Salman Rushdie's Inner Child

Salman Rushdie was awarded the British knighthood in 2007 for his services to literature.

I love Salman Rushdie's earlier works, especially the THE MOORS LAST SIGH. I can't help but envy the way he concocts sentences, each lush with imagery, touching all the senses, transporting you within the pages of his stories. But after SATANIC VERSES, something happened. Well, of course having a fatwa hanging over your head can wreak havoc with any writers creativity... THE GROUND BENEATH HER FEET, FURY, and SHALIMAR THE CLOWN didn't quite light up the page as his other works did.

This month Sir Salman comes out with his second book for children, twenty years after his first. He wrote LUKA AND THE FIRE OF LIFE for Milan, his 13-year-old son by his third wife Elizabeth West. The book is a companion volume to HAROUN AND THE SEA OF STORIES, written in the dark early days of the fatwa – for Zafar, the son he had with his first wife Clarissa Luard. The book (according the the Guardian) follows the formula of an old-fashioned quest, the young hero must complete a dangerous journey and has all sorts of adventures on the way. I haven't read it yet, but my fingers are crossed the old Salman is back...

An Evening with Greg Mortenson

The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family -- Balti Proverb

This past weekend I attended the San Francisco Gala event of DIL – Developments in Literacy. DIL is dedicated to providing quality education to disadvantaged children, especially girls, by establishing and operating schools in the underdeveloped regions of Pakistan. It has a strong focus on gender equality and community participation. Since its inception in 1997, the organization now operates and manages 150 schools, with an enrollment of nearly 15,000 students.

The key note speaker was Dr. Adil Najam, a professor at Boston University and a senior fellow at the International Institute for Sustainable Development. Dr. Najam served as a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), work for which the IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with Al Gore. His talk focused on the urgency to uplift the millions of poor in Pakistan by allowing them a chance to improve their lives through education. As I’ve mentioned before, he stressed the critical importance of educating girls, for when you educate a girl you improve not only her life, but that of her children and the community.

The special guest of honor at the event was Greg Mortenson, whose NYT bestselling book, THREE CUPS OF TEA, illuminates the importance of overcoming cultural divides and stresses that education is the solution to poverty. Greg's book has had a tremendous impact on me and my husband, who uses Greg's example in his class. We were looking forward to hearing him speak, but unfortunately, Greg was out sick. In his place stepped in Professor Abdul Jabbar, Board Chairman of Greg’s organization, the Central Asia Institute.
Professor Jabbar spoke candidly about Greg’s amazing work in building schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. He also shared a poem with us – a poem that was sent to Greg by an American soldier stationed in Afghanistan. In it, the solider, who’d just read THREE CUPS OF TEA, explains how he sits for hours behind a wall, listening to kids playing on the other side. As he marvels at their innocence, he ponders whether his gun is the answer to why he is there. He believes the only way to overcome ignorance is education. This soldier helped organize a fundraiser in Alabama to raise money for schools in Afghanistan.

It’s amazing how a book can spark so much change, little and large

The Two Ms. Pierces'

Studies have shown that American children who learn to read by the third grade are less likely to end up in prison, drop out of school, or take drugs

There’s an open secret in the publishing world that to get boys to read, the protagonist should be a boy. Historically, children's books abound with male protagonists who have adventures, save the world and accomplish mighty feats and reap the glories, whether they are Peter Pan, Charlie Bucket, Harry Potter or Percy Jackson. Although I this is a blanket statement and I don’t agree with if fully (I’ve met lots of boys, and grown men, who love Ramona and Laura Ingalls Wilder) there is a tinge of truth to the sentiment. In WordHustler’s interview with Ben Barnhart, Young Readers Editor at Milkweed Editions, he states --

“Girls make up, by a wide margin, the larger audience of readers, and there’s a lot of debate about whether boys simply don’t read or whether they don’t read because publishers are only publishing books for girls. There’s also a rule of thumb that says girls will read books about both boy and girl protagonists, whereas boys will only read books about boy protagonists.”

Although girls are omnivores of the reading world, they need to have access to books that have nuanced female protagonists. These characters should reflect a host of personality types, face adversity, succeed and fail at whatever they strive for. At the end of the day, the key for an author is to create characters who resonate with the reader – readers, whether they are boys or girls, need to believe in the protagonists journey and take away something from having read the book.

I encountered Alanna when I was elementary school, and I was hooked. Here was a girl after my own heart – a girl who defies convention and becomes a knight. She has successes and failures, yet prevails through it all. Tamora Pierce wrote ALANNA: THE FIRST ADVENTURE in 1983 and it was a ground breaking series of novels. Within a year I stumbled across Meredith Ann Pierce's DARK ANGEL trilogy, about a young slave girl, Aeriel, who defeats vampires and saves the world. These are books both boys and girls should read – the character of the protagonists transcends sex, and their accomplishments are universal.

The two Ms. Pierces’ introduced readers to tough minded, multi dimentional characters who went for what they wanted, stumbled, failed and succeeded, but perhaps not in ways they thought they would, or should. They got me love reading and planted the seeds to write – so thank you!

Indian to Indian

One in every 130 people living in the United States today is Native American.

Last night, my nieces reminded me that today was Columbus Day. I got to thinking about Christopher -- a monumental, yet controversial figure. After five centuries, he has been variously described as one of the greatest maritime navigators, a visionary genius, a mystic, a national hero, a failed administrator, a naive entrepreneur, and a ruthless and greedy imperialist.

Soon it triggered a memory of when I was a twelve. While visiting my sister, who was a college student, we hopped on a bus and headed across Oakland towards UC Berkeley. One of the regulars on the bus, a dapper old lady – a social butterfly and self proclaimed bus monitor, looked at us and asked where we were from. We said we were Indian. She paused a moment, analyzed our appearance and asked, “From which tribe?” My sister and I looked at each other and it dawned on us that she thought we were Native American. “No,” replied my sister. “We’re not that kind of Indian,” we’re from India. “Oh,” she said, and wandered off.

Photo 1: White Shield, an Indian Chief, 1908 by Edward S. Curtis. Photo 2: Maharaja of Patiala’, Bhupinder Singh, source unknown.

So, I’m the kind of Indian Columbus was actually looking for when he set sail from Spain, hoping to hit the Indies. His charter was to establish a foothold for Spain in the lucrative spice trade, which at the time was controlled by the Arabs and the Italians. And he would have found us if he’d followed common convention and gone east, over land, instead of west, across the sea. But instead, he had the idea that crossing the Atlantic was faster – he believed that earth's circumference was smaller than commonly agreed upon, thus the route would be quicker. I wonder what would have happened if he’d found us, instead of the Americas, and not set forth the domino effect of exploration, imperialism, colonization, exploitation and the eradication of native peoples.

I just reread Sherman Alexie’s THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN. When I read it, years ago, they were simply words on a page – powerful and impactful for sure, but it wasn’t’ till I saw him speak at SCBWI LA, that the words transformed into a living reality of what the repercussions of Columbus travel plans were – so here was the other Indian that Columbus had mistakenly found. The reality sank into my bones and hit me viscerally. So we are connected, the two Indians, in an odd tenuous way -- and for what is worth, I’m very, truly sorry Columbus didn’t go east instead of west.