Three Random Rambles: On Magical Candy Bowls, Ikea Green Beans, and Yoga Twerking

This is PeachBird, the crazy-eyed pigeon I met in NYC. He is my blog's new mascot. Because . . . how could I not make him my mascot?

1. The highly skilled people of the universe should develop a candy bowl that spontaneously gives rise/gives birth to new candies (i.e. once the Reese's are fully depleted, slowly-one-by-one the Skittles will begin to pile up; once those delicious bites have been consumed, M&Ms will arrive. Then the Dots. Butterfingers. So on and so forth.)

2. I had a dream recently (perhaps it was a nightmare) that I purchased Ikea's entire stock of green beans--and then some lady started fighting me for them! Messed up dream because . . . I don't think Ikea even sells green beans?! #DreamRealmsBeFlawed

3. The Yoga-Teacher-Master in class recently used the word "twerk." As in, don't "twerk" your leg the wrong way. I write for a celebrity tabloid blog so, naturally, my Miley-Cyrus tainted mind went in so many different places. Dear Yogi, please stick to your fancy yoga language nobody understands.

Fight for Equality (In a Time of Global Warming)

It's important to look at the variations in our world as being things that not only add color and interest to the universe but create a solid ground whereupon we can journey onward in our fight for equality.

Every day we see our species working toward honoring different perspectives and welcoming variations of all types; however, there's neverending work to be done in this voyage toward acceptance. Ignorance and hate, as looming entities, will always exist--but, if we fight hard, perhaps we can all strive to make the world a more welcoming place for everyone, without discriminating them based upon their backgrounds, cultures, or perspectives. 

I'm an optimistic person, and always strive to see the good, and will continue be an advocate for this notion that great power rests in the existence of variation, variability, and diversity.

~~~

I recently read Francesca Lia Block's Love in the Time of Global Warming, a piece of YA fiction with a wonderfully diverse set of characters on an Odyssey-sized adventure: totally epic in a quiet, literary sort of way. Her voice is unlike any other's, and her careful attention to language makes one wonder if each sentence was cut with a diamond. The story got me thinking not only about the importance of diversity in YA literature but how important it is to fight for equality--of every kind--within our everyday lives. Literature is just one of the many tools that can aid in this fight.

[Header image by Nick]

Banned Books Week 2013: Rainbow Rowell Discusses Censorship & Love with The Toast

Rainbow Rowell, author of Eleanor & Park and Fangirl, discusses censorship and love in a recent interview with The Toast. Unfortunately, I haven't read either books yet, but they're both sitting tall and proud in in my To Be Read Pile, and I hope to give them their rightful attention soon--as I've only heard wonderful things about them. 

It's truly sad that some places around the country feel the need to remove (or rally to remove) books from their shelves and, in the process, potentially deprive a young person of a story that just might change his or her life for the better.

There has also been an abundance of wonderful illustration work surrounding Rowell's story. One of my faves is above--the artist, Henna Lucas, here. 

While Banned Books Week officially runs through the 28th of September, we should celebrate the right to read stories--any and all types--all year round! The American Library Association has a really fantastic interactive timeline listing a few of the most frequently challenged books. Is your fave on the list?

Best. Acceptance. Speech. EVER. Thx. Bye.

Let's Get Sexual: Sex in YA Lit

As a YA writer, it's always interesting to hear how others deal with sex in their work. Carrie Mesrobian, author of the forthcoming Sex & Violence (Carolrhoda LAB, Oct. 2013), and editor Andrew Karre talked about sex in YA lit at the Children's and Young Adult Literature Conference at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. 

I wasn't in attendance; however, I stumbled across their main points of discussion on Mesrobian's blog (via YA Highway) and they're quite enlightening--especially if you're always thinking about how young adults/new adults view or contemplate sex, both inside and outside the realms of fiction.

Two points (as outlined by Mesrobian) I find particularly enlightening:

1. You can write YA that doesn't have sexual content in it. What you cannot do is write imaginable young adult characters without thinking about them with respect to sex.

6. Adolescence, the notion of childhood innocence, and the concept of privacy are all relatively modern inventions. Reluctance to speak about sex or even expose children or young adults to sex has not always been the norm throughout human history. Also, teenagers have very little privacy in general, less now in the social media age. YA stories that feature long expanses in which characters have uninterrupted romantical sex are in conflict with this reality.

Chinua Achebe: The Bravery, even, of the Lions

Chinua Achebe was a great writer and perhaps most famously known for his work Things Fall Apart. As a student, I actually read the assigned material (as opposed to my Sparknoting colleagues) and this piece, an intimate examination of colonial powers and their influence on traditional African culture, will always be one of those works of literature that I carry with me.

The literary world recently lost this great writer at the age of 82 and, in memoriam of his passing, I think we should all remember what great works of literature have the power to do: tell people's stories that otherwise might not be told or heard.

In a 1994 interview with The Paris Review, Achebe contemplates the importance of telling all sides--every side--of the story:

"There is that great proverb — that until the lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter. That did not come to me until much later. Once I realized that, I had to be a writer. I had to be that historian. It’s not one man’s job. It’s not one person’s job. But it is something we have to do, so that the story of the hunt will also reflect the agony, the travail — the bravery, even, of the lions."

The bravery, even, of the lions.

Random Ramble: I'd Like A Teacup Piglet Please

I recently had the pleasure of holding a very tiny, very snorty teacup piglet. Gah! It was so damn adorable. When he started falling asleep in my lap I was like . . . .

"All! This! Cuteness! I! Can't! Handle!"

Magical Realities, Perspectives, and the Human Condition: What Does Fantasy Do?

As a person and writer, I've never been able to look at a rock and see just a rock. The rock might grow a pair of legs and walk about the world, wondering why he's been given such a hard exterior in a land full of soft things, or that same rock might sprout a pair of wings and desire a home in the nest of an eagle. Perhaps I'm prone to disregarding the rules and laws of our world because I never quite meshed with my Organic Chemistry and Physics textbooks; or, perhaps, I gravitate toward this magical way of thinking because it is how I come to interact with and wrap my head around the confusing experiences of life.

For me, it's important to embrace this idea of other within literature because it encourages us to stand on our heads and view the world from a different perspective: a fantastical way for us to understand the human condition and experience.

I tell fantastical stories because I don't believe in saying to a character, You have to stop now--you can't go any farther because reality tells you no. I tell fantastical stories because I live for that moment when a character stumbles over that word no and does something special with it. There are many heavy things in this world, and it is my greatest pleasure as a writer to see how a character will interact with that weight: How might he lift it? How might she movie it? How will their directions change once that weight rests in their hands? [These questions might easily be applied to all genres of literature, including realistic--how might they take on different meanings?]

I tell fantastical stories because what if always has and always will intrigue me.

For me, a successful piece of fantastical literature conveys the notion that we don't always have to participate in the traditionally accepted versions of reality in order to understand ourselves and the inherent qualities that make us human. In my eyes, the goal of fantastical literature is to break apart the world we've come to know and, using all those pieces, a combination of recognizable things and never-before-seen things, slowly and carefully snap the universe back together again.