Things my books have in common with the Harry Potter series:
1) They are huge bestsellers. Oh wait, no.
2) The movies made out of them have racked up over a billion dollars in box office. Nope, not that either.
3) People have actually heard of them. This one's true, if "hundreds" of people is synonymous with "zillions" of people.
4) Hot, hot, interracial love. DING DING DING DING DING DING DING!
Yep, it's a cheerful bell ring on the interracial shenanigans. And this is me, who is hardly on a soapbox about this sort of stuff. I'm perfectly happy to admit that I'm as Hollywood sellout-y as the next Hollywood sellout, by which I mean that if they ever actually make the movie of DupliKate and decide to cast the character of Jake Cheng with, say, Justin Bieber, I'd be first in line to say, "Great. God bless." Because Bieber automatically means more people would see the movie, which probably means more people would then turn around and pick up the book, and Jake's race has exactly nothing to do with the story, so...whatever. It's not ideal, but it's realistic from a business standpoint. Now, if they tried to do the same thing with She's So Money, that would bum me out, because Maya's race does relate to the story-- not in a huge way, but it's relevant to why she ends up making some of the choices she does. And yet if the casting director said, "Look, it's just much more likely to be a success if Demi Lovato were the lead," I'd probably shrug and nod and go about my day. (This is, of course, a fantasy because unless you're Stephenie Meyer and maybe even if you are her, casting directors do not give one iota of a crap what the author thinks, and producers can generally do whatever they want even if writers set themselves on fire in protest, and also, I may have started writing this before Demi Lovato punched her backup dancer, quit her tour, and went to rehab.)
So as you can see, I'm not particularly aggressive about this issue. And YET, I know it's important. Because let me tell you...I was FREAKIN' PSYCHED when Cho Chang appeared in those Harry Potter books. Sure, she wasn't the most compelling character, and she was even sort of douchey at some points, or at least her friend was. And yet, I was excited she was there. Because she's Asian, and even though exactly zero percent of the story was about her being Asian, the fact that she even existed? Made an impression. It was, quite frankly, just plain NICE to have a character who, in however small a way, had something as important and yet non-important as race in common with me. It's totally nothing and yet big-time something, all at once, and I appreciated it. And this was years before the thought of being published was even a "writing careers are unrealistic" glint in my "should probably stay in school" eye. I was strictly a reader, and that reader thought it was cool that J.K. Rowling threw that in when she didn't have to.
So there I am writing DupliKate, and I throw in Jake being Asian. It has nothing to do with the story. It's totally irrelevant. It basically doesn't matter. At least until, if I'm lucky, a reader gets psyched about it for whatever reason-- because they're Asian too, or they're dating one, or they're just happy to see a book with some diversity, or they had a school assignment to write a book report on something with a person of color in it and they were all set to do it on some other book that's 500 pages long but first they were gonna really quickly finish this one because they started it already and oh my god, now I don't have to read the 500-page roach-squasher because look! Right there! Who knew?! YAY!
And shucks, that works for me. Which means the moral of the story is: Justin Bieber can suck it. (Justin Bieber, please do not suck it and if they ever make a movie of any of my books please consider being in it unless by then you aren't famous anymore in which case I do not care at all and you can indeed suck it.) Happy PoC Lit days! :)
Cherry Cheva (full name: Cherry Chevapravatdumrong) is originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is the author of two novels, She’s So Money and DupliKate, and she also co-authored, with Alex Borstein, It Takes a Village Idiot, and I Married One. Cherry currently serves as a writer/producer on Family Guy. She lives in Los Angeles.
You can learn more about Cherry and her books at CherryCheva.com. Check out my review of She's So Money!