yainterrobang:#OwnVoices Spotlight: C.B. Lee talks NOT YOUR SIDEKICKFinding Asian representation wit

yainterrobang:#OwnVoices Spotlight: C.B. Lee talks NOT YOUR SIDEKICKFinding Asian representation within the superhero flicks that dominate our screens is not an easy task. It’s made increasingly difficult when canon Asian characters are portrayed by white actors in film and TV adaptations. This makes existing representation all the more important, especially when it’s #OwnVoices.Take, for instance, Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee. Not Your Sidekick centers on Jess, a bisexual Asian American girl in a world filled with superheroes. Despite her heroic lineage, Jess is resigned to a life without superpowers and is merely looking to beef up her college applications when she stumbles upon the perfect (paid!) internship—only it turns out to be for the town’s most heinous supervillain.Not Your Sidekick is available now. For more, follow Lee on Twitter or visit her website.Tell us about Not Your Sidekick, and what readers can expect from your novel. Not Your Sidekick is a scifi romp in a futuristic world populated with superheroes that it isn’t quite perfect. Expect silliness and romance and girls falling for each other and people who aren’t quite what you expect, and plenty of fun.One of the common tropes associated with queer stories and characters is that of ‘bury your gays,’ where LGBTQIA+ characters aren’t allowed happy endings. In Not Your Sidekick, reviewers remarked on how it was “refreshing… [because it was] full of multiple queer characters of color who also got to fall in love and save the world and be happy, regardless of their race or orientation.” Why was it important to you to not only included queer characters of color, but subvert the trope with happy narratives? Happy narratives are so important to me because they gave me hope; as a teen, I read voraciously all the time, fantasy and adventure and mystery and all kinds of stories, and I thrived on those happy-ever-afters. Loved those adventure stories where the hero saved the day and got the big kiss and everything, and yet at the same time, I never saw myself as that hero. The narratives almost always focused on straight white protagonists, and I grew up thinking that people like me didn’t get stories like that, didn’t get to have the big adventures and happy endings.Read more about C.B. Lee and Not Your Sidekick on YA Interrobang. -- source link

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