“Ven aqui, Dora,” my uncle kneeled on the floor with his arms outstretched, waiting for me to greet him.

“Yo no ero Dora!” I yelled in my terrible, baby babble Spanish. My uncle laughed, as did my cousins and my parents standing around him. Though I was tired of being called Dora, my shoulder-length hair and purple shirt said otherwise. Sure, I loved her show when I was first learning how to talk and walk, but by the time Kindergarten rolled around, I was more than fed up with my little childhood nickname. Despite this, it had become a staple of my identity—at least in the eyes of my family—throughout my early elementary school experience.

During autumn of 2009—the start of my third grade—I had freshly acquired a copy of The Lightning Thief, the first book in the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series. When I sat down on my sofa at home to read the first page, one page turned to 100. I was done with the book within a matter of days, finding myself hooked by demigods and Camp Half-Blood. It was a world brimming with mysteries and secret heroes, who weren’t much older than me. Percy, Annabeth, Grover, Rachel—I imagined them all as my friends, and I imagined that I, like Percy, was a child of Poseidon. It was so easy to want to be them, to live their lives. These books became the center of the conversations I had with my close friends.

One year later, we anxiously awaited the release of the fifth and final book of the series: The Last Olympian. “With a title like that, at least one of the characters is going to die, right?” My friend asked me, shoveling pudding into her mouth. The cafeteria was noisy, as always. The fifth graders were just starting to come in through the doors.

“I hope not!” I responded, anxiously sipping from my milk carton. “I don’t think I could take it.”

“Me neither,” she confessed.

Later that day, I was eating macaroni with ketchup at the dinner table with my parents when an idea popped into my brain. “Quiero que mi cumpleaños sea de Percy Jackson!” My upcoming birthday party would be the coolest in the grade if I made it Percy-Jackson-themed. My parents loved the idea, and told me to start thinking of decorations.

One week passed, and the day of my party neared. I was sitting in the sun-baked mulch surrounding my elementary school’s playground when my best friend came and sat criss-cross applesauce next to me.

“Who are you going to dress up as?” She asked me, pushing her blonde bangs out of her eyes, which frequently bothered her.

“I don’t know yet,” I responded, giving her a sheepish smile.

“I’m going to be Annabeth,” my friend announced. I felt a pang of embarrassment. How did my friend know what she would dress up as to my birthday party, but I didn’t?

“That’s awesome,” I replied. “You look like Annabeth.”

She grinned at my comment, blue eyes sparkling under the intense Florida sunlight.

No matter how much I racked my brain, I couldn’t think of an important character in my favorite book series that resembled me even a little bit, with my brown skin and thick, chocolate-colored curly hair. I tried not to let it bother me. Instead, I asked my parents to take me to a Halloween store and found an Athena costume to wear to my party.

In the years that passed, I read more and more books and found that most of the popular American series at the time—Divergent, Maze Runner, The Hunger Games—didn’t feature any important characters that were Hispanic either, yet I knew there were a lot of people who, like me, moved to the United States from Latin American countries. I saw these people everyday: in stores, at school, at the park. So why didn’t I ever see them in books?

Perhaps, the lack of representation of Hispanic characters can be attributed to the small percentage of published authors who identify as Latinx.

"The salad bowl" may be a more modernized metaphor to refer to the multicultural makeup of the United States, but the missing diversity in the literature sector far from supports this idea. A survey done by Lee and Low Books in 2015 shows the industry-wide lack of diversity in publishing (see graphic below). White/Caucasians make up nearly 4/5 of the overall publishing industry at 79%. No other race makes up even 10%.

If nearly ⅘ of the industry consists of white people, it is evident why so many popular books series released in the first decade and a half of the 2000s mostly featured white characters. The problem with this is that the 2018 U.S Bureau Census shows that white children make up less than half of all children age 15 and under in the United States. Therefore, it is increasingly important that the publishing industry accommodate the growing diversity in the United States. Children often turn to books to validate their experiences, and if they don’t feel represented in the stories they are reading, it could have adverse effects on their development.

This kind of literary cultural invisibility, to give it a name, might not even be something that’s immediately noticeable to the readers themselves. It might take planning a birthday party to realize you look nothing like the characters in your favorite book series. As a child who spent most of their time reading books, I don’t know if delving into stories that didn’t include Hispanic characters was a factor in my deciding to pretend I didn’t speak Spanish during elementary school. I can’t say for certain if it’s what influenced me to say Spanish words with an American accent (intentionally), or if it’s why I wanted people to refer to me as Ally instead of Alejandra. I'm not sure about any of these things, and blaming these personal conflicts on the types of books I read would be a far stretch; what I do know, is that if more of the books that were popular during my coming of age showcased characters who looked like me, spoke like me, or celebrated the same holidays as me, I probably would have questioned the differences of my culture less.

Growing up in a society that places the spotlight on western cultures causes many non-American children to feel disconnected from their ethnic, racial, or social differences. In light of many children experiencing cultural invisibility, the movement #WeNeedDiverseBooks has picked up importance nationwide. This hashtag originated in 2014 from a Twitter exchange between authors Malinda Lo and Ellen Oh when they vocalized their disapproval of the lack of diversity in children’s literature. Since then, many authors have put in an extra effort to include multicultural, diverse characters.

Rick Riordan himself joined the battle well before the twitter movement. The launch of his series The Heroes of Olympus—the sequel to Percy Jackson and the Olympians—promised a uniquely colorful set of characters, whose heritages ranged from Asian, to Native American, to Hispanic. It was engaging to me as a reader to navigate along with Riordan relevant topics in modernity, like interracialness and cultural barriers, while interwoven with ancient Roman and Greek mythology. The next time I decided to dress up as a fictional character was for Halloween in 7th grade, and this time I had no trouble finding a brown character who I could identify with:

Piper McLean.

Protagonist, daughter of Aphrodite, and descendant of Native Americans, Piper counters many stereotypes and classic Western beauty standards. She is intelligent, loyal, and strikingly beautiful. Her role helped me appreciate something that I had been self-conscious of in the past: my indigenous features—inherited from my great great grandmother, who was part of a native Venezuelan tribe. It takes only one glance at the first generation of Disney princesses—Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty—to notice that beauty has been historically synonymous with pale, supple skin and delicate features. Riordan’s inclusion of Piper as a child of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty, was a nagging finger in the face of society’s ideals of beauty.

Riordan's Heroes of Olympus series resonated with many fans of his older books that were enthusiastic to see more diversity.

Books have revolutionized movements for centuries: To Kill a Mockingbird fought against racism; Anne Frank give a face to the victims of the holocaust; One Hundred Years of Solitude showed the West the reality of living in colonized lands. The process of reflection that often follows a book can incite changes in the reader. Even the details that pass by the reader more subtly, like Piper being a child of Aphrodite, can combat stereotypes and fight for inclusivity. This is why it’s so important that authors recognize their influence: many of them have the reach to cause positive change. The key is to not forget about certain audiences simply because you do not form a part of them yourself. Literature can be the form of entertainment for an entire generation, as were the Harry Potter and Percy Jackson series. Unfortunately, this means that any character is exposed to the possibility of reinforcing harmful stereotypes. This is not by any means a new topic; it has been a subject of investigation in previous decades.

The International Literacy Association published a study in 2005 that analyzes the changes in representations of Hispanics in literature between the years 1966-2003. One of the 1982 studies included evaluating 56 fictional books about Puerto Ricans. After thorough content analysis, the findings of the study are as follows: “Assimilation is a major goal. Puerto Ricans are viewed as causing their own oppression. Whites often ‘cured’ Puerto Ricans’ problems.” Though there were Hispanic characters in these books, the issue is that they were often only presented within the constraints of their stereotypes (ex. as blue-collar workers). Therefore, instead of being beneficial to the Latino community, creating characters solely for the purpose of strengthening a stereotype can instead cause more prejudice against it. So despite the fact that in the late 90s there was an increase of Hispanic characters in books, Latinos around the country did not feel that their experiences were being accurately represented.

In her article “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors,” Rudine Sims Bishop discusses why it is necessary to have books that reflect the experiences of many kinds of people. A window in a literary sense is what allows a reader to view a world or lifestyle that is otherwise unknown to them. The window, also called a sliding glass door, encourages the reader to step into that world and feel the emotions, experiences, and challenges that come with it. A book can also represent a mirror because it takes certain human experiences and reflects it back to the reader. If they cannot see themself reflected in the stories they are reading, it may lead to them feeling like they lack importance in society. Sims adds the following about children who form part of majority groups: “In [The United States], where racism is still one of the major unresolved social problems, books may be one of the few places where children who are socially isolated and insulated from the larger world may meet people unlike themselves. If they see only reflections of themselves, they will grow up with an exaggerated sense of their own importance and value in the world—a dangerous ethnocentrism.” Not having enough diverse books in schools could be prolonging the fight against racism.

I grew up in a small town in the southwest of Florida. It’s the kind of place where people go to retire, and the kind of place where some people are rich enough to hire others to clean up after them. The children of the house owners noticed that the people who cleaned up after them often spoke Spanish, so they would go to school and call kids like me Mexican because we’re brown and also speak Spanish. I found myself wanting to spit in the milk cartons of these culturally-ignorant children. Not because I thought being Mexican was a bad thing, but because I knew it was a bad thing to the people who referred to me as such. And in degrading Mexican culture, they were also putting down the rest of us who are from Venezuela, Panama, Nicaragua, Argentina—or any of the 18 other Spanish-speaking countries—by making our cultures and experiences invisible. It makes me wonder, if my elementary school had prioritized diverse, non-negative-stereotype-endorsing literature, would these children have had different attitudes towards myself and the few other Hispanic kids in my class? This opens up the bigger question: does education on diversity inclusion happen at schools, or at home?

Margaret A. Hagerman conducted a two-year study on how white children from economically-privileged families develop their thoughts on race. She found that many politically-conservative families tend to approach race in a “color-blind” way, which is to say, they teach their kids that race does not matter and that everyone should be viewed equally (more on this later). On the other hand, many more of the politically-liberal families talked to their children about the history of racism and what it means in today’s society. Hagerman found that most of the families in the study were unconsciously endorsing racism, despite their attempts to not do so, by providing the wrong kind of diversity education for their children. For example, forcing their kids to do community service in primarly-black soup kitchens only reinforced the idea that white people are superior, economically and socially, to black people. In an interview, Hagerman explains more about this phenomenon: “Not only do many of the white kids in my study express limited awareness of the history of racism or the realities of contemporary forms of racism and racial inequality, but they also express what sociologist Tyrone Forman describes as ‘racial apathy.'” Therefore, many parents are trying to prevent their children from being racist, but they are doing so in a way that actually enforces the negative attitudes they are trying to avoid. What's more, these thoughts on race appear to develop at a young age. Hagerman explains this further. “My research shows that such apathy manifests itself in white childhood—like when some of the young people tell me that they ‘don’t care’ about black people who are killed by police because ‘when black people get shot, it is because they fucked up.’” Children with this mindset are quite literally being pumped out of privileged white families. To explain what causes this, let's talk about “color-blindness.”

"Color-blindness" is an ideology that pledges to eliminate racism by disregarding the spectrum of races, cultures, and skin colors in order to view everyone on equal footing. In other words: “Let’s solve colored people’s problems by ignoring the fact that they’re colored.” Initially, it sounds like an egalitarian concept. However it's really just an excuse for people to avoid having the conversation on racial and sociocultural differences, which affect everything from income to college admissions. Opting out of the discussion only prolongs the issue at heart, which is that the stories of many people of color are not being told.

Evidently, the only way to combat this issue is by bringing the spotlight to the different racial and cultural groups that make up 40% of the American population. There are two sides to this coin: not only must people be willing to share their stories—in the form of books, shows, social media, speeches, etc.—the others must also commit to listening to them. Proper children’s education regarding the customs and traditions of other cultures will at the very least help form a generation with minds predisposed to the cooperation and coexistence of multiple racial and ethnic groups. It's too much to ask that this will eradicate the annoying “Consuela” and “Dora” nicknames from the English-to-Spanish dictionary, but, at the very least, let's try and get some diversity in the name-calling, since it's going to happen regardless.

Funnily enough, some Hispanics have even adopted these names as terms of endearment among loved ones—probably in an effort to turn enemy swords into pool noodles. So, my family ended up calling me Dora not because I bore even a fraction of semblance to her, but because she was a readily accessible fictional character, and, really, the only Hispanic pop culture icon of the early 2000s. Consequently, many of us Latinas found ourselves face-to-face with the Dora Complex: we fought angrily against the label tattooed on our foreheads and came out swearing never to cut our hair above shoulder-length or wear orange shorts. Where can I sign the petition to turn Dora back into an educational children’s fiction character and not into the subject of Latinx pan-ethnic micro(and not-so-micro)aggressions?