My Skepticism About “Diversity in Children’s Literature”
One night in Italy…
The colorless sky had just begun to sprinkle snowflakes over the unsuspecting city below. Sitting at the desk in my home studio, I was about to call my wife in to see it when suddenly my phone buzzed.
I’d received a WhatsApp message from my brother. It had the strangest attachment: a PDF file containing a draft of what seemed to be a story for children.
My brother is a seasoned software engineer and we usually talk about classical geek interests. Video games, tech startups, programming techniques, contemporary cultures; that’s the stuff of our conversation.
I didn’t have the remotest idea why I was looking at KidLit and exactly where it had come from. Fortunately, the first few lines knocked the confusion out of me.
“Charlie and Tancho were brothers and best friends. They liked doing everything together.”
Charlie and Tancho are my nephews, my brother’s boys. As I journeyed through a third-person narrative of their first written adventure, I realized what my brother had done.
Meet the author…
Suhmayah Banda, the software engineer, had written a story for his children, inspired by his children. Without asking, I knew why he’d done it too.
My nephews are colored kids growing up in a world where children’s literature is predominantly white.
Suhmayah had made it his personal responsibility to expose his kids to diversity in literature. He knew from experience that his children would face a lifetime dealing with a world of false categorizations.
Life starts and stops with a story; Suhmayah wanted to be sure his kids could see themselves in any of their choosing. And he’s 100% right.
So why am I skeptical about “diversity in children’s literature”?
At first, I wasn’t skeptical about “diversity in children’s literature”. Just one Google search after reading the first draft of Charlie The Fearless And Tancho The Brave and I found hundreds of people talking about it.
Every news outlet has said their piece (or pieces) about KidLit diversity. I certainly never heard the word “diversity” this much when I was growing up.
Almost every book publisher’s boilerplate mentions diversity and inclusion (another newly popular word) either directly or indirectly.
Launch those twinkly-sounding phrases over the quicksilver waves of the world wide web and surely we can bridge this diversity gap in one giant leap, right?
So my siblings and I spurred Suhmayah on!
Suhmayah spent the rest of his quasi-sabbatical, homeschooling, caravan camping year writing two more entries to The Adventures of Tancho and Charlie series.
He even commissioned a talented artist to illustrate them. The results were beautiful (get yours on Amazon).
We were stoked. We obviously loved the books but would our friends?
We reached out to buddies and colleagues far and wide, and they happily bought the books and sent back tons of overwhelmingly positive feedback.
But perhaps they were just being polite friends that way. You know, like the last time you visited the Smiths and told them — between hidden grimaces — how lovely dinner was.
Were Suhmayah’s books just stories about our nephews that gave us a warm, fuzzy feeling?
Carole P. Roman is the award-winning author of over 50 children’s books. She’s also a diversity writer extraordinaire. Her 5-star rating for Suhmayah’s book cast away any remaining doubt I harbored.
Suhmayah had genuinely surprised us in the most delightful manner.
But then, a different sort of doubt started to creep in. With a vengeance.
How “Diversity in Children’s Literature” Became Mundane to Me.
Suhmayah’s quasi-sabbatical, homeschooling, caravan camping year was over. He’d parked somewhere rainy in Her Majesty’s empire, returning to his labors as a software engineer.
In any free time Suhmayah could get, he wrote to all sorts of libraries, publishers, schools, collectives and NGOs that promised support for “diversity in children’s literature”.
Several keystrokes, emails, days, and weeks passed by and Suhmayah had not received any responses.
My skepticism started kicking in at precisely this moment.
All Talk, No Action
“But didn’t they say they were hunting for BAME authors?” BAME is a UK term referring to black, Asian, and minority ethnic groups. I’d only had peripheral knowledge of it weeks before.
“Yeah.” Suhmayah knows how to take things with nonchalance. He prefers, as his story tells, action over talk.
But it was beginning to seem to me that somewhere there was a whole lot of talk, and a whole little of action.
Lack of Support Structures
A few days later, my phone lit up with another WhatsApp message from Suhmayah: “I got a response concerning the books.”
I tapped open the chat app, eager to read more.
“They said a picture book should be 32 pages.”
Glad that we were learning, I asked Suhmayah what else they had said.
“That’s all they said.”
Charlie The Fearless and Tancho The Brave has 26 pages. Suhmayah had done some research to understand the 32-page rule of thumb. He mused about how it could be fun to extend the book to 32 pages; a few more scenes to emphasize the subject matter.
I didn’t want to poop his party, but I had to come out with it.
“I find it kind of disappointing that their main feedback is ‘should be 32 pages’.”
Wasn’t this the e-reader era? I couldn’t help but feel disheartened that platforms wanting to embrace or encourage diversity wouldn’t do (or say) more to support those rising to the challenge.
Suhmayah shrugged it off. He was grateful for lessons learned and for the time that a busy stranger had taken to respond to him.
But what happened next left us both flabbergasted.
Smells Peculiarly Like Tokenism
Suhmayah had also submitted his books to an open call for works by BAME authors. His next response was from one of the organizers:
“All books should be published by an established publishing house which means that self-published books are not eligible. Best of luck with your books and hope they receive the recognition they deserve.”
Suhmayah had missed that rule when he was submitting. But something didn’t compute. His logic-powered, software programming mind had caught a faulty algorithm. He responded:
“How can you promote diversity in children’s literature yet insist on sourcing material from the same streams which have produced the representational imbalance to begin with?”
Boom. When Suhmayah eventually received an assuaging response to that question, it didn’t come from the original white writer but rather from a black coworker!
But what am I insinuating? How dare I jump to conclusions?
Come on. For the love that we all share for “send” buttons, we can at least agree that that’s just abysmal email etiquette.
Do you remember how people got fatter during the fat-free food crusade back in the ’80s? Ah, those were the days when cookies came with cookie-cutter “fat free” labels.
Supercilious slogans served to conceal the real issue.
In a nutshell, that’s pretty much how I feel about “diversity in children’s literature”. It’s a cookie-cutter label of convenience. A politically correct talking point attuned to the zeitgeist.
Shift into a parallel reality where publishers never sang the diversity kumbaya and the stats would still be, give or take, the same. You know why? The answer’s easy.
The same old truth, far simpler and less sing-song, stares us in the face:
We live in a world dominated by a singular narrative and there’s an economic motive to keep it that way. The underrepresented and marginalized will struggle on. As always.
Okay. While that’s as clear a truism as any minority ethnic group lives and breathes, I’ll admit that, perhaps, I’m being a bit harsh.
I can’t write off the real progress that has been made in bridging the diversity gap in children’s literature. I’d be extremely disrespectful if I didn’t recognize all the tireless efforts. My own brother has thrown three books into the fray.
Still, there are some things that all publishers, collectives, and NGOs can do on top of pinning the diversity medallion to their breast pockets, and frolicking in colored powders.
4 Easy Ways to Truly Support Diversity in Children’s Literature
(1) Create Step-By-Step Guides
Realize that diversity actually means diversity. By opening specific calls to authors of underrepresented backgrounds, some people you hear from will know little or nothing about publishing.
People that felt disenfranchised before will come forth enthusiastically. But they’ll lack experience.
Providing a link to a helpful, visible guide can help authors avoid time-consuming blunders. They’ll know exactly what you expect from them. You’ll get the formats that serve your purposes, and aspiring writers won’t be put off.
The most obvious bonus is that you’ll receive more quality submissions that’ll feed your bottom line.
(2) Don’t Build The Wall & Lose The Tacos
The tendency of trying to subtly colonize the minds of BAME authors with rules of imagination doesn’t sit well with me.
A mainstream story with mainstream characters that are painted in different colors is not diversity. It’s tokenism. Besides, there’s already plenty of that.
So, yeah, you’ll probably need to revise your target marketing. Books for minority demographics may not always have “wide appeal”. After all, they were written for minorities.
To paraphrase Suhmayah: you can’t find a spicy dish that appeals to everybody.
That said, consider not placing too many restrictions on the kinds of stories you accept from new BAME authors. You’re asking for stories that you’ve never come across before. Demanding certain styles, illustrations, or subject matters seems a tad… patronizing?
More importantly, the real drawback for you is that your — truly inclusive — competition will take the most meaningful diverse stories along with their new readership.
(3) Support with Your Social Reach
OK. A self-published author reaches out to you, and that’s too bad because it looks like this one won’t trickle into your revenue stream.
But how about feedback? How about a quote? A social media share? A link to a helpful resource (like your brand new step-by-step guide)?
One idea could be inviting writers to guest blog on your website. You’d be helping diverse authors amplify their voice, but you’d also be creating unique content and reaching new audiences. For free.
Showing aspiring authors some heart may move them to come back to you with something better in the future.
(4) Use Proper Email Etiquette
If you’re indeed serious about creating an authentic dialogue around diversity in children’s literature, then be serious about it.
Don’t shy away from uncomfortable questions that will inevitably arise. There’s an emoji for that moment: 😅
Take a page out of Tancho and Charlie’s adventures. Be fearless. Be brave.
I could go so far as to say that all this shouldn’t just apply to supporting BAME authors, but all authors.
However, I won’t. That would be sugar-coating my sentiment. And let’s keep in mind that this is about the lack of diversity.
What I’m really curious to discover are the experiences and thoughts of other BAME authors. If you know one, or an operation that promotes diversity in children’s literature, please pass this article along.
There are all sorts of stories out there. Let’s unveil them.
