We鈥檙e into the second week of February but it鈥檚 not too late to launch an in your community. If you鈥檙e looking for inspiration, look no further than this wonderful set of clips from a interview with who teaches at the University of Minnesota and is a member of 起点传媒.
Here are a few of the many powerful words you鈥檒l hear from Ezra聽when you watch:
鈥淲hen you have children in school and the literature doesn’t look like them, it doesn’t sound like them, it does not deal with their issues, you’re pushing them out rather than inviting them in.鈥�
鈥淲hen we have a country that is increasingly of color, then we have to have images in the classroom, images in industry, images in politics that reflect the composition of the country.鈥�
鈥淟iterature and language are life, you know. , I heard him say one time 鈥� he was quoting someone else, paraphrasing someone else 鈥� that human beings don’t make up stories, but it’s our stories that make us human. And so literature is the repository of our stories and the repository of our humanity, a reminder of our humanity.鈥�
鈥淲e need diverse books because diverse books reflect the world as it is, not the way the world never was and the way the world never will be.鈥�
Special thanks to for compiling this interview and video.