This year, we get a little extra. On Day 29, we are delighted to have the opportunity to welcome Edi Campbell, an academic librarian who blogs at Crazy Quilts. Edi “works to improve the literacy of teens of color and am a strong ally for all marginalized young people. As part of this effort, I also work to promote authors of color. Reading multiple varieties of text is the basis for all literacies and in becoming literate, we learn how to navigate the world around us.” Thank you, Edi, and again, welcome:
It is an honor to be part of the 28 Days celebration. As I’ve read about works of such outstanding authors and artists over the years, I never even imagined that I’d be part of it; still cannot believe it. I started blogging about marginalized teens almost ten years ago and when I began, I was pretty much on my own. I hadn’t discovered people like Hannah Gomez, Nathalie Mvondo, Ari, Karen Lemmons, KC Boyd or Vanessa Irvin who are as active online for our children as they are in person. And I certainly hadn’t read the fine, important works by Rudine Sims Bishop, Claudette McLinn, Violet Harris, Jonda McNair, Nancy Tolson, Virginia Hamilton and so many, many others. Ten years ago I knew there weren’t enough books published for the Black and Latinx students in the school where I worked and even though I’ve grown to understand the immensity of the issue, I still simply want to put one more book in one more child’s hand and turn one more child into a reader.
If you consider that the whitest industries in America continue to be information industries (publishing, technology, libraries and movies) you should begin to question why that’s so. I’m not into conspiracy theories, so I don’t believe it’s intentionally about mind control, but there does seem to be a very controlled, very white message being perpetrated upon our children. And all I want is one more brown book. One more Jerry Craft, Bil Wright, Brian Walker, L. Divine, Kelli London, NiNi Simone, Nnedi Okorafor, Dia Reeves and Zetta Elliott. One more mirror, one more door. One more Tim Tingle, Cindy Pon, Malinda Lo, Eric Gansworth, Y.S. Lee, Randa Abdel-Fattah, Juan Filipe Herrera, Alex Sanchez and Sheela Chari.
I feel like the next ten years will not look like the past ten years in children’s publishing. Libraries are embracing (even creating) self-published books. Twitter, Vine, Instagram and Tumblr are giving voice to the masses allowing us to voice concerns, to announce agendas and to connect directly with those who had been hidden from us. These platforms help us find debut authors and promote their books, to immediately questions portrayals of people and histories and they’ve created #WeNeedDiverseBooks.
What I’ve learned over the past 10 years is that I’m not alone, we’re not alone and it takes all of us to get that one more book.
Reblogged this on The Eclectic Kitabu Project.
Hi Edi, I so love you and your literary activism for our children! We need all the literary activists we can get! I totally agree with you about a very white mind control. The video, “Filter Bubbles”, talks about how Google controls search results. Very interesting.
This makes me so happy. Congrats!
This is a fine way to end the month – with the words of someone who quietly just digs in her heels a little harder and speaks up again, and again, and again. Go head, Ms. Edi. We appreciate you!