The books world is a massive diversity fail – here's how we change it
At this week’s Inclusive Minds event, A Place at The Table, Fen Cole, bookseller at Letterbox Library, selling the best and most diverse books for over 30 years, said that if they were successful, they would not exist. I was part of the the event and wanted to tell you all what happened. I think it’s important.
Diverse books would just be books. Books that featured non-traditional families,protagonists with disabilities, or a range of sexualities; books that featured children that looked like the majority of the children the world over, would just be books.
I think a lot of people – me included - are fed up to the back teeth talking about diversity. We all know the arguments. Books at present are exclusive; children need to see the world they live in reflected in their reading matter. So why isn’t it happening?
Inclusive Minds – a collective set up by Beth Cox and Alexandra Strick that exists to campaign and speak up for all kinds of diversity – organised the conference to bring key book folk together, to help support real commitment and look at how things had changed in the eighteen months since the first event.
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Inclusive Minds have been busy, advocating, taking part in London’s Imagine Festival, and launching a network of Young Ambassadors - individuals and parents with experience of marginalisation and a real and deep interest in seeing better representation across the board. These Young Ambassadors have spoken on BBC’s Newsround, Blue Peter and act as consultants, working with publishers and illustrators and authors to ensure authenticity.
Candy Gourlay, author, phenomenon, and keynote speaker, spoke movingly about her experience of growing up in the Philippines on a diet of wonderful stories, every one of which excluded her. Wonderful stories that meant it took years before she could think people who looked like her into her own stories.
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Steve Pryse from Pickled Pepper Books spoke about the need for more diverse books too, and Emily Davison and Taz Virdee – two of Inclusive Minds’ army of Young Ambassadors – spoke passionately about how exclusion from stories had affected them.
Emily argued that inclusion wasn’t just beneficial for readers like her – she is visually impaired – but for children unaffected, to enable them to empathise and understand what life is like in her shoes; to unite rather than divide.
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Taz spoke about reminding authors and publishers that characters and books must take care to reflect the world in all its differences, and that intersectionality is the goal we should all be working towards.
We know that writing, illustrating and publishing as well as bookselling, festivals and in fact all aspects of production, are monoculturally white and middle class. And over the twenty years I’ve been published I’ve been to several high profile conferences, taken part in countless initiatives to improve things. It has to be said that the book world is in general a massive diversity fail.
There are many reasons. There is unconscious bias of course, but there is also fear of getting it wrong, and for picture book publishers a fear of what overseas partners might want. Maybe some assume that rabbits and bears are more relatable than a brown face?
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But listening to the small changes enacted over the past year in individual publishers and other organisations, the book audits looking at exactly what is being produced, the mainstreaming of diverse books undertaken not only by Letterbox Library but by small publishers like Sweet Apple (see their wonderful Oddsockasaurus), there is some movement.
In the past few years the change affected by bloggers promoting LGBTQ characters issues and themes in books – especially in YA – has been phenomenal.
In just a few years we have seen an explosion in books by, concerning and including, a range of characters. These books aren’t marginalised – they win prizes. It’s an inspiration.
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There has also been an increase in awareness, which is beginning to be reflected in inclusive stories, around mental illness. It’s only a start, and there’s a long way to go, but it’s happening. Inclusive Minds is working hard to ensure that it’s action not just words. Their charters, which are open for publishers and booksellers to sign up to, encourage change and action.
Here are some other bright spots on the horizon.
Megaphone is a mentoring scheme for unpublished BAME authors run by Leila Rasheed, a source of new children’s writers of the future.
BAME in Publishing, launched by Sarah Shaffi and Wei Ming Kam, is a brand new networking group fro those in the industry.
BareLit, organised by Media Diversified, was the first and hugely successful literature festival completely crowdfunded and totally sold out with no diversity panels in sight.
So there’s plenty of hope, and plenty of organisations and individuals working hard to make sure that all children can find a place for themselves and that this should be completely unremarkable. So that – as the Inclusive Minds logo says – Everybody’s In.
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Catherine Johnson’s latest novel The Curious Tale of The Lady Caraboo was shortlisted for the 2016 YA Book Prize and is available from the Guardian Bookshop.