real fierce

A few months ago, Ambelin Kwaymullina and I posted a three-part dialogue on this blog. In Part 2 I reflected on the dominance of White women in the kid lit community and the need for reparations. A woman in Seattle recently created a website called Reparations where those invested in social justice can connect—Whites offer resources they’re willing to share and Blacks can request the assistance they need. What if we tried something like that in the kid lit community? How would that play out? These are some of my reflections from this past February:

How could the dominant group ever make amends for the damage done to our children? For decades here in the US they have ignored our pleas for inclusion and perpetrated a form of symbolic annihilation by distorting or altogether erasing the image of Black youth. Can the publishing industry really be trusted to reform itself when those who uphold it haven’t acknowledged the harm they’ve caused? Of course, the first step would be an admission of wrongdoing, but most white Americans prefer reconciliation without its prerequisite: TRUTH.

Last week I came across two White women, Pernille Ripp and Liz Osisek, who blogged about their reassessment of the highly problematic YA novel WHEN WE WAS FIERCE. I was heartened by their honest reflections on their privilege and bias, but know that thousands of copies of WWWF have been pre-ordered and will still wind up in the hands of impressionable young readers across the country. So what can we do? Here’s one option: if you took the time to read, review, order, or recommend that 400-page book—a highly problematic novel written by a cultural outsider that nonetheless earned 3 starred reviews—would you be willing to devote that same time and energy to an urban novel written by a cultural insider? Rich in Color will be hosting a September discussion of my two novels, A WISH AFTER MIDNIGHT and its sequel THE DOOR AT THE CROSSROADS. Neither of my books was reviewed by Kirkus, School Library Journal, Booklist, or Publishers Weekly. And considering the fact that so many White readers fell in love with WWWF, there’s a good chance those review outlets wouldn’t have found my Black teen protagonists as appealing as T, Catch, Yo-Yo, and Ricky-Ricky…

But if you now feel a way about embracing WWWF, here’s an opportunity for you to do the right thing. Give urban fiction by a cultural insider a chance.