Stock Your RA Pantry: Have an Honest Conversation Around the Question, "Why Read Diversely?"

I am back with Stock Your RA Pantry, a series of posts that address the things you can do from home to enhance your RA Services and Resources both now and going forward. And, these are all things any library worker can do, no matter what their official job at the library happens to be.

In my popular "#OwnVoices for All Readers: Incorporating EDI Values Into RA Service" program, I have a link to the Book Riot 5 part series entitled, "Why Read Diversely?" However, I don't usually  have more time during these programs than to say, "Go read that later." It is the nature of my job, that I am hired to spend a mere 60 minutes on a complex topic, so I do the best I can and provide more links so those who want to take a deeper dive.

And yet, now we have a little more training time, which is why I started this "Stock Your RA Pantry" series in the first place. Today, I want to explain a little more about this 5 part series and how you can use it to have a conversation among your staff because this series not only features POC book professionals discussing why reading diversely is important, but they also provide discussion questions, honestly tackling some of the most uncomfortable questions at the heart of this conversation, and they do it in a respectful and direct manner.

Here is a list of just some of the questions they address in the series:

• Where can I go to find authors from diverse backgrounds?
• Isn’t this publishing’s problem?
• Who counts as a “POC”? For example, does someone from Spain count? Or someone who is Jewish? And what’s up with the term “POC” anyway?
• What about other kinds of diversity? Isn’t reading diversely important in terms of politics, religion, and where an author is from, as well as race?
• What about books written by white people that are about POC? Do those “count”? And as an author, what if I’m uncomfortable writing a character who is a POC?
• How can I, as a non-POC person, relate to a story by/about a POC?
• Why does everything have to be political?
• So what’s a “good” percentage to aim for? And isn’t that just filling a quota?
• Am I a racist if I just don’t care?
• Why are diverse books specifically important in children’s literature?
• Isn’t it enough to have at least one PoC character?
• Why is it important to have PoC characters in stories that are about more than just their racial background?

As a team, either in departments or as a whole library [or even better, creating teams across departments and job levels to break into smaller group discussions so you can have a cross section of staff working on these issues together], you can read each part, the questions they pose, and the answers they provide, and then turn each part of the series into  a discussion where staff can share their thoughts, concerns, solutions, etc.... about what they read. Even the most "white" staff will have heard the point of view of people of color in this conversation simply by reading the articles.

The key is that this series is the jumping off point you need to have these conversations at your library. You don't need to hire a fancy EDI consultant to get the discussion going. Now, as you work  through an EDI focused program at your library, there will be a time when you might need professional help, but you do not need that to get the conversation started.

Unfortunately, I am seeing some libraries push back their equity, diversity, and inclusion training and the goals they have set because of the pandemic. However, I would argue that now it is even more imperative that we push EDI to the forefront. You could use these articles and questions to have an online discussion board conversation or to make them a topic at department meetings. These are conversations that every single staff member can and should participate in. This is training that is inexpensive and useful. This is an activity that should be happening everywhere.

And let's remember the importance of  including everyone on staff, not only because every level of staff, from the janitor to the director, make up your organization, but also because the hard truth is that support staff at a library are made up of more diverse people than the 88% white ladies that make up professional librarians [myself included]. To not include all staff is to ignore the entire point of having a discussion centered around equity, diversity, and inclusion.

Click here to access part 1 and then follow the links to read the entire series. In fact, please return to part 1 after you finish each part because only Part 1 has the direct links to all 5 parts [at the end of the post]

For more posts in the "Stock Your RA Pantry" series, click here.