“Most people don't realize how important librarians are. I ran across a book recently which suggested that the peace and prosperity of a culture was solely related to how many librarians it contained. Possibly a slight overstatement. But a culture that doesn't value its librarians doesn't value ideas and without ideas, well, where are we?”
Neil Gaiman

Monday, January 21, 2013

Fitting Into Racial Checkboxes




It’s Not All Black and White: Multiracial Youth Speak Out

By St. Stephen’s Community House


Publication date: Sept 1, 2012

I’ve often felt that we don’t talk about race enough in our society.  Despite the progress we’ve made since the civil rights era of the last century, we still have little check boxes on all of our job applications and standardized tests that attempt to classify us by the color of our skin.  The challenge is that so many of us don’t fit neatly into little check boxes.  We are a little of this and a little of that combined to make up a unique individual.  That is what I loved about this wonderful little book published by Annick Press.  It’s a collection of essays and poems by multiracial young people written during an ongoing project at the St. Stephen’s Community House in Toronto.  It is definitely a book for older teens due to the language, but it is a wonderful, raw, real, emotional, and insightful view of growing up with multiple racial identities.  For parents raising multiracial teens or school libraries, this is a terrific resource.