By Allison Jeanne Alcéna
Children’s literature writers are often encouraged to pen the stories they wanted to see when they were younger. In my case, I never saw my whole self in children’s books, although I sometimes saw parts. As an adult, I now understand that what was being reflected back to me were the privileged parts of my identity, allowing me to see pieces of myself in the slew of middle-class, white characters that were on the market. And because I saw certain parts of myself in books, I then felt like those must be the most important parts of me. However, the result was a lack of role models for two important identities I’ve always had: being Black and queer. Now, being a writer myself, I put a great deal of thought into how to juggle the marginalization and privileges I embody, both on the page and in my day-to-day life.
While there is more to me than my identities, I define myself in these ways because, in the USA, we live in a country that views people based on social strata and summarizes us as such. And I am made up of these things. I’m marginalized by certain parts of my identity that are not valued by the society I live in. This includes being Black, being queer, and being gender nonconforming. People that hold one of or several of those identities don’t traditionally hold power. However, I also have privileges in that other parts of my identity give me value in my society, like being thin, middle-class, light-skinned, being a citizen of the USA, etc. I didn’t work for nor earn those things. Lastly, I have cultural capital—a set of social assets that allow for me to move through social standings—in that I have a college degree, I can code-switch, and I’m familiar enough with wealthy, white American culture. Again, there’s more to me than these identities (I’m left-handed and have a cat, for example), but as society lets me know on a regular basis, how I’m seen first is as a combination of power and oppression, and thus I often think of myself in that way.
So that being said, many parts of myself are reflected in young adult literature. As a teen, I had things in common with other suburban, academically inclined, college-bound youths. However, they weren’t dealing with some of the same things I was at twelve-thirteen-fourteen years old, like what it’s like to be a young Black person, being queer as a young Black person, having questions about gender as a young Black person. I could empathize with Margaret questioning God, and even just a little bit with Holden Caulfield’s misadventures, as much as I couldn’t stand him. But still, I felt that something was missing. Despite the similarities between these characters and myself, I was always left feeling less than. Whiteness, the resounding factor in so many young adult texts I read, was something unattainable to me, however much proximity I had to it.
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After inevitably attending college, I got more of a vocabulary about what I was seeing both in books and in my world: structural racism, making straightness the default through heteronormativity, and not representing marginalized folks by invisibilizing them. And thanks to that college experience and subsequent degree in English Literature and Black Studies, I also have been granted more access to that literary world than ever before—more access than a lot of Black kids get to have. Through all of my experiences and what I represent, I’m left to wonder how to leverage the access and privilege that I have (since that’s not going anywhere), all the while keeping in mind the ways that my Blackness, queerness, and their intersections are both entry points and limitations in the literary sphere. My focus remains on how to take the cultural capital that I possess and how to disperse the information I have, and bring even more young, Black queer people into those spaces.
And leveraging that power—decentralizing white supremacist notions of worthiness and exclusion—is no easy task. Our society is designed for us to value those with privilege and keep our own resources close. I would be remiss not to point out that it is a lifetime’s worth of self-work to counter how we’ve been socialized, and it’s a daily undertaking to actively and willingly strip ourselves of the things we’re taught to hold dear. I’m trying not to fall into the realm of those with privilege denouncing or denying their own privilege. Rather, I want to acknowledge my privileges and think of how to move forward with them, since most of them are permanent. Fortunately, many folks across different identities are striving to level the playing field, providing examples of how to mobilize one’s privilege and platform.
I want to find a solution to this disparity of power that decenters children—the very folks we’re supposedly tasked with writing for. The strategy that I’m most passionate about right now is to give Black kids the tools to share their own stories, because who knows them better than they know themselves? As much as I felt both seen and invisible as a kid, I was also (more cultural capital here) encouraged to share my own stories, and there I had a place to craft more of what I wanted and needed to see. I want to leverage my power by sharing my knowledge of the text with Black kids, encouraging them to share their own stories, and understanding that I have just as much to learn from children as I have to teach. That applies tenfold to queer Black kids, who deserve to know that their experiences are normal, valid, and important. And as an adult with access to the literary sphere, it becomes my responsibility to advocate for those stories to be shared and valued just as much if not more than adult, white authors’ stories. Again, the stories of queer Black kids are normal, valid, and important. They’re worthy of attention and praise. They should be treated with respect.
In the last couple of years, one thing has remained true for me: all Black stories need to be shared. When created by Black authors, stories about Black life need to be disseminated to Black children to reflect the real-world diversity of Black experiences. And multiply that several times over when adding how other identities intersect with Blackness, like queerness.
To the folks navigating their own light-skinned tears as I am and always will be: write it, anyways. And be careful. Be thoughtful. As we strategize on best practice, let’s keep a goal in mind: centering Black kids, however we can. In my ideal world, children write the literature that they want to read and are given space to do so, so there isn’t this mediation process on the part of adults. But until then, as adults, as folks with privilege, however that may coincide with our marginalization, we must come to terms with our roles as gatekeepers of children’s literature.
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Allison Alcéna is a writer, educator and lover of all things Black. Allison hails from Spring Valley, New York and holds a Bachelors of Arts in English Literature and Black Studies from Swarthmore College. You can reach Allison at allisonalcena@gmail.com, on their website and on Instagram and Twitter.
