Jonathan, it seems like this question has been raised because you feel people were using their “liberal ideology” to take issue with how Indians were treated in a book you supported, “A Season of Gifts,” so you in return raised the issue of racial tokenism about a book you felt people were “besotted with” though you didn’t care for it much. But you haven’t given any specific examples of how you thought Julia was a token, despite the fact that people have asked for that.

Is your view that any black characters in the story would serve only as the black people in Miranda’s life? (There are others in her life besides Julia – Miranda says that Jay Stringer and ten other kids don’t complain about the brown paper they were given for self-portraits.) Miranda starts by misjudging Julia, and Sal, and Marcus. She learns more about Julia, and Sal, and Marcus, and changes the way she interacts with them. How does that make Julia a token? Can you explain what you see about Julia that you think is tokenism? If it’s that she’s the one black character that Miranda gets close to, keep in mind that up until the story begins, Miranda hasn’t been close to anyone but Sal, ever. So she makes three new friends: Annemarie, Colin, and eventually Julia. Why is that tokenism?

I think it’s a good thing to question our beliefs and assumptions about books and about race. This is about textual evidence and examples.

I definitely think it’s possible to love a book so much that one overlooks its flaws; that happens to me more often with books I read as a child. But I feel pretty safe saying that if I had found insensitivity or tokenism in WYRM, I wouldn’t have been “besotted” with it. (Actually, I had several of the same issues with the book that the anonymous poster above did, and only rated the book 4 of 5 stars on Goodreads for that reason.) I also think it’s possible to focus so much on a book’s flaws that one can’t see its strengths. When I attended Nina and Sharon’s mock Newbery last year, this really hit home. I disliked aspects of Chains so much that I hadn’t even really thought about the ways in which it was distinguished. Other participants pointed them out to me and I left with more appreciation of the book (though I’m still not crazy about it).

Maybe it’s not an issue, but maybe we are so besotted with this book that we decided to fold up our liberal ideology and stick it in our back pocket. Is it really so wrong to question whether we are being consistent across the board?

Debbie doesn’t play devil’s advocate; she brings up issues that are of concern to her, whether I agree with her stance or not. While I wish Debbie had read/finished the books she commented on before writing, she was commenting on specifics. I understand wanting to look at the book again before getting specific, but perhaps it would have been wise to do that in the first place.

I agree with the teacher who suggested that maybe this hasn’t brought up before because it isn’t really an issue.

WYRM is definately a very different book. It’s not your typical fare. It’s out of the ordinary–very thought provoking.

I’m looking forward to a second go at it.

I think there’s definitely some truth to this, because that scene shocked the crap out of my students! It actually took them some time to process what exactly was happening . . . so maybe you’re on to something there.

(Don’t know what it says about me for jumping to the conclusion that she was black after hearing the colors mentioned earlier in the book . . .)

Sorry I apparently put words in your mouth

Well I am doing a second reading starting right now. And I didn’t say “incoherent rambling”, I said incidental, meaning not really pertaining to the story line. An I never said there weren’t clues…of course there were clues.

The word “confusing” has come up more than once, but never really delved into. I just think the introduction of too much incidential description may have lent to this confusion.

I’m going to pay specific attention to Julia’s portrail. On the first reading I remember colors of browns being described in relation to her skin, but I took it simply as she being dark complected. I never keyed into a specific ethnic group. She could have been black, hispanic, Greek, pacific islander, Native American, Indian or Pakistani…or a caucasion girl with a dark complection.

Maybe this was the author’s intent. Kids look past such things(and this was a first person narration by the MC). So when the incident at the store occured and Jimmy threw out the ethinic insult…maybe it was suposed to come as a surprise to the reader. Guess what–Julia’s black.

Teacher, if you would have read my post’s last two paragraphs I think I indicated that I felt the book had a extremely strong finish. Pointing out that a more focused beginning would make things even stronger certainly isn’t the same thing as “shooting down” the book.