Author Cynthia Leitich Smith, best known for her Native American and contemporary multicultural fiction, goes goth for the first time in her 2007 release TANTALIZE.
Acclaimed author Cynthia Leitich Smith has written extensively for the children’s and young adult audience. Her short stories have appeared in award-winning collections, such as Period Pieces: Stories for Girls (HarperCollins, 2003) and In My Grandmother’s House: Award-Winning Authors Tell Stories about Their Grandmothers (HarperCollins, 2003), as well as in respected YAL magazines such as Cicada. Smith’s writings are known for their multicultural themes, and she has published several contemporary Native American-themed books, including Jingle Dancer (Morrow, 2000), Rain Is Not My Indian Name (HarperCollins, 2001), and Indian Shoes (HarperCollins, 2002). In 2007, she has expanded her range to include gothic fantasy, with the February release of TANTALIZE (Candlewick, 2007).
Mechele R. Dillard: You’ve written for ages as young as 4-years old, and to great praise, but now you’ve decided to venture into the 14+ category with Tantalize (Candlewick, 2007). Did the decision to write for an older audience occur over time, or had you always planned to include a range of age groups as an author?
Cynthia Leitich Smith: I sometimes joke that I have either great range or a complete lack of focus. Neither is really the case. What happens is that I start with an idea for a character, which leads me to his or her story, and the combination of those two dictates whatever age level will come to be associated with the book.
It's odd, though, because I first imagined that I would write middle grade, and I have published a couple of middle grade short stories in anthologies. However, looking at the books.… If we assume the author writes for herself first, my inner child readers are four, nine, fourteen, and seventeen. I seem to have somehow skipped twelve along the way.
MRD: Before Tantalize, you stuck with realistic fiction. Tantalize is definitely gothic fantasy, incorporating vampires, shape-shifters, and werewolves, but, still, it retains the multicultural struggles that have made your realistic fiction, such as Rain Is Not My Indian Name (HarperCollins, 2001) so well-received. Did you begin Tantalize with the idea of using fantasy as a medium for a real-world situation, or did that simply develop as your characters grew? Did your knowledge and understanding of Native American culture and heritage influence your crafting of Tantalize?
CLS: The resonance of any fantasy comes in part from its reflections of the real world.
That said, I started with character and the pre-existing body of literature. Tantalize was inspired by Bram Stoker's decision to include a Texan among his vampire hunters in Dracula. That led to my decision to bring the mythology "home" to Texas in a very contemporary story. So, from the beginning, I was very aware of the power of the conversation between books. I carefully considered the classic themes—a step too many writers skip. It's an important one, though, to keep the blood fresh…so to speak.
One aspect of Dracula that didn't resonate with me with the (literal) demonizing of the "dark foreigner," which at that time meant Eastern European/Transylvanian.
Yet I couldn't deny that dynamic persists, and so I decided to approach it with a twist that suited my own more multicultural-friendly outlook. Moreover, the tensions between humans, vampires, and shape-shifters in my novel are largely a reflection of those within the realistic North American setting in which I elected to frame the fantasy world.
No characters in Tantalize are identified as Native American, and it's difficult for me to know what aspects of my background influence any given writing decision. But two other aspects of historic gothics that bothered me were the casting of major predators (wolves, cats, etc.) as monsters and of women as victim virgins or lurid vamps.
In my world, a werewolf may be the only person you can trust, and a strong girl likely will be one who has normal teenage desires.
MRD: You have worked as everything from a popcorn popper in a movie theater to a telephone operator to teaching legal writing. Do you feel this diversity in the workforce before becoming a professional writer has added to your ability to connect with a wide range of individual readers?
To find out what author Cynthia Leitich Smith has to say about her experience in the working world and how it has affected her writing, as well as what projects Smith has in the works and how to contact the author herself, check out PART II of her interview with Mechele R. Dillard for Teen Fiction at Suite101.com!
