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?

How to Shave 10K from your MS in no time!

So, if you're like me, you like really fat, juicy, wordy books. Unfortunately, that can be intimidating for some YA readers and those big, fat books are hard to sell. Maybe you've been told to "hurry it up already" or someone has gently reminded you that 450 page romances just don't sell. Either way, you've got to edit. 

Fear not!

From my own vast knowledge (wink,wink) I've come up with five fool-proof ways to shave thousands of words from your manuscript.

1. Kill a character. I know that you love all your characters, even those that provide comic relief, or the brother that really helps establish your characters softer side. Sorry, he's taking up precious real estate in your story. If it doesn't move the story along in a major way, just get rid of them. You'll be able to cut dialogue and whole scenes really easily.

 2.Shut your mouth. Dialogue helps establish how your characters think, but sometimes those conversations with other characters, especially bit ones, go on too long. Shut it down. Make it funny, make it sad, but most of all shorten it.

3. Park your bottom. Establishing setting takes a little while, especially if you're doing it right, but every time you introduce a new setting you have to spend the time to describe where your characters are, what they see and hear. Stop moving around so much. Think of a TV sitcom. They've got a few sets they've built and they have to make it work within those few sets. Do the same.

4.Keep your eye on the prize. Like everything, it helps to have a goal. I like to overshoot and then cut back. I think it's easier to whittle a scene down than it is to build one up, but whichever you choose, have a word count in mind. This makes it easier to make those hard decisions. You have to ask yourself, "Is this necessary?"

5. Become a gold speculator. I know that all your quips and heartfelt confessions are gold, but how golden are they? Sometimes you have to measure that perfect phrase against all the others in your manuscript. If it doesn't move the story along, it can follow the rest of the detritus to the chopping block. Be confident, there's enough good to withstand the loss of a few clever turns of phrase.

Happy slaughter!

Librarians as Advocates

As a librarian I have the unique responsibility and pleasure of creating the universe. Arrogant? I don't think so. I create the universe because I curate the library. I pick the books that students read to understand the universe. From a very young age, we understand and are taught that if it is important it is in a book. So, if I don't read histories that include positive and accurate portrayals about people who look like me, talk like me, and live in places like mine then it is like I don't exist, or rather I can begin to believe that there is nothing positive about people like me. I could also reject books entirely, because I know that there are positive, interesting and fantastic things about me and people like me, but they aren't found in books.

Librarians MUST be advocates for all children. Not only for students that may be marginalized, but also for those students in the dominant culture, because they can grow up with a false sense of entitlement. Those kids grow up and become teachers themselves and tell their students things like "we don't need another black president". The take-away being that we've done that already, lets get back to the real business of white only, male only, Christian only politics. Read More

As we create the universe through the books we choose to place in the our libraries and on our classroom shelves we must be sure to:

• Acquire titles that show diverse perspectives of historical events - On Columbus Day and prior to Thanksgiving be sure to display books from the perspective of Native Americans. Patriotism is not a religion. We make ideas available. Children should be allowed to look at history from every angle and make up their own minds.
• Choose books that reflect the real lives of your students - Don't shy away from books that deal with racism, rape, incest, drug addiction and the like. We have kids in our schools who have been raped. We teach kids who are struggling with or have parents struggling with addiction. They need to know that they are not alone.
• Make sure that there are diverse reflections of all kinds of students, even if you don't teach them - If you have an all-white population it is important that your kids have books by and about people of color and vice versa. If all kids consume is Teen Mom and Cops, white students will grow up to fear people of color and children of color will grow up to hate themselves (yes, I said it!)
• Recognize LGBT students - You have a gay student. Again, you have a gay, lesbian or transgendered student. You may not know who he or she is, but they are there. Let them know that they exist in the world by choosing fiction and non-fiction books about their experiences. A review of the Stonewall Riots is essential in your non-fiction section. Take it a step further and choose titles on first amendment rights of students and then display it during Pride Week.

The stereotype of librarians as meek and mild mannered may be true in some cases, but that does not mean that we are weak. It does not mean that we are not powerful. Seize your power and create a world that is real, colorful and aware.

YA with Black Female Protagonists

Check out this fantastic convo we had on twitter where I got some great recommendations for YA with Black Female Protagonists.