Naomi Bishop: Publishing and Diversity

Editor's Note: Today's blog post is by Naomi Bishop. She received her MLIS from the University of Washington iSchool in 2010. She is an American Indian Youth Literature Awards committee member, the American Indian Library Association secretary, and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community (Akimel-O’odham/Pima). She lives in Tucson, Arizona. 

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Publishing and Diversity

by Naomi Bishop

The face of American children has changed.

In 2012, the Children’s Book Council (CBC) established a committee to push “diversity” in children’s literature. They presented a panel on their diversity initiative at ALA Midwinter Conference in Seattle in January of 2013. I attended it, after having read Debbie Reese’s blog post that says several books on their Good Reads shelf for Native Americans are stereotypical.

According to the CBC “Diversity” website,

CBC Diversity is dedicated to increasing the diversity of voices and experiences contributing to children's and young adult literature -- encouraging diversity of race, gender, geographical origin, sexual orientation, and class among both the creators of and the topics addressed by kid lit.

While this is a noble initiative, there are flaws in its implementation. First, the initiative is only pushing books by members of the association and not supporting great books of non-member publishers. Second, considering the presence of stereotypes in some of their books about American Indians, the association has a non-critical viewpoint and method for evaluating the content of the children’s literature it promotes. Third, the CBC does not consult with ALA ethnic caucuses on the books selected. 

After attending the panel session presented at ALA Midwinter, I did more investigation into CBC. Here are more statements from the CBC webpage:

The Children’s Book Council is a national nonprofit trade association of children’s book publishers. The CBC offers children’s publishers the opportunity to work together on issues of importance to the industry at large, including educational programming, literacy advocacy, and collaborations with other national organizations.

And,

Membership in the CBC is open to all children's book publishers, packagers, and related companies in the United States. Personal memberships are not available.

At the presentation I listened attentively and actively participated in the discussion. I asked the panelist three questions about the “diversity” initiatives.

1. What does the CBC diversity group have as qualifications to recommend books and what is the personal background on each member?
2. What process does CBC use to vet the books on the Good Reads shelf?
3. If books on the Good Reads shelf are not representative of a particular group will the CBC take them off the list?

My questions were answered with mixed responses, but the overall message was that the CBC only promotes books by its members.

My overall reaction is that CBC is an economic publishing organization that does not care about the quality of the books published. This was particularly evident in their response to my third question. The CBC, I was told, does not say that the books are good or bad, they are just “diverse.”

As a Native American (Pima) librarian getting started in my career, I am upset with the CBC initiative, and disappointed that the American Library Association would allow such an economically driven “diversity” panel. The session would have been far better if other ALA affiliate groups and children’s awards committees were on the panel, too.

Within ALA and nationwide, conversations about multicultural youth literature are happening, but I think CBC Diversity is taking advantage of libraries and librarians. If libraries want to embrace diversity, they need to know about all the people writing and illustrating books about people of color. Librarians, me included, need to understand the economics of publishing and get to know editors, publishers, and authors. Small independent publishers like Cinco Puntos Press are a great example to the publishing world. They publish excellent, well-written stories for children by authors and illustrators of diverse backgrounds. We need to know about their books.

While at ALA we celebrated the Newberry, Caldecott, and other awards for outstanding youth literature, and we may have thought that the CBC was another means for us to celebrate diversity in children’s books. In reality, I think the CBC’s exclusivity is a disruption to inclusivity in children’s and youth librarianship, and I question ALA’s sponsorship of the panel. The American Indian Youth Literature Awards are recognizing the value and quality of books about American Indians, yet they are not a part of the ALA Youth Media Awards. I would like to see the American Indian Youth Literature Awards become a part of the big announcements in Children’s Literature alongside other awards committee.

If libraries want to high quality children’s literature about people of color on their shelves, librarians must take a look at what is being selected by APALA, AILA, REFORMA and other affiliates. It is not ok for stereotypical books to be part of a “diversity” Good Reads virtual bookshelf, or on any public library bookshelf or lists of books about diversity.

It is 2013! In order for our libraries to be truly inclusive, we need to start thinking critically. We need to think about information literacy! We need to think critically about accuracy, currency, definitions, and how we evaluate of characters, place, and time. We need to think about the people writing our stories! Are groups being represented as they wish to be represented? Are we promoting literature for the new faces of America? Are we selecting high quality books and supporting small independent publishers?

The children and librarians of the future deserve the best and it is our responsibility to educate, speak up, and participate in the discussions that are happening.

Naomi Bishop 

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You may be interested in these publications by the American Indian Library Association:

• "I" is not for Indian, compiled by Naomi Caldwell-Wood and Lisa A. Mitten, 1991
• "I" is for Inclusion, compiled by Naomi Caldwell, Gabriella Kaye, and Lisa A. Mitten, 2007

Here's the American Indian Library Association's page about its literature awards:
American Indian Youth Literature Award

And here's two previous posts to AICL about the CBC Diversity Committee:

• Thumbs down to some titles on CBC Diversity's Goodreads Bookshelf, January 4, 2013
• Thumbs up to some titles on CBD Diversity's Goodreads Bookshelf, January 7, 2013

Public Lecture: Native American Misrepresentation in Books and Media

What are you doing on March 6, 2013, at 1:00 PM Pacific Time? If you're near Cal State Polytechnic University in Pomona, consider attending my lecture. It is open to the public, and there's no charge for it! I'll be speaking at the Bronco Student Center - Centaurus. Here's the flyer:

THE STUPIDS STEP OUT; THE STUPIDS HAVE A BALL; GEORGE AND MARTHA, ENCORE

Upon learning that Champaign Public Library's 110 Books for Every Child included books with blackface and that stereotype American Indians, Creek author Durango Mendoza wrote that children and their families "could feel ambushed by the foul among the good."

I'm going to ask him if I can use that phrase as a label for any time that I write about a book in which a child--Native or not--might be ambushed by the foul in a book that has received much acclaim by others.

Today's post is about three of those books.

First is Harry Allard's The Stupids Step Out. Though the text never mentions American Indians, James Marshall decided to put Kitty, their dog (so named because they're stupid), in a headdress:

In The Stupids Have A Ball, Marshall presents Kitty in a headband with one feather (leaf?!) in it:

The Stupids series is very popular. Scholars who write about how best to engage reluctant readers point to these books as ones teachers should use. Teachers that use those two books with Native children are likely giving then more reasons to be reluctant to read! And anyone with insight into stereotyping and why it is wrong will have found the foul among the good that Durango Mendoza expressed.

We can do better! If The Stupids books were the last books on earth, we might have to use them, but they aren't. We can set them aside, can't we?

And while you're in the 'setting aside' mode, take a look at Marshall's George and Martha, Encore. In it, he's got George playing Indian...

Why would we, in 2013, use books that stereotype American Indians? Doing so affirms (or introduces) playing Indian, and we don't affirm or introduce playing ______ (fill in the blank), do we?

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Stupids Step Out, first published in 1974, by Houghton Mifflin
Stupids Have A Ball, first published in 1978, by Houghton Mifflin
George and Martha, Encore, first published in 1973, by Houghton Mifflin

International Book Giving Day

The people who established International Book Giving Day asked me to recommend books for their book giving project. Their post with recommended books went up today (Feb. 7, 2013):

See Birchbark House on the top left of the collage of book covers they created? I love the title of the page "More children should have the opportunity to read these books." Head over there to see other books on their list. Sign up to participate, too! They have several ways people can participate.

The international component of the project is important, because stereotypes of American Indians are everywhere, including children's books published in other countries. Take a look at a few of them.

Open Letter to Champaign Public Library Regarding "110 Books for Every Child"

February 6, 2013

Dear Librarians at Champaign Public Library,

While reading The News Gazette yesterday, I read that you had prepared a list of books called "110 Books for Every Child." When I read "every child," I wondered if you were thinking about all children in the area. Were you thinking about American Indian children, too? We are part of the Champaign-Urbana community.

When I clicked on the link and opened the list, I was glad to see some titles on it, like Bud Not Buddy and The Giver and Poppy. But I am disappointed that it also includes Little Town on the Prairie. 

On page 257, Laura is amongst the crowds gathered in the schoolhouse, waiting for the "Literary" (performance) to begin. Here's an excerpt:

Then up the center aisle came marching five black-faced men in raggedy-taggedy uniforms. White circles were around their eyes and their mouths were wide and red. Up onto the platform they marched, then facing forward in a row suddenly they all advanced, singing, "Oh, talk about your Mulligan Guards! These darkies can't be beat!"

The five men take the stage (p. 258):

Here's the text on that page, just above the illustration:

When the dancing stopped, the jokes began. The white-circled eyes rolled, the big red mouths blabbed questions and answers that were the funniest ever heard. Then there was music again, and even wilder dancing.

Darkies? Big red mouths?!

(Note: A reader pointed out that the following passages are not from the same book. Corrections are made as noted; Little House in the Big Woods is not on the library's list.) Earlier in the book,  In Little House in the Big Woods, Laura and Mary listen to Pa tell them a story about how, when he was a little boy, he'd pretend he was hunting Indians (page 53):

When I was a little boy, not much bigger than Mary, I had to go every afternoon to find the cows in the woods and drive them home. My father told me never to play by the way, but to hurry and bring the cows home before dark, because there were bears and wolves and panthers in the woods.

One day I started earlier than usual, so I thought I did not need to hurry. There were so many things to see in the woods that I forgot that dark was coming. There were red squirrels in the trees, chipmunks scurrying through the leaves, and little rabbits playing games together in the open places. Little rabbits, you know, always have games together before they go to bed.

I began to play I was a mighty hunter, stalking the wild animals and the Indians. I played I was fighting the Indians, until all woods seemed full of wild men, and then all at once I heard the birds twittering 'good night.'

Stalking wild animals and Indians?!

I'm not calling for these books to be removed from the library, but I do think Little Town on the Prairie ought not be endorsed as a "good book" for "every child." I don't think its good for any child at all!

Imagine reading it aloud to an African American or an American Indian child. How would you manage those particular excerpts?

I know people who say that reading these books lets kids know that there was racism in America's past, but, isn't endorsing them in 2009 as "good books" a bad idea? Children should learn about racism in the past and present, too, but might that be better done in another way?

See--if you're reading this book aloud to a child, you're probably doing it in a way that will cause them to like the characters. And then you're going to interrupt the reading to explain that, essentially Pa was either a racist, or, engaged in racist thinking. It seems a better idea (to me) to select a book to enjoy that doesn't do that sort of thing.

I wonder how many people actually take time to explain those passages as racist?

My guess is that a lot of people just blow right past them, thereby inserting racist ideology into the minds of the children that are being read to, and/or affirming the already-existing racist ideology that has crept into that child's world view.

And---if a child is reading this book alone (without an adult to mediate it), how will that child make sense of those excerpts?

I have similar concerns about other books on the list and am sharing brief notes on them:

The Indian in the Cupboard is very popular, but it makes people into the playthings of children. This is especially troubling because of the identities of the characters. In it, you have a white child manipulating the life and death of an Indian man.

Island of the Blue Dolphins has stereotypes in it and the information it provides is outdated. Today, we know so much more about the people involved in this story. This book doesn't accurately portray them. Shouldn't we set it aside in favor of terrific stories that don't misrepresent someone, especially when that someone is a group for which most American have little substantive knowledge?

We keep recycling romantic and stereotyped ideas and images of American Indians. Maybe that is what makes it possible for a book like Walk Two Moons to win awards. It, unfortunately, has a great many stereotypes of American Indians in it.

As I noted earlier, I'm not asking you to remove the books from the library, but I do think their place on a list of "good" books ought to be reconsidered. Perhaps if they were removed from the list, you could replace them with award-winning books that provide children with accurate knowledge about American Indians. Given our proximity to the Great Lakes, Louise Erdrich's The Birchbark House and its sequels would be terrific additions to the list.

Sincerely,
Debbie Reese
American Indians in Children's Literature

The True Book of Little Eskimos

Have you ever visited the blog, Awful Library Books: Hoarding is not Collection Development? Mary Kelly and Holly Hibner are public librarians in Michigan. Their blog is about weeding.

On January 31, 2013, they loaded The True Book of Little Eskimos. Click on over to Awful Library Books to see some of the pages. The book was published in 1953. Using World Cat, I see that its in 148 libraries. Some of them are university libraries, which is fine, because in those libraries, they're probably being used for research. But some of them are in school and public libraries. Yikes! Remember... the pub year is 1953. That's over 50 years ago. Is it in your library? If it is, weed it today!

Julia Alvarez's RETURN TO SENDER

Yesterday, I started reading Julia Alvarez's Return to Sender. I'm taking a minute this morning to say a couple of things about it before I dash out the door for the morning.

First, here's what Alvarez says about it on her website:

The seed for the novel came when I got involved translating at local schools for the children of Mexican migrant workers who have now made their way up to Vermont. (And boosted our compromised Latino population!) These workers are now doing the milking on many of our dairy farms. Without them, many of our small farmers could not survive, as they, too, are being squeezed by the high cost of farming and a dearth of workers.

Seeing how baffled the Mexican children and their classmates were about how to understand this situation that had thrown us all together, I thought: we need a story to understand what is happening to us! The title comes from a dragnet operation that the Department of Homeland Security conducted in 2006, named, Return to Sender. Work places were raided and undocumented workers were seized. Their children were the biggest casualties of this operation -- left behind to be soothed and reassured until they could be finally reunited with their parents.

The boy on the cover is Tyler. His family owns one of the dairy farms that hires Mexican migrant workers. The girl is Mari. I had a lump in my throat as I read about these two young people trying to make sense of the world and each other's world, too. Alvarez has done a terrific job showing all three.

Part of Tyler's world is his life at school. There, one of Tyler's teachers is a woman named Ms. Ramirez. Sprinkled in the first part of the book are references to Mexican culture, and, references to American Indian culture. Tyler has learned about the Trail of Tears. I liked seeing it in Alvarez's book. Tyler's world is enlarged by his teachers.

More later...