The Planning Period: Librarians as Educators, Charter Schools, and 'Hood Love

The Planning Period with Jovan Miles | Listen via Stitcher Radio On Demand via kwout

Make sure you check out my interview with Mr. Jovan Miles on The Planning Period as we discuss the pros and cons of charter schools, librarians as educators and passion vs. profit.

Fantasy Fail: Slavery is Boring

Dear Fantasy Writer,
In a world that you've created completely from the clay of your own mind, where dragons fly and magic prevails, where dwarves dwell and giants rule, why oh why are there still slaves?
This world is full of beauty and innumerable pleasures, but we cannot forget that the world ends for someone everyday, where horrors that make your brain and heart hurt flow freely. Murder, rape, torture.....enslavement. Get that. Enslavement is a horror.

I know you understand this because in recent years you've decided to call yourself "aware" and remove all people of color from your story lines and have replaced them with aliens or dark haired "barbarians". You've carefully side-stepped the moniker of "racist" by eliminating all the tawny-skinned, curly headed or big-bottomed characters that may give your reader a flashback of real slavery. You wouldn't want them to be offended.
You failed.
Slavery is offensive. A fantasy world where literally anything can and does exist, but sun and earth colored folk is offensive. A heroine who falls in love with a noble savage is offensive and has been for quite some time. But more than that, you're boring.
We've read this story line before. I already know how it ends.
Do something new. Create a new world order. You're a god with a pen. I expect more of you.

Sincerely,
Faithful, Fantasy Reader

The Case for Black Characters

Whenever I approach a publisher or distributor about my desire to stock my high school shelves with Young Adult books with characters of color the response is easy to predict:

• "There just aren't that many being published because there aren't that many writers." (false)
• "The market just isn't there." (also false)

What drives the second excuse into the dust is a recent survey released by the Pew Research Center, E-Reading Rises as Device Ownership Jumps.

 Looky, looky. Which ethnic group has the highest reading rate? Black folk. Eighty-one percent of Black people read at least one book last year versus just 76% of white people. Why is it that less than 3% of books published feature a character of color? 

With this kind of hard evidence at hand I'm glad to say I have a tool to advocate for more books for my kids based purely on a profit-minded model. As we all know, the push for social justice is a noble but slow process, but the push for more money is lightning fast.

Southern Spaces

When we first learn to analyze passages, and this is as early as first grade, we learn to pay attention to setting. Where are we? What do we see when we look around? All of that matters, but it is really simplistic. Later, we realize that setting affects how the people around you act, how the speak, how the dress and how they think. Every single space on this earth has its own idiosyncrasies, but few places evoke the kind of visceral reaction like the South.

Sounds ominous, doesn't it. The South.

Even for those who have never visited, have an idea of what its like "down there". Reactions swing from the romantic to the revolting. Images of rolling green hills and magnolia trees are juxtaposed with those of men in white hoods and lifeless black bodies swinging from those same magnolias. Even still, the culture, the food, the speech that has emerged from the mix of African, French, Spanish, Native American, and Mexican influences has created something completely American.

As a writer, we choose our tools. Some write exclusively from the female perspective, or just science fiction, but as a Southerner I write from the South and always will. My characters eat biscuits and grits, they say 'yes, sir' and 'no, ma'am'. They go to church on Sundays and know that you can only make sweet tea when you mix the sugar in while it's hot. This does not change. What can't you change in your writing?