{"id":17762,"date":"2016-01-19T06:00:10","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T11:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=17762"},"modified":"2016-01-19T06:00:10","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T11:00:10","slug":"turning-diversity-flare-ups-into-opportunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/?p=17762","title":{"rendered":"Turning Diversity Flare-Ups into Opportunity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The children&#8217;s literature world has been stirred up by Scholastic&#8217;s announcement on Sunday that they are pulling <em>A Birthday Cake for George Washington<\/em> from their line-up and offering full return credit for unsold copies. The nutshell for anyone new to this issue is that a picture book for young readers was published, and then recalled because it ended up altering and reinterpreting\u00a0history in ways that made slavery seem like a sometimes proud and happy experience, without sufficient accuracy and context in the story itself for its young readers to understand the reality of that experience (though there is a note in the back matter clarifying some of the license taken).<br \/>\nOur small world is in an uproar of disagreement about this decision to pull the book; you can read some articles from various viewpoints:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/oomscholasticblog.com\/post\/proud-slice-history\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">publisher Andrea Davis Pinkney&#8217;s original introduction of the book<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mountvernon.org\/research-collections\/digital-encyclopedia\/article\/hercules\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the Mt. Vernon account of Hercules&#8217; history<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbcdiversity.com\/post\/137284630773\/the-first-bite-slicing-through-a-birthday-cake-to\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><em>Birthday Cake<\/em> author Ramin Ganeshram&#8217;s post about writing the book in CBC&#8217;s Diversity blog<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/campbele.wordpress.com\/2016\/01\/17\/recalled\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">blogger Edi Campbell&#8217;s response to the recall<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.kirkusreviews.com\/features\/smiling-slaves-post-fine-dessert-world\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the Kirkus review of the book<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/2016\/01\/18\/smiling_slaves_at_story_time_these_picture_books_show_why_we_need_more_diversity_in_publishing_too\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Salon.com article on <em>Birthday Cake<\/em>, <em>A Fine Dessert<\/em>, and the responsibilities of writing for children about slavery<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.slj.com\/afuse8production\/2016\/01\/18\/happy-martin-luther-king-jr-day-lets-have-some-cake\/#_\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Betsy Bird&#8217;s Fuse #8 blog post about the controversy<\/a>, which includes a link to<a href=\"http:\/\/fusion.net\/story\/256078\/a-birthday-cake-for-george-washington\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"> this excellent Fusion article by Charles Pulliam-Moore<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While the Internet is\u00a0aflame with vilification and ire on both sides, what I want to talk about is the opportunity that this decision affords us in the future.<br \/>\n<!--more-->The only productive way to move through this is for people to listen\u00a0to each other. Personally,\u00a0I strongly believe the decision was a wise\u00a0and necessary one given the problematic treatment of this story. And yet, I also feel sad for the author and artist of the book, because this must be their ultimate nightmare. Seeing a book they&#8217;ve\u00a0worked on for years, with all good intent, withdrawn, and having strangers and colleagues fling vitriol at it (and at them personally)\u00a0on the Internet, would be terribly\u00a0unsettling at best. I truly hope that even if we take issue with some of the decisions made in the making of the book, we can keep our discussions civil.<br \/>\nI can see how some of the decisions that ended up not being acceptable could happen innocently enough. I could imagine\u00a0a conversation where the creators and editors are talking about the shape of the story and the characters, and someone saying, &#8220;This is a story about a famous adult. How do we get the child&#8217;s-eye view in there?&#8221; and voila! there&#8217;s Delia, the daughter of Hercules \u2013 the perfect narrator. So\u00a0what\u00a0if she\u00a0was actually working\u00a0at\u00a0the Virginia plantation while her father\u00a0was in Philadelphia making the birthday cake? There were likely girls helping in the kitchen, and it makes for a stronger story if it&#8217;s his own daughter. It&#8217;s obvious how that decision could have been made, creatively speaking, but\u00a0in addition to the historical inaccuracy, here&#8217;s another\u00a0reason that kind of decision is extremely problematic.<br \/>\nThe decisions that led to altering the history behind a story like <em>A Birthday Cake for George Washington<\/em> may\u00a0have been made \u2013 however subconsciously \u2013 with\u00a0the subconscious\u00a0priorities of\u00a0a particular\u00a0audience in mind \u2013 a perhaps largely white audience of gatekeepers at schools and libraries.\u00a0Looked at\u00a0by that audience, those changes perhaps seem small: Delia wasn&#8217;t in Philadelphia helping to make the cake; Hercules made an escape\u00a0attempt\u00a0on Washington&#8217;s birthday, but not on *this* birthday. However, looking at the story\u00a0from the perspective of the actual historical figures, and the truth of the full stories\u00a0of their lives, these are huge, crucial\u00a0distinctions.<br \/>\nWhat I&#8217;ve been thinking about:\u00a0I&#8217;m left wondering why we would be telling this story in the first place.<br \/>\nI can see wanting to tell stories of triumph and achievement in unlikely environments. It is a given that any enslaved people would deeply value and preserve their own dignity, as much as possible; everything else was stolen by their captors.\u00a0Dignity and spirit\u00a0are necessary for survival. I would also argue the same is true for creative individual expression, in whatever way\u00a0that\u00a0gets to express itself in a limited sphere. Don Tate&#8217;s wonderful <em>Poet: The Remarkable Story of George Moses Horton<\/em> tells such a tale, but does so in a balanced way with a lot of context and historical detail for a\u00a0young audience. He includes joy and personal achievement in his text without whitewashing or glossing over the facts.<br \/>\nOur country is deeply traumatized by our history of uprooting its original Native American citizens and importing slaves to create wealth for white European immigrants. We can&#8217;t pretend\u00a0that history\u00a0away. We need to face it, try to make amends for it, not repeat our mistakes, and honor the experience of those whose ancestors suffered (and continue to suffer) as a result of a systemically racist structure. I understand the desire to find and celebrate stories of victory over harsh circumstances. But some of these stories, I think, end up attempting to soothe the anxieties and guilt\u00a0of\u00a0the dominant culture while\u00a0painting a whitewashed (irony noted)\u00a0portrait of the truth.<br \/>\nLet&#8217;s hope that there were moments of pride, dignity, accomplishment, and achievement in slaves&#8217; lives, that there was laughter and there was spoon-licking. But any shining moments happened in a context where freedom was denied and the majority of slaves lived miserable, hard, diminished\u00a0lives. We cannot escape that fact. Freedom is something that many of us\u00a0are so lucky to\u00a0take for granted, especially those of us who have never had it threatened, much less taken away. Its value cannot be forgotten when we are writing stories, especially for the young.<br \/>\nSome authors are concerned that this event will have a chilling effect on &#8220;diverse&#8221; books\u00a0because publishers will be terrified to misstep. To my mind, this is instead a helpful\u00a0wake-up call, a reminder that diverse books must be authentic and thoughtful. Creative teams must dig a little deeper to make sure they&#8217;re doing justice to the stories they&#8217;re telling. By all accounts, the chef Hercules was a fascinating individual whose story is definitely worth exploring \u2013 just perhaps not in such an abridged manner to such a young audience. When we tell stories of slavery to children &#8212; which unfortunately we must, if we are to help them understand the world they are inhabiting &#8212; we need to tell those stories in a new way. Why do these books never talk about what on earth was going on with the white owners&#8217; decisions to own and oppress people?\u00a0Children need and deserve honest conversation around difficult issues.<br \/>\nThe diverse stories about human triumph I would like to see look to our more recent past, and now, and to the future. I find it frustrating for the vast majority of stories featuring African-American characters to be set during slavery and civil rights, as though their history begins and ends there. (Which, possibly, in the subconsciousness\u00a0of white people, it almost does, in the sense that the events of those eras necessarily include\u00a0stories about white people, and white people sadly still tend to be most interested in stories that include them\u2014for better or worse.)<br \/>\nLet&#8217;s show kids of all races what amazing things have been accomplished by free people of color, and give them new role models among the titans of the past.<br \/>\nI&#8217;d love to see a picture book biography\u00a0about Mae Jemison, the first African-American female astronaut. How about Mark Dean, one of the country&#8217;s top engineers at IBM? The list of scientists and innovators, inventors and physicians, business entrepreneurs and artists, is packed with inspiration.<br \/>\nHow great would it be to expand kids&#8217; visions of who and what they might become, instead of constantly relegating them to a limiting and deeply traumatic past, or trying to contort\u00a0that terrible past into something positive?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We don&#8217;t need flame wars to move forward with authentic diversity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blogs.publishersweekly.com\/blogs\/shelftalker\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}