Official Tumblr of We Need Diverse Books

Research on Diversity in Youth Literature (RDYL) is a peer-reviewed, online, open-access journal hosted by St. Catherine University’s Master of Library and Information Science Program and University Library. It will be published two times a year, with the first issue to be published on June 1, 2018.

For our inaugural issue, we welcome submissions by #OwnVoices (underrepresented persons writing about topics related to their lived experiences) from all disciplines engaging with Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s article “Mirrors, Windows, and Sliding Glass Doors” (1990). Almost thirty years after its initial publication, how have youth literature and the practices surrounding it (scholarship, publishing, programming, teaching, and circulation) responded to, taken up, and/or ignored Dr. Bishop’s framework and call to action?

Since that day, I’ve come back to this question often: what is the reason that we don’t have more portrayals, intersectional and inclusive portrayals, of disability and disabled people? Why are so many stories about disabled people written by our friends, families, and caretakers instead of by us? So many stories about disability only offer pity and inspiration porn, disabled people hailed as “inspirational” solely on the basis of our being disabled. A huge part of that reason is that the people who make choices—about what’s being published, how it’s framed, and who gets to tell disability stories—are often not disabled themselves. To that effect, abled writers, editors, and publishers treat disability as an “outsider” story.