Evaluating literature and disrupting ‘single stories’

Among my studies this week, authors Tschida, Ryan, and Tichnor (2014) cited two important contributions to the practice of building diverse library collections.

The first is a metaphor by Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop, of books acting as mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors (1990/2015) so that readers are exposed not only to books that validate their own backgrounds and experiences, but also give them insights into lives of people who are not like them.

“Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience” (ibid, p. 1).

Tschida, Ryan, and Tichnor argue that just as it’s important for children from groups in the minority to see characters in books that are like them, it’s also important that children in dominant groups are exposed to characters who come from other backgrounds. They cite Bishop cautioning that “if all children see are ‘reflections of themselves, they will grow up with an exaggerated sense of their own importance and value in the world — a dangerous ethnocentrism” (2014, p. 29).

The second important contribution is a cautionary admonition by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie concerning the “danger of the single story” (2009): “Show a people as one thing, and only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become” (ibid, 09:36).

Tschida, Ryan, and Tichnor reported that “Not only are both concepts useful when we work with our students, but we have also found that when brought together, they stretch and reinforce each other in productive ways that support our students’ attempts at making their book selections more critical and equitable” (2014, p. 29).

Tschida, Ryan, and Tichnor were discussing the education of pre-service teachers and the role of children’s literature in classrooms, but these principles can also apply to the efforts of a youth librarian to build a diverse library collection: a collection that’s comprised of high-quality materials that offer accurate and respectful portrayals of their subjects’ cultural backgrounds.

Achieving this requires careful selection of new materials to the collection. In their conversation with EmbraceRace.org, featured guests Megan Dowd Lambert and Sarah Hannah Gómez offer insightful ways and resources that librarians can choose books for their libraries, including We need Diverse Books and its “Our Story” app. “It allows you to look for books either because you specifically are looking for some kind of diverse experience which goes beyond race and also includes religion, disability, gender, and on and on” (EmbraceRace.org, 2021).

Building diverse collections can also take a look at books already on the shelves, through diversity audits as advocated by Lambert and Gómez (ibid). Some of the questions they recommend asking, include:

• Does this book look like the community I live in? Do I want it to?
• Do the people in this book look like me?
• If I were a member of the community or culture represented in this book, would I be hurt by the way it is depicted? 
• Are any parts of this book problematic? Do I have the words to explain to a child what is troubling about it? Do I know how to phrase a question to guide children into thinking critically about it? 
• Do I have an argument or defense for why I am reading/keeping the book in my collection?

What does “problematic” mean? A staff writer for the Colgate Maroon-News opined that the word is “used interchangeably with terms such as ‘racist,’ ‘sexist’ and ‘homophobic’” (Taylor, 2021) but that it tends to be “thrown around far more lightly” than those other words, all of which carry huge stigmas (ibid). “And for that reason, it’s significantly harder for people to argue against it. It merely insinuates a very serious accusation, instead of confronting the person with it outright” (ibid).

Lambert and Gómez suggest that when evaluating whether a book is “problematic,” you might consider asking:

• Are there stereotypes in the art or text? 
• Are the bones of the plot and the characters similar to a book I know to be offensive? 
• Is there outdated language to describe or refer to racial or ethnic minorities? 
• Does the good outweigh the bad?

When evaluating a book, we can also ask questions such as those posed by Rajput (2009): including what story is told through a book’s illustrations, “Is the storyline in classics subject to scrutiny or regarded as sacred text,” who holds power in a story, and “how do we know;” is ethnicity the only way that we measure a collection’s diversity, how do we measure the effect of a book on a child’s self-image, and whether or not an “outsider” author can write the story of an “insider”?

Finally, it isn’t enough to stock diverse books in the library if our readers’ advisory, our read-alouds, and our book displays only highlight books featuring a certain type of protagonist. In the words of Lambert and Gómez, “Which books are you pulling over and over again because you really love them, and which books are you not choosing even if they happen to fit the diverse umbrella” (EmbraceRace.org, 2021)?

References:
Adichie, C.N. (2009, Oct. 7). The danger of a single story [Video]. TED. https://youtu.be/D9Ihs241zeg

Bishop, R.S. (2015). Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors. Reading is Fundamental, Jan. 3, 2015. (Reprinted from “Mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors,” 1990, Perspectives: Choosing and Using Books for the Classroom, 6 [3]). https://scenicregional.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Mirrors-Windows-and-Sliding-Glass-Doors.pdf

EmbraceRace. (2021, Sept. 20). Reading picture books with children through a race conscious lens. Resources: Webinars. https://www.embracerace.org/resources/reading-picture-books-with-children-through-a-race-conscious-lens

Rajput, T. (2009). Questioning your collection. Knowledge Quest, 38(1), 62-69.

Taylor, P. (2021, April 2). The word “problematic” is vague and insincere. Colgate Maroon-News. https://thecolgatemaroonnews.com/28838/commentary/the-word-problematic-is-vague-and-insincere/

Tschida, C. M., Ryan, C. L., & Ticknor, A. S. (2014). Building on windows and mirrors: Encouraging the disruption of “single stories” through children’s literature. Journal of Children’s Literature, 40(1), 28-39.