We Need More Diverse Books Campaign

This is a campaign currently going on on Tumblr (link) trying to promote American YA and childrens books with diverse protagonists.

The first part of the campaign (May 1st) had people post pictures with signs saying "We need diverse books because _______." The second part (today) is to post why diversity matters in literature and why diversity matters to the poster. The third part of the campaign (May 3rd) is to buy the books and post photos.

I am not really involved, but I am trying to jump on the bandwagon by checking out some of the recommended books to read.

Here's some more articles-
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/may/01/we-need-diverse-books-campaign-chil...
http://www.buzzfeed.com/danieljoseolder/diversity-is-not-enough
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/01/weneeddiversebooks_goes_viral/

So... why is diversity in YA and childrens books important to you? Do you have some YA or childrens books to recommend? What were/are your favorites?

I think you meant to say we need more books with minority protagonists.

I used the wording the campaign uses on purpose.

I understand that the campaign uses "diverse" to have a specific meaning, but only from going to the links. My initial reaction to the title of the thread, however, was that you were complaining about the homegenization of literature when most books are sold by a small number of large retailers, e.g., Barnes & Noble.

Ah, I spent a bit trying to figure out what you meant, but it never occurred to me that things were unclear. Communication. :)

The problem is the word "diverse" has diverse connotations. I have a fairly diverse library with diverse protagonists. I do not have that many books that have ethnically diverse protagonists (French, Italian, Spanish excepted), even fewer with Black protagonists, and fewer still with protagonists who are gay. I do think it is helpful for children to read and realize there are others like them who maybe face the same challenges in confronting societal norms that exclude them. Given that most writers draw from their own experience and write about what they know, there necessarily is a paucity of such books. In any event I was probably being a bit oc with repect to the post's title.

>5 Settings:

No worries, I think anyone who doesn't live (or pretends to live) in a time warp bubble understands perfectly well what the title is alluding to.

To answer your question from >1 Settings:...

So... why is diversity in YA and childrens books important to you? Do you have some YA or childrens books to recommend? What were/are your favorites?

1. As briefly as possible, because it is normal, good and just that a just society in a diverse world should reflect that diversity in literature, giving opportunities to all children to feel valued and important, and learn that everyone else is valued and important in the same way too.

Racism, sexism, homophobia are learned; they must be unlearned.

2. 3. Nothing current, of the books I read in my childhood most featured white boys (not by my parents' and gift-givers specific intention, that's just what dominated the market and what THEY had been brought up on too) and, looking back, I couldn't recommend ANY of them. I will always love them in some way in the deep recesses of my heart's memory, but, really, a worse pile of misogynistic, sexist, racist, imperialist European trash can hardly be put together.

>7 LolaWalser: I hate to burst your bubble, but I do not live or pretend to live in one, whatever that means. I am an attorney, and a rigorous self-editor. As such I may take precision of language too seriously at times. However, your view of diversity may be myopic. For example, if we were discussing affirmative action, the term diversity would not include gays, women or Asians. That is why I thought the gist of the links would better be expressed by the term minority. Sorry to provoke the bitterness.

>7 LolaWalser: Ahum. I'm not living in a bubble either, at least not in this respect. I'm following several of the threads here that concern themselves with diversity, mostly male-female, but I'm perfectly well aware of the problems around racial diversity in books. Despite of that I didn't get it either. Not that that is a huge problem; I opened the thread and then I did get it, so I don't mind. But it's not really fair to accuse people who do not immediately get it of living in time warp bubbles. Diverse books can mean many things after all, and even if it had said diverse characters it could have meant different things.

This kind of semantic argument is exactly what I wanted to avoid by using the word "diverse." Ironically. Although I'm contributing into making this thread into something that belongs in Pro and Con, instead of the lighthearted discussion about good books I'd hoped for (I'm too niave), let me explain further.

I am a white, atheist, heterosexual woman. Young adult fiction is now full of white, heterosexual girls. Definitely not atheists, but I tended to assume everyone was an atheist until shown otherwise, and there were plenty of secular protagonists. My bookshelf growing up contained books starring white, heterosexual girls and boys, Esperanza Rising, and Island of the Blue Dolphins.

I don't fully understand what it is like to not be a standard protagonist.

Thus, although the campaign concerns me because I am a human being, and because it is so clearly a positive thing, I wanted to be careful about how I discussed it. I read the campaign carefully. I noticed the word "diversity" used, exclusively and repeatably. It was clear to me that the writers behind the campaign must have thought about their terminology very carefully. So, I thought the word "diversity" best.

If this is unclear to anyone, the links have more information. People want more books with protagonists of different races, ethnic groups, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities, and body sizes. Also more books with protagonists that are disabled and protagonists that have mental illnesses.

>6 nemoman:

Diversity for me is not just diverse in terms of different ethnicities, skin colour, sexuality, gender (trans and genderqueer) and disability. It is also books that do not default to the standard dominant anglophone cultural assumptions (especially in SF).

I think LolaWalser sums up my feelings in >7 LolaWalser: very well.

I don't read that much YA but some recommendations -
Malorie Blackman's Noughts & Crosses - SF set in a racist dystopia.
China Mieville's Un Lun Dun - female British Asian* main character
Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea Of Stories

* for the US people that means of Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi descent.

I cannot speak to childrens' books, but as a young adult the books Invisible Man and Black Like Me probably best expanded my views on race, albeit the protagonist in Black Like Me was not actually black. I never have liked the term Young Adult, because I think most people that age would benefit from reading more adult books by Gore Vidal ( sexual orientation) and Christopher Hitchens (atheism). Maupin's Tales of the City series are easy reads for young adults and teem with diversity. I naturally assume that nowadays there are many books with strong female protagonists; however, when I was growing up in the fifties and sixties, female protagonists fell into the sexual sterotypes of the day. One exception was Starship Troopers in which the battleship commander was female because women were much better suited for the job. This was surprising given that one would believe Heinlein to be a bit of a misogynist given his earlier books. Local schoolboards tend to be conservative, and somewhat intolerant, so there is a problem introducing some books into the curriculum. As for mental illness One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Darkness Visible come to mind. As I write this I come to realize that the best books I read as a "young adult" had adult protagonists. I wasn't intersted in someone else's teenage angst, except perhaps as expressed in rock music.

>7 LolaWalser: ...giving opportunities to all children to feel valued and important, and learn that everyone else is valued and important in the same way too

Yes, exactly, that's what matters.

>8 nemoman: People want more books with protagonists of different races, ethnic groups, religions, sexual orientations, gender identities, and body sizes.

We already have Billy Bunter and Snow White and the seven dwarves. There are plenty of popular books that include minority characters in ways we'd rather they didn't. It's not a question of counting the minority characters and making sure that every third child in the illustration has dark skin, it's a question of finding good, well-written, subversive books that help kids to question what the world around them is telling them about how good it is to be the same as everyone else. And that isn't easy, especially when books for young readers have to exist in a commercial market controlled by big companies who don't want to offend anyone's political sensibilities. Maybe step 4 of the campaign should be "now write one yourself".

>11 andyl:, >13 thorold:

You two explain it better than I do.

>10 Settings: A fair point, Anoplophora.

Unfortunately, I don't think I can contribute a whole lot of recommendations. I'm pretty much avoiding children's books and YA, and the books I read as a child, well. The most diverse I can remember is a white heterosexual man being superior to native Americans, but befriending the most noble of them... There might have been some Mexicans in some of the cowboy books I read, but they didn't really stand out.

Actually, trying to recall what I read as a child, I remember a whole series about native americans (not cowboy books, but focused on native americans of different peoples). Looking it up, the series is called The first north americans by Kathleen O'Neal Gear and W. Michael Gear. I'm not really sure if they count as YA, though. I read them as a teenager, so perhaps they are.

One thing that comes to mind positively (but perhaps not much use to Americans) is some young adult books by Thea Beckman, a Dutch author, like Hasse Simonsdochter and Kinderen van moeder aarde. They are centered around women in a positive way.

As for why it's important, I think LolaWalser expressed that quite well (>7 LolaWalser:). I think it's important to the self worth and self confidence of children to be able to identify with a character that is like them. It tells them they are not weird or worth less than their peers if they are different, and that others are not weird or worth less for being different either.

>7 LolaWalser: of the books I read in my childhood most featured white boys

Many of mine did too. But I think my mother must have made an effort to find books that represented cultural diversity, because I remember a great number of fairy tale and folk tale stories from China, Japan, Africa, Native American cultures, and Mexico.

Not too many stories about contemporary children from those cultures though.

>9 zjakkelien:

Your profile places you in Holland. I think "diversity" may not be quite the buzzword there that it is in North America. Apologies for inadvertently losing sight of non-American perspective--I was reacting to what the American poster said.

>10 Settings:

You're not in any way at fault, Rhea. It's clear you meant nothing but well.

>11 andyl:, >13 thorold:

Yes, excellent points about the type of representation and focus. The first question is rather tricky to answer concisely but comprehensively, isn't it.

>16 southernbooklady:

Yeah, I had such folk and fairy collections too. Mind you, it's the cumulative aspect of that (my childhood's) literature that gets me.

The SLJ diversity issue (hat tip to KJ) has some great articles, and prompted me to add a number of books to my wish list.

I believe diversity in children's and YA literature can be a tool for change. If the gay kid or the Iranian kid or the Jewish kid is just another kid figuring out what it's like to grow up in this world, and every book with one of those kids isn't about what it's like to be THE "other," then their adult lives may follow. Sure, being different is hard, but the only reason these kinds of different are "worse" than differences in height or hair color is because earlier generations deemed them so. Many of our childhood prejudices are shed as we enter adulthood; maybe they ALL can be, if the ones adults are still persecuted for are eliminated from the works our children read and watch.

Also, as an adult, I wish there had been more diversity in the books I read growing up; I didn't notice then, of course, but every single POC in a book I read as a child was engaged in a power struggle around race. It may have created sympathy I wouldn't have had without those books, but it was sympathy, not empathy - a symptom of my white privilege. I can't imagine what it would have been like for a POC peer, seeing him- or herself only portrayed in that context, if at all.
I also wonder, how much earlier in life might I have come out if there had been a single gay character - not a main character, even, but just another angsty teen dealing with puberty - in any of the hundreds of books I read before graduating from high school? How many more of my classmates might have, too? How much easier would it be to be "other" if you didn't think you were the only one?

>18 kgriffith: I also wonder, how much earlier in life might I have come out if there had been a single gay character - not a main character, even, but just another angsty teen dealing with puberty - in any of the hundreds of books I read before graduating from high school?

I think we're still a ways from gay as normative in children's and young adult literature. It's one area where television is ahead of print in showing "diversity."

>19 southernbooklady: I think you're right. I'd like to think that, as the population of authors who came out before college grows, so will queer culture in books. To be sure, I don't want children's or YA books sexualized ahead of their time to be inclusive; rather, if the characters are dealing with sexuality at all, for it to cover a broader range of attractions and gender expressions.

>20 kgriffith: I don't want children's or YA books sexualized ahead of their time to be inclusive

If someone were to write a children's book about the street I grew up on, the different kinds of families would include several Irish-Catholic (lots of kids, several sets of twins), a couple Italian-American (lots of kids, but no twins), and a couple Jewish families. No black people, but one young couple was interracial--he was white, she was Vietnamese. I babysat their son-- best skateboarder on the block.

And, then there was the house on the corner, a nice place with a showcase garden. That was where Ed and Ed lived. Edward and Edmund. They were a couple, but all that really meant for the kids in the neighborhood is that they wore matching engraved silver bracelets. (Something we used to laugh at). Otherwise, not a big deal. And during the annual block party Ed and Ed were always in charge of the salads, because they had a great garden.

So...too "PC" for a kids book?

>21 southernbooklady: So...too "PC" for a kids book?

I think kids read at the level of emotional comprehension that they're capable of at the time. So, if a book were written about your street, maybe a kid reading at her youngest would notice different holiday traditions, maybe a couple of years later would notice that Ed and Ed were the only family with two grown men, maybe a few years later think of the ethnicities, religions, classes, and sexualities represented. So, too PC? Not too anything, as far as I'm concerned. :)

>22 kgriffith: I think kids read at the level of emotional comprehension that they're capable of at the time.

A fact I wish more parents would keep in mind.

>23 southernbooklady: It's one I had to teach my own mother, once I had the language and the life experience to state it concisely. :)

In my 60's, I think my generation grew up reading voraciously. We did not read any PC books or books that had sexual innuendo. For the most part, we turned out pretty smart and have made a good life for ourselves. I have passed my love of good books that I have read in the past on to my children and grandchildren. They, too, are voracious readers. I feel that all the books should be on the shelf, and it is up to families to determine what their children read. My 14 year old grandson reads almost exclusively SciFi--I can't stand it, only I am reading War of the Worlds right now, but I find it to be more historical fiction rather than SciFi. The only thing I would not permit my children to read were books concerning the occult, and sex/violence for sex/violence sake books. I abhor anything that is PC and I'm very vocal about it, both where I teach, my real life book club, and now on here!

>25 Tess_W: I abhor anything that is PC

Do you have any examples?

As many authors write about the world as they experience it we will soon find more books celebrating diversity.Until recently it has been discouraged.
When I wrote about a man with learning disabilities a publisher said it was not commercial, but I had to have it reprinted after the first two hundred had gone.
One book I really enjoyed was My sister Lives on the Mantelpiece by Annabel Pitcher which is written as if by a child and tackles some of the issues I believe you mean.