You can't have too many books featuring people of color, just like you can't have too many books featuring white people.
Interpretation
Diversity in literature is essential, and representation matters for all races.
Jacqueline Woodson emphasizes the importance of inclusive literature, arguing that just as it is valuable to have a range of stories featuring white characters, it is equally vital to have a variety of stories that represent people of color. This statement advocates for a balanced and diverse literary landscape where all voices are heard and celebrated, promoting understanding and empathy across different cultures.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of diverse voices in literature.
'Brown Girl Dreaming' was a book I had a lot of doubts about - mainly, would this story be meaningful to anyone besides me? My editor, Nancy Paulsen, kept assuring me, but there were moments when I was in a really sad place with the story for so many reasons. It wasn't an easy book to write - emotionally, physically, or creatively.
In the midst of observing the world and coming to consciousness, I was becoming a writer, and what I wanted to put on the page were the stories of people who looked like me.
Sometimes you do have to laugh to keep from crying. And sometimes the world feels all right and good and kind of like it's becoming nice again around you. And you realize it, and realize how happy you are in it, and you just gotta laugh.
I don't want anyone to walk through the world feeling invisible ever again.
The strength of my mother is something I didn't pay attention to for so long. Here she was, this single mom, who was part of the Great Migration, who was part of a Jim Crow south, who said, 'I'm getting my kids out of here. I'm creating opportunities for these young people by any means necessary.'
I would have written 'Brown Girl Dreaming' if no one had ever wanted to buy it, if it went nowhere but inside a desk drawer that my own children pulled out one day to find a tool for survival, a symbol of how strong we are and how much we've come through.
Given the way universities work to reinforce and perpetuate the status quo, the way knowledge is offered as commodity, Women's Studies can easily become the place where revolutionary feminist thought and feminist activism are submerged or made secondary to the goals of academic careerism
To be ignorant of the lives of the most celebrated men of antiquity is to continue in a state of childhood all our days.
It is easy to get used to the morning news, habituated. But don't. The morning news is yours to alter.
We have the most prolonged adolescence in the history of mankind. There is no other society that requires so many years to pass before people are grown up ... Adolescence is nurtured and prolonged by educational processes and by industry that has found a bonanza in embracing the adolescent population and fortifying 'adolescent values.' This prolongation of adolescence robs the country of the population group having the most risk takers, and the highest ideals.
Good history is good story-telling. And good story-telling demands empathy; it requires understanding different actors, differing motivations, competing goals.
A child, from the time he can think, should think about all he sees, should suffer for all who cannot live with honesty, should work so that all men can be honest, and should be honest himself.
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