A Few Thoughts on Diversity

Reading the ALSC White Paper set me thinking about some of the things I've been trying to do in the library I work at. As previously mentioned, my daughter is mixed ethnicity. I am Caucasian and my husband is Hispanic. In every library I have worked in, I have fought with the children's librarians to try and make programming and collections more equitable for those who speak Spanish in our community.

In the library district I work in, it is common practice to have a separate Spanish or World Language collection. These include books for all age ranges, fiction and nonfiction. Often, the collection is hidden away somewhere out of sight and the Spanish children's books are never placed near the English ones. In the library I worked in previously, I finally convinced the staff to move the Spanish children's books into the regular children's section, but it took almost a year. I also managed to successfully lobby for multilingual story times since that particular branch has some Spanish-speaking staff. I'm happy to say that their first bilingual story time is next week. My daughter and my husband will be attending.

At my current library, things are much less forward thinking. Although the children's section has a lot of extra space, the librarian in charge of the World Language section doesn't see the need to change anything. She's even opposed to the idea of adding adequate signage properly identifying the section. I've tried to explain how marginalized it makes my husband feel when he tries to get a book for our daughter and has to go to a poorly-organized, ill-maintained shelf buried behind the reference section. She doesn't get it, and the library manager doesn't seem to care either.

When it comes to the general children's collection, I find that most of the books featuring Hispanic characters are about peasants living in little pueblos and making tortillas. It angers me that my daughter can't see herself in what she reads. The only children's book I've seen that accurately depicts the Hispanic American experience for children is Niño Wrestles the World by Yuyi Morales. Our library recently hired a new book selector, who happens to be a person of color. I'm hoping her perspective helps broaden the collection a little bit.