Dear ALA, I approve of your timing!

[owlectomy]

ALA creates Stonewall Prize for children's books "of exceptional merit relating to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered experience."

I think ALA has done a lot of good in creating prizes that draw attention to exceptional books by African-American and Latino authors, books in translation, and books about people with disabilities. It's still easy for books about marginalized identities to get overlooked when it comes to the major awards -- Jerry Pinkney has been drawing astounding picture books for years before becoming the first African-American to win a Caldecott medal in 2010. (Previously, Leo and Diane Dillon, a mixed-race married couple, had won the medal twice). It's hard for a book to last beyond a season or two without awards recognition or popular traction, and the books getting the popular traction are the ones about sparkly vampires. (Why not sparkly gay vampires who use wheelchairs? THE WORLD MAY NEVER KNOW.)

I haven't read all of the Printz winners and honor books, but to my knowledge the last Printz winners or honor books to have any significant LGBT content were in 2003, "Postcards from No Man's Land" by Aidan Chambers and "My Heartbeat" by Garrett Freymann-Weyr (both books that I HIGHLY recommend). And to be sure there's not going to be a Printz-caliber book with LGBT content every year. But I think it's good that books that would otherwise slip through the cracks are going to be highlighted...

...And I would think so even if I didn't have a horse in this race. ;)

Comments

[hapaxnym.livejournal.com]

I am bumfuzzled -- first that Jerry Pinkney never won a Caldecott before 2010, and second that he was the first African American to do so. (for some reason I had thought that Ezra Jack Keats was a POC. What can I say?)

Second, I hope that this doesn't mean that good LGBTQ books get marginalized -- you know, "Oh, we don't have to risk the Printz on that one, it will get the Stonewall." Seriously, I had to fight with my admin to even include the Lambda awards on our web page of "prizewinners."

Thirdly -- sparkly lesbian disabled vampires? I would *so read that*!

/still holding out for the fic I commissioned last year, with gay vampire werepenguins/

[takumashii.livejournal.com]

It was a long time before I was disabused of the notion that Ezra Jack Keats was a POC. I still completely admire his books as art and literature, and I admire how he brought non-white, non-suburban/rural settings to picture books, while being kind of horrified that the era had more room for white people writing picture books about black urban life than black people writing picture books about black urban life.

That's been an issue with all of the diversity awards, hasn't it? I'm not actually a member of ALA and I've never served on an awards committee, but I've definitely heard people say that books by African-American authors have been overlooked for the Caldecott in the past because they could get a Coretta Scott King award.

The biggest issue, I think, is the idea that somehow it's only the gay kids who need gay books, and only the disabled kids who need books about disabled characters -- it seems to be rooted in an overly simplified bibliotherapy that suggests that the real purpose of YA literature is to help people feel better about their personal life problems, and the way to do that is through a book about exactly those same problems. The Printz committees have been good at championing YA literature as LITERATURE, as an aesthetic experience, rather than as therapy, but -- I think it's still hard to get away from feeling like "universal" literature is about straight white able-bodied people.