Illustration by Wenjia Tang)
You can look at the titles on the bookshelves in a home and gain some insights into a family’s core values. You could tell from my childhood bookshelves that we were a conservative, white Christian family. The books I read throughout childhood reflected that.
When I recall books I was drawn to as a child, I realize that I sought out books with strong women to whom I could relate: Karana, the survivor and warrior in “Island of the Blue Dolphins”; Jo, the witty “Little Women” heroine; the nature lover “Heidi”; and the intelligent and creative “Anne of Green Gables.”
Unfortunately, I received mixed and even some harmful messages about women based on what was on my childhood bookshelves. Many of the books I read were Christian in nature, which meant they were “clean” — no cursing, drinking, inappropriate romance and so on. Certainly, I respect my parents for being mindful of not exposing me to mature literature I may not have been ready for. But I also recognize that the books of my childhood were problematic in the way they portrayed their characters.
Stereotypical Roles
Protagonists in my childhood books were daughters of women who stayed home and baked bread while the boys and men went on adventures, attended college and pursued careers. Or they were women who needed saving, like the archetypal “damsel in distress.” Or they were, sadly, women who were blamed when a man “lusted” after them (one book I read talked about how girls should be careful not to adjust their clothing in front of men, lest a man start thinking inappropriate thoughts about them).
I saw no female scientists or mathematicians in my childhood books. No women breadwinners. No females who were professional athletes. No women who fell in love with and created lives with other women. No women who rejected a man’s creepy advances. (It was supposedly “romantic” if a boy pursued a girl instead of respecting when she said “no” — what an unhealthy relationship dynamic to illustrate for a child.)
In contrast, the books my husband and I buy our daughters intentionally feature women as leaders, as world changers, as thinkers, as whole people in and of themselves. Books like “Little Dreamers: Visionary Women Around the World,” by Vashti Harrison, and Joan Holub’s “This Little Trailblazer: A Girl Power Primer” offer our girls examples of revolutionary women. I want my girls to know it is not selfish for them to have a career, that it is not undesirable for them to have opinions, that there are role models for them whether they want to be artists or musicians or writers or doctors or scientists.
A Monochromatic World
As a child, I never saw any characters of color featured as the heroes of stories or in positions of leadership. Why was every Black character I remember reading about a slave? I don’t recall reading books by authors who were not white, meaning that stories about characters of color were often whitewashed.
We are trying to do better with our girls’ book collection. Some of our toddler’s favorites include books that feature nonwhite protagonists: Bea Birdsong’s “I Will Be Fierce,” Karen Beaumont’s “I Like Myself,” and “I Love My Hair,” by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley. Having these books in our home normalizes diversity and challenges us as parents to have conversations about white privilege, white supremacy and racism.
Traditional Families
Most of the families depicted in the texts of my childhood featured a working father and a stay-at-home mother. There were no families with two mothers or two fathers and few featured a single parent. It was rare to read about characters who were adopted or in foster care. The traditional family unit was the only one I saw, the only one that was normalized, and it was upheld as the ideal.
Embarrassingly, it wasn’t until years after leaving my parents’ house that I started to confront my own biases and homophobia, and I knew that I needed to do better for my children. “A Family Is a Family Is a Family,” by Sara O’Leary, and Todd Parr’s “The Family Book” allow us the opportunity to discuss how love creates a family and how not every family looks like ours.
I am stumbling through this parenting gig, making numerous mistakes, and I admit that our bookshelves still have a long way to go before they’re truly inclusive. I know we need more books that feature characters with disabilities and differences. We need more LGBTQ-friendly books. We need more books that star characters who are not from America. I still have many blind spots and numerous areas of growth, but like many parents, we are committed to building a more diverse home library so our girls can learn to love, accept and cherish those who are not like us. My husband and I want our girls to have a love of reading, just as our parents fostered it in us, but we also want our bookshelves to reflect that we value celebrating those who are different from us.
Christine Suders is a high school English teacher, writer and volleyball coach. She’s married to her high school sweetheart and is the mom of a tenacious toddler and an infant.
