Faith 'n Fiction Saturday

My Friend Amy, who brought us Book Blogger Appreciation Week has a new carnival in the works, the Faith 'n Fiction Saturday.

Each week she will post a blogging prompt, which participating bloggers will answer on their own blogs. Then they head back to the original post and sign Mister Linky! This way we can all come to know each other more closely.

Today's Question: Christian fiction is growing as a market, but there are still many unexplored storylines and under-represented genres. What issues or ideas would you like to see tackled from a Christian worldview? Or, what setting would you like to see? Which genres would you like to see more books?

I would really like to see more multi-cultural Christian fiction. There is a great amount of African American CF lately and that is great. I love authors like Marilynn Griffith, Claudia Mair Burney and Stacy Hawkins Adams to name a few. But I feel that the other ethnicities and cultures aren't fairing as well. I think for the Hispanic culture, the only books that really stand out are Nikka Arana's Regalo Grande series. I know that there are others that have a couple Hispanic characters thrown in for good measure, but nothing major. And then as for Asian-Americans, Camy Tang is the ONLY AA author. Obviously I understand if there aren't more authors out there to write, there can't be more to expand. BUT my problem is also how Asians are treated in CF. Except for Camy's books, which are totally dedicated to Asian Americans (Asians who are born and raised in America), the majority of Christian fiction that features Asian in their books, have the characters either be 1) adopted into a Caucasian family, 2) be a foregin exchgange student, 3) immigrated recently into the country.

Now there are exceptions, and I found this more in YA fiction than in Adult. Melody Carlson's Carter House Girls has a Indian-American character, Shelley Adina's It's All About Us series has a Chinese-American character (it's a rather multi-cultural cast in fact), and Anne Dayton and May Vanderbilt's The Miracle Girl series has an Asian American character in their multi-cultural cast so well. In fact, they blended her in so well, that only her name gave her away that she was Asian. I don't mind this at all. It's ok to have their culture be brought out and explained and talked about. But it's also ok for them just to have an Asian last name and be like everyone else. Why is YA seem to be more ok with this than the adult Christian fiction?

I spoke with an author about this and she said that readers and authors of Christian fiction, are not normally Asian and seem not be able to relate to the Asian culture. Therefore they write the books the way they know best, but using the "adoption" storyline. Apparently it's the best of both worlds. Ok, yeah...Well I myself cannot relate to that at all. I'm not adopted, yet I am Asian. I live my life like every normal American, I just don't have blonde hair and I have a last name that is difficult to pronounce. So my wish is that adult Christian fiction writers would read these YA books and see that you can have American BORN Asians be just like anyone else. For that is how my own life is. And I would like to see that in a book.