CCBC-Net Archives
Re: Cultures and books as bridges OR If beautiful, not true, If true, not beautiful
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From: Christine Taylor-Butler <kansascitymom_at_earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2014 12:40:43 -0600
Who, pray tell, is the target audience?
And doesn't this speak to the laziness that is encouraged if we always have to make a "trade-off" in favor of accessibility to children of the so-called dominant culture?
The whole point of diversity is to expose students to other cultures as they are - not as watered down to increase the comfort level of a white child. And it is precisely the "changes" and "shifts" in voices in editorial that sometimes scrub out the nuances that many of my colleagues are talking about. An odd circumstance since the "indigenous" African American isn't so foreign as to be in accessible. We're not talking about anything near as problematic as the syntax and language of Alice Walker's The Color Purple (which was published intact) for example. But more often having to get past a majority editor or agent who doesn't recognize a pattern and substitutes their own.
And how is that working out, by the way?
I would offer the following:
When all else fails, what is left is often the solution.
Hence, perhaps there would be more bestsellers if the industry stopped doing more of what it is doing right now. And spent more time trying something closer to what the audience is asking for. Fewer tradeoffs might actually create better results….Christine
On Feb 28, 2014, at 12:03 PM, Charles Bayless wrote:
> My point is that it is highly subjective and that it often entails challenging trade-off decisions between being true to the original versus being accessible to the intended audience.
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 2014 12:40:43 -0600
Who, pray tell, is the target audience?
And doesn't this speak to the laziness that is encouraged if we always have to make a "trade-off" in favor of accessibility to children of the so-called dominant culture?
The whole point of diversity is to expose students to other cultures as they are - not as watered down to increase the comfort level of a white child. And it is precisely the "changes" and "shifts" in voices in editorial that sometimes scrub out the nuances that many of my colleagues are talking about. An odd circumstance since the "indigenous" African American isn't so foreign as to be in accessible. We're not talking about anything near as problematic as the syntax and language of Alice Walker's The Color Purple (which was published intact) for example. But more often having to get past a majority editor or agent who doesn't recognize a pattern and substitutes their own.
And how is that working out, by the way?
I would offer the following:
When all else fails, what is left is often the solution.
Hence, perhaps there would be more bestsellers if the industry stopped doing more of what it is doing right now. And spent more time trying something closer to what the audience is asking for. Fewer tradeoffs might actually create better results….Christine
On Feb 28, 2014, at 12:03 PM, Charles Bayless wrote:
> My point is that it is highly subjective and that it often entails challenging trade-off decisions between being true to the original versus being accessible to the intended audience.
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Received on Fri 28 Feb 2014 12:43:59 PM CST
