The Latte Rebellion

The Latte Rebellion by Sarah Jamila Stevenson 2011
Flux

Rating: 3.5/5

IQ "'Because you're brown and they can't tell what you are.' Miranda picked at her cheese sandwich. 'You know, this is why the Latte Rebellion is a good thing. It'll open people's eyes. I mean, it's not like we just automatically identify with whichever group we look the most like.'
'Yeah.' I [Asha] nodded. 'Not to mention, ethnicity isn't anybody's whole anyway.'" pg. 158

Asha and Carey would love to have a best friend post-graduation trip to London. In order to raise the money, they decide to sell t-shirts that praise being mixed-race (or bicultural, what have you), they dub it the 'Latte Rebellion.' The girls expected to make some money, but they didn't expect people to actually get excited about their cause and turn it into a nationwide student social movement. Asha is both apprehensive and excited about this, but the Latte Rebellion is starting to mess with Asha's life. Her grades start slipping and she and Carey are fighting more and more. Before she can say 'latte', the peaceful Latte Rebellion turns violent and charges of terrorism are being thrown around. Does Asha believe in the Latte Rebellion enough to disprove the charges and fight to keep the group alive?

I don't usually mind slow starts in contemporary novels and this one was no exception. I liked getting the backstory and feeling completely immersed in Asha's world, I was satisfied with the little everyday details. I would warn you though that it takes awhile for the actual rebellion to start but stick with the book. I was a bit peeved at how some characters emerged for a chapter and then faded away, only to be called again a few chapters later. Thad and Bridget were both brought into the story but then they just disappear, Asha doesn't give them another thought. The biggest problem to me were the awkward transitions. Just when a chapter was starting to get really good, the story would stick to the present where Asha was in the middle of a school board hearing on her possible expulsion (her school viewed the Latte Rebellion as a terrorist group). Then just when the hearing started to get interesting, the story would change to the past events leading up to the hearing. Sometimes it seemed like the hearing was rushed, for example, I almost missed the decision the school board made because it was rushed over.

The most fascinating point to me was that Asha (half-Indian, a quarter Mexican and a quarter Irish) and Carey (half Chinese, half European) resent being forced to pick a side or idenitfy with what they are the most. I admit I'm guilty of thinking that way. I'm bicultural but I've definitely thought at times that if you if have more than three different cultural backgrounds, you can list them all but if you join a club, join them all or pick the one you identify most with. I get ticked when people do the whole '10% Irish, 10% Scottish, 15% Swedish, 2 % Cherokee' etc. Just pick your top two! However this book showed me that it's not that simple. I shared Asha, Carey and Thad's frustration at the lack of understanding/options for multicultural people. Just today I was registering for the SAT and I could only pick one race or chose to be 'other.' I ended up selecting Black but I was peeved that there wasn't a way for me to pick Black AND Latina. Real-life moment right there. I love that Asha starts The Latte Rebellion for purely selfish reasons. She wants to travel and needs the money so why not open a business that would appeal to certain people? That's what entrepreneurs do all the time and I thought it made the book even more fun. Asha starts off self-absorbed and a bit clueless but that makes the end result even better. I also really liked that the book showed why the term 'latte' is so appropriate for multicultural/multiracial people and that the school thought of the group as a terrorist movement. As if. Gotta love school bureaucracy.

*Please be warned the next paragraph will contain some lame coffee puns/jokes*

The Latte Rebellion is filled to the brim with coffee for thought ranging from how multicultural people are viewed in the world (should we have to choose what culture we identify the most with, how do we do that?), prejudice (Asha is called a 'towel head'. Wow), race and the college process (and it was nice to read a book about a senior who is stressing out about college because the process sounds SCARY people) and friendships drifting apart. We aren't meant to be best friends with the same people all our lives. It's nice if that happens but it's a rarity. I loved Miranda (fight the power!) and even though I didn't see much of him, I was a big fan of Thad. But then again, I'm a complete sucker for a guy who has a sense of humor and yet still wants to save the world (and manage to make enough to get by). The rough transitions and disappearing characters made this book a bit hard to swallow but there is a great balance between hilarity and seriousness that brings out the sweet flavor. The parents have a role and they aren't a complete caricature of overbearing-must-get-good-grades kind of parents. I sipped a vanilla latte while reading this book. It was my first latte and while I'm not a fan, I've been told to try chai lattes and a gingerbread latte. So we shall see if I become a latte fan. I applaud the author for keeping up the latte metaphor throughout the whole book, it could be a bit silly at times but who doesn't like a little silliness? A stirring novel. Oh and I love the cover, the symbol of the Latte Rebellion in the coffee (which is a coffee cup with steam rising to to from the shape of a hammer and sickle) along with the coffee rings, napkins and a cartoon drawing are perfect for the cover.

Disclosure: Booouuugghhhttt

PS Doret and I want T-shirts that say "Ask not what Brown can do for you. Ask what you can do for Brown." (this slogan could also apply to Brown University which makes it rock even more) <3

PPSS I'm buying a mug. You can also buy a shirt. $1 of each purchase goes to Reading is Fundamental. Social justice for the win. You're welcome

PPPSSS I can't decide, now I really want a shirt. Hmm. Oh and please read my interview with the author!

Elated Over Eleven: Sarah Jamila Stevenson

This is my 2nd Elated Over Eleven interview. This is a feature I started in which I interview YA/MG 2011 debut authors of color. Kelsey at the Book Scout was part of my inspiration for the idea.

Today I'm thrilled to present an interview with Sarah Jamila Stevenson, the author of The Latte Rebellion. The Latte Rebellion releases on January 4, 2011. Keep reading to learn about why mixed race people are called lattes and how we balance cultures.

Hi Sarah and welcome to Reading in Color! Please tell us about The Latte Rebellion

The Latte Rebellion is about a moneymaking idea that spirals out of control; then hilarity ensues. (Hilarity always has to ensue when your scheme goes awry, right?) Asha Jamison, the narrator, and her best friend Carey—both high school seniors of mixed ethnicity—use an unpleasant racist incident as the springboard for their idea: they start a fictitious club (the Latte Rebellion) for students of mixed race, and the money they earn from selling t-shirts is funneled into their post-graduation vacation fund. But the Rebellion gains its own momentum, and as Asha gets more and more involved, her friendships and her academic career are put on the line, forcing her to make some difficult choices about what she believes in and who she wants to be.

How did you break into publishing?

Time, persistence, and hard work! That's the short answer. It isn't an easy or predictable road, and there's no magic formula, but you have to have those three—and probably a healthy dose of luck and good timing—to succeed in the writing field, and in the arts in general.

Taking creative writing classes really helped me develop that persistence and discipline. I got a lot of valuable advice about my work, and about the writing life, while in graduate school for fiction writing. But ultimately, here's what I did to get published: I sent my work out. I got rejected. Again. And again. And again. I revised my work some more. I wrote new things and sent them out. I got rejected some more. Until one day, about four years into it, somebody said yes. I'd been sending The Latte Rebellion to agents and editors for about a year and half before it was accepted to Flux. The whole "breaking in" thing is still kind of mystifying to me.

In The Latte Rebellion, mixed race people are called 'lattes' by the main character. How did that term come about?

Like my main character, I was probably drinking a lot of coffee! I was in the car, on a long drive back from visiting my parents, when the phrase "latte rebellion" popped into my head. (Fortunately, my husband was driving.) I jotted down a few notes with the bare bones of an idea—Asha, a half-South-Asian girl, decides to start a movement called the Latte Rebellion. I don't think I made the conscious connection between lattes and mixed ethnicity until a little later, as I brainstormed some more. All I know is, there was a post-it note on the car dashboard that said "Asha" and "Latte Rebellion", and the next thing I knew was, it was National Novel Writing Month and I'd written half the book.

Wouldn't it be awesome if people of mixed race started calling themselves 'lattes'? Non YA-readers would be so confused :p I'm not a coffee person but maybe this book will convince me to try it!

What book would your book date?

Maybe Robin Brande's Fat Cat—Cat being a smart, determined girl with

bright ideas of her own. Or Sherri Smith's Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet—talk about a melting pot of mixed ethnicities! Or maybe Shine, Coconut Moon, by Neesha Meminger. Sorry, I guess that's three...

The more the merrier, your book is just a playa! I keep meaning to read Fat Cat. And Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet has been on my wishlist for forever, I need to get on that. And I adore Shine, Coconut Moon :)

Mixed-race people often feel torn between cultures (or at least speaking for myself). Did you experience this yourself? If so, which culture did you lean more towards and how did you learn to reconcile both cultures?

Yes and no. In some ways, I was very much NOT confused, because I was born and raised in California, and I always felt very American in all the ways that count. At the same time, it can be complicated to figure out who you are in relation to the different sides of your cultural identity. In many ways I identified more with my mother growing up, with what I saw as the more mainstream side of my heritage.

It wasn't that I felt conflicted about being of mixed heritage, but I have to be honest—there were times while I was growing up that my father's Pakistani cultural traditions felt like an obstacle to my desire to be a "regular" American girl, to do what my friends were doing, to live life like the teenagers I'd read about in books. It was hard for me to cope with the dos and don'ts that were probably perfectly reasonable to him, from his point of view.

And I think I'm still working on reconciling the two cultures, weaving the two together in ways that fit me as an individual. Being married to someone of mixed ethnicity really helps, though, and I'm close to my in-laws, too—having an understanding support network has been so valuable. I'm probably not done exploring the topic, though. I think I'll always be mulling it over, meshing the two sides together in new and unexpected ways as my life continues forward.

I can relate to identifying with the more mainstream half of your heritage. So I may be one of the few people who is conflicted about my heritage (but I'm getting better!) ;) Slightly disappointed to hear that working on balancing both cultures is a life-long act, but like you said, it will be fun to see the new and unexpected ways the two cultures manifest themselves in our lives.

What are some of your current favorite YA reads? What fellow '11 debuts are you looking forward to?

I'm a huge fan of fantasy and sci-fi—some recent fantasy reads that I really enjoyed include Fire by Kristin Cashore and Sacred Scars by Kathleen Duey. (The main character of Fire is mixed-race, too—she's half monster!) I really love the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness. I also recently read The Ghosts of Ashbury High by Jaclyn Moriarty, whose books are truly hilarious.

As for '11 debuts, I'm so horrible at keeping up with these kinds of things (as you can see, most of my "recent" reads are a bit behind) but Jessica Martinez's Virtuosity sounds intriguing, as does Beth Revis's Across the Universe, and The Bestest Ramadan Ever by Medeia Sharif.

The cover of Across the Universe is brilliant! I love it. Virtuosity does sound really good and I'm quite looking forward to reading The Bestest Ramadan Ever. I feel as though Jaclyn Moriarty is one of those authors that everyone should read, I certainly intend to give her books a go.

What two PoC literary characters would you love to hang out?

Sticking with a YA theme, I'd definitely hang out with Samar from Shine, Coconut Moon, or Eunice "Bug" Smoot from David Macinnis Gill's Soul Enchilada.

What is one issue you have with YA/MG? What is something you love about YA/MG?

I have an issue with the way YA/MG books are sometimes marketed, especially when the cover art or marketing verbiage is so overly targeted that it has the effect of limiting readership—books that might appeal to both girls and boys having a cover that would make boys embarrassed to read it, for instance. Or the whole "let's keep people of color off the cover so it will appeal to a wider audience" debacle, which frankly is a terrible argument in my opinion--but then it's just as bad when a book with a non-white person on the cover gets relegated to the "ethnic interest" section of the bookstore.

I love the coming-of-age aspect of YA/MG books—I may be far from my teen years, but I feel like great YA or MG novels can always teach readers something new about growing up and learning who you are. The way I see it, the process of growing up never stops, and I'm still figuring things out. :)

Where can readers find out more about you and your books?

For more information about The Latte Rebellion, readers can visit the Latte Rebellion website: http://www.latte-rebellion.com

For information about me, they can visit http://www.sarahjamilastevenson.com – the site's under construction, but should be finished within the next few weeks.

I have two blogs: Finding Wonderland, a blog about reading and writing YA books which I co-write with author Tanita S. Davis, and my personal blog, Aquafortis (http://aquafortis.blogspot.com). My Twitter handle is aquafortis, too

Thank you so much Sarah! Pre-order The Latte Rebellion now and hooray for your soon-to-be debut =)