Zetta Elliott's Blog, page 105

enough is enough

I spent some time this evening thinking about the recent suicide of Tyler Clemente, a student at Rutgers University who was cyber-bullied and shamed by his idiot roommate.  I had seen updates on Facebook listing other gay teen victims, and I knew I wanted to post something with the word "enough."  And then I thought about the list we made of nearly 60 MG & YA novels written by black authors this year—how many of those books spoke to the realities of queer youth?  I haven't read them all, but judging from the summaries on Amazon, I don't think any LGBTQ teens are represented in those books.  They're invisible in our books, and seemingly disposable in our society.  Queer youth need to see themselves reflected positively in the world around them.  I really admire the It Gets Better project and hope more PoC will make video testimonials that show how diverse the LGBTQ community is so that *all* our teens know they deserve and can have the future they want.

God bless librarians

book news

Most YA books don't get a full-page ad in the New York Times—unless they've been banned.  This morning I read a PW article that reports Penguin has done this for Laurie Halse Anderson's novel, Speak, which has been called "soft pornography" by a professor in Missouri…the ad urges consumers to "read the book. Decide for yourself," which is both a sales pitch and a plea for freedom of speech.  Edi and Carleen Brice have already talked about the profit factor attached to banned books.  I wonder if publishers ever took an ad out for Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor, Black Boy by Richard Wright, Push by Sapphire, or Beloved by Toni Morrison.  Anyone know?  You can find a list of banned books here.

Looking ahead…it's time for both The Cybils and The Brown Bookshelf's 28 Days Later.  So dig deep, find some titles by authors of color (more titles have been added to our list of MG/YA novels by black authors), and nominate them so that they, too, receive some recognition.  You've got two weeks for the Cybils, and one month before 28 Days Later closes its nomination process…

round and round

Doret posted an interesting video over at Color Online; author Elif Shafak discusses the trouble with circles—if you enclose yourself in one, you'll wither from insularity and the lack of exposure to diverse people.  But if you think of yourself as a compass, then one foot will remain rooted in your own world while the rest of you circles the globe—or whatever part of the world is within reach.  And the point is, you SHOULD reach for what you don't know.

I have trouble with circles.  In a way, they represent closure and I could definitely use some of that in this struggle to create greater diversity in publishing.  But most days I feel like we're just going around and around, not really making any progress.  When I read this PW article by Diane Patrick, I was heartened and put out.  Heartened because I love it when a marginalized person refuses to be pushed offstage.  Kwame Alexander was sick of authors of color being excluded from the National Book Festival in D.C. and so he started his own festival, Capital BookFest.  But Alexander didn't stop there:

Next year's festival schedule will expand again to include Richmond, Va.; New Orleans; and an as yet undetermined city in the Caribbean. Alexander's goal is to have festivals in 15 to 20 cities in the next five years. "We are targeting cities that do not have a proper book festival, and have a strong or emerging arts/literary scene," he said, emphasizing, "This is a community-based effort, and we are bringing our expertise. So we build it from the community up; it's not us telling them what to do."

I have *such* respect for that rationale, and yet I wonder what these "alternative" literary events do to increase the involvement of authors of color in the big mainstream festivals.  How many festival organizers now say, "We don't have to have more than one or two authors of color because they have their own events to attend."  And round and round we go…Authors of color can't afford to wait for publishing insiders to "act right," yet when we establish our own awards, our own conferences, our own anything, does it send the message that we'd rather be on our own?  I like to say, "Things wouldn't need to be separate if they were equal."  Ideally, we'd all work together, right?  But when doors are closed again and again, some of us get tired of knocking.

On a related note, how do we get bookstores to carry more titles by writers of color?  Because if bookstores carry the books, they have a better chance of selling, and if they DO sell, publishers will have to admit there's demand for stories with multicultural perspectives.  Right?  Stop by ShelfTalker to read Elizabeth Bluemle's post on "Selling Color in a White Town."  I'm getting dizzy just thinking about all of this…good night!

retreat or rethink?

Brooklyn's under a tornado watch right now.  It has stopped raining and there's a little light in my apartment, but it's otherwise kind of cave-like in here.  A good day for writing, though I feel like I need to pause for a moment and get my bearings with this novel.  I read Ninth Ward last week, and really admired the way Jewell Parker Rhodes told a beautiful, simple story about an incredibly traumatic moment in a girl's life; as I think about the book now, I'm struck by the author's ability to invoke the complexity of Hurricane Katrina without writing a long, dense narrative.  I just passed 50K words with my novel, and wonder if I should stop adding new characters to the sequel.  The challenge is to bring back some of the most memorable characters from Wish and have them interact with new characters in the same setting.  One agent I met with suggested I cut Genna and Judah out of the sequel; I guess her rationale was that not enough people had read Wish and so a second book about their relationship wouldn't interest new readers.   Needless to say, we parted ways.  I want people to understand Judah and that means providing more of his backstory, which necessarily means introducing more characters into the novel.  Right now I'm working on a chapter about Judah and his deeply flawed role model, Clive (his aunt's Kingman).  For me, each chapter is like a scene in a movie—there are extras, and there are minor characters who steal the scene.  But Genna and Judah are the stars—that doesn't change.  Today's task is to go over the outline and figure out which scenes need to be crafted to draw the novel to a close.  What's the most direct way to reinsert Paul into the narrative?  Which characters from the past are most likely to accept Genna's offer to return with her to 2001?  That's my problem, I guess–getting to the end means writing more scenes!  Back to work…

labor of love

Nikki Grimes has a great post up on her blog, Nikki Sounds Off.

Recently, an acquaintance, one I have not set [eyes:] on in years, casually asked me to drop in on her class as a favor and conduct a story hour with one of my books. When I declined, explaining that school visits are something I do professionally (i.e., something for which I am paid), she became very snippy with me. Sigh.

In the days that followed, I found myself wondering if she'd be inclined to ask a carpenter, one who had not...

next steps

As I mentioned before, when you're agitating for change you've got to walk with suggestions.  So we made our list; we now know that about 50 MG/YA novels by black authors were published in the US this year.  Here's what I'd like you to do NEXT:

READ THESE BOOKS!  I had a lot of help putting together this list and there were many titles I'd never heard of, which is precisely the problem:  publishers don't put much marketing money behind books by writers of color.  So now that we know about...

the breakdown

Now that the oracle has spoken (thanks, Doret!) I'm ready to analyze our data.  I should start by saying that I underestimated the publishing industry—sort of.  I didn't think we'd hit 20 titles by black authors in the US and instead we topped 40!  Consider, however, that the ALA estimates about 3,000 YA titles are published each year, which means we're still less than 2% of the total.  Not surprisingly, most presses/imprints only put out ONE black-authored novel this year.  Here are the...

the grim reality

I've been wanting to do this for a while.  I wanted to know just how many novels for young readers (MG & YA) were published this year.  I'm limiting this list to US-based authors of African descent.  Have I missed anyone?

Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, 8TH GRADE SUPERZERO (January; Arthur Levine)Rita Williams-Garcia, ONE CRAZY SUMMER  (January; Harper)Dia Reeves, BLEEDING VIOLET (January; Simon Pulse)Sharon Flake, YOU DON'T EVEN KNOW ME (February; Hyperion)Patricia C. McKissack, et al., THE...

don't let me be misunderstood

In my Book Smugglers guest post, I talked about the extra burden some writers of color bear when we decide to become author/activists.  Neesha Meminger recently articulated this form of privilege in relation to the rising Islamophobia in this country, making the point that choosing NOT to speak out is in and of itself an exercise of power.  If you haven't read Shine, Coconut Moon YET, now's the time—seriously.  I wish parents and educators and librarians understood that stories told from...