Young Adult Fantasy Literature
Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl series follows the boy genius Artemis and his adventures with the fairy people who have been living in secret under ground for thousands of years. This novel explores diversity in the form of racism between mythical beings.
Throughout the first few books, various characters make statements that indicate racial stereotypes that are not always positive. These statements may be justified by the character after uttering, or sometimes are justified by the narrator who goes and shows that a certain species is a certain way. However, creative methods of creating fun and entertaining sayings within the fairy population that make sense aside, some of these statements are hurtful to certain characters on occasion. In later books, characters start catching themselves midway through socially accepted racial slurs and either utter short apologies, or stop and find a different way to express themselves.
A Wizard of Earthsea, by Ursula K. Leguin, is another novel that is part of a series. This first book is a coming of age tale for Ged, a young up-and-coming wizard who lives in an island community that is very in touch with the spirit and the Earth. Ged finds himself on a quest to find the shadow of his fears in order to kill it, and his quest takes him further from home than he could have ever imagined.
These books do not display diversity in a manner that is obvious upon reading it unless a reader is readily looking for it. The island-dwelling people are not white like many characters from novels that do not disclose ethnicity right away. Leguin leaves this element of her novel up to interpretation, with context clues planted throughout the novels.
In Sharon Shinn's Gateway, a Chinese-American girl named Daiyu finds herself on a mission to send a world-hopping villain back to his own dimension after she falls through a portal from her world into the one he is hiding out in.
This novel represents diversity in a number of different ways. For one, the central character is Chinese-American. Aside from this, Gateway also shows racial divisions occurring in the society of the world Daiyu is transported to. In this alternate world, the Han (who are that world's equivalent of our world's Chinese) built up society in the American continents, and are the ethnically superior class. All other ethnicities are seen as inferior. Daiyu makes friends with people in other ethnicity groups, and witnesses how the social stigma keeps these people from achieving what she believes they should be able to achieve.
Malinda Lo's Huntress follows two girls, Kaede and Taisin, as they quest to save their world from falling apart at the hands of an evil fairy-human empress. On their journey, they stumble through self-growth and finding first love.
The novel takes place in a world context where homosexuality is not crushed under a negative stigma. Not only are the novel's heroins homosexual, but there is also a great deal of Chinese influence in this work. It is never directly said that any character's ethnicity may be Chinese, but it is a possibility given the Chinese influence on words and names, as well as descriptions and cultural customs.
The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan, follows a boy named Percy as he discovers that he is a Demi-god and learns what that means for him and the life he believed he was gearing himself up for.
This novel is a bit different than the others represented in this issue in that it does not directly represent any diversity. Rather, this book appears at first like it may have some diversity in Percy's teacher who is in a wheel chair, as well as in Percy himself who has Dyslexia and ADHD, then abandons that diversity within the first 100 pages. Like many fantasy novels, this book takes the diversity it has built up, and explains it away as part of the world of the Olympians. Although there are various species represented in this novel, as well as Greek mythology which is represented in this novel as fact, which may arguably be diversity because the dominant religion(s) in many predominantly English-speaking countries have only one god.
Book one of D.J. MacHale's Pendragon series follows Bobby Pendragon as he learns that he is a Traveler, or a person who can move between worlds in order to protect those worlds and prevent chaos from breaking out. He finds himself facing an enemy who wishes to throw off the balance in worlds so that the resulting chaos will destroy or disrupt surrounding worlds, and it is up to Bobby and his friends to stop him.
The first book in this series especially focuses on diversity, with a group of people who are enslaved by another group of people who consider them inferior. As the series progresses, Bobby meets other Travelers his age who represent different diversity groups, though the story is told predominantly from the perspective of two white males and one white female.
Cassandra Clare's Mortal Instruments series follow the tales of multiple Shadowhunters as they work to protect the world and find balance between the underworld and those who live on the planet's surface.
This series has a few notable niches of diversity tucked away inside of its various covers. In City of Bones, diversity is found in the character Alec, who is secretly gay in a world where being gay has a heavy negative stigma attached to it. In Clockwork Prince, a half-chinese character named Jem steps onto the scene. There is also Magnus Bane, a bisexual male character.
A person could also say that the cultural clash between the various races presented in these novels shows some diversity as well. In City of Bones, the upworlders and underworld dwellers are in constant conflict, and do not see one another as equals. In the beginning of the novel especially, the shadowhunter Jace can be found speaking about how the underworld dwellers are inferior, and even becomes angry when Clary mistakenly calls what he does magic, an implication which he finds appalling.
