Jewell Parker Rhodes Closes Children’s Institute With Powerful Talk on Diversity

Author Jewell Parker Rhodes delivered a stirring closing keynote speech at the ABC Children’s Institute in Pasadena, California, last week, earning a standing ovation for her talk on the importance of diversity in children’s literature. Rhodes’ forthcoming young adult novel, Bayou Magic, will be published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in May.

“I know you’ve been dealing with diversity and promoting it forever,” Rhodes said to the booksellers in attendance, referring back to 1993, when she sent letters off to booksellers to request that they order her first book, Voodoo Dreams (Picador). “And you did,” she said, giving a shout-out to a host of indie booksellers from across the nation. “Independents started my career.”

But Rhodes’ journey to success as a writer was not simple. “I grew up feeling less than,” she told booksellers. Raised by her grandmother in a ghetto on the north side of Pittsburgh, “I lived in a hyper-segregated community and I didn’t see white people until I was five,” she said. “My grandmother took me on the bus, over the bridge to downtown Pittsburgh, and for the first time I saw the people who were on my book covers.”

Stories were Rhodes’ escape, but it wasn’t until she was a junior in college, when she discovered Gayl Jones’ Corregidora, that she understood that she, too, could be a writer. “I do believe that in not seeing myself in books, I almost missed my calling as a writer,” Rhodes said.

Later on, when she met her future husband, a tall, white man, Rhodes took pause, both in marrying him and having children with him. “It is indeed the content of the character that determines love. But just like nearly having missed my calling as a writer, in not seeing interracial couples mirrored, I almost missed my true love. I almost missed my children, too,” she said. The two have now been married for 30 years and have raised a son and a daughter together.

“Who gets published, what gets taught, is dominated by an excluding master narrative, as Toni Morrison calls it,” Rhodes said. “And this master narrative privileges white discourse as the imaginative realm, the imagined language of America.”

Rhodes called on publishers, teachers, writers, librarians, and booksellers to increase their efforts in making sure children are able to appreciate themselves as unique human beings by sharing with them literature that mirrors who they are and where they come from. “We must challenge the master narrative and replace it with a narrative of inclusivity,” she urged.

“All stories have power but that power is amplified when it mirrors the specificities of race, class, religion, gender, health — both physical and mental — and the myriad expressions of love and sexuality,” Rhodes explained. Because she saw herself in Corregidora, Rhodes came into being, she said, and found her voice. “I became empowered to write of my culture and share as any other writer would.”

When booksellers hand a book to a child, they are taking a direct role in influencing the future of America, Rhodes said, and booksellers have the power to put diverse books into the hands of children who urgently need to see their worlds reflected.

“Diversity isn’t about political correctness, nor is diversity a passing fashion; rather it is a significant struggle to see if America can fulfill its civil rights promises of inclusivity, of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. America’s story isn’t done,” said Rhodes.

Children’s literature should convey diversity through unique characters and their distinct and rich heritages and cultures. “Imagine mirrors to encourage all of us to be comfortable in our own skin. No one need feel less than because we are all included — not excluded — and everyone’s narrative is equally important as anyone else’s. The more narrative threads we add — the more rainbow threads, the diverse threads — the more American we become,” she said.