CBC Diversity

An “It’s Complicated!” post by Debbie Reese, assistant professor of American Indian studies at the University of Illinois

---

When Nancy Mercado invited me to submit a post for CBC’s “It’s Complicated” series, I was pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the audience of CBC’s Diversity Blog. In her invitation, she wrote that CBC defines diversity in terms of “cultural/ethnic/religious/class/sexual diversity.”

I’m complicating the definition by adding “nation” because while American Indians have specific cultural or religious ways of being that mark us as diverse from the mainstream, the most significant marker is our political status as sovereign nations. Within an Indigenous sovereign nation, you could find people who don’t have the hair or skin color, or other features commonly—we could say stereotypically—attributed to American Indians. I’ll complicate the discussion even further by saying that there are people who are citizens of sovereign nations, and, there are people who are descendants of someone who was/is a citizen of a sovereign nation. Going one step further in complication, there are sovereign nations that are federally recognized, some that are state recognized, and some that are not recognized at all.

Most people don’t know anything at all about tribal sovereignty and what it means. Without that knowledge, it can be difficult for outsiders to write stories that ring true to our experiences as American Indians. In fact, it can be difficult for someone of a sovereign tribal nation at one end of the country to write about a nation at the other end, but someone who knows their nation, its history, its ways of being, and the ways it has been misrepresented has a leg up on anyone else. They know that there is a lot they do not know, and they know that standard sources aren’t the place to go for the information they need to write a story that holds up to the eye of someone of that tribal nation.

Keep reading

An “It’s Complicated!” post by editor Cheryl Klein

---

One of the most common questions that comes up around diversity is the issue of “Who can write what”—whether an author of one race can create a character of another, whether that character is then authentic, who gets to decide all this. When I’ve considered these situations as an editor, my judgment almost always starts with how much that writer is willing and able to radically decenter himself and his own privileges and biases in favor of those of his fictional character and culture, rendered in all its lights and shades … which also presupposes the writer has done enough research or gained enough experience with that culture to render the lights and shades authentically.

As an example, let’s suppose I just finished reading a manuscript written by a white woman but told from a Mexican-American teenage boy’s perspective, and overall, I liked the manuscript: I found the characters involving and multi-dimensional, the plot was fresh and smart and kept me turning the pages, the themes were woven deeply into the story and thought-provoking — and all of that would incline me toward acquiring it. But as a person who thinks a lot about diversity issues, I would at that point pause a moment and ask myself: Did the voice sound believable to me as that of a Mexican-American teenager, given the character and the world the author created around him? (Here I have to acknowledge that I myself am a white woman, and keep an eye on my own privileges, biases, and knowledge/lack thereof.

Here I have to acknowledge that I myself am a white woman, and keep an eye on my own privileges, biases, and knowledge/lack thereof.

Keep reading

An “It’s Complicated!” post by literary agent Stefanie Sanchez Von Borstel

---

While on faculty at the National Latino Writers Conference last Thursday, a timely

USA TODAY

headline read:

For the first time in US history, more than half of all newborn babies born last year are minorities. The entire US population is 36% minority, and this milestone shows how swiftly our nation’s youth is diversifying. 

Yet a recent study by the SCBWI found that in 2010 more than 90 percent of children’s/young adult books published in the US featured white protagonists. As a literary agent, I’ve found it’s important to show publishers there is a demand, and in turn help them feel confident to publish even more diverse voices. As an author advocate, I believe it’s critical for writers of color to see their fellow writers succeed. As a mother, I know it’s urgent that we make sure young readers see themselves in the books they read.

The debut middle-grade novel by Diana Lopez, Confetti Girl (Little, Brown), is an example of a book filled with diversity that doesn’t focus on diversity but instead wraps diversity around a wonderful story. Apolina “Lina” Flores is a sock enthusiast, volleyball player and science lover looking for answers about her life. Filled with colorful Mexican-American cultural details such as dichos, confetti-filled cascarones and cumbia dances, the story struck a chord with middle-schoolers nationwide. 

Keep reading

One of the goals of the CBC Diversity Committee is to recruit a wider, more diverse range of people to work in the children’s publishing industry. In service of this goal, committee members visit schools in the New York area to talk about how we got into the industry and how students of today might find their way into it in future.

 

This past Tuesday, in honor of Children’s Book Week, my fellow committee member Antonio Gonzalez, author Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, and I visited Bushwick Leaders High School for Academic Excellence in Brooklyn. Gbemi is the author of the wonderful Eighth Grade Superzero, which I edited, while Antonio handles school and library visits for Scholastic as part of our marketing department. Thus together we covered almost the entire publishing process, from the author’s initial inspiration to putting books into kids’ hands.

We spoke to two classrooms of seniors on the verge of graduation. Gbemi kicked the presentation off by talking about her path to becoming an author – her years as a new kid in many different schools around the world, and the various kinds of writing she did for magazines and nonprofits, all growing out of her own passion for the subjects she wrote about. I talked about the three roles involved in being an editor – that I’m simultaneously a talent scout, a responsive reader, and a producer – and showed some sketches of various draft covers for Gbemi’s book, including this lovely final image to the right.

Keep reading

My how-I-got-into-publishing story is the oldest and most commonplace of them all:  Girl falls in love with books, decides to devote life to reading and making them. The only distinction I bring to this story is that I truly started making authorial connections very, very young … at about six months of age, in fact. My grandfather, Philip Sadler, was a professor of children’s literature at Central Missouri State University in Warrensburg, Missouri, not far from where I grew up. He founded and organized one of the nation’s very first children’s literature festivals, where dozens of authors would come and meet hundreds of children for a few days every spring. In March of 1979, when I was about six months old, my mother went to pick up Barbara Robinson (author of The Best Christmas Pageant Ever), Gertrude Bell (Where Runs the River), and Clyde Robert Bulla (The Ghost of Windy Hill) at the Kansas City Airport, and as Mom tells it, I cried and cried as long as I was in my car seat. Thus Barbara held me for the next two hours – and my career collaborating with children’s authors began.

From such a beginning, I grew up surrounded by books and book people – constantly read to, and, once I learned myself, constantly reading. When I was in high school, my mother brought home a book from the library called Careers for Bookworms and Other Literary Types by Marjorie Eberts and Margaret Gisler, and I read about life as a book editor. A job where you lived in New York, read all day, and worked with authors to make books sounded absolutely awesome to me, so I began consciously shaping my life to achieve that end: I went to a college that had a good English program; I majored in English and took classes in bookmaking and economics (though the latter didn’t turn out to be all that useful); I read Publishers Weekly in the college library… . And all the time, I kept reading for pleasure – or more accurately, I couldn’t stop reading for pleasure, especially kids’ books, alongside all the reading I had to do for classes.

I wanted to do a publishing internship, but I also needed to work in the summers to pay for my college expenses, so I couldn’t afford the cost of spending three months in New York. To make up for this,

after my college graduation in 2000, I attended the Denver Publishing Institute, a four-week course at the University of Denver that teaches Publishing Business 101. Industry professionals lead the classes, so there were lots of opportunities to make great contacts; and one of them was Susan Hirschman, the founder of Greenwillow Books (an imprint of HarperCollins), who was so clearly in love with her books and her authors and her job that I thought, “That’s who I want to be when I grow up.” Moreover, while I’d gone to Denver knowing that I wanted to be an editor, her speech reminded me of how much I loved children’s and YA books in particular, so children’s editorial really was the perfect fit. I talked a lot with Susan during her visit – in particular, and without knowing it, I said the best possible thing one can say to an editor:  that she edited one of my favorite books ever (in this case, The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley – and I meant it too!). She was kind enough to tell me to keep in touch.

Keep reading