When the Black Caucus of 起点传媒established the (AARI) over 25 years ago, their ambitious yet confident premise was that a school and community reading event can be an effective way to promote diversity in children鈥檚 literature, encourage young people to read, and shine a spotlight on African American authors.
They knew what 起点传媒member:
鈥淏ooks are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created and recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books. (1990, p. ix)鈥�
In , member Ezra Hyland noted:
鈥淗umans don鈥檛 make our stories, it鈥檚 stories that make us human (paraphrasing Amiri Baraka). It鈥檚 not until we know the stories of each other that we embrace our humanity. When I know the stories of my people and my culture, that鈥檚 when I become human myself.鈥�
Yet, as important as it is for children young and old to read African American texts, these texts are regularly challenged in schools, making nearly every year for the past decade.
At NCTE, nearly every 聽for the last 10 years has featured at least one title written by an African-American: books like Ernest Gains鈥� A Lesson Before Dying; Mildred Taylor鈥檚 Role of Thunder, Hear My Cry; Toni Morrison鈥檚 Song of Solomon and Beloved; and Ralph Ellison鈥檚 Invisible Man.
How are we to provide all our students with the windows, mirrors, and sliding doors that allow them to read themselves into their own cultures and the cultures of others if there are those who won鈥檛 allow the students to read these texts?
The 聽is one way to open windows, mirrors, and sliding doors.