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The Divine (in) Every Body: A Guest Post from Tanita S. Davis

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I’m so excited to share this guest post today from Tanita S. Davis, author of several books, including Mare’s War, Happy Families, and Peas and Carrots (out tomorrow, February 9). After I read Peas and Carrots, I couldn’t stop thinking about the interesting elements about body representation brought up in the story and I asked if Tanita would talk to that. This post will rerun over on the Size Acceptance in YA Tumblr, as well, because it is so good. 

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peas and carrotsMy first teaching job out of college took me to a group home where I worked one-on-one with students ages 12-18. As part of their extended classroom, I often accompanied the female students to after-hours community sponsored outings intended to give them wider life experiences. One day I accompanied them to a yoga studio in a tony winery town. Enthusiastic about the trip, I initially urged the girls to try and take the yogic instruction seriously, to appreciate the opportunity to get in touch with their bodies in a new and different way. All of us were strangers to yoga practice, but I read them a few explanations and descriptions of it, and thought we were prepared. However, I found that when we got to the studio I, and the twelve young women with me, seemed vastly, wildly out of place. The instructors and volunteers for that night were in dedicated yoga clothing, young, sylph-bodied and white. I became hyperaware of my own heavy belly and ponderous breasts camouflaged in my 4x T-shirt, of the round butts and full thighs of the girls with me displayed in tank tops and cut-off sweats. The majority of my girls were full-bodied and curvy, and of African American ancestry. And despite yoga’s claims of inclusiveness and openness and the instructor’s I-salute-the-oneness-of-whatever-goddess-within-you, it was clear that we weren’t part of the oneness, the whiteness, of everyone else who was there.

Aware my girls were watching, I shelved my discomfort and …yogaed. Or, tried. It was, by some standards, a pretty thorough disaster. The instructor seemed unable to simply describe the poses we were meant to take, but kept on calling them by name – as if we knew what a cow or a cobra was supposed to be. Her distress at our perceived lack of fitness was evident, as she continued to repeat, “Our bodies are made to move, but don’t force them, girls, don’t force them.” There were thuds and snorts as one after the other, the girls attempted poses, fell out of them, and lay on the floor in cheerful defeat. “Okay, this is wack,” someone announced, and our quiet snickers turned to guffaws as we got up and tried again. The instructor tried to enable us to find our composure, periodically chiming a calming bell, but we couldn’t get our stuff together to save our lives. We laughed, fell, got up, laughed, and laughed again. “Don’t hurt yourself,” the instructor murmured to me as I struggled to continue to model “mature adult” behavior and hold the required poses. At my disbelieving huff – surely I wasn’t that bad – one of my students comforted me, “That’s okay. Black people don’t really do yoga anyway.”

“We’re black, though, and we’re doing yoga,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but we’re just playing,” she assured me. “This doesn’t count.”

Huh.

Suddenly I stopped laughing.

This does count, I wanted to insist. We can do this, too.

But… I didn’t quite believe it.

“I didn’t think black people really did yoga.”

Foster Lady inhales slowly and then breathes out. “Black people are just people, Dess. People of all kinds do whatever they feel like doing.” She exhales and smiles, bringing her arms and legs down again, standing still. “I feel like doing yoga.” – PEAS AND CARROTS, by Tanita S. Davis, Knopf Books for Young Readers, 2016

In PEAS AND CARROTS Dess encounters her foster mother’s size the moment they meet, but it is seeing her big legs holding that large body in strong stillness on a yoga mat that creates, for Dess, an instant of shocking, anomalous behavior that demands explanation. Dess is full of  vaguely authoritarian beliefs on the capabilities of black bodies, the limits of behavior for black people, and those beliefs don’t extend to swimming or yoga, or working with weights, or even eating vegetables for breakfast, despite what she discovers in her new foster family. She finds the Carters beyond belief, and their unswerving dedication to being just who they are, regardless of expectation, is nothing she’s ever experienced before. There is power in being who you are, and owning it – a power and a comfort I wish I could bequeath to every young reader.

A lot of first-person voices in young adult lit voice character assumptions and beliefs but writers don’t always find ways to comprehensively deconstruct those beliefs in a way that feels organic to the narrative. I wanted to be thorough with all of the opinions that Dess expressed. I wanted to give the reader space to turn over each and examine it  – through observation, but also more directly through conversations Dess had with Foster Lady, I wanted to make sure that the reader could come away saying, specifically, yes, black bodies, every body, CAN.

It was, in some ways, an incomplete accomplishment. Writers control little but their words in the publishing process, and I gave what input I could on the cover, which went through many iterations before arriving at the brightly engaging hardcover image, depicting two relatively slim-bodied girls. I’m happy with it on a number of levels, even as I hope someday that acceptance of black female bodies, even in a work intended for young readers, will better illustrate the normalized inclusion of big bodies, and black bodies as part of the whole – as different as peas and carrots, but taken as a normal part of the diverse whole that makes up who we are.

***

tanita

Tanita grew up with foster siblings, worked at a summer camp, and taught at a group home school and an elementary classroom, so she’s frequently hung around a mob of kids and teens. A bookworm, introvert, and a tea addict, you can usually find her hiding behind a mug as big as her head. She was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Mare’s War, which was a Coretta Scott King Honor Book. Her most recent novel, Peas and Carrots, is out from Knopf this month. Tanita lives in Northern California with her Tech Boy and feels rather queenly referring to herself in the third person.

#1000BlackGirlBooks Donation Fund Drive Book List

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Black Girls

 

In Mid-January, a story about 11-year-old Marley Dias and her quest to collection 1000 books about black girls hit the internet. Or maybe the correct phrasing of that is that it hit the internet in a way where it picked up attention and got spread far and wide in the book community. Almost immediately, I knew I wanted to do what I could to help this fabulous girl collect the books she wanted to meet her goal.

Like last year, I thought putting it out there that I’d take up donations would work. But unlike the Some Girls Are drive, rather than collect books and send them to Marley, I opened up my Paypal account to accept donations, which I’d then funnel into sending her book after book after book.

Nearly $3000 came in from the drive, which is fabulous and powerful. I still have a couple hundred dollars left to spend, and it’s my idea to get in touch with the people behind this project and help fill in any additional holes.

One of the fun, frustrating, and challenging elements of this drive was selecting the books to send. I let anyone who donated choose a title or two (or ten, it didn’t matter!) to send, but I limited to one copy of each title. I did this knowing that some titles, like brown girl dreaming and Pointe would be requested again and again and be sent again and again. There’s nothing wrong with that in the least, especially for a library like the one Dias is working toward, but I wanted to offer a further range of titles, too. Thanks to the hard work of dedicated people like Zetta Elliott and Edi Campbell, I was able to really dig deep into the world of kid lit featuring black girls at the center of the story. In addition to utilizing their incredible resources, I tapped into the brains of Sarah Hannah Gomez, Justina Ireland, and Anne Ursu, who all provided a wealth of title ideas for sending.

Justina further pointed something out to me that I’ve been unable to stop thinking about. It only took $2500 to collect nearly every black girl book in children’s/middle grade/YA/crossover adult. These books have limited shelf lives, as numerous titles were tough to track down or required me going through third parties to collection. Do you know how sad it is to think that that amount of money is all it takes to buy nearly everything?

I’m thrilled we could do this, but it didn’t hit me how difficult finding black girl books truly was until I’d exhausted the obvious, exhausted the less obvious, and still have some money left over to find further titles.  I am eager to see how Marley completes this dream of hers, as well as what her library will look like, but I’m also saddened to see so clearly the very thing she was talking about (and that so many others have and continue talking about): these books are not out there, not obvious, and that needs to change. I also ran into seeing just how few graphic novels offer black girls at the center of the story.

As promised, here’s a round-up of nearly everything I purchased for #1000BlackGirlBooks. This list is so long and took a long time to compile, so forgive any errors or mistakes. I’m doing what I can to designate titles by category — picture books and early readers, middle grade, YA, adult, and graphic novel. I’ve starred titles within each of those categories that are non-fiction, and all links will take you to Amazon. I’m choosing to do it that way because I’m using Amazon as my way of gauging ages for some of the titles, and it’s where I made my purchases for Marley because of the ability to track purchases and ensure quick delivery.

I used my librarian brain when buying these, knowing these will be used in libraries. That means there are award winners here, as well as popular books, as well as pop culture leaning title. This is a mix of a little of everything, just as it should be.

Ready? Here we go.

 

Picture Books/Early Reader Titles

 

 

Middle Grade (some are higher level and some lower)

 

 

Young Adult

 

 

Adult (with crossover appeal)

 

 

Graphic Novels

 

 

Black Girls Matter: A YA Reading List

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I have thought a lot recently about black girls.

Earlier this year, a piece on NPR highlighted how black girls are pushed out of schools at higher rates than their white counterparts. Discipline toward black girls is harsher and handed out in ways that aren’t equitable to white girls. We have seen this front and center, too, thanks to the horrific and heart-shattering video of a school police officer assaulting a black girl in school. We saw it front and center this summer as a police officer in McKinney, Texas, manhandled a black teen girl.

There’s no excuse at all for any of these situations. Black lives matter, and that mattering extends to those teen black girls who deserve to be listened to, acknowledged, boosted, and treated as human beings with immense potential, perspective, and possibility ahead of them.

Because they absolutely, positively do.

I’m not sure I can say much more except that when I start feeling powerless, creating a resource list feels like a small step toward not only acknowledging the issue, but it feels like something that could, I hope, get a book into the hands of a person who desperately needs it. In this case, I hope a teacher or librarian or reader finds one of these books featuring great black female leads and understands that their story — their life — matters hugely.

All descriptions are from WorldCat, and I’m absolutely eager to hear more titles. All are YA books featuring black girls front and center and they include fiction and some non-fiction. A couple of these titles also fall into that crossover category, so while they may technically be “adult” reads, they have great appeal to teens. Several of these authors have written more than one title featuring a black girl at the center, so it’s worth checking their other titles, too. Many of these are also on-going series titles. I’ve limited to one per author.

 

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brown girl dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson: Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become.

Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson: When their owner dies at the start of the Revolution, Isabel and her younger sister are sold to Loyalists in New York, where Isabel is offered the chance to spy for the Patriots.

Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice by Phillip Hoose: Based on extensive interviews with Claudette Colvin and many others, Phillip Hoose presents the first in-depth account of an important yet largely unknown civil rights figure, skillfully weaving her dramatic story into the fabric of the historic Montgomery bus boycott and court case that would change the course of American history.

Disgruntled by Asali Solomon: Kenya Curtis is only eight years old, but she knows that she’s different, even if she can’t put her finger on how or why. It’s not because she’s Black–most of the other students in the fourth-grade class at her West Philadelphia elementary school are too. Maybe it’s because she celebrates Kwanzaa, or because she’s forbidden from reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Maybe it’s because she calls her father–a housepainter-slash-philosopher–“Baba” instead of “Daddy,” or because her parents’ friends gather to pour out libations “from the Creator, for the Martyrs” and discuss “the community.” Kenya does know that it’s connected to what her Baba calls “the shame of being alive”–a shame that only grows deeper and more complex over the course of Asali Solomon’s long-awaited debut novel. Disgruntled, effortlessly funny and achingly poignant, follows Kenya from West Philadelphia to the suburbs, from public school to private, from childhood through adolescence, as she grows increasingly disgruntled by her inability to find any place or thing or person that feels like home. A coming-of-age tale, a portrait of Philadelphia in the late eighties and early nineties, an examination of the impossible double-binds of race, Disgruntled is a novel about the desire to rise above the limitations of the narratives we’re given and the painful struggle to craft fresh ones we can call our own

Don’t Fail Me Now by Una LaMarche: Interracial half-siblings come together for the first time and embark on a cross-country road trip to confront their absentee father before he dies.

Nothing But Drama by ReShonda Tate Billingsley: Four teenaged girls from different backgrounds find faith and friendship after joining Good Girlz, an afterschool church youth group.

 

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Endangered by Lamar Giles: When Lauren (Panda), a teen photoblogger, gets involved in a deadly game, she has to protect the classmates she despises.

Flygirl by Sherri L Smith: During World War II, a light-skinned African American girl “passes” for white in order to join the Women Airforce Service Pilots.

The Game of Love and Death by Martha Brockenbrough: Antony and Cleopatra. Helen of Troy and Paris. Romeo and Juliet. And now… Henry and Flora. For centuries Love and Death have chosen their players. They have set the rules, rolled the dice, and kept close, ready to influence, angling for supremacy. And Death has always won. Always. Could there ever be one time, one place, one pair whose love would truly tip the balance? Meet Flora Saudade, an African-American girlwho dreams of becoming the next Amelia Earhart by day and sings in the smoky jazz clubs of Seattle by night. Meet Henry Bishop, born a few blocks and a million worlds away, a white boy with his future assured — a wealthy adoptive family in the midst of the Great Depression, a college scholarship, and all the opportunities in the world seemingly available to him. The players have been chosen. The dice have been rolled. But when human beings make moves of their own, what happens next is anyone’s guess.

The Good Braider by Terry Farish: Told in spare free verse, the book follows Viola as she survives brutality in war-torn Sudan, makes a perilous journey, lives as a refugee in Egypt, and finally reaches Portland, Maine, where her quest for freedom and security is hampered by memories of past horrors and the traditions her mother and other Sudanese adults hold dear. With unforgettable images, the author’s voice sings out the story of her family’s journey, and tells the universal tale of a young immigrant’s struggle to build a life on the cusp of two cultures. Includes historical facts and a map of Sudan.

Heaven by Angela Johnson: At fourteen, Marley knows she has Momma’s hands and Pops’s love for ice cream, that her brother doesn’t get on her nerves too much, and that Uncle Jack is a big mystery. But Marley doesn’t know all she thinks she does, because she doesn’t know the truth. And when the truth comes down with the rain one stormy summer afternoon, it changes everything. It turns Momma and Pops into liars. It makes her brother a stranger and Uncle Jack an even bigger mystery. All of a sudden, Marley doesn’t know who she is anymore and can only turn to the family she no longer trusts to find out.

High School High by Shannon Freeman:  Brandi, Marissa, and Shane are excited to begin their freshman year at Port City High, but find their friendship tested by Shane’s drug addiction and Marissa’s relationship with Brandi’s ex.

 

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The Hot Girl by Dream Jordan: Kate, a fourteen-year-old Brooklyn girl and former gang member, risks losing her first good foster family when she adopts the risqué ways of her flirtatious new friend, Naleejah.

The Kayla Chronicles by Sherri Winston: At the urging of her pushy best friend, Kayla overcomes her reticence and tries out for the school dance team in order to expose their suspected discrimination, but when she unexpectedly makes the team–and even begins to enjoy performing–she finds her assumptions, and her sense of herself, challenged.

Kendra by Coe Booth: High schooler Kendra longs to live with her mother who, unprepared for motherhood at age fourteen, left Kendra in the care of her grandmother.

Love is the Drug by Alaya Dawn Johnson: Emily Bird is an African American high school senior in Washington D.C., member of a privileged medical family, on the verge of college and the edge of the drug culture, and not really sure which way she will go–then one day she wakes up in the hospital with no memory of what happened.

Mare’s War by Tanita S Davis: Teens Octavia and Tali learn about strength, independence, and courage when they are forced to take a car trip with their grandmother, who tells about growing up Black in 1940s Alabama and serving in Europe during World War II as a member of the Women’s Army Corps.

Not Otherwise Specified by Hannah Moskowitz: Auditioning for a New York City performing arts high school could help Etta escape from her Nebraska all-girl school, where she is not gay enough for her former friends, not sick enough for her eating disorders group, and not thin enough for ballet, but it may also mean real friendships.

 

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On The Come Up by Hannah Weyer: AnnMarie comes across a flyer advertising movie auditions in Manhattan. Four months before she’s due to give birth; she lands a lead role. For a time, AnnMarie soars, acting for the camera, flying to the Sundance Film Festival, seeing her face on-screen. But when the film fades from view and the realities of her life set in, AnnMarie’s grit and determination are the only tools left to keep her moving forward. Told with remarkable compassion and based on the real-life story of Anna Simpson.

Pinned by Sharon Flake: Adonis is smart, intellectually gifted and born without legs; Autumn is strong, a great wrestler, and barely able to read in ninth grade–but Autumn is attracted to Adonis and determined to make him a part of her life whatever he or her best friend thinks.

Pointe by Brandy Colbert: Four years after Theo’s best friend, Donovan, disappeared at age thirteen, he is found and brought home and Theo puts her health at risk as she decides whether to tell the truth about the abductor, knowing her revelation could end her life-long dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer.

Camo Girl by Kekla Magoon: Ella, a biracial girl with a patchy and uneven skin tone, and her friend Z, a boy who is very different, have been on the bottom of the social order at Caldera Junior High School in Las Vegas, but when the only other African-American student enters their sixth grade class, Ella longs to be friends with him and join the popular group, but does not want to leave Z all alone.

See No Color by Shannon Gibney: Alex has always identified herself as a baseball player, the daughter of a winning coach, but when she realizes that is not enough she begins to come to terms with her adoption and her race.

Copper Sun by Sharon Draper: Two fifteen-year-old girls–one a slave and the other an indentured servant–escape their Carolina plantation and try to make their way to Fort Moses, Florida, a Spanish colony that gives sanctuary to slaves.

 

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So Not The Drama by Paula Chase: Mina’s plans to carry her middle school popularity over into high school do not work out just as she had imagined when her best friend Lizzie gets invited to a party with the social elite, and a class project on prejudice exposes the truth about school cliques.

Something Like Hope by Shawn Goodman: Shavonne, a fierce, desperate seventeen year-old in juvenile lockup, wants to turn her life around before her eighteenth birthday, but corrupt guards, out-of-control girls, and shadows from her past make her task seem impossible.

Sound by Alexandra Duncan: Ava’s adopted sister Miyole is finally living her dream as a research assistant on her very first space voyage. But when her ship saves a rover that has been viciously attacked by looters and kidnappers, Miyole–along with a rescued rover girl named Cassia–embarks on a mission to rescue Cassia’s abducted brother, and that changes the course of Miyole’s life forever

Step To This by Nikki Carter: Gia doesn’t have the hair or the clothes, but she’s got the moves and the attitude to make her sophomore year at Longfellow High unforgettable. But not everyone agrees, so Gia decides it’s time for a makeover. With her stylish new look, she scores a date with hottie football player, Romeo, snags a spot on the Hi-Steppers dance squad, and makes a ton of new friends.

Taking Flight by Michaela DePrince: The memoir of Michaela DePrince, who lived the first few years of her live in war-torn Sierra Leone until being adopted by an American family. Now seventeen, she is one of the premiere ballerinas in the United States.

Tankborn by Karen Sandler: Kayla and Mishalla, two genetically engineered non-human slaves (GENs), fall in love with higher-status boys, discover deep secrets about the creation of GENs, and find out what it means to be human.

 

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This Side of Home by Renée Watson: Twins Nikki and Maya Younger always agreed on most things, but as they head into their senior year they react differently to the gentrification of their Portland, Oregon, neighborhood and the new–white–family that moves in after their best friend and her mother are evicted.

Tiny Pretty Things by Sona Charaipotra and Dhonielle Clayton: Gigi, Bette, and June, three top students at an exclusive Manhattan ballet school, have seen their fair share of drama. Free-spirited new girl Gigi just wants to dance — but the very act might kill her. Privileged New Yorker Bette’s desire to escape the shadow of her ballet star sister brings out a dangerous edge in her. And perfectionist June needs to land a lead role this year or her controlling mother will put an end to her dancing dreams forever. When every dancer is both friend and foe, the girls will sacrifice, manipulate, and backstab to be the best of the best.

Maya’s Choice by Earl Sewell: Maya’s summer is shaping up to be unforgettable– in both good and bad ways. First she’s sent to stay with her grandmother for a month. Living in the city, Maya is too far from her friend Keysha and her boyfriend, Misalo– and too near her rebellious cousin Viviana. When Maya finally comes home, her parents drop a bombshell– Viviana is moving in with them. Her cousin has barely unpacked before she’s creating chaos. Truth is, Maya kind of likes the way life is a whole lot less predictable with Viviana around. But her motives are up for debate– especially when it comes to Misalo. And as Maya’s little sister, Anna, grows more fascinated with her cool older cousin, Maya begins to see that following where Viviana leads has its price. And it could cost Maya her reputation, her relationship– and maybe even her future. 

 

When The Black Girl Sings by Bil Wright: Adopted by white parents and sent to an exclusive Connecticut girls’ school where she is the only black student, fourteen-year-old Lahni Schuler feels like an outcast, particularly when her parents separate, but after attending a local church where she hears gospel music for the first time, she finds her voice.

On (Not) Reading Science Fiction as a Teenage Girl

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About ten years ago, I was at the local Barnes and Noble, browsing the science fiction and fantasy aisle for a good book (or two or three). I was back in Texas, on break from college where I was studying English, and looking forward to diving into a book that was far from my assigned reading at UNC. Even if I didn’t end up buying anything (rare), simply being there next to all those books that promised so many terrific adventures felt like home.

Usually I browsed alone, sometimes camping out on the floor to read the first few pages of a likely candidate. This time, there was a man browsing the same aisle. He was about my age. He had brown hair and a beard. He made eye contact with me and I saw a surprised, but pleased, look overtake his face. I regretted making the eye contact (the absolute worst for a shy person) and wanted to just ignore him, but he must have felt the need for some sort of comment, because he told me he was surprised to see me browsing that aisle.

I was confused by the comment. We didn’t know each other. This was the aisle I always browsed when I shopped for books. I didn’t make any reply, just smiled thinly and continued shopping. I thought about telling him that I was looking for fantasy novels, which may have cleared up his confusion, but opted to just stay silent.

This is a small moment, but it’s one that’s stuck with me (and I have a notoriously sieve-like memory). I don’t remember when I first learned that science fiction was a boys’ arena, but it was something I had internalized from an early age, reinforced by small incidents like the one with the man at the bookstore who was surprised to see me shopping for SF.

This moment, and so many others, is why Alexandra Duncan’s guest post resonated so strongly for me, and it’s why I wanted to write my own piece for our About the Girls series this year.

We all know that representation matters for readers. In my experience, this is especially true for teenagers. When I was a teen, I craved seeing myself in the books I read. I wanted to see girls on the covers, and I wanted them to be the focus. I wanted to put myself in their shoes and imagine that I was saving worlds, falling in love, and finding my power. I wanted to pilot a space ship and meet aliens. I wanted to get away from a life I often hated and pretend I could do incredible things. Furthermore, as someone who dreamed of being a writer when I grew up, I wanted to see books written by women. I wanted to know that there were other women out there writing the kind of stuff that I wanted to write.

With a few exceptions (Anne McCaffrey, basically), I didn’t find books like this in science fiction.

That’s not to say they weren’t there, as Maureen accurately points out. As an adult, this is easy for me to recognize. But the existence of women in SF – both as creators and as subjects – doesn’t necessarily make these books accessible, especially to teens who have limited resources to do research on their own. When I was a teenager, I found my books by browsing my library’s shelves and my bookstore’s shelves (usually a Barnes and Noble or a Half Price Books). I’ve always been interested in stories that are out of this world, that are heavy on the fantastic and the impossible. In both my library and the bookstores, these kinds of stories were found in the combined Science Fiction and Fantasy section. The science fiction authors I found there were overwhelmingly male: Isaac Asimov, Orson Scott Card, Piers Anthony, Ben Bova, Frank Herbert. Their covers and their stories featured men and the synopses on the back had little relevance to my life. When women were on the covers, they were often not wearing much or kneeling at the foot of a man or dead. I found the women in the fantasy novels: Juliet Marillier, J. V. Jones, Anne Bishop, Elizabeth Haydon, Sara Douglass. I began to recognize a science fiction novel by its cover, which usually had a black background and blocky lettering. Those I would quickly bypass in search of something more likely to include someone like myself.

Getting past the easy reach is, well, not easy. For most people, myself included at that age, it’s not even something that would cross their minds. What is on the shelf is what exists. If it’s not there? It functionally does not exist for the reader looking for it. Thus I came to believe that science fiction was not for me. Science fiction was for boys, and they knew it, too. Of course, books by and about men are also for women, and I read a lot of them, but when I realized over and over again that I would never see myself in these books, that the girls and women who were in these books were always portrayed via the male gaze, I mostly gave up on them. I would tell people I preferred fantasy over science fiction. It became my primary love and the genre in which almost all of my own fictional scribblings at this time belonged.

What I came to realize much later is that I preferred fantasy to the science fiction I could find, not necessarily the science fiction that existed. While I don’t absolutely love The Hunger Games, I am so glad for its stratospheric popularity, for much the same reason Duncan mentions. It, and its legions of dystopian and post-apocalyptic readalikes, made science fiction by and about women much more visible to people like teen me, who only saw what the booksellers and the librarians chose to buy. YA science fiction helped bring me to the genre I had always wanted to love, if only it would love me back.

Since reading The Hunger Games, I’ve become much more cognizant of what SF is actually out there, how certain books are marketed, and the inherent biases in people’s reading choices. That’s due to my professional life as a librarian, which has led to an effort on my part to get beyond the easy reach – for the benefit of myself as well as my patrons. It’s easier for me to find both hard and soft SF about girls when I want it because I have the tools to do so. But if my professional life hadn’t given me those tools? It would be a lot harder. I wouldn’t have known that so many great books even existed.

I’m reminded of a conversation I had as a teen with a black girl around my age who was volunteering at the library alongside me. We were talking books and reading and I mentioned that I loved historical fiction. She told me she didn’t really care for it, and I was so surprised. I loved historical fiction so much I just figured its appeal was universal. I told my mom later on that my friend said she didn’t like historical fiction, and my mom’s reply was that it might be due to the fact that there’s not much historical fiction about black girls. I was dumbstruck, having never thought about that before. I have no idea if this is the real reason she didn’t care for it. I’ve since learned that quite a lot of people don’t like historical fiction simply because they think it’s boring (sacrilege!). But I wouldn’t be surprised if it were.

Visibility matters. You can talk about books by women writers and writers of color and LGBTQ writers until you’re blue in the face, but if none of their books make it to library or bookstore shelves, most people – especially teens – aren’t going to read them. The mega success of books like The Hunger Games, their ubiquity, tells girls they belong in science fiction – reading it, writing it, imagining it.

So let’s continue to remind people that women have always been a part of science fiction – all kinds of it. But let’s also remember how privileged it is to know this history and be aware of these books when they’re not on endcaps at bookstores. And let’s continue to work to fix that.

On Curiosity: Guest Post by Jordan Brown

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To round out the guest posts for this year’s “About The Girls” series, I’ve asked editor Jordan Brown to share some thoughts. I won’t preface this with more than that because his post is powerful.


Jordan Brown is an executive editor for Walden Pond Press and Balzer + Bray, both imprints of HarperCollins Children’s Books.  Recent releases he’s edited include Laura Ruby’s Bone Gap, Mindee Arnett’s Polaris, Chris Rylander’s Countdown Zero, and Gris Grimly’s illustrated version of A Study In Scarlet.  He lives in Brooklyn.







I’m honored and humbled to be included in this series of blog posts—even more so as I’ve been reading the previous entries by this brilliant group of women.  Some of their words even helped me to form this post, in which I’d like to talk about a couple incidents that have divided the community of children’s book folks in the last month.

You may have seen a recent series of blog posts and tweets by the author Shannon Hale.  If you haven’t, please take a moment to look at these two excerpts:

http://oinks.squeetus.com/2015/02/no-boys-allowed-school-visits-as-a-woman-writer.html

https://twitter.com/haleshannon/status/580817335449034752

The posts are recent, but the issue is hardly new; this is not the first time that concern for young boy readers has been offered up as a reason for removing women writers, and books about women, from their presence.  Talk to a dozen women writers and you will get a dozen such stories.

I probably don’t have to explain to you that there is not a single element in Shannon Hale’s books—biological, social, intellectual, emotional—that eschews male participation, unless you simply believe that books about girls written by women are automatically of zero interest to a young boy and have zero value to his development.  Which, apparently, many people do.  While girls are generally free to read whatever books they’d like without fear of shame or ridicule, boys are often cut off, in one way or another, from the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of half the planet’s population, at least as far as reading material goes.  I know this because it was not long ago that I would spout accepted wisdom about “boy books” vs “girl books”, discussing with publishing colleagues the idea that girls will read anything while it’s difficult to get boys to pick up a book featuring a girl protagonist—as if this profound incuriosity about girls were a part of a young boy’s genetic makeup, and not something ingrained in him by adults that constantly remind him that thinking about the interior lives of girls runs counter to everything that defines boys and men in our culture.

Now, I don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong, intrinsically, with talking about gender and reading.  I think it’s important that we think specifically about what values and modes of thought we want to encourage in our young people; and in a culture dominated by gender paradigms and prescription, I will agree with those who say that instilling in them those sorts of values and thoughts can require different approaches based on gender.  I am the proud editor of Jon Scieszka’s Guys Read short story anthology series, after all.  And I also don’t think there’s anything wrong with a large portion of a boy’s reading material including stories that feature boys as primary characters and model and address answers to their emerging questions about themselves.  My problem arrives when those ideas about gendered books bring with them the same troubling paradigms and prescriptions I mentioned—specifically the reductive idea that unless a book includes boys in the most dynamically-developed roles, is concerned primarily with traditional presentations of those characters’ thoughts and feelings, and is more often than not written by a man (especially if it is less than thirty years old), then it is not meant for them; and that we need to help boys avoid situations in which they are exposed to literature by women that concerns what girls think, feel, and experience.  This, of course, is rarely something that is actively stated or spoken aloud, but it need not be: it’s present in how books are marketed and sold and reviewed, how panels at conferences are planned and populated, etc.  For a business that puts such a premium on encouraging the curiosity and creativity of young people, this is a particularly troubling instance of us all falling asleep at the wheel.

The problem with the deeply sexist attitudes that Hale and other women writers battle with daily is that they are bred not of active bias, but of good intentions mixed with passive acceptance of the dominant narrative I mentioned above.  Many smart people who work more directly with children than I do will agree that boys sometimes take to reading more reluctantly than girls, and thus require literature that speaks to their experience of the world in order to more directly foster enjoyment in the act of reading.  This is something that many boys already carry with them as they enter their educational years, and it’s left to teachers and media specialists to address.  But this endeavor—fostering enjoyment in the act of reading—seems to be the primary motivation that allows some people to deprioritize the development of an interest in what girls think and feel in boys at this age.  In any case, the message has been received: there is certainly no dearth of bestselling, critically acclaimed, and award-winning reading material for boys of all ages involving traditionally “male” content, and generations of young boys are not only allowed to exclusively read books featuring a distinctly male point of view, but are actively and passively prevented from reading anything else.  In Shannon Hale’s case, this means that they are not allowed to be in the room with her while she talks about an adventurer using cunning and skill to battle monsters, because that adventurer happens to be a princess.

When she posted her essay, Hale got some truly horrid responses.

The majority of disagreements with her and other writers who choose to speak out are not all quite as ill-conceived as this one, but they tend to imply something similar: the problem isn’t with society, or with the message we’re sending to boys,  but rather with the women writers themselves who presume to feel slighted by the natural order of things.  I’m a man, and so my tweets about Hale’s experience didn’t produce such vitriolic responses directly into my mentions, but the one negative response to my assertion that her blog post is “the most important thing you’ll read today” was “Hope not.”

“Hope not.”

If I may extrapolate: how depressing it would be for the responder if this frivolous issue were not eventually put out of mind by something more worthy of his attention.  This was not an aggressive response at all—it was simply one in line with the general idea that an objection to this sort of line-drawing where gender is concerned is much ado about nothing, and ought to be dismissed to deal with issues more pressing about boys and their development.  This assertion carries with it the idea that not only are these women authors self-obsessed, but they don’t have the best interests of the kids they claim to be writing for at heart—a point raised by Hale’s responder above.  To him, it’s a failure of empathy on her part that she thinks boys might want to read about a girl. Sit with that for a moment.

Of course, this isn’t the only time in the last month that we’ve seen this sort of hostile response to female writers’ objections to sexism. I’m not going to talk in detail about Andrew Smith’s words when he responded to his interviewer’s question about the lack of multi-dimensional female characters in his books, nor the overall character of the defense of his words; writers much smarter and more eloquent than I have covered this.  I bring it up because I believe it ties into this conversation about curiosity.  Smith implied that he believed he was constitutionally and experientially unable to understand the interior lives of women, and didn’t feel it necessary to attempt to do so until recently—and while I agree with those who say that Smith didn’t intend any harm with these words, his response seems directly in line with what we’ve been discussing here today.  More than this, a particularly troubling strain of the defense of what he said—exemplified by this blog post—suggests that one need not even listen to a thoughtful and earnest analysis of sexism by a woman with a degree in gender studies, as it can be nullified by, for instance, the opinion of someone whose point of reference for sexism is a dictionary entry.  This seems to me to be the result of practices like what Hale describes: a life lived in a world where men are actively discouraged from listening to women. And it has manifested itself in a culture in which, in so many unfortunate cases, we find ways (often inadvertently, I’d like to believe) to silence those women when any of them presume that their own personal experience with sexism in our business might be relevant to the conversation.

The truth is that this is a desperately important issue.  We hear how difficult it can be for women to speak out when dealing with experiences of body dysmorphia, internet harassment, physical abuse, sexual assault, etc—and we see, again and again, that so many of the men in their lives feel no responsibility to simply trust their words.  So many of us mitigate women’s pain, deny women’s experience, and believe it is our place to do so—that these are situations where our perspective is needed to bring necessary objectivity to the conversation.  It’s difficult for me to not draw a straight line between the attitudes of those who presume to inform a women what sexism is or isn’t and the attitudes of those who presume to inform them about what rape is, or what domestic violence is, or what a women’s rights are.  All of them stem from a belief that a man’s experience alone is enough to evaluate and judge that of a woman.  And why wouldn’t it be?  Male experiences are all we’ve ever been taught are worth our time and attention.

For the record, I don’t believe that anyone from our community involved in this conversation truly thinks that sexism and the other issues mentioned above are fabrications, or don’t need be addressed when they arise.  But I do believe that a culture in which boys are not expected to pay attention to girls during their formative years can lead to men who have an impaired sense of judgment when more subtle, complex, pernicious, or insidious instances of systemic sexism do come along.  I know this because, until relatively recently, I was one of these men—one who presumed himself to be thoughtful, intelligent, and empathetic enough to believe that if I wasn’t personally offended by an instance of sexism or racism, or had what I thought was a perfectly legitimate reason to mitigate it, then it probably didn’t exist, or at the very least was being blown out of proportion by those people discussing it, who obviously couldn’t see the big picture as objectively as I could.

What changed for me, then?  It’s funny—of the endless forks in the recent path of conversation about sexism and publishing and the internet, the one that bums me out the most is the conversation about outrage culture, and the fact that nothing meaningful can happen online.  Because it’s on Twitter, on blogs, on various internet platforms, that I was exposed daily to the thoughts, feelings, and perspectives of intelligent people who don’t look anything like me—and it’s here that I learned to listen to them.  The internet allows the perspectives of people who are traditionally marginalized in our culture to coalesce, to build off of one another, in ways that were rarely possible before.  It’s here that I could see patterns emerge where before I only saw disconnected incidents.  I learned when it was appropriate to shut the hell up and listen, and heard so many perspectives different from mine that it eventually became an act of profound ignorance and naiveté to continue to think that my opinion could be informed when it took no one’s experience into account but my own.  I learned that there are dozens of people right here in our community—people like Shannon Hale, Gayle Forman, Justina Ireland, Ellen Oh, Liz Burns, Brandy Colbert, Sarah McCarry, Amanda Nelson, Tess Sharpe, Marieke Nijkamp, Ilene Wong, Angie Manfredi, Roxane Gay, Courtney Summers, Kelly Jensen, Leila Roy, Melissa Posten, and many, many others—who could speak loudly and powerfully about female experiences in ways I didn’t understand previously.  And I could see men—Mike Jung, Daniel José Older, Saladin Ahmed, Andrew Karre, and many more—be unafraid to tweet and retweet with an interest, understanding, and curiosity for those same experiences, to be able to add their voice and perspective to the conversation in ways that recognize and respect them (including those moments when their voices simply aren’t needed).  I’d been a reader my whole life, but it was on the internet that I recognized in a way I never had before that reading, at its heart, is about listening.

One has to be curious in order to listen.  Children’s and YA lit represents the bulk of the books actively contributing to the formation of a child’s values, and, where middle grade is concerned, the majority of the books that end up in a child’s hands are, on some level, prescribed by adults.  This is a desperately important time to be cultivating a curiosity in young people about others’ experiences, and we’re not going to be able to do that properly if we remain entrenched in the same ideas about “boy books” and “girl books” that we’ve been working with up to this point.  Books can be powerful tools for change in this respect—to teach young boys and girls to look outside themselves, to frame empathy as a trait not reserved for girls but as an important part of being a boy as well.  The way in which we talk about gender with regard to books for kids and teens is certainly not the sole problem here, no more than any other aspect of American culture—but unlike those other aspects, we are in a unique position to be a part of the solution.  The choices that writers, publishing professionals, booksellers, educators, reviewers, etc make with regard to framing gender can have a profound impact on these issues.  Because books are one place where smart, kind, passionate men whose life experiences have simply prevented them from connecting with the perspectives of women can find that connection.

 

But first, we need to let them in the room.