In the NYT Sunday Review section of March 16th, Walter Dean Myers, the respected children’s book author, asked the question, “Where are the people of color in children’s books?” He wrote that as a child he read everything and “every book was a landscape upon which I was free to wander.” But then as a black teenager, he realized that the characters he read about were not him. Books did not become his enemies, but were became like friends with whom he not longer felt comfortable.
He eventually dropped out of school and joined the Army. His post-military days were a “drunken stumble’ with him merely holding on. A life altering experience occurred when he read James Baldwin’s story “Sonny’s Blues.” He didn’t love the story but was moved by it. The story took place in Harlem and was about black people who were like himself. During a chance meeting with Baldwin, Myers was able to tell him how much the story meant to him.
Today upon reflecting on Baldwin’s story, Myers says that he recognized himself in it and it “validated” his existence as a human being because “someone understands who I am.”
When he began to write in 1969, children of color or children from the lower economic classes were not represented in literature. What he wanted to do when he wrote about poor inner-city children was to “make them human in the eyes of readers and, especially, in their own eyes.” Books transmit values. “They explore our common humanity.” What will black children think when they are not represented in books? Where are black children going to get a sense of who they are and who they can become?
Book publishers must, says Myers, go beyond the story of slavery and the civil rights movement. Children’s literature must speak to black children of adventure, curiosity, imagination and personal growth. There is so much more that has to be done.