Q and A With Grace Lin!

Hm, that’s a good question. I often tell readers that my books so often focus on Asian culture not because I know so much about it but because I want to know about it.

I never learned about my Asian heritage as a child, so making books has been my way of discovering it. I think this is the approach I often use with all my books– I think about what I want to know more about and attempt to make a book about it. So, really, I learn with my readers. 

I’m so glad you enjoy them! I am working on four more Storytelling Math board books! They will feature the same characters and be seasonally themed just like the first set, but will be about four  different math concepts! Look for the first two (if I don’t miss my deadline) in Spring 2023!

Well, education partly ties into the answer to your first question–one reason I make these books is to learn the things I did not learn as a child.  As I said, I did not learn about my cultural heritage as a child–and this was by choice! I basically rejected my heritage because, as a child, I did not want to be Asian. One reason I did not want to be Asian was because the only media I saw with Asian characters portrayed them as caricatures that made me feel ashamed. 

Now, of course, I am not ashamed of my heritage and I create my books with the hope that kids see them instead of the harmful caricatures I saw. I hope that my books instill in Asian kids a sense of belonging and self-worth and in non-Asian kids an acceptance and understanding of our common humanity even with visual differences. 

I’m glad you know “Okie-Dokie, Artichokie!”–that’s not a book I hear people reading often these days! 

My love of patterns came from doing my own self-directed study of Chinese folk art, which sometimes is dubbed “peasant art.” This art uses a lot of bright colors and as one art critic described “an abhorrence of blank space”–which basically means that the folk artists liked to fill up all the space with patterns and images. I, personally, found this charming and started doing that with my own work–hence all the patterns and lack of empty space!

I hope that my books help fill that gap. There’s always been pushback from readers, critics and publishers but, fortunately, a lot less so in the last five years or so with the power of the WNDB organization. For a long time, books with Asian characters were considered very niche, unmarketable, and unimportant–to imagine an Asian book on the bestseller list was unthinkable!

And those who wanted books with Asian characters were SO hungry for them that they had almost impossible expectations on the few Asian books that were published — just as one grain of rice cannot fill an entire stomach, one book cannot tell every story.

So, sometimes being an Asian-American author/illustrator has been tough. But it’s also always been an honor. I’m proud that I’ve been able to tell the stories that give a glimpse of the rich, wonderful culture that I’ve been bestowed.