Tag: one world

Categories
what's lit

Congresswoman Cori Bush, Ibram X. Kendi Discuss Empowerment Factor in Banned Books Movement

Missouri Rep. Cori Bush and Dr. Ibram X. Kendi (Image: Penguin Random House / Janice Checchio)

Missouri Rep. Cori Bush and anti-racism intellectual Dr. Ibram X. Kendi discussed the magnitude of banned books in Washington, D.C., for one of the busiest Banned Books Week observances in recent years.

Holding their conversation at the Anacostia location of the Busboys and Poets bookstore on Thursday, the congresswoman and the author of anti-racist thought focused on the history of banned books, particularly for Black Americans. The event was hosted by The Emancipator, a vertical of The Boston Globe focused on racial justice and equity founded by Ibram.

Earliest censorship in this country began with beating and killing enslaved people for learning to read or being suspected of knowing how to read, they said. That legacy continues with readers now seeing books that share accurate histories and personal narratives of experiences with race and gender being banned, they added.

Banned Books Week is held every year in mid-September, but over the last few years, book bans have been making headlines over more school districts and local libraries removing books, primarily targeted to kids, due to complaints from parents and other adults. Many of these books contain themes surrounding race, gender, and sexual orientation.

Almost half of distinct titles banned are young adult books at 49%, followed by picture books at 19% and middle grade books at 11%, according to PEN America‘s recent report on banned books.

Book bans occurred in 138 school districts in 32 states, meaning 5,049 schools with a combined enrollment of nearly 4 million students have been impacted by a book ban, PEN America found.

Cori and Ibram sat in front of bookshelves with books by authors of color as they emphasized the importance of books giving young people the ability to see worlds different from theirs and how removing access to books is hurting that freedom.

“Some people don’t want to speak about their story, and that’s OK,” the St. Louis congresswoman said. “For those who feel compelled to, when we tell our stories, other people are able to see themselves. Just like you, I didn’t see myself when they made us read Huckleberry Finn. I didn’t see myself when I was made to read The Odyssey, and books like that. I didn’t see myself, and there weren’t books presented before me where I did.”

Cori will tell her own story in The Forerunner: A Story of Pain and Perseverance in America, which will be on shelves Oct. 4. Knopf of Penguin Random House is publishing the political memoir.

Ibram is the author of How to Raise an Antiracist and Antiracist Baby, published by Penguin Random House imprints Kokila and One World. The power of readers seeing themselves in books brings equity in itself, he said.

“Books are treasures. And they’re not just sort of treasures that reveal wisdom,” he said. “They’re treasures for that person who isn’t able to, or doesn’t have the ability to, travel around the world. But they can travel around the world into time through books. It’s a democratizer.

“But I also think as you mentioned that there’s something beautiful about the power of seeing your own story in the mirror through a book, and I also see the differences,” adds the humanities professor and founding director of the Boston University Center for Antiracist Research. “There’s just something affirming. There’s just this connective tissue that allows human beings to connect.”

The conversation is available on YouTube.

Categories
book reviews

Book Review: ‘Detransition, Baby’ by Torrey Peters

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters explores the complexities of parenthood between two women and a man who unite in an effort to take care of a baby, but the closer they get, the more they convince themselves they’re making a mistake. 

Reese always wanted to be a mother. In fact, she acts as a mother figure in the New York City transgender community, taking in young trans women who remind her of herself when she first came to the city from the Midwest. Upon her arrival, she quickly became a go-to caretaker for children on the Upper East Side. She has the natural gift of taking care of others. One of the trans women she had taken under her wing was Amy, who returns in her life in a form she’s unfamiliar with. 

Ames is a marketing executive having a sultry fling with his recently divorced boss, Katrina. They soon realize they are expecting a baby. Katrina had a miscarriage during her marriage, so she’s nervous about the pregnancy. She’s also at the top of her game at work, and she’s unsure how a baby she’s having with a subordinate fits into her career plan post-divorce. Ames can’t believe he even impregnated a woman, but now that he has, he suggests bringing in an old friend to help parent the baby. 

When Reese sees Amy again, Amy is now known as Ames. Amy detransitioned from a trans woman back to a biological man. Ames explains how he thought years of taking hormones to live as a female would decrease his fertility. But now that a baby is coming, Ames wants to tap Reese to be a secondary mother and assist Katrina to raise the child. Reese always wanted to be a mother, and she feels her chances were dashed when she and Amy broke up. Now, who Reese still can’t believe is the Amy she used to love is offering the opportunity of motherhood.

Skeptical of the idea of becoming a mother by playing a third parent in raising another woman’s baby, Reese starts hanging out with Ames and Katrina to see if she can get onboard with the proposal. Katrina has questions and misconceptions of how Reese lives as a trans woman and how Ames lived as a trans woman. The clashes melt away once Reese and Katrina realize they are simply women who want to be mothers. It takes a village to raise a child. But when Katrina realizes why Reese and Amy broke up, she starts to rethink the concept of letting Reese play a mother and herself become a mother.

This is an eye-opening novel exploring a part of the New York City trans community rarely seen in mainstream media. Reports say that this book is one of the firsts written by a trans author to be distributed by a “big five” publisher. It’s refreshing to learn about how these fictional trans women feel they are competing with biological women to demonstrate their femaleness, including their capability and desire to become mothers. The author, who is a trans woman, spent time in the community to nail down the intricacies of the characters, their backgrounds, and their desires. 

The spectrum of characters represent different people who interact in the community. There is the trans person, the former trans person, and the cisgender, heterosexual person fighting their biases to accept someone they actually meet in real life who is trans. For Reese, her sex life is complicated with having committed lovers and secret lovers. The emotional struggle of identifying as female in a world that deidentifies her as not female makes her feel like she could never commit to a monogamous relationship long enough to raise a child with someone. For Ames, he detransitions soon after ending his relationship with Reese but still struggles on pinpointing what made him want to live as male again, especially when Reese pushes for answers. For Katrina, she is wrapping her brain around the fact she is having a baby with someone she didn’t know had lived as a woman for years, but her open-mindedness forces her to shake the anger and accept the perceived affection she’s receiving from Ames and now Reese. 

Overall, this novel again shows a community rarely magnified in the literary world. Pushing the boundaries that women who have penises also have desires to be mothers, and though it could be difficult to produce that child biologically depending on the partner, they will make a way to be mothers. Humankind, regardless of identities and circumstances, wants love, and this story shows the road for these characters finding that love unexpectedly with each other, though their inner demons try to destroy what they have. By the way, a TV series adaptation is in the works.

Categories
what's lit

From the Editor: Diversifying the #TBR List to Add More Books by Latina Authors

woman in white dress shirt and black pants lying on bed reading book
Photo by Los Muertos Crew on Pexels.com

For Banned Books Week, One World authors discussed what they wished they had learned in school. As in what they felt was missing from their yearslong education presumably from kindergarten to college. The conversation centered on the absence of racial and ethnic groups that make up the fabric of the United States and the context of discrimination against these groups. English and history classes became a target where authors said they didn’t recall reading works by entire groups of people, their voices missing from our curriculums.

We’re in the midst of National Hispanic American Heritage Month. From Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, we as a country are celebrating the histories, cultures, and contributions of Americans whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. The middle of September marks the independence days for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, and Chile.

I don’t read enough books by Latina authors. I started she lit to document my adventures of becoming a published author like blogging about the literary industry conferences and networking events I attended in Los Angeles. One factor I realized as a future author is the necessity to read current works. That’s when I noticed the diversity and inclusion conversation in book publishing. And that’s when I realized I read mostly books by men because that was what was marketed to me the most, recommended to me the most. When I started adding more books by women to my #ToBeRead list, I added books by Black women because as a Black woman who had attended predominantly White schools, I rarely had the opportunity to invest the time into reading books by women whose experiences I can identify with.

The disappointing realization that I need to read more books by Latinas occurred to me months ago while examining my book collection. Julia Alvarez’s In the Time of Butterflies and Yo! stared at me from my bookshelf, both fixtures that have been there for years, but the time to read them always slips away. I reread The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros a few years ago since we share Chicago roots, and I had to experience her part of Chicago again. The thick hardcover of Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés sits unread though I bought it last year to replace the paperback Jada Pinkett Smith gifted my class at Spelman College that later made its way to the jungles of Africa with my sister. It didn’t return intact.

As a challenge, I read three books in a row:

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Dominicana by Angie Cruz

Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo

Other content related to Latina authors you can find on she lit include:

Why the Latinx Literary Community Is Warning Us About ‘American Dirt’

Book Review: ‘Sabrina & Corina’ by Kali Fajardo-Anstine

‘The View’ Co-Host Sunny Hostin Gushes Over Debut Novel

Book Launch: ‘The Education of Margot Sanchez’ by Lilliam Rivera

I look forward to blogging about more works by Latina authors, and diversifying that list even more since many of the ones I have read recently are of Dominican descent. Like many readers open to broadening their perspectives, there is always room for improvement. Leave a comment below on the books you recommend by Latina authors 👇🏾

Categories
what's lit

One World Authors Mark Banned Books Week With Conversation on Self-Education

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

One World hosted an event Wednesday featuring some of the most celebrated and debated authors of our time for a conversation on what they wished they had learned during their youth.

In honor of Banned Books Week, the Random House imprint invited authors via pre-recorded video interviews such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Ibram X. Kendi, and Bryan Stevenson to mark the “annual celebration of the freedom to read” from Sept. 26 to Oct. 2.

“Banning books is something that’s happened for many, many years and then there’s also the long-standing practice of omitting entire histories and identities from school curriculum around this country, as well as the fact that many books simply never get published,” said event co-host Elizabeth Méndez Berry, the One World vice president and executive editor. “One World authors, many of them have actually dedicated their lives to writing the books that they were not able to read coming up.”

Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, said she learned how histories and cultures were wiped away from her schooling when she was younger.

“I didn’t remember if there were certain books my schools were prohibited from teaching us when I was a child, but I do know that there were entire histories, and peoples, that were simply erased,” she said. “I was taught about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, and how they were men who made their living off of human bondage, and that their primary occupation was that of being a slave owner.”

The New York Times journalist and Howard University professor also mentioned how Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption and other books have been banned from prisons. Helping place books in prisoners’ hands has become a growing civil rights issue with groups such as Noname Book Club starting a program to send books monthly to incarcerated readers.

Heather McGhee, author of The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together, said she didn’t learn about Bacon’s Rebellion until she was learning about labor history in her twenties. The rebellion, which occurred in 1676 ignited by colonists’ failure to steal Native American lands, resulted in the burning of Virginia’s capital of Jamestown and united White indentured servants and Black slaves.

“Once the rebellion was crushed, the colonial plantation elite decided they needed to drive a permanent wedge between White and Black workers to keep them from ever joining forces against them,” she said. “Again, the post-Bacon laws in large part created the system of racial hierarchy that we take for granted as part of our history.” 

For modern history, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning author Cathy Park Hong said she didn’t recall learning in school about the Chinese Exclusion Act, and Japanese Americans living in World War II internment camps seemed like a “footnote.”

“In all of my English classes, I don’t recall reading a single novel or short story, or even a poem by an Asian American author,” she said. “Because of this, it took me a long time to realize I had permission to be a writer, because for so long, I didn’t think I had a place in American literature because I had no role models. In my history classes, too, I learned very little, if anything, about Asians in America.” 

Race and ethnicity in America wasn’t the only theme. Golem Girl: A Memoir author Riva Lehrer discussed her experience growing up disabled in the 1960s. She said though she went to a top school that wouldn’t put her on the path to becoming a sweatshop worker, there weren’t many discussions on what path she should take.

“What we didn’t get was any idea of what we could be in the world,” said Riva, a queer painter. “We got no encouragement to dream, to think about wanting be an engineer or a doctor or a botanist or all the things that would have been open to people back then at a normal school.”

Banned Books Week started in 1982 after the surge in more books being challenged by schools, libraries, and bookstores around the U.S. The top 10 challenged books of last year can be found here. The event is on YouTube.

Categories
what's lit

The Women Headlining Jay-Z’s New Random House Imprint Roc Lit 101

Hip-hop mogul Jay-Z’s Roc Nation and publisher Random House have joined forces to create Roc Lit 101, a one-of-a-kind imprint promising to deliver entertainment literature that’s already putting women in the forefront as leaders and creatives.

Roc Lit 101 will be overseen by Jana Fleishman, the executive vice president of Roc Nation, and Chris Jackson, the publisher and editor-in-chief of One World, a Random House imprint that promotes diverse writers.

“The goal of Roc Lit 101 is to provide a creative outlet for acclaimed wordsmiths and artists to share their visions with new audiences,” said Fleishman in the Random House announcement. “There are so many untold stories and we consider it a true privilege to be able to amplify diverse voices while exploring the uncharted worlds that are about to open to us.”

The inaugural Roc Lit 101 list includes former Vibe editor and author Danyel Smith’s Shine Bright, in what the publisher is calling “a brilliant weave of memoir, criticism, and biography that tells the story of black women in music as the foundational story of American pop.” Baseball pitcher CC Sabathia also has a memoir slated for release in summer 2021, along with Danyel’s book.

Roc Lit 101 plans for fiction and nonfiction works across genres from rappers Lil Uzi Vert, Meek Mill, Fat Joe, and Yo Gotti.

Jay-Z, legally known as Shawn Carter and Beyoncé’s husband, is not the first rapper to form an imprint to feature diverse voices. In 2018, British rapper Stormzy announced a collaboration with William Heinemann imprint under Penguin Random House where he curates the selection for #Merky Books imprint. Penguin Random House is the parent of Random House.