![]() | The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject.(May 2019) |
Young adult fiction and children's literature in general have historically shown a lack of diversity, that is, a lack of books with a main character who is, for example, a person of color, from the LGBTQIA+ community, or disabled. The numbers of children's book authors have shown a similar lack of diversity. [1] Diversity is considered beneficial since it encourages children of diverse backgrounds to read and it teaches children of all backgrounds an accurate view of the world around them. [2] [ unreliable source? ] In the mid-2010s, more attention was drawn to this problem from various quarters. [3] In the several years following, diversity numbers seem to have improved: One survey showed that in 2017, a quarter of children's books were about minority protagonists, almost a 10 percent increase from 2016. [1]
One of the foundational elements of young adult literature is its representation of diverse ideas. [4] [5] Looking at The New York Times bestseller list for young adults in the late 2010s demonstrates the selling power of diverse narratives. [6] Recent YA bestseller lists in the UK show a similar pattern. [7] This dedication to and emphasis on diversity is a fairly recent[ when? ] concept. [8]
For a large portion of history, young adult fiction focused on cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied characters and authors. [9] In the 1920s and 1930s, "diverse" children's stories emphasized stereotypical characteristics of people of color. The 1940s sparked a change in the conversation surrounding black narratives. Those in black communities began demanding the publishing of books that actually depicted their lives. [10] In 1965, Nancy Larrick published the article "The All-White World of Children's Publishing", which analyzed the literature and found that only 6.4 percent of the more than 5,000 books published for children between 1962 and 1964 featured children of color. [11] A year later, the Council on Interracial Books for Children, which demanded that more books be published by people of color, was created. [12]
Diversity in the pre-1980s era was not limited only to racial diversity. In 1969, John Donovan published I'll Get There. It Better be Worth the Trip , which was the first young adult novel to feature a gay teen. [13] In 1979, Rosa Guy published Ruby, which became the first young adult novel featuring a lesbian woman of color. [13]
The 1980s brought a greater awareness to the need for diverse youth literature. The population in the United States of America became much more diverse: the Hispanic population more than doubled and the population of races other than white or black increased exponentially. [14] The publishing industry took notice of demographic changes and became more vocal about representation. In 1985, the Cooperative Children's Book Center (CCBC) began to track the percentage of books written by African American authors. That year, they reported that African Americans authored less than 1 percent of all children's books. In 1994, the organization began to track the number of Asian and Pacific Islander, Native and Latino authors as well. In their report, the CCBC found that, collectively, authors of color published about 9 percent of all books directed towards children and young adults. By the end of the millennium, that percentage dropped to 6.3 percent. [1]
The young adult market bloomed in the 2000s, largely in response to some high-profile, bestselling YA series (such as Twilight and The Hunger Games ) and their subsequent film adaptations. [7] In the late 1990s, only 3,000 young adult books were published annually. By 2010, that number increased to 30,000. [15] While the number of diverse books has increased, the numbers are not reflective of the demographic breakdown in the United States and the United Kingdom. [9] The statistics gathered by the CCBC and various other independent researchers show that the market does not reflect the diversity of the U.S. [9] In 2013, less than 9 percent of best-selling novels featured characters with disabilities. [16] In 2014 and 2015, found that 85 percent of all children's and young adult books feature white characters. This statistic has remained fairly stagnant since the 1960s. [17] In 2017, a 20-year analysis of National Book Award winners between 1996 and 2015 found that only five of the novels were written by non-white authors. [11]
In 2014, spurred by an all-white, all-male discussion at the 2014 BookCon festival, young adult author Ellen Oh created the Twitter hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks to protest the lack of diversity in young adult and children's literature. [3] This movement developed into the nonprofit organization We Need Diverse Books (WNDB). WNDB's goal is to increase the representation of diverse communities within the world of children's books. [18]
This movement changed the conversation surrounding diversity in YA and has influenced the number of diverse options on the market today. [19] In the UK, 90 percent of the best-selling YA titles from 2006 to 2016 featured white, able-bodied, cisgender, and heterosexual main characters. [20] During this period, 8 percent of all young adult authors published in the UK were people of colour. [20] This number increased in the subsequent years. In the UK the proportion of authors of colour writing for young adults in the UK has more than doubled between 2017 and 2019. In 2017, 7.10 percent of YA authors were people of colour: this rose to 19.60 percent in 2019. [7] Between 2007 and 2017 in the UK, fewer than 9 percent of children's books creators were people of colour. [21] Authors of colour have proved to have commercial appeal, despite not being offered the same types of publishing deals and opportunities as their white counterparts: in the 2017–2019 period, women authors of colour and white women authors accounted for 30.75 percent each on the YA bestseller list in the UK, but 9.02 percent and 58.3 percent, respectively, of the overall publishing output. This means that despite there being around six times as many White women being published than women of colour, there are the same number of both groups in the bestseller list, [7] In 2017, a quarter of children's novels from US publishers were about minority protagonists, almost a 10 percent increase from 2016. [1]
It is claimed that diversity encourages self-reflection among readers. This self-reflection creates a sense of comfort. People like to see themselves and identify with the stories they read. [22] It is claimed that this is not possible when 85 percent of children's and young adult books feature white characters. [17] By featuring multicultural characters experiencing real-life problems, readers can see that they are not alone. [23] On the other hand, if diverse experiences are not visible, it further alienates disadvantaged minorities.
When a reader identifies with a minority or disadvantaged population, seeing characters that resembles their experiences can be empowering. [22]
Diverse literature can also be a catalyst for acceptance. Portraying and reading about characters that are different from the reader helps to reduce stereotypes. [24] These narratives alleviate the "otherness" and make the different seem less strange. [24] Studies have found that reading about people from different cultures increases empathy. This is especially true in fantasy and science-fiction novels because readers are already immersed in a "different world". [25] Being surrounded by diverse characters and cultures builds a "tolerance for and appreciation of" those cultures which helps to eliminate prejudice. [23] With the increasingly diverse population and more diverse public schools, young adults constantly interact with people that are different than them. [26] [27]
The "#ownvoices" movement, which has spread beyond young adult,[ citation needed ] promotes books about diverse characters written by authors from the same diverse identity. It originated in September 2015 when author and co-founder of the website Disability in Kidlit [28] Corinne Duyvis created the Twitter hashtag #ownvoices. [29] Proponents of #ownvoices argue that minority voices have been misrepresented and stereotyped in the past, and a movement spotlighting stories by authors who are part of minority groups can help combat this. [30] [31]
In recent years, more authors of color are publishing novels, but there has been no significant increase in novels published by marginalized authors in the US. [32] In the UK, there has been a notable increase, with the percentage of YA authors of color being published more than doubling over a 10-year-plus period. [7]
Concern with the identity of authors is not a new concept. In 1986, Walter Dean Myers published I Actually Thought We Would Revolutionize the Industry, an article in The New York Times detailing how few black narratives were determined by black authors. [12] In 1998, Jacqueline Woodson published Who Can Tell My Story in The Horn Book Magazine posing the same questions. [33] In the article, Woodson said, "I realized that no one but me can tell my story." [33]
Publishing companies commonly distort the perception of diversity on book covers to conform to traditional standards based on the assumption that book covers with diverse character representations are less marketable than those with white, heterosexual, and able-bodied models, resulting in a white-washing effect. [26] Typically either a white model represents a character of color or the character's image is distorted beyond complete recognition. [34] Ursula Le Guin was a champion for dispelling the "white sells" phenomenon. In a 2001 interview, Le Guin attributed the frequent lack of character illustrations on her book covers to her choice of non-white protagonists. [35] At the 2004 BookExpo America convention, she specifically criticized this practice, saying:
"Please consider that 'what sells' or 'doesn't sell' can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If black kids, Hispanics, Indians both Eastern and Western don't buy fantasy – which they mostly don't – could it be because they never see themselves on the cover?" [36]
A high-profile instance of white-washing in YA was Justine Larbalestier's 2009 novel Liar . [34] In the novel, the protagonist is described as an African American, but the advance reading copy (ARC) featured a white cover model. [37] The publisher remedied this after Larbalestier complained. [38]
Alex Sanchez is a Mexican American author of award-winning novels for teens and adults. His first novel, Rainbow Boys (2001), was selected by the American Library Association (ALA), as a Best Book for Young Adults. Subsequent books have won additional awards, including the Lambda Literary Award. Although Sanchez's novels are widely accepted in thousands of school and public libraries in America, they have faced a handful of challenges and efforts to ban them. In Webster, New York, removal of Rainbow Boys from the 2006 summer reading list was met by a counter-protest from students, parents, librarians, and community members resulting in the book being placed on the 2007 summer reading list.
Young adult literature (YA) is literature, most often including novels, written for readers from 12 to 18 years of age. The term YA was first used regularly in the 1960s in the United States. The YA category includes most of the genres found in adult fiction, with themes that include friendship, drugs and alcohol, and sexual and gender identity. Stories that focus on the challenges of youth may be categorized as problem novels or coming-of-age novels.
Lisa Mantchev is an American author of fantasy novels and short stories. She is best known for her Théâtre Illuminata series, a trilogy of young adult fantasy novels.
Malinda Lo is an American writer of young adult novels including Ash, Huntress, Adaptation, Inheritance,A Line in the Dark, and Last Night at the Telegraph Club. She also does research on diversity in young adult literature and publishing.
Nicola Yoon is a Jamaican-American author. She is best known for writing the 2015 young adult novel Everything, Everything, a New York Times best seller and the basis of a 2017 film of the same name. In 2016, she released The Sun Is Also a Star, a novel that was adapted to a film of the same name.
Tu Books is a young adult and middle grade publishing imprint of Lee & Low Books. The company was founded by Stacy Whitman in 2009 as Tu Publishing before being acquired by Lee & Low in 2010. It focuses on publishing works featuring diverse characters and works written by diverse writers. Since 2012, it has administered the New Visions Award to recognize new talent in the field.
We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) is a nonprofit organization created to promote diversity of multiple forms in American children's literature and publishing, which grew out of the Twitter hashtag #WeNeedDiverseBooks in 2014. The organization's programming includes funding grants and internships for diverse authors and people interested in publishing, a mentorship program, providing lists of book recommendations for librarians, teachers, and parents on finding books with characters from marginalized backgrounds, and publishing an anthology of short stories featuring multiple authors from diverse backgrounds.
Angie Thomas is an American young adult author, best known for writing The Hate U Give (2017). Her second young adult novel, On the Come Up, was released on February 25, 2019.
Jason Reynolds is an American author of novels and poetry for young adult and middle-grade audience. Born in Washington, D.C., and raised in neighboring Oxon Hill, Maryland, Reynolds found inspiration in rap and had an early focus on poetry, publishing several poetry collections before his first novel in 2014, When I Was The Greatest, which won the John Steptoe Award for New Talent.
Anna-Marie McLemore is a Mexican-American author of young adult fiction magical realism, best known for their Stonewall Honor-winning novel When the Moon Was Ours, Wild Beauty, and The Weight of Feathers.
Emily X.R. Pan is a New York Times Bestselling American author of young adult fiction, best known for her debut novel The Astonishing Color of After.
Stranger Than Fanfiction is a young adult novel written by author Chris Colfer. It was published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers on February 28, 2017, and is Colfer's second young adult novel. Stranger Than Fanfiction explores themes of race, friendship, and fame, as well as LGBT themes. It has received widespread press coverage and numerous reviews, and has been featured on several awards lists.
Justina Ireland is an American science-fiction and fantasy author of young adult fiction and former editor-in-chief of the FIYAH Literary Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction. She received the 2018 World Fantasy Award for Non-Professional Work. Her novel Dread Nation won the 2019 Locus Award, and was nominated for the Andre Norton, Bram Stoker, and Lodestar Awards.
Ellen Oh is a Korean-American author, and founding member and CEO of the non-profit We Need Diverse Books. She is the award winning author of young adult and middle grade novels including the Prophecy trilogy, also known as the Dragon King Chronicles, a series of fantasy, young adult novels based on Korean folklore.
More Happy Than Not is the debut novel by American author Adam Silvera, published June 2, 2015 by Soho Teen.
Leatrice "Elle" McKinney, better known by her pen name L.L. McKinney, is an American writer of young adult literature. Her debut novel, A Blade So Black, was released in September 2018. McKinney created the PublishingPaidMe Twitter hashtag in June 2020 to highlight racial disparities in writers' advance payments.
This is a timeline of African American Children's literature milestones in the United States from 1600 – present. The timeline also includes selected events in Black history and children's book publishing broadly.
The Walter Dean Myers Award for Outstanding Children's Literature, known as "The Walters,” was created by the American nonprofit We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) in 2014, and the inaugural award was presented in 2016. Named after young adult author Walter Dean Myers, the award recognizes published, diverse authors who champion marginalized voices in their stories. The awards program is managed by WNDB's co-directors Kathie Weinberg and Terry Hong. In 2018, WNDB changed the categories from a single category of young adult titles to two categories of teen and young readers. Subsequent awards include both categories.
The Astonishing Color of After is a young adult novel by Emily X.R. Pan, published March 20, 2018 by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers. The novel addresses topics including suicide and mental health through the story of a biracial teenager, Leigh, in search of her mother, whom Leigh believes has transformed into a red bird following her suicide. She follows the bird to Taiwan, her mother’s birthplace, where she meets her grandparents for the first time and tries to learn what the bird is trying to teach her before the end of the traditional Ghost Month. Throughout the story, Leigh uses colors to describe emotions and her art as a way to process her grief. Meanwhile, she is also in conflict with her father, who does not believe she is handling her grief well and also thinks she should be pursuing something more practical than art.
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