The Unbeatable Diana Ma
Note: The following first appeared in the Seattle Colleges Foundation’s “The College Minute” newsletter. It was penned by veteran Seattle journalist Florangela Davila, previously a longtime reporter for the Seattle Times and most recently news director for NPR-affiliate KNKX.
Stories have inhabited Diana Ma’s brain for as long as she can remember.
“From my earliest memory, I’ve always had stories in me,” she says. “My mind populated with characters, worlds, fantasies; I’d get lost in another world.”
Ma, 52, is sitting at Third Place Books, a fitting locale for a novelist and professor of English and Creative Writing at North Seattle College.
Heiress Apparently, Ma’s first novel, was a finalist for a 2021 Washington State Book Award. Her latest novel, The Unbeatable Lily Hong, hit store shelves earlier this year. Both are geared to young adult readers.
Ma is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. Born in Tacoma, she was raised in Burien and Renton. Throughout childhood she and her younger brother David constructed dramatic narratives and played them out with action figures: Resistance fighters in space. Sorceresses maneuvering to make things right. Star Wars figurines battling over fortresses.
When the entire family watched a 60-episode Chinese martial arts fantasy series, Ma was inspired to dress up her Barbies as Chinese warriors.
“I would use my hairpins as wands and daggers. So, there’d be a Barbie on a palomino with a hairpin dagger clipped onto her boot. I wanted to create and design worlds with characters who had agency and power.”
As Ma grew up, and eventually put aside the toy figurines, she started writing down her stories in spiral notebooks. Later, at the University of Washington, she majored in English with a creative writing focus. From there she went on to an MFA program, something unusual at the time for a woman of Chinese heritage. Only Amy Tan and Maxine Hong Kingston were clear role models.
Her writing continued: a draft short story collection, a draft literary novel. But what put Ma’s imagination into hyperdrive was the 2016 election. “I needed to write a world I could control, with characters having a way to resist,” she recalls.
The Young Adult dystopian novel that resulted didn’t find a publisher. But it did propel her forward, since it helped her win a year-long mentorship with We Need Diverse Books, a nonprofit created by marginalized writers working towards equity in the publishing industry. The 2019 mentorship paired Ma with an established author of color in the Young Adult genre: Swati Avasthi. “She gave me the MFA education I needed. She was a professor who knew how to teach,” says Ma.
Since that mentorship, Ma has gone on to publish three books, each featuring, in her words, “kickass Asian American heroes.” Her most recent book, The Unbeatable Lily Hong, celebrates the daring creativity of 12-year-old Lily as she fights to save the community center that houses her family’s Chinese school.
Growing up, Ma attended Chinese school and American school. “My American friends would say, ‘Wait, what? Four hours on a Saturday? That’s horrible.’
“But I actually enjoyed it. I wasn’t the painfully shy kid I was in American school. I was loud, obnoxious. I had an innate sense of belonging.”
The Lily character, Ma says, is not afraid. It is who she was when young — “on the inside. Not afraid to be.”
Ma continues, “The things that Lily knows and talks about, an understanding of race and gender, is so nuanced. I see that in my own kids. This generation … they’re making the world they want to live in. They’re asking, Why can’t we?”
It’s an optimism imbued with activism, which is something Ma has brought into the classroom, as well. She teaches in the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) framework, which prioritizes changing the learning environment versus changing learners. “It’s not one size for all learning. It recognizes individuals and their specific needs.”
Ma has taught at Seattle Colleges for more than 25 years, and is one of four Asian American woman who are tenured faculty in the English department. “It’s exciting to me to be in community,” she remarks.
“Diana, she’s got an openness to her. She’d be the one with a wide smile who’d throw her arms wide open and give you a hug,” says Terri Chung, a longtime colleague and the senior faculty member in the English and Humanities department.
Ma, Chung says, has always had a clear-eyed vision for equity. “I’ve watched her be an advocate for trans and LGBTQ issues as well as on race, gender and disability.” Both professors acknowledge their departmental priority to be constantly thinking about how students are navigating the curricula and whether all students are seeing themselves reflected.
Ma began a 1-year sabbatical this summer, but will stay busy writing, creating workshops, and building out an anti-oppressive writing community. She’ll also be actively reading, including Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem, an insistent recommendation from her 14-year-old son.
Ma’s fourth book, Rainbow Fair, may be her most personal yet. Set for release in April 2025, it centers on 12-year-old Sophie Mu as she explores her Hui, or Chinese Muslim identity. Also coming soon is Force of Chaos: A Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Novel featuring Trini Kwan, one of the earliest Asian American superheroes.
Another pair of “kickass” heroes? To find out, we’ll all have to buy the books.