Friday, May 2, 2014

Witnessing


            Living in New Orleans has exposed me to a lot of things I’ve never seen before.  Some things are awesome, like crawfish boils. Some things are confusing, like having the invasive Nutria serve as the mascot for the minor league baseball team.  Some things are just downright heartbreaking, like watching a policeman tiptoe around a building with an AK-47 in full view of school students in the middle of the day.
            Things like watching attempted raids of impoverished homes aren’t realities for many people living in this city, but they are realities for me and for the community I serve.  And what’s disturbing is that as much as I had heard about such things happening in this country, and as much as I disapproved of them from afar, I didn’t let such violence and implied violence get under my skin until I witnessed it myself.
            Right now, the NOLA YAVs are critically examining the role of race in this country.  We’ve been reading an outstanding book by Michelle Alexander called The New Jim Crow, which presents the idea that the mass incarceration being justified by the war on drugs, is actually a means of further oppressing people of color.  When you think about it, it makes sense—folks who have been charged with a felony in this country, an alarming percentage of whom are black men are, “subject to legalized discrimination in employment, housing, education, public benefits, and jury service, just as their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents once were.” (Alexander)  Though this is difficult to digest, my experiences are beginning to confirm it as truth. 
            As much as we as a nation would like to believe and celebrate the idea of “colorblindness”, it is still a Lie.  This year has shown me that in so many ways, but the most surprising involves the publishing industry.  Allow me to explain.

            Since I love reading more than just about anything, since I taught Language Arts for a few years, and since I noticed that the closest public library to my garden and the surrounding neighborhood was nearly a mile and a half away (which might sound close unless you think about living without a car and having to walk that far for groceries and other services constantly anyway, and when you consider that libraries deal in books, and books can be very heavy), I decided we should install a Little Free Library at the Johnson Garden.  With the help of my supervisors and a local builder, we got a library built, registered, and ready to stock, which fell to me. 
            I was pumped to buy books, and only after filling my basket at a library book sale did I notice that none of my choices featured any African-American characters.  This is not to say that I assume that people of color are only interested in reading about other people of color, but it is more than a little stupid for a white girl to stock a library in a primarily black neighborhood with books that only feature characters that look like her.  So I looked again, and what I found was disheartening. 
            Aside from the more classic books by black authors, many of which are considered literature as opposed to every-day pleasure reading, I found three books featuring black characters.  3.  Now, perhaps I’m just a hick, but I don’t always reach for a Pulitzer Prize winning author when I want to relax and get lost in a narrative—and I think that based on the success of folks like Janet Evanovich and James Patterson, I’m not outside of the norm—but where are those authors, narratives, and characters for people of color?  Who is the equivalent of Lee Childs or Danielle Steel in the black community?  Where are those books?  I certainly couldn’t find them.
            So I decided to search the Internet, where I found a lot more than I’d bargained for.  Here are some of the highlights:

  • A great article from Huffington Post, "50 Books That Every African American Should Read"; chock full of beach reads and literature alike, and also sadly full of barbed comments directed at Huff Post for having a “Black Voices” section of its website.  
  • An incredible TED talk on "The Danger of a Single Story" detailing how damaging it is for publishers to fail to incorporate people of color in narrative texts, especially children’s books.  
  • The beginnings of a movement to encourage diversity in publishing via Tumblr.  Three different meditations on that movement can be found herehere and here.   


            My findings astonished me.  I didn’t know that my favorite pastime was tainted by the ugly realities I sometimes escaped by engaging in it, and I had never been blessed to take on another perspective.  Sitting with the reality that over half of the population of New Orleans is severely underrepresented in my “safe” world of books is very difficult for me, but now I know.  Which means that now I can do something about it.  I hope you’ll join me.    

1 comment:

  1. Jess, now that you point it out, I would have to agree with you. There is a lack of quality writing that include main characters or even supporting characters who are African American/Japanese/Chinese/etc. As I look at my bedside bookshelf, all of the books are written by Caucasians and feature Caucasian characters. Thanks for posting the link for '50 Books...'. I've saved the link and will refer to it again in the fall when I pick up books. It's so awesome to read your blog, wish you wrote more.

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