Giving Compass' Take:

• Junot Diaz's book, Islandborn, is about a little girl trying to recall where she came from. Diaz discusses the importance of books that represent immigrants and people of color - and why their stories need to be told honestly. 

• How can we encourage more authors to tell stories that children of color can relate to?

• It is important for young immigrants to have role models, to see themselves in books and movies. And especially, as activists. 

For more than 20 years, novelist Junot Diaz has explored the immigrant experience.

From his debut 1996 novel, “Drown,” a semi-autobiographical work on the life of a young Dominican transplant to the United States, to “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2008, Diaz has found inspiration in the culture that surrounds him.

His work has won him more than just accolades. He is a MacArthur “genius grant” winner and teaches creative writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But for years, his two goddaughters and other children have asked him to craft stories with them in mind. Diaz has done so with his latest book, “Islandborn,” which tackles the dilemma of an island girl in the United States: How do I remember where I come from?

In “Islandborn,” he writes of a brown-skinned girl named Lola, whose head is topped by an Afro puff, or bolita. One day Lola’s teacher asks her students to draw pictures of where their families are from. But Lola can’t remember her island. So family and friends start to tell her stories, beginning with memories of a hurricane she lived through.

Junot Diaz was determined to get it right, given how hard it is for children of color to discover books with characters who are like them, particularly by authors of color.

“I think, communities like mine, if we’re not willing to have stories with these kinds of complexities — who we are and why we’ve found ourselves across the world — those stories are not going to be honestly told,” he said.

But Diaz also wants to let immigrant children know that they have a culture and a history that they can be proud of.

Read the full article about Islandborn by David Cazares at St. Louis Public Radio.