The five girls of The Girls of Many Lands series make their debut this month. They are all 12 years-old, independent, spunky, non-conformist girls living in a time of great historical change, unwilling to spend their lives trapped in what society declares is proper behavior. Photo courtesy of Pleasant Company.
Move Over Barbie, Say Hello to The Girls of Many Lands
By Terry Hong
Special to AsianWeek
Say hello to The Girls of Many Lands, a book and doll series brought to you by Pleasant Company, renowned for the American Girl series of books, dolls and paraphernalia. Now the company is branching out globally, as they introduce this month five new girls from faraway lands and faraway times.
“Although girls today have a great deal of exposure to other cultures in school and through the media, our world is still often filled with misunderstanding and mistrust of those who are different,” says Girls of Many Lands editor Tamara England. “By learning and identifying with the Girls of Many Lands characters, we hope girls will not only expand their cultural awareness but grow intellectually and emotionally in understanding, tolerance and compassion for others — something desperately needed in our world today.”
The five girls making their debut this month are all 12 years-old, living in a time of great historical change. They are all independent, spunky, non-conformist girls unwilling to spend their lives trapped in what society declares is proper behavior. Of this initial group of five, two are actually Asian girls.
Perhaps the most noteworthy is Neela, who comes of age in 1939 India in Neela: Victory Song. Her name, actually, is borrowed by the book’s author — the American Book Award-winning Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Arranged Marriage, The Unknown Errors of Our Lives) — from our very own editor-in-chief Neela Banerjee, who happens to be Divakaruni’s niece. So yes, our Neela now has her very own doll! “A good addition to the Barbies and Kens, don’t you think?” says Divarakuni.
Although there the resemblance ends. The Neela in Victory Song becomes inadvertently embroiled in India’s growing independence movement when she steals away from her village home in search of her father, who is being held in a Calcutta jail. “Quite a bit of information is from my mother, who was a girl in 1939 in Calcutta,” says Divarakuni. She applauds the series, in which “children can learn about and identify with girls of other cultures, especially as many of those cultures have strong immigrant communities here. In the wake of 9-11, everything we can do to promote cross-cultural understanding is crucial.”
The second Asian-inspired character is Spring Pearl, an orphan in 1857 Canton who is sent to live with the wealthy merchant family of Master Sung, an acquaintance of her famed artist father. Written by veteran young adult author Laurence Yep (Dragonwings, Dragon’s Gate, Child of the Owl), Spring Pearl: The Last Flower captures Canton caught in China’s Second Opium War against the British and French. Yep relied on the stories of his Chinatown “Aunties” to bring the story to life. “All of them … were tough, resourceful women who not only survived but flourished. So I naturally thought about using a composite as a main character.”
Unlike most girls of her era, Spring Pearl not only reads and writes Chinese, she can also manage some English as well — a talent which proves extremely beneficial when she and a resourceful servant boy must go rescue Master Sung from corrupt government officials. Says Yep, “Spring Pearl has [my Aunties’] toughness, their compassion, the resourcefulness and above all, their sense of humor.”
Also part of the series is Minuk: Ashes in the Pathway, written by Kirkpatrick Hill (Toughboy and Sister, Winter Camp, The Year of Miss Agnes), about a Yup’ik Alaskan native in 1890, whose simple village life is on the verge of cultural collision with the white foreigners. Minuk, who lives with her family on the Kuskokwim River, encounters missionaries who not only bring Christianity and western medicine but books, tortuous clothing (the corset!) and strange new foods. Tragically, they also bring influenza, which decimates the native population, including much of Minuk’s family.
“I love Alaskan history,” says Hill, a resident of the Alaskan bush for the last 30 years, “and the most interesting aspect of that history to me is the process of acculturation. … What could it have been like to have your way of life, your ideas, turned upside down in days, weeks? The most amazing thing to me is the way people absorb all this innovation without missing a beat … they just go on, matter-of-fact. But my, the pain of seeing old ways dying, old values, old beliefs.”
Cécile: Gates of Gold, another of the series, goes back to 1711 France and King Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles. Brought to life by award-winning author Mary Casanova (Stealing Thunder, When Eagles Fall, The Hunter), Cécile dreams of a life at court, away from the deprivation of life in her outlying village. But once her dreams come true and she enters the service of the King’s sister-in-law, her fairytale expectations of palace life are not at all what she finds amidst the rigid rules and inner politics of all the subjects vying for the King’s favor.
“Court life was sumptuous, complicated and scandalous,” says Casanova. “Through Cécile’s eyes, I hope young readers can imagine and experience [its] complexities.”
Isabel: Taking Wing uses the backdrop of London in 1592 to tell the story of an independent young girl. Created by the award-winning British author Annie Dalton (Night Maze, The Real Tilly Beaning, The Afterdark Princess), Isabel is banished from her beloved home for sneaking out to the theater — something unheard of at the time for girls of fine families. She is sent to live with a maternal aunt in the countryside, which proves to be a fortuitous experience.
“We have all these mental photofit pictures of what an English man (or woman) is like, and what I love is that the Elizabethans gloriously undermine and contradict every one!” laughs Dalton. “They were not in the least buttoned up or repressed. They were actually far more like our cultural stereotype of Italians — passionate, volatile, feuding and scheming, exuberantly in love with the arts and with life itself.” In that spirit, Dalton created Isabel. “Isabel is absolutely a child of her times, and here is the greatest source of her conflict … her spirit rebels against the deadly tedium of domesticity. Taking Wing shows how she finds a way to fly free within the confines of a 16th-century female life.”
Dalton adds, “Taking Wing is a universal story. We all live within confines of some kind.”
Indeed, each of the girls of the Many Lands series must face her own challenges and restrictions, regardless of her homeland, her history, her family. And each of them prevails.
Says editor England, “… as girls grow into young womanhood and face changes and the increasing complexities of life, we want to offer them stories and dolls that connect them with other girls also in the process of change, of facing new challenges and of becoming their more grown-up selves.” That three more Girls are forthcoming next fall is only more good news.
Girl power, yes! Girl power with ethnic diversity and sensitivity — most definitely!
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