report on diversity
Many thanks to my good friend, Laura Atkins, who forwarded me these notes on the “Crossing Cultures, Changing Skins: Writing Across Race, Ethnicity, Class, and Culture” panel I listed a while back. As I’ve said before, I’m fine with people writing “outside” their own race, and am currently absorbed in Octavian Nothing by MT Anderson. Of course, the recent appalling cartoon published in the New York Post reminds us that there are still many whites out there whose only aim is to malign, distort, and misrepresent black people, up to and including the President…
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Fran Manushkin of the PEN Children’s and Young Adult Committee introduced the panel moderator, Helen Benedict, who in turn introduced the speakers-Cheryl Willis Hudson, Fatima Shaik, and Sharon Dennis Wyeth. Benedict said they chose the title to highlight the process writers go through when they write about people different from themselves. She talked about the shock and (sometimes) disapproval she experienced from others as an outsider writing about people of color; she asked “As writers, don’t we want to step outside ourselves?” But identity is so important to the lives of children and teenagers and to the books we write for them.
Cheryl Willis Hudson, an author and the co-founder and co-director of
Just Us Books, began by saying, “I do believe that we can cross
cultures.” Stepping outside ourselves and embracing others is a good
thing. As writers, we serve as models.
Hudson went on to say, “I’m proud of the skin I’m in.”
She talked about her childhood and the role of family, community, and
culture-all the experiences of her life that have given her her voice
and made her the writer she is.
At the same time, Hudson considers herself more of an
editor and a publisher and talked about the role of institutions in
promoting multicultural books. She and her husband, Wade Hudson,
founded Just Us Books because they were troubled by the lack of Black
characters in pictures and texts of children’s books in the 1950s and
1960s. Nancy Larrick’s famous 1965 article, “The All-White World of
Children’s Books” discussed this problem. Hudson asked if we still
need to worry about this problem after years of multicultural
publishing and the election of Barack Obama. She answered her own
question, “yes and no.” Selecting which bridges and cultures to cross
is still a challenge for editors and publishers. For instance, is the
Coretta Scott King Award inclusive enough? (I wanted her to talk more
about this, but there wasn’t enough time in the Q&A for all the
questions.)
Hudson concluded with some questions that writers and
editors need to ask: What is the story? Who gets to tell the story?
How will the story get told? (I didn’t get the fourth question, so if
anyone else was there, please add to this.)
Fatima Shaik, whose article on race in children’s literature is posted
on the PEN web site, talked about race and place in her own writing.
She began with a story about a 13-year-old girl whose family in the
fishing business is suffering because of pollution in their Louisiana
town. Her father works for the chemical plant that is causing the
pollution, and she knows that confronting the plant’s owners will save
the fish but cost her father his job. Does it matter what race she is,
in what is, ultimately, a human drama? On the other hand, in this area
of Louisiana, the people are primarily Black and primarily poor.
Shaik said it is “deadly to focus exclusively on race in
creating character, but it is deadly to ignore it.”
She writes historical fiction about the region where she
lives-southern Louisiana-and this region’s history is one of
colonialism, slavery, and Jim Crow. During these periods of legalized
discrimination, people formed a lot of ideas about each other, and
“we’re still carrying these stereotypes.”
Shaik talked about the diversity of Black experience and
opinion: “there is no ‘Black perspective’; you’re writing about a
character who happens to be a Black person.” She gave examples from
her historical novel Melitte, about a girl in 1760 learning that she
is enslaved and from her picture book about the second line dancers in
New Orleans. In each of these cases, she wrote “from the inside”-from
the experience of her characters. She urged those in the audience to
understand that there isn’t a single experience-only what your
individual character sees upon opening his/her eyes each morning.
Writers should forget about race and write from the character’s heart.
Sharon Dennis Wyeth began by talking about a book signing in 1995 for
her picture book Always My Dad, and a Black woman who expressed
extreme disappointment because Wyeth “looked White” and not like the
person in the author photo. That woman cared so much what Wyeth looked
like because she felt Always My Dad was the story of her life.
Why was the woman so possessive of the story? Why did she
care so much? People place a great value on that which is rare. And no
other author has written that woman’s story. This has to do with
power. The keeper of a family’s and community’s stories has a lot of
power.
This ties into the issue of outsiders writing a
community’s stories. Wyeth objected to a White reporter who produced a
story about the Anacostia neighborhood of Washington DC that
emphasized its hopelessness and degradation. Nobody wants to be
depicted as a victim. This piece motivated Wyeth to write her picture
book Something Beautiful, which depicts a child’s hope amid the
bleakness. Wyeth knew this was a risky project in two ways: writing a
picture book about children in a needy urban environment without
causing them embarrassment or shame; and, as an insider in terms of
race but an outsider in terms of class, being seen as invasive.
Outsiders need to acknowledge these risks. Wyeth said she focused on
the human core, making every character an individual. She wanted
insiders to feel good about the story.
Helen Benedict echoed Shaik’s comment: deadly to focus entirely on
race, deadly to ignore it. She said that in her two multicultural YA
novels “the characters chose me.” In general, she said, “I choose my
characters the same way I choose my friends.” She wants them to be
interesting people.
Writers should create a story, not teach a lesson.
Characters should serve as the starting point and they should be
intriguing-the lesson comes later.
Benedict talked about the genesis of her novel about the
Dominican-American teenager. It came from her living in a
predominantly Dominican-American neighborhood, where her husband
taught middle school. One of his students wrote that she was pregnant
and her life was over. Benedict observed the children of her
neighborhood grow into teenage mothers. In the novel, she used many
voices, but the white person’s voice seemed flatter and less alive
than those of the Dominican-American characters. Given the number of
novels authored by Whites in which people of color served as
sidekicks, she was pleased to have depicted a White characters as a
sidekick.
There was a brief discussion among the panelists. They commented on
the need to balance imagination with research in historical fiction.
They also thought the “message book” was the kiss of death. Wyeth
worried that this would be a problem with Something Beautiful, and
that concern drove her to focus on the characters above all. In her
historical novels, she observed that the primary sources that she used
helped her to get a sense of the texture of the characters’ lives,
their humanity, and their uniqueness. These primary documents steered
her away from the lesson plot and from stereotyped characters.
Hudson, however, defended lessons in stories. She pointed
out that traditional African stories are didactic. One can be didactic
and effective.
There was time for three questions from the audience. A young African-
American man asked about opportunities for collaboration in
contemporary urban YA fiction, based on performance pieces. Hudson
said these aren’t getting published yet.
A second questioner cited the observation by Maya Angelou
that it’s easier for a Black person to write about Whites than the
opposite because Blacks have had to accommodate themselves to White
society in order to survive. Benedict observed that all humans have
four basic needs-love, belonging, safety, freedom. These transcend
race and ethnicity. Shaik said that the resonance of communication
often goes “under the radar”-there are subtleties that people of other
cultures don’t pick up.
Finally, Fran Manushkin asked Hudson about the reception
of Just Us Books’ titles. Hudson said that sometimes White parents say
that the books are not for their kids. But one can be culturally
specific but universal in subject and appeal; she cited the Afro-Bets
books as examples. They are alphabet books for everyone, but Black
kids especially enjoy seeing themselves in the books.
Lyn Miller-Lachmann
Editor-in-Chief, MultiCultural Review
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