Erin Entrada Kelly: Seeing myself in a book

“The first time I recall seeing an Asian character in a book was again Judy Blume. She had a book “Just as long as we’re Together.” And one of the characters- she wasn’t the main character, but she was one of the three best friends, and she was an Asian character. And I remember being fascinated by that, because it wasn’t something that I had come across before. And, you know, another thing I like to tell young people is when I was growing up I, all the stories that I wrote for myself were all had white girl characters, and a lot of times they had blonde hair. They certainly weren’t, you know, a part of any marginalized community. And one of the great things about this year’s Newbery honorees is that they’re all people of color. And the great thing is that young people today more and more will be able to see themselves in books, and they’ll be whenever they sit down to write when they’re 8 years old like I was, they’ll write characters that look like them, because they’ll know that their stories are valid. It never even occurred to me even into adulthood to have a story with a Filipino character until I wrote “Blackbird Fly,” which was my first book. And that’s really sad, you know. When you think about it. So I’m happy to be writing at a time right now where there’s more and more of those stories available, so that people know that their stories are valuable and that they need to be heard.”