If you’ve grown up playing Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, Lin wants you to know that you can relive its delights with Netflix’s eponymous new series (https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/80167821). It brings entertaining geography lessons alongside fun and dynamic adventures which prove Carmen to be a thief with a heart of gold.

Kelly Yang’s middle-grade novel Front Desk (https://www.frontdeskthebook.com/) features the so-called “sandwich generation” of Chinese immigrants who came to North America in the 1980s-90s. Through the eyes of ten-year old Mia Tang, we grasp the multi-faceted experiences of struggling immigrants, while holding out hope for the better.

Lin's new book FLY WITH ME is available for pre-order now! books2read.com/flywithme

Question of the episode: What’s your experience with learning about the world—history or geography, for example—from fiction?

Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at [email protected].

Lin has been enjoying Netflix comedy specials and she recommends a number of shows that tackle immigration and cultural translation with humour and panache. Such as Maz Jobrani’s Immigrant, Vir Das’s Abroad Understanding and Losing It, Gabriel Iglesias’s I’m Sorry For What I Said When I Was Hungry, Hari Kondabolu’s Warn Your Relatives, Mo Amer’s The Vegabond, Ali Wong’s Baby Cobra and Hard Knock Wife, Gina Yashere’s Laughing to America and Skinny Bitch, and Tig Notaro’s Happy To Be Here and TIG. (Netflix.com)

Margrit talks about Heidi Heilig’s fantasy duology, The Girl from Everywhere & The Ship beyond Time (http://www.heidiheilig.com/books/). Heilig weaves myth & history from all over the world in these beautifully written books, thus taking the whole Eurocentric genre of fantasy in a global direction.

Question of the episode: What stories have you read that paints the world from a non-dominant point of view?

Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at [email protected].

Jackie Lau (https://jackielaubooks.com, https://twitter.com/JackieLauBooks, https://www.instagram.com/jackielaubooks/) joins us for a lively conversation. We talk about indie vs. traditional publishing, writing ethnically diverse characters respectfully, writing humour that eschews damaging stereotypes, and having a great sense of place in a story.

Margrit watched Outrageous Acts of Science (https://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/outrageous-acts-of-science/) because hashtag children on holiday, but liked the diversity of the cast of scientists who comment on the intrepid amateur experiments.

Lin enjoyed Crazy Rich Asians (http://www.crazyrichasiansmovie.net) for its authentically East-Asian scenes and its entertainment value. As a consumer of Asian media, Lin is baffled at how surprised Western audiences were by the quality of this film, and questions why the behind-the-scenes names were not as predominantly Asian as the cast.

Question of the Episode: Have ever found a book or a TV show with a great sense of place that transported you there or made you want to visit?

Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at [email protected].

Lin has been bingeing The Fosters on Netflix (https://www.netflix.com/ca/title/70281526), and she recommends it for broad representation of diversity, in terms of race/ethnicity, gender and sexual identity, as well as disability. It doesn’t hurt that the writers have nailed the dramatic structure, so that each episode ends on a cliff hanger. You have no choice but to binge-watch!

In the mean time, Margrit has caught up to 2016! They watched finally watched Hidden Figures (https://www.foxmovies.com/movies/hidden-figures) and are here to tell you it’s super well done, offering a nuanced glimpse into the hurdles of African American women’s efforts to forge a professional career at NASA in segregated early-1960s Virginia. But, of course, you already knew that, because you haven’t been living under a rock deprived of this awesome film.

Question of the episode: What’s a good show or movie that you’ve watched that walks the talk of diversity?

Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at [email protected].

Tanya Talaga’s non-fiction book Seven Fallen Feathers illustrates the vicious confluence of racist attitudes and a colonizing culture through the stories of seven indigenous children who died in similar circumstances in Thunder Bay, Ontario. We talk about how much of the history and reality of indigenous people living in Canada is still obscured and rendered invisible today.

Echo by Pam Muñoz Ryan weaves the fictional stories of three musically gifted children who live in politically charged times in mid-twentieth century. From Nazi Germany through the American Depression to the impact of Japanese interment in the US during WWII, political turmoil is personalized in the lives of children whose fates are linked by a special harmonica.

Question of the episode: Do you have an example of a story that touched you and informed you of people you didn’t really know much about?

Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at [email protected].

We revisit Green Book, and discuss how marginalized people—or parts of a marginalized existence—are left out of mainstream stories told from a more privileged perspective.

Lin rejoices in the rich conversations about disability at the launch of Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha.

Margrit brings up some middle-grade novels featuring disabled protagonists. In some of them, living with disability is the main plot point, e.g., El Deafo by Cece Bell, Out of My Mind by Sharon M. Draper, and Wonder by R.J. Palacio. In The Magisterium series by Holly Black and Cassandra Clare, the protagonist’s disability is neither easy to overlook, nor an impediment in the adventures he lives through.

Question of the episode: What do you think about the pressures on marginalized people to constantly explain their marginalization?

Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at [email protected].

Lin went to the promisingly titled “Telling Stories in the Age of Historical Amnesia” 2018 Harold Innis Lecture at the University of Toronto, and found it did not live up to the expectations. Charlotte Gray, a highly acclaimed author of historical non-fiction, insisted on the need to understand and critique events in their historical context. We found it troubling when Gray used as an illustrative example the removal of the statue of John A. MacDonald, Canada’s first prime minister, from in front of the city hall in Victoria, British Columbia.

Margrit raves about the Pulitzer-winning novel Less, by Andrew Sean Greer, that rare kind of book that approaches deep issues, but leaves you feeling joyous and hopeful. A book that manages to embed love within its structure, Less deals with all its characters and their idiosyncrasies not with mocking cruelty but with supreme gentleness.

GIVEAWAY: Open from Friday, November 23, to Friday, December 10, 2018. We are giving away a copy of Less by Andrew Sean Greer. To enter, follow us on Twitter @World_ofStories, and answer our question on Twitter or by email at [email protected]. The winner will be drawn randomly and announced on our podcast on December 21, 2018.

Question of the episode: Have you come across a story that involved difficult topics, perhaps controversial, perhaps ugly, yet it was told in a beautiful and uplifting way?

Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at [email protected].

Hope in trying times. Margrit finds refuge in Thích Nhất Hạnh’s book Happiness that combines meditation practices by the renowned Buddhist monk and activist with anecdotes from his daily life. We chat about the West’s penchant for appropriating spiritual practices like meditation and yoga and stripping them of their roots.

Lin’s quest turns sour when the rom-com she chooses, Dating You/Hating You by Christina Lauren, turns out to be a study in barely challenged sexism. With a heroine who’s professionally successful, yet unpopular, and a hero who’s perfect on paper but unconvincing, Dating You/Hating You only goes through the motions of feminism, without actually embracing it.

Question of the episode: Where do you find hopes in trying times?

Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at [email protected].

Lin liked Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You for its complex and unflinching portrayal of life as a racialized minority in 70’s America. The well-crafted story elicits strong emotions through the interwoven narrative strands that revolve around coping with grief and with oppressive social dynamics.

Another interwoven narrative, Brian Selznick’s The Marvels is a touching middle-grade story set against the background of the AIDS crisis in the early nineties. Margrit loved it for the way it unfolds like a mystery with ever higher emotional stakes and for the message that everyone deserves to find themselves reflected in stories.

Question of the episode: Do you have a found story of your own, one that you were so excited to find and really spoke to you for who you were, even if it made you angry with its stark realism? Have you ever had the experience of finding your own story?

Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at [email protected].

Kat Chow of NPR's Code Switch wrote about using the term "yellow" to describe East Asians in her article If We Called Ourselves Yellow. Lin discusses her unease with the term and its association with disease.

From there, a conversation about acetate glasses manufactured to fit only a narrow strip of the population evolves into how stereotypes about races and ethnicities still reign in the popular imagination.

Finally, Margrit raves about Webtoons and their rich and entertaining library of diverse comic art.

Question of the episode: How do you feel about using the word "yellow" to describe East Asians?

Bonus question: Do you have trouble finding glasses that fit? Do you have any solutions for making glasses fit better?

Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at [email protected]. 

Transcript

Margrit  00:00

Hi, welcome to World of Stories. I'm Margrit and my pronoun is they.

 

Lin  00:05

I'm Lin and my pronouns she and we're here to talk about diversity and storytelling.

 

Margrit  00:09

Indeed. So what's new this week in your life, Lin.

 

Lin  00:13

So there is an article written by Kat Chow, who is a journalist with NPR's CodeSwitch podcast and the article is called If We Called Ourselves Yellow. And it is about the term "yellow" to describe East Asians and she writes about how--sort of the origins of where this term came from, and some of the negative connotations that surround the use of this term "yellow" and how other ethnicities use colors like Black and Brown to describe themselves. And, the use of those terms is not viewed in a negative light. But yet yellow still is. And so she was saying how she's thinking about reclaiming this word. And it's a very, it's a very interesting article and it goes both into history and also sort of her thoughts about what to do with this term. Yeah, what to do with this term going forward?

 

Margrit  01:29

Right? Right. It does a really good job of presenting the cultural history of the term and how it pans out in like a bunch of movies and other kinds of, you know, cultural artifacts that were distributed and how that perpetuated a certain image of East Asian people in general. And how also that connected to policy, right?

 

Lin  02:00

Yeah, with immigration policies in the US. There was the Chinese Exclusion Act, I believe that was in place for decades and decades, where Chinese people were just not allowed to immigrate into the US. And then there was also Japanese internment during World War Two. I think there's a couple of others that she mentioned.

 

Margrit  02:22

Both of which Canada--

 

Lin  02:26

Yes, that's right. Yes. Those were both in Canada. And if I remember correctly, the Japanese internment was actually worse in Canada than it was in the US. If I have my Canadian history remembered correctly.

 

Margrit  02:54

I find this concept, like this way of reclaiming former slurs as a means of empowerment for a certain community, I find it really interesting. And it's very cool how it pans out for all kinds of marginalization. Like, for example, the term queer, being reclaimed and used as a way of identifying. And I was just wondering how you personally felt about it. After I read the article--I think it's a really, really well written article. And it's really wonderful in terms of being informative, but it will also leave you very angry if you have any kind of social justice leanings. How do you feel about this term?

 

Lin  03:39

Yeah, I've always... So it's interesting that this article came out now because I have been thinking about the use of the term yellow a couple of months ago, and I have no idea why I was thinking about it, but I was. And then again, this comparison with using Black to describe people, and Brown to describe certain groups of people. And I am kind of uncomfortable with the term yellow.

 

Margrit  04:09

Why is that?

 

Lin  04:10

It always reminds me, it reminds me of jaundice. Like yellow skin is like jaundi