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Monday 19 October 2015

The Many Faces of Diversity

By Candy Gourlay

So let's be honest. We authors are terrified of diversity in children's books.

Are we doing it right? Are we offending anyone by not including/including a character who is 'other' in our stories? Who is allowed to write about other cultures/races/sexual orientations? Who should be offended? Who should just keep their mouths shut?

I have publicly expressed some views on diversity (read Growing up I thought Filipinos were not allowed to be in books), but in the main, I have to confess I have been careful not to step in to the public spats that burn across the world of social media like brushfires that are hard to put out. I keep my counsel not just because I am so busy it feels like I'm drowning, but because the heat is intense.

And yet here I am, described by many as one of the UK's 'diverse authors'.


I do embrace this label (I've even put it into the search engine optimisation of my various websites so that anyone searching for 'diverse authors' will find me). My debut Tall Story was selected for a list of the Fifty Best Culturally Diverse Children's Books by a group of experts under the aegis of the Seven Stories Centre (see here and here). Librarians are always asking me to recommend diverse children's books.

At the reception for the Fifty Best Culturally Diverse Books at the Guardian Newspaper

And yet when I sit down to write, diversity is not top of my agenda. I do not design my characters thinking: 'I must have 20 percent English, 20 percent Filipino, oh maybe an American character so that I can be published in America. But I can't feature an African American because I don't know what it's like to be one.'

I just want to tell a good story and my character casting reflects the diversity that I experience on a daily basis.

When "Diversity" began to replace "Multiculturalism" as an object for society to desire in everything from the arts to business, I thought it was a very good thing indeed, widening the definition of peoples and cultures that deserved respect and recognition.

But it soon became clear that Diversity meant many things to many people.

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION

Diversity as Inclusion is always high on my mind because I grew up in the Philippines at a time when there was little publishing going on and books with all-white cast lists were imported from the United States. I identify keenly with that experience of wondering whether the absence of people like you reflects your lack of importance in the wider world.

I am still that little girl who wondered why there were never any Filipinos in the books she read - and so I will always write a Filipino sensibility into my characters. It is, as I often tell audiences, writing not just what I know but who I am. It is not as easy as it sounds because writing who you are means delving into places in your experience you would not otherwise want to revisit. But I sincerely believe that going there makes my stories ring truer, engaging readers from any background.

My friend Sarwat Chadda, who is British of Indian extraction, had the same experience:
I grew up reading myths about Greek heroes, about Vikings, Normans and Saracens, stories of Sinbad and King Arthur, and I’ve loved them all. But where were my heroes? My parents immigrated to England from the Indian Subcontinent and growing up in the 1970’s I had no heroes that I could call mine except Mowgli. The only Indian in children’s literature and he was over a hundred years old. Even Kim, Kipling’s other great child hero, is actually Irish. I wanted heroes like me, but not labelled as ‘ethnic’.
Sarwat writes adventure books (the Ash Mistry series) starring boys like him and featuring monsters from Indian mythology. 'I didn’t have to be Scandinavian to enjoy tales of Vikings and I don’t believe you need to be Asian to enjoy tales of Rama and of Ash Mistry,' says Sarwat. 'Heroes are heroes and we love them wherever they come from.'



But if we focus on diversity as inclusion, does it simply mean that authors of whatever race or creed can feel free to write any character of any sensibility, race or culture into their books?

I vote YES. Yes because, although I am writing heroes who are Filipino like me, my real world is not monocultural and I want to write not only about my world but for my world. Also, I would be a very sad author indeed if I could only write characters who came over to London from Cubao, Quezon City in the Philippines.

DIVERSITY AND CULTURAL APPROPRIATION

Ah, but someone will say, you're wrong to vote yes. The answer is more complicated than that because you might be contributing to the Problem.

A group of librarians have set up a website called Reading While White (read their mission statement). One blog post attempted to answer the question "Do I have the right to write about ______?"

The answer is easy. Yes, you have the right to write about whatever you want, in the USA, at least. The constitution guarantees free speech (although, and this is key, it does not guarantee consequence-free speech). So, yeah--we White people can write pretty much whatever we want and nobody will send us to jail for it.

But either or both of the following might be true:
1) You might drown out or overshadow (effectively silencing) marginalized people who justly want to tell their own stories.
2) You might get some stuff wrong and evoke criticism from people whom you misrepresent.

And nothing you do can alter either of these truths. Not even asking permission from someone from the culture about which you're writing. Read the whole thing

In fact, I have just run into this very problem. I am currently working on a book set in a particular historical space, told in the voice of a boy from a particular tribe in the Philippines. I have spent the past two years reading entire libraries, original documents and diaries from that era, describing these people. But from the tribe itself, there are no documents that date from that era. Have I done enough to justify the publication of this story? I may be Filipino, but I am not from that tribe, do I have the right to create a hero from that background?

Here's how one African American writer responds to fellow African Americans saying 'Bruh, don't let them tell our stories':
Whenever this comes up—and I’ve heard it more than you think—it’s probably linked to my statements about writers getting it right IF they plan to write outside of their culture. Dude, seriously, that’s not me telling another writer to appropriate someone’s culture, especially mine. That’s the same advice I’d give someone writing about engineering, or cooking with truffles, or Minecraft. What I’m saying is if you’re going to do it, don’t be lazy. That’s a far cry from, “Here, take my life.”

But, I get the concern. I have a platform, and I’m not saying, “Hey, don’t you dare write about [insert applicable Other] people.” I won’t say that. I can’t. Before I ever made a dime from my writing, I spent cumulative years of my life alone in a room making up stories about all kinds of people. I consider it a sacred process and would not have reacted kindly to someone leaning over my shoulder saying, “Don’t type that.” I will never tell another writer what they’re allowed to write. Sorry, not sorry. Read the whole post by teen author Lamar Giles

Well,  I am writing the best book that I can. And I am hoping against hope that it does not drown out or overshadow anyone but encourage them to tell their own stories.

DIVERSITY AND RACISM

Of all the structural inequalities though, it is race more than culture that is a minefield, especially in the United States.

Early in October I was one of the authors featured in the excellent Filipino American International Book Festival in San Francisco [FYI British peeps: it is still summer there ... how unfair is that?] Speaking to Filipino American novelists, poets and film makers, I was struck by how often challenges in the Fil-Am community, literary or otherwise, were described in the context of racial discrimination.

'People try harder from your neck of the woods,' someone told me, their perception being that racism in the United Kingdom is far less acute than in the United States with Ferguson and other examples of racialised violence, the emergence of words like 'blackface', 'redface', 'yellowface' (to mean appropriation and exploitation of black, native American and Asian culture) - as well as  'microaggression' to mean cultural overstepping that is equivalent to racial violence. Reading While White describes the problem thus:
... Race is society’s biggest structural organizer, and it is essential to recognize it as such. If it were not, we would see neighborhoods and schools comprised of LGBTQIA+ people, or people with disabilities, of all different races, living together. But this is not the case; instead, neighborhoods and schools are starkly racially segregated.
In 2014, the announcement that BookCon's top panel was going to be all-white and all-male sparked a Twitter-backlash that led to the creation of the We Need Diverse Books campaign. Today, the campaign is planning a festival, hands out awards and grants, mentorships, contests as well as lists of diverse authors and books. Says co-founder Ellen Oh:
"The part where we have to keep going after gatekeepers and reminding people about why it's good to read diversely and why it's good to introduce children to diversity — that part of it, I hope eventually it becomes the norm and we don't have to do that anymore." Read
The weird thing of course is that from here the other side of the pond, the bookshelves of America look incredibly diverse - I always marvel at the faces of all hues smiling out of the children's departments of bookstores and libraries I visit in America. But this is apparently deceptive. In 2013, of 3,200 children's books published, only 93 featured black people, according to a study.

It must be even worse in the UK. Not just the books but the book industry are even more monocultural (I am reverting to 'culture' rather than 'race' - because, heads up, world, there are marginalised pink-skinned people too).

Children's author Leila Rasheed says growing up in that book monoculture 'affected my own writing and what I was able to imagine'.

Leila has set up a writer development scheme called Megaphone, aimed at supporting children's authors from a BAME background. [The label for 'Other' in the UK is BAME - meaning Black, Asian, or other Minority Ethnic ... and 'Asian' in the UK means the Indian subcontinent, so Southeast Asians like me, for examole, are the ME part of BAME].

Says Leila:
I really want the next generation of British BAME children to be able to write themselves into all kinds of stories – and not to internalise the idea that to be the hero/ine of an exciting, thrilling, magical or dramatic story, you have to be white. Unfortunately, I feel that won’t happen unless we make it happen.
The fact is, children’s publishing as an industry is extremely lacking in diversity, and as a result the need to include all children equally in literature is often simply forgotten, or its importance is not understood or felt. And sometimes, sadly, people actively dislike the idea that diversity and equality might be as important in children’s literature as anywhere else. Having said that, Megaphone has had so much enthusiastic support from publishers and writers, that I am sure those people are not the majority. There is definitely a feeling that change is needed. Read the interview

DIVERSITY IN DIVERSITY

Living here (or on Twitter) it's easy to think that Diversity is an issue that exists only in America or the United Kingdom. But hey, there are diversity issues EVERYWHERE in the world.

This became extra apparent to me early this year when I was one of the tutors at a retreat for writers and illustrators on an Indonesian island just a ferry ride from Singapore.  We were a melting pot of nations – from the Philippines, Singapore, Macau, Canada, Indonesia, Hong Kong, India, Vietnam, Portugal, the United States, England and Australia.


It is interesting, being thrown into such a diverse group. It made us all wonder.

How come we buy into Western stories but the West has no interest in ours? Can Asia publish literature that the West will enjoy? Can we in Asia read each other's stories? How can I interest you in my story? How can we live so close to one another and yet know nothing about the other? Who are you really? Who am I? How can Asia, fragmented by so many languages and so many cultures, overwhelmingly swamped by American (irony!) culture, create a literature that is accessible to the world?

After the retreat, I gave a keynote speech at the Asian Festival for Children's Content with the following message:
Asia is not fragmented. It is diverse. Think of all the stories that can emerge from that diversity! This is not a problem it’s an opportunity.
My new friends from the retreat helped me illustrate my message with the following photos:



Diversity is vexed and complex territory, and right now authors must pick their way carefully through the burning coals. How do we get beyond thinking of Diversity as a problem to seeing it as an opportunity?

Recently, picture book writer Clare Bell and illustrator Dave Grey worked together on The Unstoppable Maggie McGee, a book about children in hospital.

I urge you all to read Clare's inspiring blog post on how spending time with ill and disabled children threw out all her plans for the book.

It is an example of how, however well-intentioned, we all tend to approach a project with preconceived notions that only research and hard work can dispel.  I have seen the final product and Clare and Dave have created a beautiful book - I can't wait to get my copy.

Indeed, let me end this piece on Diversity with three things I learned from Clare's article, that are relevant to creating diverse stories:

1. Your character's Otherness doesn't have to be The Story.

2. You can't go wrong if your characters are fully imagined. 

3. The best story, the one that will captivate readers, should be built on truth and not on agenda.


Candy Gourlay is the author of Tall Story and Shine. She also blogs on her website. You might be interested in Candy's recent article asking what Middle Grade Literature really is about over on the Our Book Reviews Online blog.


Megaphone is a new writer development scheme for Black, Asian and other ethnic minority writers who are interested in writing for children. It is now open for applications! Please share the link widely if you can. This Arts Council and Publishers' association funded scheme includes masterclasses from fantastic children's authors (including me!), feedback from top editors (Hachette , Simon & Schuster, Scholastic, Penguin Random House, PanMacmillan UK.) and promotion to the publishing industry. Applicants need to be
1) from an ethnic minority
2) resident in England
3) never previously have published a book for children/ teenagers (they could have published one for adults, or poetry).

17 comments:

  1. A well considered and excellent post on such a difficult and contentious subject. This was a delight to read.

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    1. Thanks, Vanessa. Reading all the hate and anger on social media made me afraid to write anything about diversity but it has been weighing on my mind.

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  2. A really interesting read. I'm excited to hear how Leila's project works over the coming years. I come across countless children on my author visits who are rarely represented in the books they read (or are offered). It was a joy to have Sarwat do an author visit at our school from a grant I had to engage hard to engage children (especially Pakistani boys) in reading for pleasure. The children were over the moon to have an Asian hero in a book and pupils -Asian and non-Asian- devoured it. Thank you.

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  3. Thanks for this - I'm really struggling with my new main character - she's popped up brown skinned with a white brother - neither of these things are totally relevant to the story, it's just how she materialised ( she's not behaving characteristically how I planned either)...I want to keep her as she is, working on the premise that skin colour is no different to hair colour, but it's making me so nervous I really don't know what to do. So I'm just writing it and hoping.

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  4. I think that is so good. I too feel very nervous about discussing this. I have a book on submission at the moment where the heroine is mixed race - purely because my little three year old neighbour some years ago, whose father is black Kenyan and whose mother is White English (that description has made me very nervous in case I did that wrong too) - ANYWAY - my little gorgeous neighbour told me she wished she hated her hair and its black tight curls as it wasn't Princessy. So I decided that there was no reason why, in my next book, the heroine couldn't happen to have that same cultural and racial heritage and be beautiful and brave. I also recommended her mum 'The Rescue Princess' series. But Candy, you are so right - even writing this comment makes me want to run away and hide in case I have done something wrong.

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    1. There is a rogue 'wished' in the above comment. Sorry. My neighbour told me she hated her hair - I was going to write she wished she didn't look the way she did and she hated her hair.

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  5. This is such a brilliant post, Candy. You've nailed so many issues that we're all aware of and don't know how to handle as authors. As a reader I am in wholehearted agreement with Sarwat. I discovered the Greek Myths as an 11 yr old. As a child living in a mining village in the northeast of England I lapped them up and have continued to enjoy myths from inside and outside my personal historical background. But retelling of myths is not really writing with diversity in mind. As an author I have a problem in that I live (physically) in a monoculture. How do I reflect other cultures in my books if I don't connect with other cultures in my day to day life? How do I even pick a name for a character? There was an interesting discussion recently about this - picking a name from a 'name your baby' website doesn't work. I may pick a name that is not used for this generation of children. It would sound as daft as calling the Wimpy Kid Obadiah.

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    1. Maureen - I have the same kind of monocultural experience, and it definitely makes me more timid about approaching diverse characters and themes. Not that I haven't, but the fear of getting something wrong and being pilloried for it is far worse than the worry of getting a small character detail wrong in a story about white, middle class, middle England children. As writers, we're only human, but the highly-charged nature of racial debate can sometimes cause things to get blown out of proportion.

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  6. This is a wonderful, balanced post. When I wrote, 'Siddharth and Rinki' about an Indian boy coming to school in England, I didn't think about anything other than what a story he had to tell about his own experience. I worked in schools and with children learning english as an additional language and was struck by how one boy found friendship through a toy he carried around - it was his story that was so interesting. Your excellent post has raised so many issues that I have not truly thought about. Thanks, Candy.

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  7. Great post, Candy! I've tweeted it. There does seem to be a lot of anxiety around diversity, and I'll be honest, I find that odd. Diversity is not a new phenomenon, people have been mixing with different people since the year zero (did anyone see this fascinating story: http://www.birminghampost.co.uk/news/local-news/1700-year-old-skeleton-african-man-found-3924684 - and this doc gives more: http://historywm.com/wp-content/uploads/issue2/pp36-39_Callaghan.pdf) - indeed, diversity is the norm. The problem is that children's books published in the UK don't reflect that normality, and indeed children's literature as an industry - from publishing to authors, booksellers, librarians, etc - doesn't reflect it, hence Megaphone. (We also ought to remember that diversity does not mean equality necessarily - a company that employed 50% BAME employees might be diverse, but if they're all cleaning staff while the boardroom is entirely white, it might not be described as equal...) Personally I think the three most important things a writer should do, if they are worried about 'getting diversity right' are as follows:
    1) Listen
    2) Listen
    3) Listen
    We writers are so good at broadcasting, but if you really want to know how someone else who is different from you experiences life (perhaps they are a different gender, or have a different skin colour, or are less physically able in some way) and if you are genuinely concerned about creating a character that doesn't hurt and disrespect real people, I really think the best thing to do is to find someone who does know about that experience from the inside (the internet is a great help, you don't have to speak to someone directly, many people blog about their experiences for example) and ask them, 'What is it like?' (not 'Give me permission to write this' ) and then just *listen* - even if what they say isn't what you want to hear.

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  8. I love this post and the way you address this question in a balanced way. As an American, I'm always aware of the black-white(-Native American) racial issue that has never gone away and was our country's original sin. British colonialism is just a faint shadow of what slavery and its aftermath did, so U.S. discussion is fraught with anger and anguish and guilt in a way that you're lucky not to have experienced.

    But it is hard to be in the minority anywhere– and almost all of us are members of both a minority and a majority culture in some way. Maybe it's easier to imagine the "other" point of view if we remember that.

    It actually IS a bit scary for people with good intentions from a majority culture, where it is still a common experience to grow up not meeting people who are different from them, to try to write diverse characters for fear of getting it wrong and being harshly criticized. (Rural/provincial white British/Irish/Americans to start with, but this would certainly apply to people in any mainstream culture, in China or Japan or other parts of the world. In my case, I never saw an Asian or Asian-American person in real life till I went to university!) Along with Leila's "Listen!"– meeting people, doing your research–I like your advice: "You can't go wrong if your characters are fully imagined."

    My favorite novel was written in China in the mid-1700s about the author's childhood thirty years earlier. I forget how "different" they are from me when I read it– these 15-year-olds living in Nanjing are people I feel I know, or am glad I don't. The author (and translator) puts you into their hearts. That's the best kind of "diversity"!

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  9. Thanks, Candy. As writers, we all simply want to 'tell a good story in our own way’ – one that as many children as possible will enjoy or value. Everything we write is well-intentioned to that end, but yes, we do often feel cautious when referring to cultures that are not our own. My latest picture book text (circulating) features a British WW2 R.A.F. airman stationed in India who is given a lucky Manjadi seed with a tiny carved elephant inside it ...and he is told a relevant Hindu legend. It’s based on my uncle’s experience and on fact, and I now own the seed. I hope I don't offend anyone by including the legend in my story. It seems that no English person is offended if someone of a different nationality retells an Arthurian legend, and I have always believed that ancient Norse stories can be retold by anyone ...but that's not the case for Australian Aboriginal stories. Not even an Aboriginal person can tell all indigenous Australian stories whenever they like, in any form (written, verbal, song, dance or art). Permission for retelling has to be granted by the story custodian. First seek the origin of the story and its custodian within one of the 700 tribal groups.

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  10. @Peter - interesting, that the Aboriginal peoples seem to have developed long ago the concept of copyright!

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  11. Thank you, Candy. The more we discuss diversity, the more likely we are to bring about change.

    The London primary schools where I teach are diverse with a capital D. It is essential that these children see their races, cultures and religions reflected in the books that they read and in the media generally, so that they are able to grow up feeling that they can be and achieve anything.


    The We Need Diverse Books campaign is fantastic, as is Leila Rasheed's initiative. Children's writing courses should do even more to support authors of diverse backgrounds by providing grants and scholarships, and literary consultancies should offer subsidies for manuscript edits.

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  12. Thank you, Candy Gourlay for this deeply considered piece. We all try to tread very carefully in these sensitive areas, so as not to do more harm, and it is good to have the support of many stellar minds thinking about these issues. Thank you for what you are all doing for the community. Yes, we have many stories to tell.

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  13. I wish we could be less angsty and more celebratory about diversity. I wish that the richness of voice and experience across the world could find expression and that the cream of that expression could rise to the top for us all to share. I don't pretend to know the best way to support that process, but it's good to know that the debate is under way. Thanks for a great piece.

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  14. Thank you for writing this piece. A healthy contribution to a difficult dialogue, much of which, I fear, will discourage diverse books in the end.

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