Ask the Author: Sarah Jamila Stevenson
Answered Questions (2)
Sarah Jamila Stevenson
THICK AS THIEVES by Megan Whalen Turner, AS BRAVE AS YOU by Jason Reynolds, THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY edited by Peter S. Beagle, THE LIE TREE by Frances Hardinge, DREAMER'S POOL by Juliet Marillier, JOURNEY ACROSS THE HIDDEN ISLANDS by Sarah Beth Durst, ASCENSION by Hannah Rials
Sarah Jamila Stevenson
The Latte Rebellion started with just a title and a character! The phrase "latte rebellion" was rattling around in my head and I began to speculate on what that might be, and at the same time the character of Asha was taking shape, too. Asha is a bit like me; all three main characters have bits and pieces of me, but Asha is "the most me." She's a lot more socially aware and activist, though, than I was as a teenager!
I was also interested in the way food metaphors are often overused to describe skin tone in books—the word "latte" as a metaphor for mixed race made me smile, and the idea started to take off from there. As far as similar experiences go, when I was in high school in Southern California there was a violent incident just off campus that was gang-related, and the fighting spread onto school grounds throughout the morning. Police in riot gear showed up and things calmed down, but then the newspaper reported it as "exploding racial tensions." (This was less than a year after the LA riots.) So that incident was still in the back of my mind when I was thinking about how it feels to witness campus violence and how schools respond to incidents like that. A few images from my memories of that found their way into the book.
And, of course, like many people of ambiguous ethnicity, I was often asked "what are you?" as a kid, and had some surreal conversations as a result. One of the big takeaways I hope readers will get from the story is that there are a lot of people out there of mixed race and culture and they aren't alone in their experiences. It's something that's all around us, people with different mixtures of backgrounds and different, fascinating stories, but because we still often think about race or culture as all-or-nothing, "mixed" people sometimes get overlooked. I was interested in writing a story that dealt with race but also looked at the situation with some humor, something that will make people laugh with recognition.
I was also interested in the way food metaphors are often overused to describe skin tone in books—the word "latte" as a metaphor for mixed race made me smile, and the idea started to take off from there. As far as similar experiences go, when I was in high school in Southern California there was a violent incident just off campus that was gang-related, and the fighting spread onto school grounds throughout the morning. Police in riot gear showed up and things calmed down, but then the newspaper reported it as "exploding racial tensions." (This was less than a year after the LA riots.) So that incident was still in the back of my mind when I was thinking about how it feels to witness campus violence and how schools respond to incidents like that. A few images from my memories of that found their way into the book.
And, of course, like many people of ambiguous ethnicity, I was often asked "what are you?" as a kid, and had some surreal conversations as a result. One of the big takeaways I hope readers will get from the story is that there are a lot of people out there of mixed race and culture and they aren't alone in their experiences. It's something that's all around us, people with different mixtures of backgrounds and different, fascinating stories, but because we still often think about race or culture as all-or-nothing, "mixed" people sometimes get overlooked. I was interested in writing a story that dealt with race but also looked at the situation with some humor, something that will make people laugh with recognition.
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