CBC Diversity
Month
By Susan Tan
As a child, I was enthralled by traditions.
I loved them, from going to Hebrew school, to my parent’s tradition of letting us eat ice cream for dinner on April Fool’s day, to the way we lined our shoes up in straight, neat rows before going inside my Nai Nai and Ye Ye’s[1] apartment.
This love of traditions has lasted into my adult life, and I often wonder if my family and our traditions are the reason that I write. My mother’s family is Jewish, and came over from Russia several generations ago. My father’s family is Chinese and Christian, and my Ye Ye was an evangelical Christian minister. I’ve inherited a rich family history that teems with stories, from my grandparents’ accounts of their close escape from Communist China with my father as an infant, to the stories my mother’s mother tells of Passover Seders all in Hebrew and Yiddish, with linen napkins so big they spilled from your lap to the floor. We’re also a family that continually generates new narratives, because when you ask your evangelical minister grandfather to please come up to say an Aaliyah at your Bat Mitzvah, that simple act is, in itself, a pretty excellent story.
By Soman Chainani
Writing THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD & EVIL series is like running a fantasy corporation. Six years into writing, five books later, I wake up every day and juggle over 150 characters, 40 plot lines, and a world so big it feels like it’s outgrowing my own head. But it’s what I was born to do – write big worlds and sophisticated stories that can keep up with a clever child’s imagination.
But there was something else I was born to do, only I never thought I’d find an outlet to do it: tell my own story.
And my most personal story is about my grandmother, who without sounding too crass, was a person far more significant in my life than my own parents. We shared the same birthday. We both liked gourmet food and fancy hotels, even if we couldn’t afford them. We both were highly suspicious of my grandfather. And most of all, we were deeply, deeply unhappy.
But Nani didn’t want me to be. And something about my own unhappiness made her intolerant of her own.
And so the summer trips began.
The Super Life of Ben Braver by Marcus Emerson (Roaring Brook Press, March 2018). All rights reserved. @macmillanchildrensbooks
