I had planned to watch the show and happened to see one such warning before I watched the series so I was prepared. I watched a couple of episodes, then called it a night. The next morning I was unsettled and reached out to my fellow contributors here on Rich in Color. No one had seen it yet, but Jessica said she was planning to as well. As we chatted, I felt that our conversation should be shared with our readers, so Jessica and I decided to write our thoughts down and have a conversation after she watched a few episodes herself. 

Oh, and spoilers abound! 

First off, before we dive into this conversation: Have you read the Grishaverse series? How much did you know about the story going in?

K. Imani: As everyone knows I love fantasy so I’m open to reading all sorts of fantasy books. I read the Shadow & Bone series a few years ago and enjoyed it. When the Six of Crows duology came out I read those too and actually enjoyed those better than the original series. Why – more diversity? It also expanded the world and the different perspectives of “Grisha” like folk from other cultures. It was very clear from the writing that Bardugo realized her first series was very lacking in diversity and worked hard to change it. I actually re-read both series during quarantine, so I had a fair idea of what the Netflix series would be about. 

Jessica: I’ve actually never read a single Grishaverse book! I know, shocking. I only knew two things about the series going into the show: 1) Six of Crows is a heist book? 2) Ben Barnes is a person who exists. 

The cast announcement for any show is always so exciting, and Shadow and Bone was no different. How did you feel about the casting — before and after you watched the show? What did you think was done well, and what did you think could be improved?

K. Imani: Before watching the show I was actually a bit confused about some of the casting choices. I didn’t understand why 3 of the main Six of Crows characters were in the show and I honestly did not make the connection to Alina and Mal being biracial. Knowing that the Grishaverse is “Russian-based” and knowing that some ethnic Mongolians are considered Russian I just found it cool that the show cast a person who didn’t fit a Russian stereotype. Oh boy was I way off! Overall I was pleased with the casting and think all the actors did a great job. I liked the few changes they did make with casting actors of colors for other roles to round out the diversity of the world. 

Bringing it back to Mal, I was confused as to if he was supposed to be coded as biracial. I missed the reference in the show, but I did read somewhere that he was supposed to be as well and that is what bonded him to Alina. If that’s the case, then how come Alina was the only person to experience racism? That thought continues to sit on my heart because it shows that the writers did not really think through how they wanted to express racism and included it for the wrong reasons. 

Jessica: My reaction was basically, “I’m happy that other people seem happy!” since again, I had no context for the show. Casting on Netflix shows often seems to be a case of “cool, this is some exciting casting… but definitely could be better and even more intentional.”

K. Imani: “More intentional” That is the word right there! Making a story more diverse is wonderful and fully reflects the world we live in, however if you just randomly do it without thinking it through it comes off as insensitive. I know Leigh Bardugo used this show as an opportunity to make her story better (and I do not begrudge her of that fact) but when one doesn’t think it through, the criticism that is being expressed is a direct result. 

Jessica: Sidenote — I ended up watching a booktube video titled “Darker Jesper, Fat Nina, Shadow and Bone Casting Thoughts” on booktube channel Chronicles of Noria about the casting. Highly recommend checking it out. I also recommend this profile on Jessie Mei Li, who talks about being gender nonconforming. 

Did any changes in the Netflix adaptation stick out to you? Were there changes you liked or disliked?

K. Imani: My favorite part of the adaptation is how well the show runners included the Six of Crows characters into the narrative. The storyline completely worked for me and connected the two stories together. I really enjoyed the Arken storyline (and the character tbh) as it was used to flesh out the world of the Grishaverse, which made the series much more interesting. I also liked the change of making Ivan and Fedyor a couple instead of just Darkling’s henchmen as it humanized them and actually made me like Ivan because they were so cute together. Though how that will come into play after the events of Episode 8 will be interesting. I’m a sucker for the Enemies to Lover trope so I loved that Nina’s & Matthia’s story of how they came together was included here. In either Six of Crows or Crooked Kingdom (I don’t remember), it was told as a flashback, but I loved that it was moved here as their “origin story”, so to speak, and how it connects to the events of the Alina timeline. 

What I didn’t like…the casual racism. It really bothered me and left me sad the next morning. For example, a certain poster shown in the first episode had me physically cringe and I was upset that 1)  the production designers even created it and 2) no one, at no point, said that was a bad idea? Come on! It was horrible to see and I can imagine the hurt an AAPI would experience seeing that. And then, it got worse. Racial slurs thrown around a couple of times in the first couple of episodes to show that Alina is an outsider. They were jarring and took me out of the narrative. Having read the books I knew there was tension between the Ravkans and Shu Han, so I could understand what the show runners were trying to do, but it was actually never explained in show, hence making the racism feel random and just there for shock value. 

Jessica: I saw tweets going around alluding to the racism Alina (and other characters to a less frequent extent) faced, so I braced myself for it. I’m only a few episodes in, and the instances so far were brief… but it just didn’t feel right. The foundation for this portrayal of racism wasn’t laid properly. And if the work of laying the foundation and really digging into what it means for the overall worldbuilding doesn’t happen… then why include it at all? Especially if it might be painful for certain viewers? I’m sure harm wasn’t the intent, but that’s the impact. Why not leave it out and let the show be escapism? 

K. Imani: Jessica, the eyes comment took me out, not gonna lie. I audibly screamed. Anyone who has experienced a racist comment based on their looks felt that in their gut which is horrible when watching a show for escapism. 

Jessica: Yeah, the eyes and rice-eater comments were especially frustrating. On top of it being a reminder of the racism Asians experience daily… it doesn’t make much sense. Like, canonically, do people in Ravka not eat rice? An American’s conception of racism isn’t necessarily going to make sense in a (Imperial Russia-inspired) fantasy world. But maybe I’m missing something since I didn’t read the original books. 

And the eyes comment… whoof. When I was a kid, other kids would make fun of my eyes and ask me to, like, count seagulls because surely, I couldn’t see out of my eyes… And the other kids were also Asian! Internalized racism is so real. It’s disappointing that Shadow and Bone would include this experience as, I don’t know, discrimination flavor text. Surely there were better ways to portray discrimination that made sense within the Grishaverse… 

Ellen Oh really said it so well: “If a writer is going to show racism against Asians, it’s important to balance it with the beauty of all that makes us Asian also.” Where is the balance? Where is the nuance? Even if Alina’s Shu Han mother isn’t alive, couldn’t Alina have had a treasured Shu Han pendant? Just spitballing here. There were so many possibilities.

K. Imani: Exactly. I agree with Ellen and unfortunately there is no balance. That’s what makes it so hurtful. The focus is on how bad it is that she’s biracial and how bad the Shu Hans are for no specific reason. Because Alina is an orphan and grew up in Ravka, she unfortunately has no connection to Shu Han culture (or at least what is shown on screen) so all that she identifies as is Ravkan who just happens to look like a Shu Han person, but she doesn’t exhibit any pride in being Shu Han. Her ethnicity is just another obstacle to overcome which is all the more cringeworthy and why having Alina be biracial just to be biracial without thinking it through ended up being so problematic. Having her be biracial and using casual racism as an “obstacle” that she has to overcome is such a shallow interpretation of racism and shows the writers didn’t do the work to really think about the why the racism exists. 

In addition to talking about what was done well and what went wrong or felt off about certain representation, it’s important to look at the “how.” How did this happen? 

Jessica: I read on Twitter that one of the show writers is Korean and biracial — which is awesome! I was really heartened to hear that. But at the same time, this highlights how important it is to have multiple marginalized voices in the room who can speak with some level of expertise. I don’t know the decision-making process that went into including this sort of surface-level, simplistic version of real world racism, but I wonder if anyone, at any point, said “is there a more nuanced and original way to portray this?” or “how will this affect Asian viewers?” Did someone bring it up, and they were overruled? What happened?

This absolutely isn’t a judgment on the Asian writers or staff on the show. When I’ve done collaborative writing, there were times I caught an issue and said “we need to be more sensitive about this” — and there were other times when my teammates pointed out something I didn’t notice. It happens! That’s why it’s so important to have multiple marginalized perspectives when creating something — especially when it’s a work as impactful and far-reaching as a Netflix show. Placing the burden of complex, nuanced representation on one, or a scant handful, of marginalized creators is just not going to work… and it’s not fair to the creators, either. 

Frankly, this is a problem in so many industries — film, publishing, games… there are so many “diverse” shows, games, etc with all-white or majority white teams. Good, nuanced representation can only happen when BIPOC / marginalized creators are the majority and have power behind-the-scenes. (This is why I’m really excited to watch the show Rutherford Falls — half the writers room are Indigenous writers, as is the co-creator!)

K. Imani: Exactly! It’s great that one of the writers is biracial and Korean, but if she’s the only one how much input did she really have? I’m by no means knocking her experience but, say for example, that particular poster in the first episode. No one else behind the scenes found it problematic? There are many steps to a production process and that poster, if there had been more diverse voices present on the production staff instead of just 1 writer, would have been flagged as a huge problem and redone. The poster was supposed to be a “short cut” to show Ravkan/Shu Han tension but instead it came off as so profoundly racist and unnecessary. There are many other non-racist ways to explore the tensions between the two countries that could have been explored instead of just jumping to racism. And…as someone on Twitter pointed out, we never see the tension between the Ravkans and the Shu Han, but we openly see fighting between the Ravkans and the Fjierdans, so why were they not vilified to the same extent? 

Jessica: Right. I’m definitely not saying racism can’t be portrayed in fantasy ever. But if you’re going to do it, make it make sense within the world. Don’t just use it as shorthand for “this character is Other.” I mean, experiencing racism isn’t what makes me Asian… 

K. Imani: Boom! I’m going to repeat that for the people in the back…experiencing racism is not what makes a person Asian or Black, and if you are going to have racism in a work of art, be sure to provide balance to show all the other aspects of a person of color’s life. 

Since we’re talking creators behind-the-scenes… which YA fantasy books by Asian authors do you think would make great Netflix shows or movies? 

Jessica: I’ve got a list about a mile long, but I’ve cut it down to my top four:

• These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
• Forest of a Thousand Lanterns by Julie C. Dao
• The Tiger at Midnight by Swati Teerdhala
• The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee

You’re welcome, Netflix execs who are totally reading this blog. Hop to it! 

K. Imani: I second the Tiger at Midnight series! I loved the first two books and can’t wait for the conclusion in June. While not YA, the City of Brass series would make an excellent Netflix series. Anything Maurene Goo writes would be fun rom-coms (because we need those too!). 

Jessica: I mean, with To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before complete… Netflix clearly needs to start adapting Maurene Goo’s books. 

K. Imani: Yes, the people demand it! I don’t care which book, just grab one of them and get the production started. 

On a final note, I do want to say that despite the criticism the show rightly deserves, there was much about the show that was enjoyable. The storytelling was strong and moved at a good pace, the costuming was on point, special effects worked seamlessly into the narrative, and even small touches such as how the Grishas used their small science was visually interesting. Book adaptations are always hard to pull off well and the Shadow and Bone production team did a good job overall. Their intention towards adding more diversity is a step in the right direction, but just didn’t do enough. Let’s hope they learn from their mistakes and improve for season 2.

Ms. Reese pointed out to me that while reading can help, we still laud classics such as Gone with the Wind, that has very racist depictions of characters. She also pointed out to me that in a number of contemporary novels, Gone with the Wind is revered by the characters and held as an epitome of classic literature, but is not critiqued by those characters for its troublesome elements. Ms. Reese is extremely correct in her assertion that while we cannot forget these horrible and racist literary depictions in our past, we do have the ability, nay responsibility, to critique them and point out to readers how harmful those depictions are.

While we not only have the responsibility of pointing out inaccurate representations, we each also have different responsibilities, things we can actually do to help combat racism through literature. And each of us, depending on how and what way we are involved in the literary world, have different responsibilities – tasks that we can start doing today. Because, like I said earlier, just talking about a problem, without doing action, never resolves anything.

1. Publishers/Agents/Editors: Hire more People of Color. One way to have more diverse books published is to have more people in positions of power be diverse themselves. I know through WNDB of the intern program, which is great and a step forward, but do better. Don’t rely on People of Color to come searching for a job, seek them out. Visit college campuses and create relationships with minority organizations to extend a hand. I guarantee you people of color want to work in the industry, and by hiring them, your company will only benefit. Also, sign contracts with more authors of color. We are out there, sending queries, pitching at conferences, etc. Come find us. And, once you do sign an author of color, promote the mess out of that author. Give them a big push like Hunger Games received, or other big name YA authors. Don’t regale them to the “______-American section”. Give them exposure and I guarantee the readers will be there. Which leads directly to Group #2

2. Parents: Specifically parents from the dominate culture – do not censor your children’s reading habits. Trust your child to make the right decisions, to know where their interest lies and choose books accordingly. I say this from experience as my mother did not censor my reading choices at all. When I was 10 years old I read Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple”. My parents had taken my sister and I to see the movie, and shortly after I saw the novel in the store. I asked my mother if I could read it, and instead of saying “you’re too young,” she grabbed the book off the shelf and handed it to me. Listen parents, I was 10! Yes, I might have been too young to read the book, and some of it I really didn’t understand, but my mother trusted my judgement. Because of many instances where I asked for a book and my mother’s trust in me, I know that is the reason why I have such a diverse literary sense. I’ve read all genres, all types of novels, simply because my parents never said, “this book isn’t for you.” Parents, when you tell your children that and take a book that might have a person of color on the cover, you are telling them that that person’s story doesn’t matter and that you do not trust their own reading habits. Encourage your child to read widely and diversely. When you do that, you have a child who will become more empathetic and more in charge of their own mind.

3. Teachers: We are in charge of educating the future and helping them find their own minds and one of the ways we accomplish this is through literature. Now, I know the Common Core states that our curriculum should be 70% non-fiction and 30% fiction, which is the antithesis of creating thinking empathic students, but as I stated in my essay a few months back titled “Teachers! Choose Diverse Books,” there is a way to still have students read fiction and still read non-fiction texts. The key is to tie the fiction with the non-fiction, and you will expand the themes presented in the novels the students read. Second, DO NOT STICK TO THE WESTERN CANON! When you choose to share “classic” literature with students, you automatically exclude a number of voices and reinforce many troublesome depictions of people of color. An idea would be to create a balance of books, create your own canon, to provide both windows and mirrors for your students. You can also include numerous contemporary literary texts that will engage students on a personal level, as well as include classical translated texts from non-Western countries to give historical perspectives of life outside the United States.

4. Librarians: Keep doing what you’re doing. I was floored by the push for diversity at the MidWinter ALA meeting and the results of all the awards given to diverse books at the end of the meeting. If any advice I could give, would be to continue to promote diverse books, continue to order diverse books for all kids, and continue to give awards to diverse books.

Change doesn’t happen overnight and it sometimes is messy, and is always hard, however, if we don’t try, don’t fight, then change will never come. The same authors will continue to get published, the same stories told, and true equality for our world will not exist. I, for one, do not want to live in that world. I want a different world for my students, for my godson, for my niece and nephew. I want them to be able to have more books that are mirrors instead of windows into a world that must learn in order to survive in. I want their future to be one in which all people are seen as equal and that all stories are valid. Literature is one way we can achieve that world, if only we all do our part.

I’m going to admit something a bit embarrassing, but all to real for readers of color. When I first read Daughter of Smoke and Bone, I made the mistake of not clearly reading the physical descriptions of the character Akiva. I was enjoying the story, inhaling the gripping twists and turns that I did what many readers do – defaulted in my mental picture of Akiva (i.e. White guy). It wasn’t until I was reading the last book of the trilogy, Dreams of Gods & Monsters, that I realized my error. There was a description of him that brought me up short. I stopped, read the line again, and my mental picture changed. I grabbed the first book in the series and scanned looking for physical descriptions and bam, found my error. I had read the words, but did not truly take in what skin tone the descriptions meant.

I imagined this….

Now I picture this….

While I can’t fault the author for my misinterpreting, I think if she had included a few more physical descriptions, I think I would have caught my mistake earlier. She clearly described the main female character, Karou, many times so the reader could create a full mental picture, but with Akiva, the descriptions are few and somewhat vague. It is really easy to see how in this instance, a reader could default. There have been many discussions about how much description a writer should use when writing a character of color; the debate being giving too much description or is it “othering” to only describe characters of color. I am in the camp of that a writer should be specific in their descriptions and to repeat a few times throughout the novel. Let us be aware of what the characters look like, otherwise we will default to the Eurocentric standards of beauty.

In Dreams of Gods & Monsters, Laini Taylor changed up her tactic and spent more time giving character descriptions, repeating them sometimes in beautiful ways to make sure the reader know that the characters that inhabit the world of her story are very diverse. The novel takes place in different places in our world and on an entirely different world, but all the people in both worlds are made of a variety of colors. By making sure both her worlds were reflective of the racial diversity of our world, the book felt more grounded in reality (as much as she can make it). This attention to detail in her character descriptions made the book extremely enjoyable to me. I liked knowing that in a major event in our world, all the people would be represented, and that even in a different world, the different colors are all represented as well.

Another aspect of the novel, a “Diversity Surprise” moment, was that Taylor also made one of the major characters a Black woman. I actually sat up and read the description twice because I was so happy to see this character included. I loved that a Black character was included in the ensemble and that the focus was not on her being Black, but other things which I can’t say because….

But I will say that Taylor wrote her character to perfection as she was a real character where we learned more about her fears, her hopes, her dreams, instead of focusing just on her race. When authors ask “how do I write a character of color,” the aspects of the character’s personality is what they should focus on, not just a character’s race. A writer still should address it someone, after all, race does color how one views the world, but do so sparingly as dealing with racial issues is not something a POC worries about 24/7. For example, Taylor has Eliza describing her interactions with a hostile co-worker, she writes, “Eliza was used to being underestimated, because she was black, and because she was a woman, but no one had ever been quite so vile about it as Morgan”. Talk about your intersectionality laid out in one sentence! Taylor has lines like this peppered throughout out Eliza’s narrative, but it is not the focus of her story, it is just Eliza’s observations that she has from time to time. Those little moments, those small comments, will show that a writer has done his/her homework when creating a character of color and will make the character read like a real person instead of a stereotype.

I’m sad that Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone series has come to an end because I really did love its epic story. I highly recommend this fantasy series to anyone who also loves plot twists that keep you reading well past your bed time, and characters that make morally gray decisions in order to survive. The story is gritty in it’s realness in regards to war and doesn’t hold back with the darkness just because it’s considered a YA novel. I fully respect authors who don’t insult the intelligence of the teen reader and my respect for Laini Taylor has grown three-fold with her creation of a truly diverse world.

Seriously, go buy this series.  You will not be disappointed.

In the following TED Talk, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie speaks about the “Danger of the Single Story.” Adichie explains that many individuals only know one story about a people and that may lead to stereotyping. When we know only one story about a culture, the risk is that we assign that story to all the people we believe are part of that group. Adichie provides an amazing and at times amusing presentation that speaks to the need for more stories about each other. This video is from 2009, but even if you have viewed it previously, it’s worth a second or even third look. Photographer Matika Wilbur also touches on this idea in her TED Talk. She’s concerned about the single picture that many people may have in their minds about Native Americans due to media exposure. Her current project is photographing individuals from 562 federally recognized Tribal Nations with a goal to “unveil the true essence of contemporary Native issues, the beauty of Native culture, the magnitude of tradition, and expose her vitality” (quoted from her blog). She is not only creating portraits, but is collecting their many and varied stories to share. This video is also well worth the few minutes it takes to watch.

Wondering where to find a multitude of stories?
It’s no secret that there is a serious lack of diversity in Young Adult and Children’s Literature. There have been a large number of blog posts and articles recently to that effect. But there are some diverse books being published. They are not in the numbers I would like to see, but they do exist. They can be hard to find, so we have some resources on our blog to help make it easier. In the tabs at the top of this page, we provide a release calendar that displays titles scheduled to be published in the coming months. In addition, we have a resource page with links to many excellent websites/blogs that review and share diverse literature along with links to publishers focusing on diverse materials. We created a Goodreads profile with a growing list of titles and there are also blogs in our blog roll on the right-hand side of the page that focus on diversity.

But how can we know which stories are accurate representations?
Matika Wilbur noted in her TED Talk that some Native American images and stories from the media have been damaging to Native people. As a school librarian, I want to provide many diverse stories for my students, but not all stories are helpful. Just look at some of the early Newbery Award winners. There were a few books with cultural diversity, but several fed into stereotypes (one I highlight below). As an educator, I have to evaluate the resources I am providing to our staff and students. I am clearly not an expert on every culture in the world, but here are a few questions* that help guide me in my selection process for school and also as a reader:

• Who is the author and what experience or knowledge do they have as they write from this cultural perspective? (This helps me understand the lens the reader will be looking through)
• If they are not a native of that culture, is it published by a publisher from that culture and/or has it been favorably reviewed by someone from that culture?
• Are the characters distinct, fully developed and free of bias and/or stereotypes?
• If there are illustrations, are they free of bias and/or stereotypes?
• Is it a well developed and engaging story?

It can be helpful to know the lens of the author. In the case of Shen of the Sea: Chinese Stories for Children (1926 Newbery winner), the stories were filled with broken English, verbal caricatures and misinformation. I read Shen last year and was horrified. As I investigated his knowledge base of Chinese culture, I found a post from a blogger named Amanda. She pointed to the April 1, 1994 issue of School Library Journal. In it Margaret Chang wrote, “Chrisman had never been to China, did not read Chinese, and claimed to be aided by two Chinese speakers, but gave no sources for the stories in his book” (p 42). According to the book’s description Shen is comprised of “Sixteen stories reflecting the spirit of Chinese life and thought.” Chrisman appears to have taken what he knew about Chinese culture, consulted a Chinese shopkeeper or two in California about some of the details and proceeded to create original stories. He may have even been doing this in some way to “honor” Chinese culture, but this is not a book I will be purchasing or sharing with my students.

I tend to specifically seek out books that are written from an insider’s perspective like No Crystal Stair, Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, and Since You Asked, but there are also people born outside a culture who have provided authentic representation. Debby Dahl Edwardson is not Inupiaq (Eskimo) by birth, but she’s been a part of that culture for many years. She has written powerful stories with fully developed, realistic characters in her YA historical novels, My Name is Not Easy and Blessing’s Bead. My Name is Not Easy is a look into the effect of the residential schools on Native students and their families. She did not rely on stereotypes, but created complex and unique characters. On her blog, American Indians in Children’s Literature, Debbie Rees shared Beverly Slapin’s very favorable review. I would recommend Edwardson’s books without hesitation and there are many other talented authors that learn about a culture and successfully represent it in their novels.

We may not have balanced representation in publishing yet, but there are some fabulous pieces of literature that can be our mirrors and windows. Let’s seek them out and share them.

Chang, M. A. (1994). Chinoiserie in American picture books: Excursions to Cathay. School Library Journal, 40(4), 42.

*Some of my questions were developed with influence from Full Circle’s Criteria for Authentic Native American Books & Oyate’s comprehensive evaluation criteria