Literature Is Another Front In The Identity Politics War

Bim Adewunmi on the perils of the written word:

The majority of the characters in the books I loved were white. There's just no getting away from this. Through them, I very quickly learned (thanks to the context, and then a dictionary) what it was to blush, or to "go purple with rage". I understood that these were not things I could do; my body would not allow it.

Well, my body won't allow me to fly, but it didn't stop me reading 'Peter Pan' or 'Superman' comics...

There was magic in these books too: faraway trees, enchanted woods and worlds beyond wardrobes and looking glasses. I rarely encountered a single character who was a person of colour, and when they were they were very often the bad guy – their non-whiteness a signal for their morally bankrupt insides. You notice it as a child, and even though you shrug it off it lingers at the back your mind, perhaps unconsciously.

Oh, does it? Or does a decade or so of 'gender and racial politics' implant it?

The Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie recalls writing about characters who played in snow and drank ginger beer.

Well, isn't that the point of fiction? To show you other worlds? To show you other cultures, other ways of viewing the world?

Years later, selling stories to kids, I noticed that regardless of genre, there was still a dearth of brown faces and voices in children's literature. We got our diktats from head office on what was on promotion "3-for-2" that week, or the movie tie-ins we were looking to push, but then we were given "free" displays to fill as we pleased. That's when the scramble would begin, trying to find books with a black or Asian character, and then even more stringently, one that was a lead, and written as a complex, non-stereotypical creature.

We pulled our selections from the main stocks and even with the most sympathetic of eyes, it was almost always a paltry haul, some of the sorriest-looking displays you ever saw. It was the same even (especially?) when we widened our remit to include picture books: I cannot tell you how many times I pressed Handa's Hen or Handa's Surprise into the hands of parents looking for some much-needed diversity for their children's bookshelves.

So the children weren't bothered, it was the parents?

But here's the thing – they sold. Every time we put up this feature wall – from picture books to teenage YA fiction via young readers' titles – we sold out of several of the books on display.

And that's great for booksellers. But I wonder how many of those books were read. And enjoyed? And how many were glanced at, then left on the shelf...

So I am very pleased to hear that the new children's laureate is Malorie Blackman.

Why? Because she's black.

And it seems that - like Obama - all that counts for Bim and her ilk is the colour of a person's skin, and not the content of their character. Martin Luther King must be spinning in his grave...

I hope her appointment, and her books, will serve to inspire more writers to power up their computers and finish their manuscripts. Equally importantly, I hope it will encourage publishers to push these stories as well. After all, what good are books if, as well as taking us to magical far-flung places, they do not showcase the everyday magic of the diverse world we live in?

Because it's never too early to plug that message!