standards for construction safety, local boys and men often assumed high up on the barn rafters, when a photographer came calling.

On October 14, Professor Andrew Mahon took the audience on a research trip to Antarctica. The stories of serious research were mixed with photographs of the awe and wonder found amid the continent’s unending ice, and what life aboard a research vessel was really like.

On October 23, author Keith Widder opened a fascinating window on the capture of Fort Michilimackinac by Ojibwe warriors on June 2, 1763. The story commonly told ends with the capture of the Fort, but Mr. Widder’s story only began on June 2. He told a fascinating and complex tale of diplomacy involving Britain and several Native American nations. The capture of the Fort by the Ojibwe did not have the support of all of the Native American tribes in the region, and some tribes, including some bands of Ojibwe, were distinctly displeased with the attackers. Eventually the British soldiers who were taken captive after the fighting ended were returned to Montreal, but they traveled in a most peculiar convoy that mixed imprisoned British soldiers with other British redcoats from Green Bay traveling freely back to Montreal with their Menominee and Odawa tribal allies.

Finally, on November 3, Michigan State University librarian Michael Unsworth discussed the underutilized but extremely valuable Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections. A forty volume set of pioneer reminisces, historical sketches, original documents, and the occasional “historical paper,” the long-running series offers a true insight into early life in Michigan. It does not necessarily give up its secrets easily; the multi-volume set was actually published under three different titles and finding online a single, searchable set of the volumes takes more than a bit of persistence and skill.

Stay tuned to the Clarke's News and Notes blog for more information about our upcoming spring speaker series, which promises to be informative and captivating.

Janice Harrington Speaking Thursday

Professor Janice Harrington, storyteller, poet, and author of children’s books will speak this Thursday, September 25, at 7:00 p.m. in the Park Library Auditorium on the subject of children’s books and her own work.

Janice Harrington’s first children’s book, Going North, was published in 2004. The book won several awards and drew upon her memories of rural Lamar County, Alabama. The Chicken Chasing Queen of Lamar County, published in 2007, was one of Time magazine’s top ten children’s books of the year. Her 2008 book, Roberto Walks Home, continues the stories of Ezra Jack Keats, a now deceased white writer who was among the first to publish stories using African American and other children of color as central characters.

Currently a member of the faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, she was for seventeen years the head of children’s services at the Champaign Public Library. She has performed as a professional storyteller in a variety of settings, including the National Storytelling Festival in Washington, DC.

The presentation is free and open to the public. A reception will follow to talk in the Clarke Historical Library.

Professor Harrington’s presentation is made possible by the David M. and Eunice Sutherland Burgess Endowment.

Fall 2013 Speaker Series Wrap Up

by Frank Boles

During the fall semester, the Library sponsored four programs, including a discussion of WCMU Radio’s popular show, “Our Front Porch,” a presentation by noted children’s illustrator Peter Sís, a remembrance of famed musicologist Alan Lomax's 1938 tour of Michigan, and a presentation by Deborah Thomas regarding the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America website, which features fully searchable newspapers from across the United States.

Betsy Hearne Presentation on October 10

by Frank Boles

Professor Elizabeth “Betsy” Hearne spoke at the Library on October 10 presenting a speech entitled, “Fooling Around With Stories: Children’s Books, Oral Lore, and the Playful Imagination.” It was indeed a wonderful evening of fooling around with the auditorium filled with listeners enthralled by Professor Hearn’s mix of entertaining storytelling, deep insight into children’s books, and profound sense of fun.

For one student in particular, it was also a wonderful learning moment. As part of her presentation, Professor Hearne talked about the large number of children’s stories that include an element of risk. Whether chased by witches or wolves, abused by evil step-mothers or abandoned by overburdened caretakers, terrible things often happen to children in stories. These terrible occurrences, however, are important in that the stories give children a safe place to work through their own fears. Learning how to deal with fears and difficult situations is part of a child’s “work,” and stories with simply awful occurrences in them help children undertake that process in a way that might be impossible in the real world.

At the reception following the presentation, Professor Hearne was engaged in discussion by a graduate student from Indonesia. The discussion was long and intense. Driving Professor Hearne back to her hotel, I asked about it. The lecture had given a student a new way to understand the importance of children’s stories. Children’s tales in Indonesia rarely include the kind of gruesome occurrences routinely found in Western stories. Indonesian stories, reported the graduate student, are happy tales intended to make children feel safe, not to cause them potential worry. Professor Hearne’s presentation opened to this student an entirely new way of thinking about children’s stories; something the student enthusiastically looked forward to taking back with her to Indonesia after completing her studies in the United States.

Part of the Library’s mission is to enlighten and inform. Based on the conservation between Professor Hearne and the graduate student, I think we did our job particularly well on the 10th. I am deeply grateful to Eunice Burgess, who made this presentation possible through a generous gift that created the David M. and Eunice Sutherland Burgess endowment. Funds from this endowment made it possible to bring Professor Hearne to campus, and resulted in a marvelous learning experience for a student – the magic the Library exists to make possible.