Zetta Elliott's Blog, page 29

protect your heart

Those words are sprayed on the sidewalk not too far from my home, a useful reminder these days when the news is so bleak. I find myself tearing up a lot while scrolling through my Facebook feed so I think it’s time to take a step back. We’re close to having a finished cover for The Return; I had the cover art retouched and hope Nyla will appear a bit browner once the book prints (all art seems to print a few shades darker with CreateSpace). I’ve got four more chapters to finish; I hit my word goal (30K) but missed by mid-June self-imposed deadline. Some days I write over a thousand words and some days I don’t write at all. Trying to be gentle with myself, and trust that the story will unfold in its own time. I’m eating vegan most days but overall I’d say I’m at 80% for the week (ice cream happened). Purple Wong has started working on Benny Doesn’t Like to Be Hugged and when I’m not writing, I’m reading long, complicated novels that take my mind off the many lives lost around the world this month.

It’s the first day of summer! I’m heading to the park for a power walk and then maybe I’ll see a matinee later on if I get some writing done. Seeing art with a friend on Friday, taking a hike with another friend on Sunday…taking care of myself as best I can. Please do the same!

Social Justice Books

Avoid summer slide and make sure the kids in your life READ while school is out! Teaching for Change recently launched a new site, Social Justice Books, and you can find their 2017 Summer Reading List here. I’m honored that MILO’S MUSEUM is one of their recommended titles! They also have a guide to finding anti-bias books for kids, and you can also read reviews of the best (and worst) books. When educators and parents ask me where to find inclusive books for their kids, I send them to Teaching for Change because I trust Deborah Menkart and her team of reviewers to separate the wheat from the chaff…

I’ve been reading a lot lately; I don’t post reviews on Goodreads, but I do track the titles I finish. Instead of rating a book, I’d much rather reflect on my particular reading experience; I can appreciate and respect a book without enjoying it, and I can value originality and good storytelling even when the writing itself is lackluster. Sometimes a book has it all—like Katherina Vermette’s The Break—and then I urge everyone I know to read it. But I still don’t write a review, and maybe I need to reconsider that since I certainly appreciate readers who post reviews of my books online (this one just came in). Right now I’m reading NK Jemisin’s The Shadowed Sun and yesterday I finished Nnedi Okorafor’s Binti: Home. Both books make me very aware of my limitations as a writer. “I could never do that!” is a phrase I hear in my head again and again. But recognizing the strengths of others also makes me want to explore my own potential. I don’t think I’ll ever write science fiction; I’m not that interested in spaceships, alien species, and distant planets. But I’m fascinated by the way these women writers make science and technology appear meaningful and *organic* in the lives of Black people. I never thought I’d write a dystopian novel but I’ve got one underway right now. That’s why reading widely is so important—the more books I read, the more I realize that writers GROW, they evolve over time precisely because THEY KEEP ON WRITING. I don’t feel my books have to be perfect and that empowers me to finish up and move on without agonizing over small (or even big) issues. Each time I finish a story, I learn more about myself as a writer and a reader. And I’m SO grateful that there are so many amazing women writers out there doing things I can’t do…yet.

Today is one of my last gigs for the school year. I’m looking forward to talking about books with Joseph Bruchac at the Middle School Quality Initiative. Michele Weisman from Meet the Writers kindly invited me to present, and the 100 attendees will receive a copy of Ship of Souls. It feels like I wrote that book a lifetime ago, but it’s exciting to share my process and priorities with educators and administrators. I had the opportunity to talk about legacies at Weeksville Heritage Center with outgoing executive director Tia Powell Harris and Brooklyn Historical Society president Deborah Schwartz. I want to leave behind a body of work, but I also hope people remember that I took some chances—in my writing and my advocacy. I’m not fearless, but do hope to prove that there’s more than one way to be a writer who serves her community.

looking back, moving forward

Yesterday I got serious about The Return. I’ve been working on this novella, off and on, for 3 years! I hired a cover artist, I’ve got another artist finishing the last interior illustration, and I’ve written about 20K words. I just need to make one final push to finish it by mid-June, and that means not getting distracted by other projects. I’ve got speaking gigs for the next 3 weeks but then my summer opens up…once I finish The Return, I can focus on my other novella North/South. Part of me wonders whether these projects could be sold to a traditional publisher and part of me just wants to go ahead and do my own thing. Having 4 full-color illustrations hikes the price of this follow-up to The Deep. Would you pay $20 for a paperback book? My comics friends tell me that’s the standard rate for a graphic novel, but this is a hybrid…CreateSpace charges as if you’re putting color on every page so that’s what jacks the price up–and that’s why I need to write less rather than more. Well, the task this week is to finish 3 of these 10 half-written chapters. Yesterday I drafted a new outline and printed it out so I can make notes as I work; I formatted the book twice, comparing font sizes; I inserted the four illustrations to see how they look; and I revisited the blog posts I wrote while I was in Dakar in 2014. Yesterday Facebook pulled up photos from my trip to Ghana in 2013 and I was reminded how that trip to Elmina Castle really inspired The Return. I felt angry at Elmina but visiting the House of Slaves at Goree Island the following year was a very different experience. I want this novella to balance the rage, sorrow, and longing one experiences when visiting a slave fort. For me, it hurt, but it affects everyone differently. This is reflected in my cast of characters and I hope readers can relate to them.

After binge-watching The Last Kingdom this past weekend (research for my Viking novel), I wrote a poem for a forthcoming anthology designed to help kids survive the Trump era. I’m sticking to my vegan diet and getting my steps in…next week I meet with my Random House editor, and Skype into the Los Angeles classroom where I passed out last month…I feel like I’m closing some of the many tabs that have been open for a while. Unstructured time can be tricky, but I’m learning to budget my time and feel optimistic about the summer. It’s time to close some doors so that others can open…

WORD! 2017

Join us at Restoration Plaza on June 11th for the 2017 Word Caribbean Lit Fest! Our young adult panel Younger Readers: A Brave, New World is at 4:30pm:

Award-winning Young Adult fiction writers journey to brave new worlds from Zetta Elliott (Canada/St. Kitts – Nevis), Mother of the Sea, historical saga from the coast of Africa to across the Atlantic, to magical realism and vodou culture in Ibi Zoboi (Haiti), American Street to Daniel José Older (USA/Cuba), Shadowshaper Cypher, with his complex, urban fantasy in summertime Brooklyn.

You can find the complete schedule here.

home again

London was lovely! I came home with yet another cold and I’m hacking as I write, but it was good to get out of the US for a while. I’m always struck by how easy London feels—I traveled all over the city and went to Coventry and Cambridge, and didn’t feel anxious or unsure; something about the design of the city really works for me, and that no doubt contributes to how happy I feel when I’m there. It also helped that I met wonderful educators who created opportunities for me to share my work with their students. I arrived Wednesday morning and stopped by the Museum of Natural History to say farewell to Dippy but the main hall was closed; got some soup and a cheese & pickle sandwich before heading back to the hotel to work on my law school talk. The next morning I went to East London to visit Ms. Russo’s class at the Petchey Academy—such wonderful young readers! I hustled back to the hotel and caught a train up to Coventry; it was great to meet such impressive Caribbean women lawyers and scholars, and our audience members were ready to debate the topic of cultural appropriation. I had a chance to sell some books afterward and then the conversation continued as we returned by train to London. I ordered a late night pizza and slept in the next day before heading up to Cambridge to hang out with Ana from The Book Smugglers. She gave me a tour of the historic colleges, and we talked about the intense labor and emotional energy that goes into publishing. Saturday was Open Day at the University of Roehampton and I received a warm welcome as soon as I arrived on campus. More books were sold and important connections were made before I dashed off to meet my friend Clare at the British Museum. I managed to see two more friends before heading to the airport on Sunday, and on the plane ride home I started composing the previous blog post calling for researchers around the world to track diversity in kid lit. I felt pretty awful on Monday because of this cold (and all the “issues” writing about Canada stirs up for me), so it was nice to get these colorful graphics from Matthew Smith at Reflection Press. Instead of looking at how many books we *don’t* have for Indigenous kids and kids of color, Maya and Matthew have calculated how many #ownvoices books we’d need to achieve parity:

Of course, this isn’t likely to happen within the traditional publishing industry since it’s dominated by straight, White, cis-gender women without disabilities. I’m a little worried that if other countries agree to track diversity in kid lit, they’ll continue to treat books for kids as if they organically appear rather than being carefully curated. We have to look at the lack of diversity in the entire children’s literature community—librarians, teachers, reviewers, booksellers, editors, marketers, authors & illustrators, and kid lit scholars…

The Face in the Mirror

Every year I conduct dozens of presentations in public schools, on college campuses, and at libraries. As a self-published author I am not welcome in certain spaces within the kid lit community, but I am also an independent scholar and my academic credentials open some doors that might otherwise remain closed. I very much appreciate the invitations I do receive to share my particular point of view, and my most popular talk for adults focuses on community-based publishing as one solution to racial discrimination (and, more specifically, anti-Blackness) in the traditional publishing industry. Nothing supports my claim of White supremacy like the illustration commissioned in 2016 by Sarah Park Dahlen at St. Kate’s University. The graphic was inspired by Rudine Sims Bishop’s oft-quoted metaphor of children’s books serving as mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors.

In addition to providing the 2015 statistics compiled by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center, the colorful illustration demonstrates how privilege is bidirectional; you can’t unfairly advantage one individual without simultaneously disadvantaging someone else. Artist David Huyck cleverly positions a White boy—blond-haired and blue-eyed—standing confidently in a room full of mirrors. Each shows him in a different heroic role: king, firefighter, astronaut. By contrast, the children of color and the Indigenous child have only one mirror each; their mirrors diminish in size, corresponding with the limited number of books published about their group. Unlike the White child, these kids are not beaming with joy and/or pride; instead they are downcast and clearly disturbed by the injustice perpetrated against them by those in the US publishing industry.

I have often wished that such a graphic existed for my country of origin. I grew up without “mirror books” and as a result often felt invisible and less valuable than my White peers. When I decided to become a writer at age thirteen, I initially wrote stories about Whites because almost all of the books I consumed featured White protagonists. It has taken years for me to decolonize my imagination, and I doubt I would have become an award-winning Black feminist author and scholar if I had remained in Canada (I left in 1994). I am also critical of my adopted home, but there are opportunities here in the US that simply don’t exist for Blacks in Canada. “The Great White North” prides itself on its diversity (a mosaic rather than a melting pot!), yet the reality often falls far short of the rhetoric around multiculturalism. Canada is a progressive place but it is far from perfect, and its proximity to the US too often results in a kind of smugness in Canadians that I find hard to bear. The apparent disinterest in collecting and publishing diversity data on children’s literature leads me to believe that no one in the Canadian kid lit community feels the effort is warranted. In fact, a 2016 article in School Library Journal celebrated Canadian publishers as leaders in the drive for greater diversity in children’s literature. But is such praise justified? My research on kid lit by and about Black Canadians suggests otherwise. Gathering and illustrating diversity data would provide a much-needed mirror, forcing the Canadian kid lit community to confront not only its successes but also its limitations and failures.

On a recent trip to London, I gave a presentation at the National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature at the University of Roehampton. After my talk, several people asked whether I believed the grim statistics on US kid lit were better or worse in the UK. I told them that I couldn’t say for sure, though I suspect the numbers are worse. What would happen if researchers around the world made a commitment to track diversity in books for young readers? How might scholarship in the field be enhanced by such data? A model for tracking racial diversity already exists—could other countries not replicate (and potentially improve upon and/or extend) the model established by the CCBC at the University of Wisconsin-Madison? What does it say about the profession that so many children’s literature scholars seem content to operate without an accurate understanding of disparities in the representation of their nation’s children? Greater transparency leads to increased trust; if publishers expect the public to believe they are committed to producing inclusive children’s literature, then it’s in their interest to submit their books for annual evaluation.

It’s time to hold up a mirror and take a good, hard look at the global kid lit community. As James Baldwin asserted, “Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Sisters in Law

I don’t know much about intellectual property law so I’m looking forward to learning more about it from Tania Phipps-Rufus next week! Today I’m heading to Baltimore for tomorrow’s 5th annual book fair at the Reginald F. Lewis Museum. If you’re near either of these events on either side of the pond, come on out!

what a week!

SO much has happened in the past seven days! Last Friday I had breakfast with Jewels Smith, creator of the (H)afrocentric comic. We swapped stories about teaching Ethnic Studies at a community college and shared our strategies for getting our work out into the world. Then I went home and packed so I could fly to LA! My budget hotel was just a short walk from the USC campus and so on Saturday morning I went over to drop off books. I ran into Jackie Woodson immediately and that helped put me at ease. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel spending Saturday on my own in a strange city, but I had an amazing day. I went to a gallery to see POWER—an exhibit of incredible Black women artists spanning 150 years. Then I walked downtown and took a two-hour walking tour of historic LA. Laura drove down from Berkeley and we connected that evening to have dinner with Stan Yogi and his husband David. I’m not a social girl but I do love dinner parties—a delicious home-cooked meal plus great conversation plus loads of laughter. I slept well after clocking close to 20K steps and the next day met up with Maya, Matthew, and Sky to head over to the LA Times Book Festival. We got our badges, had breakfast with our co-panelists in the University Club, and then headed over to the Hoy Stage. We got to meet Arleene Valdez who created this wonderful space for the Latinx community, and found our friends were already sitting in the front row. I thought they might be the only ones in attendance but we had a full house–well over 50 people under the tent! It was awesome to look out during our 30-minute panel and see heads nodding in agreement with the points we raised about the value of storytelling in our communities. We signed books afterward and then got a quick bite to eat in the green room before heading to the Huntington Library to see the Octavia Butler exhibit. It was amazing and the gardens surrounding the library were stunning. Laura and I reconnected with Maya, Matthew, and Sky for dinner and that’s when things took a turn. I felt full but otherwise fine, yet at midnight found myself throwing up…something I haven’t done since I was a kid, I think. I felt better afterward and woke up thinking I could give two book talks at a school in Silver Lake. The first talk went well but I passed out during the second talk and threw up again…I actually don’t even remember what happened; by the time I came to, the kids were gone, and the teacher was rubbing my back while calling 911. Paramedics came and said my vitals were fine…but I was MORTIFIED. That has never happened to me before and I hate to think that the kids might have been traumatized or at the very least disappointed that I couldn’t finish my talk. I was VERY grateful to the staff and my host Carmen who came and got me and took me to her home; while I booked a room at an airport hotel, she packed me some rice cakes and a banana…what a godsend! I checked into the hotel and slept for a few hours before heading to the airport for my 12:30am flight. And I feel much better now—got through 3 more gigs yesterday and today, and a girl who didn’t even participate in the workshop gave me this lovely poster as I left Bay Ridge Library. I just submitted my abstract for an October conference on Black British history in the UK. This morning I made plans to see a friend in Cambridge while I’m in England next month, and this evening I approved another amazing sketch by my illustrator for The Return (three down, one more to go). I got a (mostly) positive response to my minstrelsy essay, which went up on The Book Smugglers site earlier this week, and School Library Journal is considering my suggestion that we take a closer look at the “secret” role of book packagers in the publishing industry. This weekend I’ll be revising Dragons in a Bag and I’ve already started thinking about the sequel, which is due this fall. Will try to see some art this weekend and will stop by the botanic garden to check on the lilacs…everything’s blooming early this year because of the wonky weather. I’ve got two more trips coming up in May and then I can seriously slow down—can’t wait!

in the sea

Last week was ridiculous. I finally finished my second attempt at a 3000-word story (wrapping up at 14K words) and was absolutely exhausted yet still managed to release Mother of the Sea (read my latest newsletter here). I have a vision for this new book—I could write another 14K words from the protagonist’s twin brother’s point of view, and self-publish as a flip book with different front and back covers to reflect each storyteller. And since one twin goes north and the other goes south, I’d keep the title simple: North/South. The next day I left for Toronto and found I was too tired even to read on the train or plane. I dozed while in transit and then spent the next few days visiting with family and working on…yet another short story! This one really will be 3,000 words; the pitch is more manageable and the scope is narrow. I watched a few videos on migrants crossing the Sahara and epigenetics…and I got a few hundred words written before succumbing to butter tarts and mindless TV. Got back to NYC on Monday night and immediately started organizing my receipts so I could finish filing my taxes the next day. Once that was done, I packed up posters and review copies of Mother of the Sea…today I have a school visit and I want to attend a tribute to June Jordan tonight at the Brooklyn Public Library. Tomorrow I leave for LA! It’s supposed to be 90 degrees out there, so went shopping for something to wear. Really looking forward to our panel, “Fact or Fiction: Activism for Kids in a New Political Era.” We only have 30 minutes but we’re going to see if we can find a way to record it for folks who can’t attend. I’ve got a school visit booked for the day after the book festival and then it’s back to Brooklyn to finish edits for Dragons in a Bag by May 1…

I found out yesterday that Melena’s Jubilee earned a spot on the Bank Street Best Children’s Books of the Year 2017 list—with a star for outstanding merit! None of my three self-published books made the list, despite being some of the best I’ve written so far (IMHO)…but I’m glad Melena’s there with so many other great books. And it will be great to discuss the specific actions listed at the back of the book to help kids “reboot.” I need to follow my own advice! I’ve traveled and written a lot since January…time to slow down.

crossing the pond again

I delivered my first paper on children’s literature, “Telling Secrets in the City: Narrative Possibility and the Urban Environment,” at the University of Roehampton in London way back in 2008. My first picture book, BIRD, had just been published by Lee & Low and I was excited to see my good friend Laura Atkins who was teaching and doing graduate work at the National Centre for Research in Children’s Literature (NCRCL). It’s through Laura that I met Dr. Lisa Sainsbury, Director of the NCRCL, and I’m honored that she is teaching my work in her graduate class. Dr. Sainsbury also invited me to present at Roehampton’s upcoming Open Day; you can learn more about the event at the NCRCL blog.

Someone on Twitter asked me to post information about my UK “tour”—I don’t think that’s the right word for my upcoming trip to London, but I’m very grateful for the invitations I’ve received to talk about my books and advocacy work. On May 12, Terrence Brathwaite, Postgraduate Course Director at Coventry Law School, has arranged for me to engage in dialogue with legal scholar Tania Phipps-Rufus: “Sisters-in-Law: Equity in Publishing, Intellectual Property Law & [image error]Cultural Appropriation.” I’m hoping to surprise some London students who have been reading my books, and I’m keen to connect with the avid readers behind the podcast Mostly Lit.

I’ve been writing this week but I also binge-watched Crazyhead and learned that Season 2 of Chewing Gum is out, too…I’m thinking about the UK but writing about a dystopian US; I’m eating too much, but that’s what happens when I’m close to finishing a project. I found a new font for the cover of Mother of the Sea, and its designer sent me a lovely message of encouragement. The Nigerian anthropologist mother of a friend of a friend has agreed to review the manuscript, so I hope to have the book out next week before I head up to Toronto for a few days. It gets hectic sometimes but I do love this transnational life…