What a marvelous talk! Leah speaks with authority, empathy, and thoughtfulness about what is one of the most controversial issues facing kidlit today.
I’m so pleased, Leah, that you draw the distinction between a harmful history of exclusion and bias in the publishing industry and the ability/right of writers to tell stories about people who are different from them. Too often I think that people dismayed by the homogeneity of publishing take the solution to its most extreme — discouraging people (mainly white people) from writing stories about characters different from them (mostly minorities).
I hope that people take Leah’s advice to heart, and if you really want to tell a story about someone very different from you, don’t give up altogether but instead do the work to avoid stereotyping and marginalizing, and get help making sure that your story feels authentic.
And Leah, thank you for the encouragement at the end not to be too hard on ourselves! I’ve found that to be one of the toughest battles in writing.
Rachael
3 years ago
Thank you so much for this. That was exactly the encouragement I needed right now.
What a marvelous talk! Leah speaks with authority, empathy, and thoughtfulness about what is one of the most controversial issues facing kidlit today.
I’m so pleased, Leah, that you draw the distinction between a harmful history of exclusion and bias in the publishing industry and the ability/right of writers to tell stories about people who are different from them. Too often I think that people dismayed by the homogeneity of publishing take the solution to its most extreme — discouraging people (mainly white people) from writing stories about characters different from them (mostly minorities).
I hope that people take Leah’s advice to heart, and if you really want to tell a story about someone very different from you, don’t give up altogether but instead do the work to avoid stereotyping and marginalizing, and get help making sure that your story feels authentic.
And Leah, thank you for the encouragement at the end not to be too hard on ourselves! I’ve found that to be one of the toughest battles in writing.
Thank you so much for this. That was exactly the encouragement I needed right now.