An Interview with Allen Say

Papertigers.org's monthy interview for July features Allen Say. He talks about the turning points in his career, his past, his books, and how he produces his work. At one point, he remembers immigrating to the U.S. from Japan at the age of sixteen:

"My mother had been born in California and my father was a Korean orphan who had grown up in Shanghai, and I was always aware of being different from other children. This sort of personal history doesn’t seem too out of the ordinary today, but it was when I was a child. I was born an alien. And my sense of being an alien intensified in America. In Japan I could blend in with the crowd and disappear, but in America I was too conspicuous. Some years ago I noticed that there are a lot of doors and windows in my illustrations, which of course are the devices through which the outsider views the world."

tags: multicultural children's books Allen Say