(What have you seen change positively and negatively since that time especially in Af Am [African American] children’s literature?) RWG: The biggest … - Rita Williams-Garcia

" "

(What have you seen change positively and negatively since that time especially in Af Am [African American] children’s literature?) RWG: The biggest change is being able to find African American lit for children and young people in libraries and bookstores. We’re here. We’re out on the shelves with our diverse stories. Characters don’t bear the weight of having to represent all African-Americans, or of meeting publishers’ black quota for the year. We have a presence, yet there’s still a need for even more stories and more writers to explore different genres. If you would have asked me twenty years ago about negativity in African American literature for young people, my lips would still be flapping. I would have begun with them not letting us tell our stories as we know them, and how they let people outside the race and culture write whatever they wanted and call it an African American story. That was one of my main gripes. “Why can’t I tell a story I know to be true, but ‘she’ can write this fake mess?” Ahem. I’ve calmed down over the years. My view has broadened as writing from the other side has gotten better. Truer. More and more I see that we are not a people unto our selves. We make up a good deal of the American experience, culture and expression. I feel both loss and gain. This is the way of forward movement. (2008)