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Article published in Viewpoint (vol 14 no 4)

What Colour Are Australians?

This is a question I am going to have to ask myself before I illustrate my next book. I was shocked, once again, to receive feedback from a publisher who was considering an idea for a picture book I have developed that, while they liked the sample illustration I had enclosed 'unfortunately but realistically, in order for the appeal to be broader, [I would need] more blended features, rather than specific ethnicity.'

It's not the first time I have received this advice. I have been told in many different ways that my picture books would sell better if they didn't have Chinese/Japanese/Indian/African faces on the cover. These publishers are far from being racist - many of them want the best for me. They are just relating what their marketing department has determined. Most parents who buy books for their children are white middle-class women.

I don't consciously choose to write 'multicultural' books - they choose me. I have lived a multicultural life. Even though I was born in Australia, I spent most of my childhood in South East Asia, moving every few years because of my father's job. When I was old enough to leave home, I went to China to study painting and lived there for three years. I met a French painter there whom I travelled to France with and when our marriage broke up I came back to Australia and have settled down with an Italian-Australian. Two of my sons are half French, my third son is half Italian and we live next door to Nonno and Nonna in multicultural inner-Melbourne.

The stories I write and illustrate, like many creators' stories, I imagine, are a mixture of my own experience and what I see around me. Many of my characters have been Chinese-Australian, because that, ironically, is closest to how I feel. Not exactly Chinese-Australian, but certainly 'blended'. Fellow author Gabrielle Wang, calls me an 'egg', because I am white on the outside and yellow on the inside. I call her a 'banana' because even though she looks very Chinese, she is fourth generation and visited China for the first time only when she was an adult.

Painting the illustration to accompany the new picture book idea I was working on, I thought about all the faces of my friends' babies that I would like to model my main character on. I am an unconcious visual collector of faces. I store all the faces I come across every day in my mind to use when I illustrate my books. The first face that came to mind was that of my goddaughter, Milani, not having painted her into a book yet, but she was too old for the character I was developing so I decided to use her baby brother Zenzi. Milani and Zenzi are the children of Andrea Watson, who was born in Australia, and Valanga Khoza, who was born in South Africa. Their children are neither black nor white, but what their mother fondly calls them: 'chocolate'.

I painted Zenzi sitting on the floor at his mother's feet, and sent the picture off with my proposal. The reply I received was the above one. Feeling indignant, I talked this over with another author friend of mine, whose books have sold very well, and she suggested, kindly, that I make a bigger name for myself first, then make a statement. I look at the bibliography of Morris Gleitzman and recognise that now he has won a huge following through his wonderful books of humour, he is writing books on refugees and Nazi Germany. Andy Griffiths has written a book for children about health and nutrition. And they sell. Perhaps this is wise advice.

I must stress that this is not what I have found when visiting schools. Teachers and librarians are my greatest support. At one school I visited just this week, in the affluent Eastern suburbs of Melbourne, I was surprised at how many of their students were of Chinese, Vietnamese and Korean descendants. The teacher, who walked me to the school hall, spoke to me passionately about how useful my Fang Fang books had been in teaching ESL and how great it was to have characters the students could identify with. I spoke to her of what had happened recently with the new publisher I was hoping to work with and asked if she would write me a letter of support. She handed me a letter the next session. It reads: 'Sally's text and illustrations value the diversity of our world and the importance of tolerence, friendship, humour, honesty and forgiveness - at the same time stereotypes are broken down. Fang Fang's Chinese New Year and Speak Chinese, Fang Fang! gave a touching, funny and empowering voice to a character that our ESL students could identify and laugh together with. These books were also linked across the curriculum through the Department of Education and Training's initiative "Our Place in Asia" engaging all students.'

So, what do I do here? Do I bite my tongue and 'blend' all the faces I have so meticulously collected in my mind and just paint a grey baby? Or will that merely reinforce the vicious circle that my publishers have become a part of? That the less these faces are used in children's literature, the more they are going to stand out and seem abnormal, rather than just a representative of the people who live around us.

Young Adult literature is shifting in this regard, with authors such as Melina Marchetta and Archie Fusillo writing stories infused with their own life experience. Italian-Australian faces are becoming acceptable. Randa Abdel-Fattah's book Does My Head Look Big In This? has been popular in schools. Soon Muslim-Australian faces on covers might become acceptable, thanks to her humorous book. (Randa Abdel-Fattah makes a great joke about being a hyphenated Australian: 'Australian-born-Muslim-Palestinian-Egyptian-choc-a-holic'). Carole Wilkinson and Gabrielle Wang's books set in China are very popular and much awarded, and Meme McDonald and Boori Pryor have written a wonderful collection of books about growing up as an Aboriginal in Australia. But where are the picture books?

For Zenzi's six-month birthday, I presented him with Bob Graham's wonderful Oscar's Half Birthday. This is a story about a family celebrating Oscar's sixth-month birthday, just like Zenzi. Just like Zenzi, Oscar has an older sister around Milani's age. Just like Zenzi, Oscar has one parent who is 'black' and one who is 'white'. Oscar is 'chocolate', like Zenzi, but this is not what the story is about. The story is not about a multi-racial child struggling to find his identity. It is simply about turning six months of age and the loving way his family celebrates that achievement in a city that could easily be anywhere in the world. These are the stories I want to write. But maybe I have to wait until my books sell as well as Bob Graham's for a publisher to feel I am worth taking that risk.