Turning a new page
Lifestyle at sacbee.com, March 14, 2004

Minority authors add a new dimension to 'chick lit'
By Rasmi Simhan -- Bee Arts Critic

Browsing through a bookstore, you'll have no trouble finding novels about ethnic women. Paperbacks about lighthearted 20-somethings also abound.

The problem is finding both in the same book.

In other words, "a third-generation San Franciscan of Chinese descent who could not quote a single Han Dynasty proverb, but ... could recite entire dialogues from numerous 'Brady Bunch' episodes."

That's 25-year-old Lindsey Owyang, the heroine of Kim Wong Keltner's "The Dim Sum of All Things."

In July, Sonia Singh will publish "Goddess for Hire," in which a Newport Beach shopaholic learns she's an incarnation of a Hindu deity.

And in Mary Castillo's "Hot Tamara," due next year, the heroine is a Mexican American mama's girl who pursues her dreams of a career while trying to make time for love.

These ethnic titles represent a new twist on the literary genre known as "chick lit" - popular novels about hip single women. They are all published by Avon, a division of HarperCollins.

A craze for chick lit overtook readers and publishers after Helen Fielding's "Bridget Jones's Diary" appeared in 1998. Other titles followed, such as "The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing" by Melissa Bank and "Good in Bed" by Jennifer Weiner.

The value of chick lit - both the term and the books themselves - remains questionable for some critics and authors. In England, where the trend began, literary figures such as Beryl Bainbridge and Doris Lessing openly denounced the genre. Meanwhile, author Jenny Colgan defended the books while accusing "hairy-legged" female critics of lumping together novels of varying quality with a "deliberately condescending" marketing term.

Still, the genre remains popular enough to sustain entire publishing divisions, such as Harlequin's Red Dress Ink and Simon and Schuster's Downtown Press.

"All of us consider ourselves part of some minority or another," said Carrie Feron, executive editor of Morrow/Avon Books. "We all have the same issues - finding out who we are, breaking away from our parents, trying to establish ourselves independently - perhaps from slightly different angles."

And authors such as Castillo defend these novels. "Readers can empathize with the characters, see where they're coming from and say, 'I felt that way in my life,' " she said. "It gives readers a sense there's a possibility for love or that they'll find their place in the world."

Families play a larger role in ethnic chick lit than in previous books in the genre, Castillo suggested. She points out that one rarely sees the relatives of characters on "Sex and the City."

The inspiration for "Hot Tamara" came from a conversation Castillo overheard at a museum: A young Latina said her parents wanted her to get married and take care of them instead of attending a four-year college.

The character worries about "not being Latina enough" because she's not bilingual, an issue that concerned Castillo in college.

Premarital sex can also be a charged issue for women from more traditional cultures, especially if they are Catholic, she added.

The specific concerns of an ethnic heroine should not prevent readers of different backgrounds from relating to her struggles, Castillo said. She cites the popularity of Amy Tan's 1990 novel "The Joy Luck Club."

"That book proved that not only will Asian or Latina or African American readers buy these books, but so will readers who are white," said Castillo, who grew up in the San Diego area. "If readers look at characters who are maybe like them but of a different ethnicity, and they can relate to those characters, then you have a great combination."

Ethnic figures often have been cast as sidekicks or secondary characters in popular novels - with notable exceptions in the works of authors such as Walter Mosely and Manuel Ramos.

While literary fiction about Indians abounds, Singh said she had trouble relating to it.

"Every book I read with Indian characters was always serious, heavy stuff - Salman Rushdie or 'The Death of Vishnu,' " Singh said. "I wanted to do something mainstream and funny so Indian people could be out there - not just as a doctor or an engineer, but like average Americans who just happen to be of Indian descent."

Singh, 30, said few people of Indian descent lived in Orange County when she was growing up. She recalls classmates calling a thin Indian student "Gandhi boy," while another said Singh's mother looked like a clown. (The heroine of "Goddess for Hire" gets revenge for this comment in her book.)

"It was mostly my being painfully aware of being different as opposed to other people bringing it up so much," Singh said.

Today, people ask her where they can get Indian clothes, and the clerk at the video store recommends "Monsoon Wedding," she said.

The popularity of that film and "Bend It Like Beckham" suggests the appeal of minority "chick lit" will cross ethnic lines, she said.

"You can relate to the whole 'single girl with married friends whose parents are completely worried about her getting older' thing," she said, "whether you're Chinese American, Arab American or British American."

More than entertaining readers, ethnic chick lit should also start a cultural dialogue, Keltner said.

She recalls a stranger who walked up to her in a bookstore and asked why Chinese paintings usually didn't include people. Her book's heroine deals with white men who see her as an exotic sexual object and co-workers who consult her as a "24-hour cultural educator."

"If there were more books and movies that portrayed different ethnicities, maybe people would have an easier time talking about them in context without making the other person feel like they're being attacked," said Keltner, 34, who has lived in San Francisco for most of her life. "I think people are starved for information and for the beauty and quirkiness of other cultures, too."

The heroine herself is starved for information in "The Dim Sum of All Things." Her parents, second-generation Americans, had assimilated so much that she couldn't necessarily turn to them for information about Chinese culture. Her efforts to learn her family history from her grandmother plays an important role in the book - a book Keltner was inspired to write by her own grandmother.

The notion of minority love stories is not entirely new. More than 25 years ago, Dell started a line of ethnic romances "with the intent of publishing them regularly," wrote Rosemary Guiley in her 1983 book, "Love Lines: A Romance Reader's Guide to Printed Pleasures."

"But the market response was not enthusiastic enough, and the idea was quietly dropped," Guiley wrote. "Watch for them in the near future."

As literary agent Sha-shana Crichton put it, "When it comes to popular fiction, it's a question of, 'Are people really going to buy this?' "

Some say the marketability of popular fiction about minorities in general became clear in 1992 with Terry McMillan's best-selling "Waiting To Exhale."

"'Exhale' showed the publishing industry that black people read books and bought books in big numbers," said author Felicia Mason, two-time winner of the Waldenbooks Best-Selling Multicultural Title Award. Her first book, "For the Love of You," was published by Kensington in a line of African American romances founded after "Exhale" was published.

Another pathbreaker for ethnic chick lit was Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's "The Dirty Girls Social Club," which snagged a nearly $500,000 book deal in 2003 for the first-time author and former reporter - after a four-day auction with five publishing houses. It later appeared on the New York Times best-seller list.

"I'm actively seeking Latin American chick lit," said Crichton, president of Crichton and Associates Inc., in Takoma Park, Md. "There is a place in the market for it, definitely."

Ethnic chick lit joins other trends in the chick lit genre. Early novels had starred single, white city women with perfect shoes, hapless dates and a career in publishing or advertising - the literary equivalent of "Sex and the City." The assumed audience was women 18 to 34.

Recent heroines might be divorced, single mothers or middle-aged. They might seek a Christian man or no man at all. Readers range from adolescents to women over 50.

Besides the publishers' needs, authors' interests helped spark changes in the genre, said Margaret Marbury, a senior editor at Red Dress Ink.

The authors "don't want to write the same story over again, or they're in a different position than they were when they wrote their first book - some have gotten married, some got pregnant, some moved or got divorced," Marbury said. "They want to tell a different type of story."

About the Writer

The Bee's Rasmi Simhan can be reached at (916) 321-1071 or rsimhan@sacbee.com.