talking back

The essay that was due last month is finally done! The finished version differs greatly from the essay I started back in December, but I think that’s ultimately a good thing. I finally had a chance to quote Cathy J. Cohen and Kyra, whose important essay, “How to Uphold White Supremacy by Focusing on Diversity and Inclusion,” should be required reading for everyone who claims to be invested in the diversity debate. I see a matinee in my near future and there will be puppets later this week. Then it will be time to turn back to novel-in-progress #1. For now, here’s a taste of my essay, which will appear in a forthcoming textbook on children’s literature.

I can’t breathe.

I am a Black feminist writer committed to social justice. I write stories about Black children and teens, but within the children’s literature community I struggle to find what poet June Jordan calls “living room.” In “Moving Towards Home,” Jordan empathizes with the Palestinian people as she envisions a space free from persecution:

I need to speak about living room

where the talk will take place in my language

I need to speak about living room

where my children will grow without horror

I need to speak about living room where the men

of my family between the ages of six and sixty-five

are not

marched into a roundup that leads to the grave

I need to talk about living room

where I can sit without grief without wailing aloud

for my loved ones

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

I need to talk about living room

because I need to talk about home

I have been asked to write about the future of children’s literature but right now I need to talk about home. If “home” represents sanctuary—a safe space where one can speak in one’s authentic voice and not only survive, but thrive—then the children’s literature community is not my home. I must make my predictions as an outsider.

By industry standards, I am a failed author. Since I started writing for young readers in 2000, only three of my thirty stories have been published traditionally. I turned to self-publishing as my only recourse, and then faced the contempt of those who see self-publishing as a mere exercise in vanity. Last year a white woman Facebook “friend” suggested that my decision to self-publish was analogous to Blacks in the civil rights era choosing to dine in their segregated neighborhood instead of integrating Jim Crow lunch counters in the South. In her mind, self-publishing is a cowardly form of surrender; to be truly noble (and, therefore, deserving of publication) I ought to patiently insist upon my right to sit alongside white authors regardless of the hostility, rejection, and disdain I encounter.