The Mitali Test

A couple weeks ago, Mitali Perkins suggested applying a version of the Bechdel Test to books, as a way of evaluating their racial and cultural diversity.

In the comments, I threw out the term "Mitali Test," which other commenters seemed to like. (I also demonstrated my inability to spell "knew," but that's another story.)

The Mitali Test asks three questions about a book:

1. Are there two or more people of color with names?
2. Do they have a significant conversation with each other?
3. Do they talk about something other than race?

I decided to apply the Mitali Test to the middle-grade and YA books in my LibraryThing collection. Here's what passed*:

• 47 and Sunrise Over Fallujah, Walter Dean Myers
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Sherman Alexie
• The Amethyst Road, Louise Spengler (This could go either way, but I say the fictionalized Roma count)
• Any Small Goodness, Tony Johnston
• Ask Me No Questions, Marina Budhos
• Before We Were Free and How Tía Lola Came to Stay, Julia Alvarez
• Bhangra Babes, Bindi Babes, and Bollywood Babes, Narinder Dhami
• Bucking the Sarge, Bud Not Buddy, and The Watsons Go to Birmingham - 1963, Christopher Paul Curtis
• Candle in the Wind, Maureen Wartski
• A Cap for Mary Ellis, Hope Newell
• Chains and Forge, Laurie Halse Anderson
• Climbing the Stairs, Padma Venkatraman
• Cubanita, Gaby Triana
• Dark Dude, Oscar Hijuelos
• Does My Head Look Big in This? and Ten Things I Hate About Me, Randa Abdel-Fattah
• Echoes of the White Giraffe and Year of Impossible Goodbyes, Sook Nyul Choi
• Esperanza Rising, Pam Muñoz Ryan
• Estrella's Quinceañera, Malín Alegría
• Front Porch Stories at the One-Room School and Celeste's Harlem Renaissance, Eleanora Tate
• Gully's Travels, Tor Seidler
• Habibi, Naomi Shihab Nye
• Honey Blonde Chica, Michele Serros
• If Only You Knew, Denene Millner and Mitzi Miller
• Jason & Kyra, Dana Davidson
• The Kayla Chronicles, Sherri Winston
• Keeping Corner and Koyal Dark, Mango Sweet, Kashmira Sheth
• Kendra, Coe Booth
• Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow, Faiza Guene
• Kim/Kimi, Hadley Irwin
• El Lector, William Durbin
• Marcelo in the Real World, Francisco X. Stork
• My Most Excellent Year, Steve Kluger
• My Sister Sif, Ruth Park
• Nothing But the Truth (And a Few White Lies), Justina Chen Headley
• Red Palms, Cara Haycack
• The Return, Sonia Levitin
• Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, Let the Circle Be Unbroken, and The Road to Memphis, Mildred D. Taylor
• Seedfolks, Paul Fleischman (I think)
• Shadow Spinner, Susan Fletcher
• She's So Money, Cherry Cheva
• Skunk Girl, Sheba Karim
• Sweet, Hereafter, Angela Johnson
• Tangled Threads, Pegi Deitz Shea
• Trouble Don't Last, and All of the Above, Shelley Pearsall
• The War Between the Classes, Gloria Miklowitz
• White Hare's Horses, Penina Keen Spinka
• Who's Your Daddy?, Lynda Sandoval
• Why Does the Coquí Sing?, Barbara Garland Polikoff
• A Wish After Midnight, Zetta Elliott
• Wolf by the Ears, Ann Rinaldi (This was, I believe her first book, and loads better than her more recent stuff.)

Is this a comprehensive list? Hardly. But it's a start.

*I was relying on memory when I compiled this list, and it's been a while since I read a few of these. Feel free to correct me on any that don't meet all three criteria.

A mitzvah?

Diversity - or more properly, the lack thereof - in kidlit has been a hot topic in our corner of the blog world lately. Some of the discussion has focused on historical fiction and its insistence on focusing on particular periods, especially slavery and the Holocaust.

Which is why this paragraph from recent non-kidlit reading caught my eye:

"To the 613 mitzvot counted by the rabbis, [Emil] Fackenheim added one: Thou shalt not grant Hitler a posthumous victory... Part of the obligation of this commandment rests with Holocaust remembrance, but it can go too far. We can read only so many books... Of those that have Jewish content, what percentage should be about the Shoah? Ten? Fifty? At what age should children be taught about these horrific events?... If the child cannot respond and later feels that she already knows all about it, the impact of remembrance is lost."

It's from Unsettled: An Anthropology of the Jews, by Melvin Konner.