Against Book Bans: Mirrors and Windows

Mirrors. 

Windows.

Lonely. Alone.

Cover the mirror. Your place is clear.

Close a window. So much you won’t know.

Mirrors. Windows.

A child needs both.

Rudine Sims Bishop, the mother of multicultural children’s literature was the first to explain that, in order to get a balanced view of the world every child needs mirrors and windows. 

Mirrors provide children with a view of their own lives. Whereas windows provide glimpses of the lives of others. A balanced literary diet includes both for all children. 

One of my favourite children’s authors, Grace Lin, talks about this in her TED Talk. She writes the books she needed as a child. Her books, and her knowledge of children’s literature, are evident she has done tremendous things to diversify children’s literature.

As a Taiwanese-American Lin did not see herself reflected in literature or other media growing up. In preparation for Lin’s Solidarity interview I was struck by Lin’s story about THE WIZARD OF OZ  and her desire to play Dorothy in the school play. Other children told her that Dorothy wasn’t Chinese. 

To my autistic brain there’s no good reason Dorothy couldn’t or shouldn’t be Chinese in the school play or anywhere else. 

I’ve long believed that more diverse casting can revive a story that might otherwise feel stale. 

Yet, whenever actors of colour are cast there is an outcry from those who believe the Little Mermaid can’t be Black; as if that is the part of the story that strains credulity. 

When Lin was growing up, diverse books were seldom published in American and Canadian markets. Now these beautiful books exist in the world and are actively suppressed through book banning and baseless accusations of Critical Race Theory by those who, if pressed, would be unlikely to offer anything approximating a definition of CRT. 

While some banned books become bestsellers due to the controversy, what’s more common is something School Library Journal calls a soft ban in which books likely to raise the ire of censors are simply not purchased or promoted. In a time where wonderful authors of colour are writing and publishing so many books we need there are those who would like to actively prevent children from accessing them. This hurts everyone as every child needs both mirrors into their own lives and windows into the lives of others.

Mirrors.

Mirrors, of course, represent books in which children see themselves reflected. Some children have always had a lot of these books. Guess which children? 

An exhaustive study of the works of Dr. Seuss, the OG children’s author, noted that 98% of his human characters are white. The 2% who are of colour? Entirely male. And, as one might imagine given the recent Seuss debacle, the representation, when it exists at all, is steeped in Orientalism, othering the few BIPOC “characters.” 

In the entire Seuss oeuvre there is not one character, even incidental, who is both female and non-white. No wonder Lin and so many children like her didn’t feel represented growing up. 

Windows.

Windows give children, and the adults reading with them, views of the lives of those different from their own. As much as some children are missing mirrors that reflect their lives another group is given literature that reflects them and only them.

Imagine what that does to a child. And how narcissistic that child might become as they grow into an adult who believes that their perspective is the primary perspective. Perhaps the only perspective that matters. They are taught that their perspective is unbiased when, in fact, it is uncritical. 

Lonely. Alone.

This is a lonely way to live. It robs everyone of the joy that comes from connecting with those different from ourselves. It limits the capacity for empathy. It’s damaging and isolating. Monochromatic books do no one any favours. 

Reading books that reflect oneself and only oneself damages even those it reflects. It gives them a distorted view of the world. 

I hear folks talk about how they grew up with a problematic literary canon and turned out fine. Somehow, I never hear this from anyone who turned out fine. 

Cover the mirror. 

Some children are not able to see themselves in literature. I was, almost, one of those children. I’m queer, autistic, and multiply disabled. But I was also a little blonde girl. And, given that those characters tended to lack depth, I might have been any one of them. Only slightly more rumpled. I could hide in plain sight in a picture book as I did in the real world.

Many children–nearly all children of colour and especially non-males of colour–never used to see themselves in books. Not even as an under-developed sibling-character. What are we telling a child when their reflection is absent? What does it say about their place in the world?

If a child doesn’t see themselves in books and other media, they may feel that the world has no place for them. 

If they do see themselves in media but the images they see are dehumanizing to people who look like them – when indeed they are present at all – how can we expect them to feel? 

Not cherished, not loved. Not the way we, as caring adults, would like them to see themselves.

Your place is clear.

When books that humanize BIPOC characters are deemed political; and yet people are quick to defend the Seuss oeuvre as universal when really it’s specifically white and largely male, we are saying that white people are the people who are people. Even if we’re not saying this with our words. We are saying it with our actions. And so this is the education our children receive.

Close a window. So much you won’t know.

We all lose when we erase the diversity of the human experience. How else can I explain how groundbreaking it was when I first read Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow’s, Mommy’s Khimar? I was already in my mid-30s. It was the first time I realized that a Muslim woman’s head scarf might be an object of wonder for her young child. Because of course it would be.

I have learned so much from picture books. A good picture book, and these days there are many, many good picture books, is a rich text. Pictures and words work together and are richly evocative windows into lives lived we cannot even imagine.

Mirrors. Windows.

The books I learn the most from are those that many would like to ban. What does it tell us about the people banning them? Why do they consider it dangerous to humanize the lives of others?

Each child needs BOTH.

Children don’t know what they don’t know. But we are adults. We do know. 

And when we know better, as Maya Angelou said, we do better. And that is why we are here together, in Solidarity, learning together so we can help the very young become the best possible versions of themselves.