Books Not About Race

Dawn, in her recent article on Anti-Racist Parent, has asked the question: What are the good chapter books that have main characters that are people of color, but the story is not about their race or ethnicity? She gives this as her “rule for inclusion - The child’s race isn’t a plot-device even if it has some bearing on his/her experience. In other words, In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson didn’t make it in because Shirley Temple Wong is trying to assimilate into the United States, which makes it an issue book albeit a good one.” I have been mulling this over for a few days. It’s pretty hard to think of books with non-white characters where ethnicity is not a main part of the plot. Issues of identity, assimilation, dealing with racism or living in an environment stereotypical of a particular race (the ‘hood, Chinatown, and internment camp, wrong side of the tracks in a small southern town, etc.) are so common in books with non-white characters. Dawn’s question is a really good one. What books would you recommend? I have started this list just from scanning our library shelves:

Grades 1 -3
The Stories Julian Tells by Ann Cameron
Later, Gator by Laurence Yep
Justin and the Best Biscuits in the World by Mildren Pitts Walter
Suitcase by Mildren Pitts Walter
Ruby Lu, Brave and True by Lenore Look

Grades 3 - 5
Drita My Homegirl by Jenny Lombard
Becoming Naomi Leon by Pam Munoz Ryan
Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis
Sing a Song of Tuna Fish by Esme Raji Codell
M.C. Higgins the Great by Virginia Hamilton
The Road to Paris by Nikki Grimes

Grades 5 - 7
Small Steps by Louis Sacher (sequel to Holes)
Hush by Jaqueline Woodson
Bucking the Sarge by Christopher Paul Curtis
The Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin
LeGuin wrote her Earthsea series with a variety of races in mind. It isn’t stressed in the books, but skin color is occasionally mentioned. When the movies were made she wasn’t consulted about who should play the parts. In this Slate article LeGuin discusses how the TV mini series changed her characters from a variety of shades of skin tone and ethnicity to white guys: “Most of the characters in my fantasy and far-future science fiction books are not white. They're mixed; they're rainbow. In my first big science fiction novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, the only person from Earth is a black man, and everybody else in the book is Inuit (or Tibetan) brown. In the two fantasy novels the miniseries is "based on," everybody is brown or copper-red or black, except the Kargish people in the East and their descendants in the Archipelago, who are white, with fair or dark hair. The central character Tenar, a Karg, is a white brunette. Ged, an Archipelagan, is red-brown. His friend, Vetch, is black. In the miniseries, Tenar is played by Smallville's Kristin Kreuk, the only person in the miniseries who looks at all Asian. Ged and Vetch are white.”


The trouble with writing a story with non-white characters where their ethnicity isn’t stressed is that most white people don’t register the possibility that normal life includes all ethnicities. If the book cover doesn’t have a picture of a brown face on it and the plot doesn’t revolve around racism and ethnic identity, it doesn’t enter our minds that the character might not be white like us. I was looking through Codell’s book Sahara Special, for instance. Is the main character white? I can’t tell. Someone suggested that Gregor the Overlander had non-white characters. I hadn’t noticed that at all when I read it. Did you?


Take a look over at the original article and the comments at Anti-Racist Parent and then leave a comment with your book suggestions please.