INTRODUCTION:
Among authors, readers, librarians, educators, and others, a grassroots social movement seeks greater diversity in literature for children and young adults. Specifically, the movement addresses a disparity that favors books about white, male, heterosexual, and able-bodied protagonists. The movement prioritizes authors who are, themselves, from marginalized communities, and it also draws attention to the fact that industry staffing remains overwhelmingly white (Lee and Low).
Progress in the movement can be tracked in statistics compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) in the School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison. But CCBC figures for 2018 showed that 50 percent of children’s books that it received that year still depicted white protagonists (Huyck 2019).
Children’s books were more likely to feature animals or “other” characters (27 percent) than ethnic minorities, and an infographic by David Huyck and Sarah Park Dahlen illustrates the continuing disparity: 1 percent depicting American Indian or First Nation protagonists, 5 percent depicting Latino / Latina, 7 percent depicting Asian Pacific Islander / Asian Pacific American, and 10 percent depicting African / African American.
One of the challenges affecting representation of more diverse characters in literature, is the online harassment of authors who write about people from marginalized communities; the practice is referred to as “cancel culture.” This annotated bibliography looks at recent articles that address the effect that “cancel culture” has on diversity in children’s and Young Adult publishing. It includes articles that address themes in diverse literature. Some articles examine writers’ qualifications, and the competence / validity of reviewers.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Aronson, Krista Maywalt, Brenna D. Callahan, and Anne Sibley O’Brien. (2018). “Messages Matter: Investigating the Thematic Content of Picture Books Portraying Underrepresented Racial and Cultural Groups.” Sociological Forum, Vol. 33, No. 1, March 2018: Pages 165-185.
The authors’ study examines the messages conveyed by various themes in books that depict diverse characters and cultures. “When children find themselves reflected in a book mirror, or when they catch a glimpse of people different from them through a book window, what are they seeing? What types of portrayals are they encountering, and what do those images convey? Messages matter. Books and the ideas they present have influence over the minds of people who read them; not all diverse books convey the same message, and not all messages have the same effect.”Benedictus, Leo. (2019). “Torn apart: the vicious war over young adult books.” The Guardian, June 15, 2019. Retrieved Jan. 22, 2020. (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/jun/15/torn-apart-the-vicious-war-over-young-adult-books)
Benedictus highlights Twitter campaigns against two YA authors: Gareth Roberts, whose contribution was removed from a Doctor Who anthology, and John Boyne, author of My Brother’s Name Is Jessica. According to Benedictus, the campaigns against these authors are “not new, or isolated. Since March, I have been sending discreet messages to authors of young adult fiction. I approached 24 people, in several countries, all writing in English. In total, 15 authors replied, of whom 11 agreed to talk to me, either by email or on the phone. Two subsequently withdrew, in one case following professional advice. Two have received death threats and five would only talk if I concealed their identity. This is not what normally happens when you ask writers for an interview.”Bishop, Rudine Sims. (2015). “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.” Reading is Fundamental, Jan. 3, 2015. Reprinted from Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom, Vol. 6, No. 3, Summer 1990. Retrieved March 1, 2020. (https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf)
Sims’ 1990 article launched the metaphor that is widely used today when discussing themes in diverse children’s literature. “Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience.”
The problem, as related by Sims, is that, while reading becomes a “means of self-affirmation,” for many years, non-white readers have found it futile to seek their mirrors in books. “When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read, or when the images they see are distorted, negative, or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part. Our classrooms need to be places where all the children from all the cultures that make up the salad bowl of American society can find their mirrors.”Cheaney, Janie B. (2018). “Age of Outrage: Have diversity police created a culture of censorship?” World Magazine, Feb. 17, 2018: Pages 36, 37.
Cheaney argues that “All good literature broadens experience, whether it takes the reader to the Russian steppes, apartheid-era South Africa, or Regency England. A dogmatic insistence on a particular context pits cultures against each other. It also creates a class of literary cops who patrol the pages of upcoming releases and blow the whistle on ‘incorrect’ content.” According to Cheaney, this trend, which she describes as “diversity-for-its-own-sake,” is especially pronounced in Young Adult literature. Cheaney cites controversies around The Black Witch by Laurie Forest and American Heart by Laura Moriarty.Deaderick, Lisa. (2020). “‘American Dirt’ leads to conversations about representation and diversity in storytelling, publishing.” San Diego Union Tribune, Feb. 23, 2020. Retrieved Feb. 23, 2020. (https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/columnists/story/2020-02-23/american-dirt-leads-to-conversations-about-representation-and-diversity-in-storytelling-publishing)
Presents an edited conversation via email between the interviewer, Lisa Deaderick, and Jean Guerrero, author of Crux: A Cross-Border Memoir; and Nicole Johnson, executive director of We Need Diverse Books. They state that, while it’s not necessary for a writer to have the “lived experience of a group they’re attempting to represent,” they express concern that, in the case of American Dirt, a white woman’s book was “elevated above stories” written by novelists who share backgrounds with the characters that Jeanine Cummins depicted in her book.
In Johnson’s words, “Every writer has the freedom to write the characters and stories they want to write. With that freedom comes a responsibility to authentically present their characters and settings when it is outside of their own personal experience. Further, being able to engage and respond to the diversity of reactions and feedback that will come when the story is published, will demonstrate the author’s commitment to honoring the perspectives of those with lived experience.”Flood, Alison. (2019). “Young Adult author cancels own novel after race controversy.” The Guardian, Feb. 1, 2019. Retrieved Jan. 22, 2020. (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/01/young-adult-author-cancels-own-novel-after-race-controversy)
Describes groundswell of online criticism that prompted author Amélie Wen Zhao to request that her publisher cancel publication of her then-upcoming novel. “Zhao, who [was] raised in Beijing and emigrated from China to the US at the age of 18, said she wrote the book ‘from my immediate cultural perspective,’ writing that the slavery storylines in her novel ‘represent a specific critique of the epidemic of indentured labor and human trafficking prevalent in many industries across Asia, including in my own home country.” Online critics accused Zhao’s book of “anti-blackness and blatant bigotry.”Graham, Ruth. (2019). “Wolves: A YA sensitivity reader watched his own community kill his debut novel before it was ever released.” Slate, March 4, 2019. Retrieved Jan. 30, 2020. (https://slate.com/culture/2019/03/ya-book-scandal-kosoko-jackson-a-place-for-wolves-explained.html)
Examines Kosoko Jackson’s membership in an “intense” online community that “scolded writers who ran afoul” of the community’s values. The article relates that Jackson has now been “demonized by the community he once helped police.” As a result, Jackson and Amélie Wen Zhao are both “people of color who now see their careers hobbled in an industry that claims to be laser-focused on diversity.”
The article cites a 2016 survey by Bowker Market Research of book-publishing employees, which documented that the industry “as a whole is still extremely, extremely white.” It argues that “A reckoning with these abysmal numbers and their impact is overdue,” but that instead, “we’ve gotten an increasingly toxic online culture around YA literature, with evermore-baroque standards for who can write about whom under what circumstances.”Kirch, Claire. (2019). “Responding to Criticism: Booksellers weigh in on the postponement and cancellation of titles by publishers after early readers express concern.” Publishers Weekly, June 17, 2019: Pages 14,15.
Presents a cross-section of viewpoints expressed by various booksellers concerning recent controversies around Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao and Kosoko Jackson’s A Place for Wolves. Zhao’s novel, the article states, “will be released in November, five months after its original street date,” while Jackson has requested that his publisher cancel the release of his book.Huyck, David and Dahlen, Sarah Park. (2019). “Picture This: Diversity in Children’s Books 2018 Infographic.” SarahPark.com. Created in consultation with Edith Campbell, Molly Beth Griffin, K. T. Horning, Debbie Reese, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, and Madeline Tyner, with statistics compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC), School of Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison: http://ccbc.education.wisc.edu/books/pcstats.asp. Retrieved March 1, 2020. (https://readingspark.wordpress.com/2019/06/19/picture-this-diversity-in-childrens-books-2018-infographic/.)
The authors discuss how their current infographic differs from an earlier infographic that was produced in 2015. With their illustration, they evoke a 1990 work by Rudine Sims Bishop that emphasises the way that children’s books can serve as “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors.” The size of the mirror each child has to look into, corresponds to the prevalence of children’s books featuring protagonists of that race.
The authors call attention to their decision to crack sections of the minority children’s mirrors, “to indicate what Debbie Reese calls ‘funhouse mirrors’ and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas calls ‘distorted funhouse mirrors of the self.’ Children’s literature continues to misrepresent underrepresented communities, and we wanted this infographic to show not just the low quantity of existing literature, but also the inaccuracy and uneven quality of some of those books.”Lee and Low. (2020). “Where is the Diversity in Publishing? The 2019 Baseline Survey Results.” The Open Book Blog, Jan. 28, 2020. Retrieved Feb. 3, 2020. (https://blog.leeandlow.com/2020/01/28/2019diversitybaselinesurvey/)
Looks at trends and developments that have emerged in publishing after its original 2015 survey, and compares those earlier findings with its 2019 results. “The numbers provided by DBS 1.0 contributed to a sense of urgency that has resulted in more diverse books being published in the marketplace today—at least on the children’s book side.” But the industry, overall, is still overwhelmingly white. It continues to be dominated by cis-gender white women, and people who identify themselves as straight or heterosexual. Lee and Low does note that more people self-identified as having a disability between the 2019 and 2015 surveys, but acknowledges that how the question was worded, may have helped account for the gain.Moreillon, Judi. (2019). “Does Cultural Competence Matter? Book Reviewers as Mediators of Children’s Literature.” Children and Libraries, Spring 2019: Pages 3-8.
Argues that librarians must be “culturally competent” in order to “purchase, provide, and present authentic and accurate children’s and young adult literature,” and that “librarians who serve as reviewers for children’s and young adult book review sources must practice cultural competence as they read.”
Using the results of an online survey that was administered to librarians in the United States who review books for well-known journals, the article explores two main questions: 1. What in their personal lives or professional training prepares U.S.-based book reviewers to be reliable mediators between global literature and readers? and 2. What processes do reviewers use to determine the authenticity and accuracy of a book that is situated in a culture that is not their own? “The goal of this study and this article is to further the conversation among book reviewers, authors, illustrators, publishers, educators, librarians, and book review sources regarding strategies to elevate the competence of reviewers and the accuracy of global book reviews, in particular.”Moriarty, Laura. (2018). “MY ACCOUNT: On being deemed ‘problematic.’” Wired, February 2018: Page 67.
Moriarty describes online backlash against her fifth novel, American Heart, concerning what these critics described as the book’s “problematic white-savior narrative.” The book, about an American girl trying to help a Muslim woman avoid Muslim-American detainment camps, received a starred review on Kirkus that was written by a Muslim woman. Moriarty relates how Kirkus retracted the star in response to online backlash and asked the reviewer to reflect on her language. The review now states, “It is problematic that Sadaf [the book’s Muslim-woman main character] is seen only through the white protagonist’s filter.”Senior, Jennifer. (2019). “Teen Fiction and the Perils of Cancel Culture: Readers, not a Twitter mob, should decide the fate of a book.” New York Times, March 8, 2019. Retrieved Jan. 26, 2020. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/08/opinion/teen-fiction-and-the-perils-of-cancel-culture.html)
Argues that rabid pile-ons against recent YA books are by people who have not read them, and that an early “intemperate, if highly impassioned review” of Kosoko Jackson’s A Place for Wolves might have remained only “a pan from a citizen critic” if the Twitter subculture that’s “obsessed with Y.A. fiction” had not noticed the review. Senior predicts that “If Twitter controls publishing, we’ll soon enter a dreary monoculture that admits no book unless it has been prejudged and meets the standards of the censors.”Singal, Jesse. (2019). “Teen Fiction Twitter is Eating Its Young.” Reason, June 2019: Pages 58-63.
Singal acknowledges commendable motivation behind efforts to diversify publishing, but argues that the online world of Young Adult fiction is a “case study in toxic Internet culture.” Singal summarizes controversies around the recent books of Amélie Wen Zhao and Kosoko Jackson, as well as a blowup in 2017 around The Black Witch by Laurie Forest.
Singal points out that what’s especially interesting about the controversy around Jackson’s book is that Jackson had been an outspoken critic of the book by Zhao. Singal also highlights Jackson’s rigid opinions about who should be “allowed” to write stories from the viewpoint of minority characters. But Singal argues that the “right” response isn’t to point and laugh at Jackson’s own cancellation, but rather to consider how this “pattern,” now established, will affect other works in future.Waldman, Katy. (2019). “In Y.A., Where is the Line Between Criticism and Cancel Culture?” The New Yorker, March 21, 2019. Retrieved Jan. 26, 2020. (https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/in-ya-where-is-the-line-between-criticism-and-cancel-culture)
Poses the question that “When it comes to Y.A., what, precisely, is the difference between the marketplace of ideas and a Twitter mob?” Waldman claims that a “major contributor” to blow-ups like those around the books of Amélie Wen Zhao and Kosoko Jackson, is the publishing world’s “homogeneity.” “People of color face economic and racial barriers to breaking into the industry: entry-level positions in editing or literary agenting, which are mostly situated in New York City, offer barely sustainable wages that favor those with existing support systems and family wealth. The result is that the people who are most qualified to weigh in on a text’s treatment of marginalized identities are often the least likely to do so.”
Waldman relates that “A group of unpaid readers—one with an undeniable personal investment in the Y.A. community—seems to be doing much of the work of critique that is usually first the task of agents and editors, and then that of booksellers and critics. But, when these particular readers do that work, they are derided as pitchfork-wielding hysterics.”