Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color - 67

number of the Indian reviewers were as comfortable with it as "a young novel." That was just one of the experiences I had with those often contradictory review communities. Depending on where someone was coming from, they'd see different themes, get different jokes. There is a lot of market pressure to write in a universally accessibly style, but we do so at the expense of culturally unique literary and storytelling traditions. With continued exposure to other points of view, we'll slowly build more understanding. That doesn't have to be an easy process to be a worthwhile one. Especially where we can laugh together, connect on that level, we've built a bond. More recently, I've published short stories in a number of anthologies: In My Grandmother's House (HarperCollins, 2003); Period Pieces (HarperCollins, 2003); and Moccasin Thunder (HarperCollins, 2005). Its occurred to me that, with the exception of Santa Knows (Dutton, 2006), all of my books and all but one of my short stories are set in places that I've lived—Jingle Dancer in Oklahoma, Rain Is Not My Indian Name in northeast Kansas, Indian Shoes in Chicago. My upcoming YA gothic fantasy, Tantalize (Candlewick, 2006) is set in Austin, which is where I now make my home. A number of people have asked me about what they assume will be a departure from my emphasis on multiculturalism because it's not realistic fiction. But to those who've had a chance to read it, that sensibility shines through. I'll let you all read it and see why. Today I'm a writer, not a younger reader. Depictions of contemporary Native people are less rare in part because I've joined a small circle of authors for whom that has been a priority. All of us matter. Each of us can make a difference. Make ourselves heard. Storytelling elevates the human soul, the human condition. It makes us laugh and ache and, hopefully, relate to one another better. It's an honor to be part of that tradition and in such inspiring company. Thank you all. GREG H. LEITICH SMITH I was born and raised in Chicago – for those of you from there, I attended Lane Tech High School back when they still had shop and drafting classes (Cyn was surprised the first time I told her that, at our school, we didn’t have home economics, we had foundry.) I was ten years old when Richard J. Daley died. Both my parents have engineering backgrounds – my father, electrical, and my mother, mechanical. I went to the University of Illinois in UrbanaChampaign for my bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering; the University of Texas at Austin for my master’s degree, also in electrical engineering; and the University of Michigan for law school, which is where Cynthia and I met. My mother is Japanese-American – her family came over to Hawaii in the late 1800s; they made it to the mainland after the war. My grandfather was a Congregational minister; both he and my grandmother studied at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. My father is ethnically German but grew up in Romania. His family fled Romania by foot from the Soviets into Germany and he immigrated here in the mid-late forties. When he came over, he said, his dream was to someday buy a house. I grew up in a typical Chicago bungalow neighborhood. We had quite a few Japanese American families, but the neighborhood was historically German, and we had a number of German immigrants, as well. My first novel, Ninjas, Piranhas, And Galileo (Little, Brown 2003, 2005; Recorded Books 2004,) is a romantic science comedy courtroom drama, set at a fictional school in Chicago, about three friends who take part in their school science fair and end up in their student court because of it. It’s told in alternating points of view from each of the three: Elias Brandenburg, Shohei O’Leary, and Honoria Grob. Elias is German American and suffers in comparison to his over-achiever (and Bachobsessed) parents and older siblings, is an 67

Proceedings of the First National Joint Conference of Librarians of Color

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