The Chick-Fil‑A Fiasco

The ques­tion must be asked: What is Amer­i­ca com­ing to? A pri­vate cit­i­zen who owns his own busi­ness, albeit a large one, makes a state­ment about his per­son­al opin­ion on a hot-but­ton issue, and those who hold a dif­fer­ing point of view respond by orga­niz­ing a move­ment to put said cit­i­zen out of busi­ness. Real­ly? Seriously?

Cor­rect me if I’m wrong, but haven’t we buried thou­sands of young men and woman who gave their lives to secure the rights and free­doms all Amer­i­cans are blessed to enjoy? And don’t those rights and free­doms include the free­dom of speech? And, unless some­one altered the Con­sti­tu­tion and all its amend­ments when I was­n’t look­ing, that free­dom applies to all Amer­i­cans, not just those with whom we hap­pen to agree. Trust me, I’m none too fond of state­ments by, say, mem­bers of the KKK, with regard to their opin­ions of Black folk. How­ev­er, as hate­ful as I might find their speech, I acknowl­edge their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to it.

The sim­ple fact that we dis­agree with some­one’s stat­ed opin­ion, no mat­ter how vocif­er­ous­ly, does not give us some sort of moral high ground to threat­en their liveli­hood. And, do keep in mind, we’re talk­ing about a pri­vate cit­i­zen, here, not some­one hold­ing pub­lic office, serv­ing at the fed­er­al, state, or even city lev­el. Nor are we talk­ing about some­one in a posi­tion to leg­is­late pub­lic pol­i­cy. The brouha­ha might make a bit more sense if we were. As it is, what this sit­u­a­tion boils down to, in my hum­ble opin­ion, is one set of Amer­i­cans ham­mer­ing anoth­er Amer­i­can for hav­ing the audac­i­ty to express a per­son­al opin­ion con­trary to their own. If we keep down this road, we won’t have to wor­ry about ene­mies from with­out. We’ll be doing a pret­ty bang-up job of sab­o­tag­ing our­selves from within.

If you don’t like the opin­ion of Chick-Fil-A’s CEO, or any­one else, for that mat­ter, feel free to say so—even loud­ly, if you must. But once you’ve made your point of view clear, for good­ness sake, move on. This is Amer­i­ca, after all, remem­ber? Every­body gets to have his say.

The Color of Character

For the record, I’ve nev­er had a nose job, or tried to bleach my skin. I do not straight­en my hair—not that there’s any­thing wrong with that. The fact is, for decades now, I have worn my hair nat­ur­al in cel­e­bra­tion of my African her­itage. I am now, and have always been, black and proud.

That said, I take issue with the fact that review­ers rou­tine­ly begin every dis­cus­sion of my books by iden­ti­fy­ing my char­ac­ters as African Amer­i­can. Now, before you chime in with com­ments about eth­nic pride (“My Greek friends refer to them­selves as Greek Amer­i­cans,” one woman told me, while anoth­er said “I’d nev­er call myself Greek-Amer­i­can”) that’s not what I’m talk­ing about, here. Under con­sid­er­a­tion here are how books are defined in terms of race.

As I not­ed in a con­ver­sa­tion on Face­book, if I were Ital­ian, no review­er would refer to the char­ac­ters in my book as Ital­ian-Amer­i­can, unless that her­itage was of par­tic­u­lar con­se­quence in the sto­ry­line. Yet, when it comes to my books, no such dis­tinc­tion is made. The specter of race is raised right out of the gate, with every title, near­ly every time, sub­ject notwith­stand­ing. Just recent­ly, I read an oth­er­wise won­der­ful review of my lat­est nov­el, Plan­et Mid­dle School that did exact­ly that.

Sigh.

I know it’s pos­si­ble to write a thought­ful review of this book with­out men­tion­ing race because K.T. Horn­ing cre­at­ed one for Book­list. Now, since I’ve been in the busi­ness for more than 30 years, and most of my books have cen­tered on char­ac­ters of African Amer­i­can descent, it can be assumed, with­out prej­u­dice, that my new book does so as well. How­ev­er, race is by no means ger­mane to the sub­ject or treat­ment of this par­tic­u­lar nov­el. You’d nev­er know that, though, accord­ing to the first review ref­er­enced above. Why does that mat­ter? I’m glad you asked.

I under­stand why librar­i­ans might want to be able to quick­ly iden­ti­fy titles of par­tic­u­lar inter­est to African Amer­i­can read­ers. And were I a first, or sec­ond, or third time author, with no track record, or body of work, or sta­tus in the chil­dren’s book com­mu­ni­ty, one might argue the impor­tance of men­tion­ing race, at least ini­tial­ly, in con­nec­tion with my titles. How­ev­er, none of that is the case.

At this stage of the game, most peo­ple involved with, or mak­ing use of, chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture know that I’m African Amer­i­can, and that my pri­ma­ry char­ac­ters are, in the main, African Amer­i­can, too. Mind you, I’m not sug­gest­ing that I’m “famous” in the sense that we speak of celebri­ties (God for­bid!), but mere­ly that I am well estab­lished in the chil­dren’s book com­mu­ni­ty, and it is a fair­ly sim­ple mat­ter to ascer­tain that the char­ac­ters of most of my books are African Amer­i­can with­out hav­ing the fact men­tioned in review after review after review. Besides, the cov­er art makes it plain, does it not? (I’ve all but begged pub­lish­ers to con­sid­er cre­at­ing cov­ers for my books that are not always race-spe­cif­ic, but to no avail!)

“But,” you ask, “what if the cov­er art is not includ­ed in the review?” No prob­lem. Take two sec­onds to go to IndieBound.org or Amazon.com or the Barnes and Noble web­site, click on the title in ques­tion, and up pops the telling cov­er art, in no time flat. Prob­lem solved. And oh, by the way, if race is the only com­mon denom­i­na­tor book buy­ers are inter­est­ed in, they’re free to check out the spe­cial list­ings pub­lish­ers pro­duce each year to high­light their own black and mul­ti­cul­tur­al titles. Most pub­lish­ers’ cat­a­logs I see, these days, have a sec­tion set aside for those titles. And don’t for­get the annu­al Pub­lish­er’s Week­ly issue on black books in—when is that? February?

Of course, my issue with the whole race ques­tion in dis­cussing chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture (or any lit­er­a­ture, for that mat­ter) is, if you will, more than skin deep. I have a prob­lem with seg­re­gat­ing teach­ing or read­ing prac­tices in all schools, whether a school is seg­re­gat­ed or racial­ly mixed. Be a stu­dent black, brown, yel­low, or white-skinned, he should be encour­aged to read a diverse selec­tion of good books by authors of every race. Period.

Is a book well writ­ten? Is the sto­ry well told? Will the sub­ject mat­ter res­onate with read­ers? Does the book have the poten­tial for mak­ing an emo­tion­al con­nec­tion with read­ers? These are the kinds of ques­tions teach­ers and librar­i­ans should be focused on. In the case of books in which race is cen­tral to the sto­ry­line, race should absolute­ly come in for a men­tion. But where it does not, it should not. That is my contention.

Race, as an explic­it des­ig­na­tion in books, has a mar­ket­ing com­po­nent that can’t be over­looked. Books iden­ti­fied as “black” are fre­quent­ly mar­gin­al­ized in the mar­ket­ing plan. Their appeal is auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­sid­ered to be nar­row­er than books writ­ten by Cau­casian authors, some­times even when those books are about non-white char­ac­ters. The point-of-view is assumed to be uni­ver­sal, sim­ply by virtue of the white author’s race. In the sell­ers’ mind, a so-called “black book,” i.e., a book writ­ten by a black author, should be exclu­sive­ly mar­ket­ed to black buy­ers. As such, said books are rarely made avail­able in out­lets locat­ed in pre­dom­i­nant­ly white neigh­bor­hoods. This makes me crazy because I have avid fans in those neigh­bor­hoods, too. I know because I meet them dur­ing my school vis­its, and find their let­ters among my fan mail. Luck­i­ly for me (and them?) they were exposed to my work at their local library.

I can’t help but won­der how many stu­dents are miss­ing out on these read­ing expe­ri­ences because my “black books” aren’t being mar­ket­ed to a broad­er audi­ence. I nev­er know whether to ball my fists or cry.

I find myself annoyed by review­ers who give my books left-hand­ed com­pli­ments. In the first sen­tence of their review, they’ll men­tion the African Amer­i­can lead char­ac­ter. Then, in the final sen­tence, they’ll offer some ver­sion of “but the sto­ry has uni­ver­sal appeal.” Well, duh! If that’s the case, why both­er to point out the fact that the char­ac­ter is African American?

(A ques­tion just came to me. Can you imag­ine refer­ring to a com­put­er pro­gram design, or a med­ical break­through, or a work of archi­tec­ture as “black” sim­ply because the cre­ator was African Amer­i­can? I’m just won­der­ing. Where do we draw the line?)

As I sit at my com­put­er, typ­ing this blog, I think back on some of the gor­geous­ly craft­ed, well-imag­ined books I read last year as a judge for the Nation­al Book Award. I would hate to think that African Amer­i­can stu­dents will miss out on the titles that don’t hap­pen to fea­ture African Amer­i­can char­ac­ters, or that white stu­dents will miss out on those books that do. What a cry­ing shame!

I might be inclined to shrug my shoul­ders and say, “Maybe it’s just me,” except I know it isn’t. There are oth­er authors of col­or who are bugged by this issue, as well. (And what about those authors who are from South Africa, but are not black? What kind of box do review­ers put their books into? Oh, what a tan­gled web we weave when first we prac­tice to give race more than its due!) Still, I can’t speak for all authors of African descent. It’s quite pos­si­ble that some are con­tent to have their entire body of work boiled down to the col­or of their skin. As for me, I’d rather be known for writ­ing books that are mov­ing, inspir­ing, impact­ing, emo­tion­al­ly charged, beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten, clev­er­ly con­struct­ed and—oh, yeah—universally appealing!

But that’s just me.

The Push to Publish

While chan­nel surf­ing the oth­er day, I came across a real­i­ty show about child beau­ty pageants. A four or five year old con­tes­tant was asked what she want­ed to be when she grew up, and her answer was “famous.” Her par­ent seemed pleased with that response, nev­er once sug­gest­ing to her daugh­ter that, per­haps, she should iden­ti­fy a career or pro­fes­sion for which she would like to be known. Being pret­ty and being known for any­thing seemed to be the point of it all. I myself found the child’s answer wince-worthy.

To be sure, I’ve met many a child, and not a few adults, whose chief goal in life was to achieve celebri­ty. They clear­ly crave the sta­tus of being famous for being famous, nev­er mind iden­ti­fy­ing and hon­ing a tal­ent, or learn­ing a trade, or devel­op­ing crafts­man­ship in some cho­sen field of endeav­or. And we won’t even dis­cuss the pos­si­bil­i­ty of pur­su­ing a career in high­er edu­ca­tion. No. Fame’s the thing.

What’s all that got to do with the push to pub­lish? Every­where I go across the coun­try, vis­it­ing schools and libraries, I encounter young peo­ple whose sole focus is on get­ting pub­lished. Note, they are not focus­ing on becom­ing good, let alone great writ­ers. They sim­ply want to be known for their writ­ing, and that acknowl­edge­ment or fame, if you will, comes in the form of publication.

There’s cer­tain­ly noth­ing objec­tion­able about want­i­ng, or need­ing, val­i­da­tion for one’s work, but that assumes one has actu­al­ly worked. That is to say, one has striv­en to hone one’s craft over a rea­son­able peri­od of time, through study and prac­tice. In the case of a per­son inter­est­ed in pur­su­ing pub­li­ca­tion, it is assumed that one has first done the hard work of sharp­en­ing lan­guage skills, study­ing a cho­sen genre and mas­ter­ing that sin­gu­lar skill of ines­timable val­ue, revi­sion. Said per­son knows what it is to read, read, read and to write, write, write. (I love Jane Yolen’s answer to ques­tions about the secret to writ­ing a book: Butt in chair!) Once a young writer has done all of the above, I think he or she is ready to pur­sue pub­li­ca­tion. But, it appears I would be in the minority.

Nowa­days, as ear­ly as ele­men­tary school, I hear stu­dents being referred to as “young authors.” I cringe every time I hear the phrase. Don’t get me wrong. I under­stand the desire to give chil­dren a sense of suc­cess, and desk-top-pub­lish­ing their work may achieve that, in the short term. How­ev­er, that suc­cess won’t be real unless it is earned.

I, for one, would like to see a move away from the push-to-pub­lish mod­el, a shift from “How can I get pub­lished?” to “Am I ready to pub­lish?” That shift has to begin in the classroom.

We all know teach­ing is one of the world’s tough­est and least-appre­ci­at­ed jobs. And we under­stand that most teach­ers are doing the best they can, despite being ham­strung by require­ments to teach to the test. So the last thing I want to do is crit­i­cize. But might I gen­tly sug­gest that there are ways to encour­age stu­dents to improve their writ­ing that don’t begin and end with pub­lish­ing? After all, not every child will be inclined to dig deep to do the hard work of revi­sion if he knows he can slap any­thing on paper and get it pub­lished by his teacher or school librar­i­an. Why not make pub­li­ca­tion an end-of-year goal that stu­dents must strive for? Mean­while, here are a few ideas to keep them writ­ing, along the way. Obvi­ous­ly, since I am not in the class­room myself, I won’t know the best ways to apply these ideas, but those of you who teach will. I’m just throw­ing my thoughts out there for you to consider.

Chal­lenge stu­dents with com­pe­ti­tions. Include winners—and not every­one is a win­ner, oth­er­wise the word would have no meaning—include win­ners in an end-of-year school pub­li­ca­tion. Cre­ate cat­e­gories for recog­ni­tion: Voice, Orig­i­nal­i­ty, Descrip­tive Lan­guage, Most Chal­leng­ing Vocab­u­lary, etc. No one child will achieve in all cat­e­gories, but sev­er­al chil­dren will achieve in one or more.

Assign stu­dents the task of research­ing mag­a­zines and jour­nals that pub­lish work by juve­niles, and then encour­age those stu­dents whose writ­ing mer­its it to sub­mit their work.

Dis­play the best writ­ing in class. Invite the best writ­ers to read their work out loud. Make this a sched­uled time so that stu­dents have ample time to pre­pare work for shar­ing. I know one teacher who has a poet­ry chair in her class­room. Once or twice a week—I can’t remem­ber exactly—a stu­dent gets to sit in that chair and read one of his or her favorite poems. There’s a great deal of pride attached to the expe­ri­ence of get­ting to sit in the poet­ry chair, and stu­dents look for­ward to the oppor­tu­ni­ty. The same idea could be applied to a stu­den­t’s own writ­ing. Why not? (Here, again, cat­e­gories might be use­ful. Stu­dents with dif­fer­ent writ­ing strengths could have those strengths hon­ored, week-to-week.)

Okay. Those are some sug­gest­ed “Dos.” Here are a cou­ple of sug­gest­ed “Don’ts” for teach­ers and par­ents, alike.

Every child can learn the basics of poet­ry, but not every child is a poet. Please stop telling them that they are. I know some of you will gasp at this notion, but not every­one who learns to draw has the poten­tial to be Picas­so. He is encour­aged to draw, any­way! I’m no Shake­speare, but my teach­ers man­aged to encour­age me to write despite that fact. In the process, I dis­cov­ered my own voice. Teach poet­ry? Absolute­ly! But don’t label a stu­dent a poet unless he tells you he is. And once he does, chal­lenge him to devel­op his skill. Guide him to poet­ry col­lec­tions to read so that he can dis­cov­er what is pos­si­ble in his own work.

Stop seek­ing men­tors for your pre­teen child who wants to be a writer one week, but will decide to be a bas­ket­ball play­er the next. I was sev­en­teen before I sought out my first men­tor, and I was pret­ty hard-core. I’d already begun pub­lish­ing my work in lit­er­ary jour­nals, and I sought out a men­tor on my own. Most kids, even at 17, aren’t ready for that lev­el of com­mit­ment. If they decide they want to make writ­ing their life’s work, they’ll grav­i­tate toward a men­tor on their own, when the time is right. Don’t force the issue. This is a tough career, with mas­sive amounts of rejec­tion. One should not set out on this path until he or she has reached a sol­id lev­el of maturity.

Let’s put pub­li­ca­tion aside, for a moment and talk about the work eth­ic, in gen­er­al. It’s dif­fi­cult to sort out, but some­how, in the last gen­er­a­tion, we’ve lost a respect for, and for­got­ten about the sat­is­fac­tion that comes from hard work. We’re all about instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion, now—instant every­thing, in fact. What about the bone-strength­en­ing impact of achieve­ment? What about the self-esteem that derives from work­ing towards, and then achiev­ing, one’s goals? We’ve got­ten away from that and our fas­ci­na­tion with the new tech­nolo­gies has­n’t helped. We no longer stop to con­sid­er whether or not we should do a thing. We only ask whether or not we can, and that def­i­nite­ly applies to pub­lish­ing. Sigh.

I had a great Eng­lish teacher in high school. Her name was Eve­lyn Wexler, or Mrs. Wexler to me. Mrs. Wexler encour­aged my writ­ing, and made sure I was famil­iar with the impor­tant African Amer­i­can authors of the day. But one thing Mrs. Wexler nev­er did was give me an easy A+. She made me work for it. I was already quite a good writer, but she want­ed me to strive to be bet­ter, and if I did­n’t chal­lenge myself to do so, she would not reward me with an A+ no mat­ter how much bet­ter my essays or book reports were than every­one else’s in class. She was push­ing me to be my best, not the best. It was a great les­son for me to learn.

Through­out high school, and beyond, I worked long and hard to cre­ate work that was wor­thy of pub­li­ca­tion. The result? When I final­ly saw my work in print, it was cause for cel­e­bra­tion. As for the rejec­tion along the way, it made my ulti­mate suc­cess all the sweeter.

I’m not sug­gest­ing that young stu­dents need to expe­ri­ence rejec­tion in the class­room, but they need not be hand­ed the reward of pub­li­ca­tion so eas­i­ly, either. In the long term, it will not serve them well.

I write for a liv­ing, and it would be easy enough for me to dash some­thing off and pub­lish it on my blog with lit­tle fore­thought. But I don’t, and there’s a rea­son for that. As a stu­dent, I was chal­lenged to make sure my writ­ing was the very best that it could be before I turned it in. Thanks, Mrs. Wexler. I’m still listening.