Today is We Need Diverse Books Day

We Need Diverse Books has been on my radar as an organization since my teaching days because their mission was so prescient for me and my students.

When I started teaching in 2011, young adult books that reflected the full spectrum of my students’ lived experiences were hard to come by. Our library’s titles with Black protagonists were basically limited to the Blueford Books series, which kids blew through extremely quickly. Disability representation in YA wasn’t particularly strong and tended to focus on characters who were also well-resourced and white. Queer representation? Forget about it. This wasn’t a new problem in 2011, though. I grew up a slow, reluctant reader in part because I had trouble finding books that felt relevant to me, particularly as a disabled, neurodivergent person. As a teacher, I wanted to end this cycle. It felt extremly important that I find books that my kids would connect with, especially since I had so much trouble finding them for myself.

I remember in 2013 one of our administrators started an Amazon registry to try to broaden our library offerings to include more diverse titles. Because the registry was structured in such a way where people could donate any book and even donate duplicate copies, we ended up with eight copies of The Help: a novel set in the Jim Crow south with a well-known white savior plot arch. It’s cringey to think about it now, even though I know we were all just doing our best.

The reality was there were not a ton of diverse books on our radar back then because fewer diverse books were being published for young people at that time. Here’s a snapshot of what children’s literature was like back in 2013 (from WNDB):

Things have changed in the last twelve years, thanks in part to the work of We Need Diverse Books. Their book reccomendations helped me drastically broaden my classroom library so my students could see themselves in stories. Whatsmore, I began to see myself in these stories too. Reading queer YA as an adult helped me put my own queer and confused young adulthood into perspective. I began to see my young self more clearly and generously because of books like Artistotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe and When the Moon Was Ours. Writing about my queerness, and the experience of being closeted, once felt like a risk, particularly when writing stories for young people. Having access to a wealth of stories about every shade of queerness—experiences that reflected mine and those that didn’t—afforded me the courage to write what I really wanted to write and ultimately to be myself.

But it wasn’t just queer YA that helped me feel more comfortable in my own skin as an adult. It was also books like Everything Sad Is Untrue and A Snake Falls to Earth and Piecing Me Together. Books written by people who I have very little in common with but whose stories felt so deeply personal that they were uncannily familiar to me. I felt at home in their pages.

I was lucky to find these books as an adult. I wish I’d had access to them growing up. It would’ve made life less lonely. It would’ve made me braver sooner.

Children’s book writer, Uma Krishnaswami, writes about how stories for young people have more potential than the typical ‘windows and mirrors’ metaphor (for those unfamiliar, books as ‘windows and mirrors’ is meant to suggest that stories can be windows into the lives of others and also mirrors to better understand the self). Krishnaswami highlights how stories can be in fact be prisms through which we see the world refracted at multiple angles. They helps us to see reality in a new way. Indeed, a prism casts off light in a way a window and a mirror cannot. Every story is a prism. Diverse stories, even more so.

And boy do we ever need to see reality in a new way these days…

If you’ve read this far, I bet you already know about what’s happening in schools, libraries, and college campuses right now. And I bet you know that we need diverse books now more than ever.

Today is We Need Diverse Books day. Here’s what you can do:

• You can donate to We Need Diverse Books to support their fight against book bans, mentorship for emerging authors, classroom initiatives, and more.

• If any of the titles I’ve mentioned in this message are unfamiliar to you, I highly reccomend you go out and read one (or all) of them. Links above.

• You can check out We Need Diverse Books on social media for more book recs and follow them for updates.

• You can call your senators and congressional reps to express your concerns about the defunding of the Institute of Media and Library Services, the attempt to abolish the Dept. of Education, the rise in book banning nation wide, and so, so much more.

Upcoming Events:

In the interest of being less online and more in community, I’ll be attending LavendarCon in DC June 14-15. I’m bringing swag. More details soon!

I will also be at the American Library Association’s annual conference in Philly June 26-30. If you want to hang out and be nerds together, let me know.

More soon. Be well,

Q