THETo potato bike from Élise Gravel. The complicated life of Léa Olivier by Catherine Girard-Audet or Amos Daragon by Bryan Perro. So many well-known children’s books from here, and very well sold. Books to which are now joined Nish Isabelle Picard, How to transform a banana on a bike by Jerry Dougherty and Ravy Puth and Kids coloring by Simon Boulerice and Paule Thibault, where Léon, Éloïse, Alex and Ajala live and run in adventures that bounce back to Matimekush or Montreal. The faces of Quebec children’s literature are slowly becoming more diverse, like the faces of Quebec children. Color portrait.
“When I was little, like Black, I couldn’t really find any representation resembling me in children’s books,” recalls the artistic director of Kata editions, Anne-Laure Jean. Except in African tales or in collections of legends. But never anyone who, like me, has current problems and a normal life here. “
Historically created and produced for the most part by whites, children’s literature here is increasingly adapting to the diversity of small readers. Publishing houses have been working there for a long time – Soleil de minuit, Isatis and Scholastic on a Canadian scale -, others more recent specialize in it – Hannenorak, Kata, Dent-de-lion and Mémoire encrier, this last present for a lease and which is not very young.
Other well-known houses have taken, with a little delay, a marked turn in recent years towards diversity, such as Fonfon (“It’s not a very fluid turn, but we try it as much as possible”, says Véronique Fontaine) or Les Malins. And publishers, again, do not see the need to change their way of doing things, like Robert Soulières. “We don’t place orders; if a manuscript with diversity comes to us, it happens to us. And that’s about once a year. At Soulières éditeur, we don’t care who wrote the book: we publish if it’s good. “
A white market?
At different speeds and with different visions, Quebec literature “evolves quite quickly,” says Mr.me Jeans. It takes time, and that’s normal, to get the point of view of the whole of society. The National Association of Publishers (ANEL) founded a committee on cultural diversity a year ago. Les Malins editions have a seat there, with Mémoire encrier, VLB, Dominique et cie, Les Herbes rouges, Druide, Lux, Dent-de-lion, Le Quartanier and Les 400 coups.
“We still have to work harder to sell so much a book with racialized realities,” indicates the publisher of Les Malins, Marc-André Audet. There are ideas that are deeply rooted in the commercial imagination of books that sometimes create resistance. I do not experience this resistance in the imagination of the readers ”, indicates the one who saw the series Nish and My crumpled paper life by Elizabeth Baril-Lessard rise among the best-selling books.
“The real reason that Les Malins has looked at the issue of diversity,” explains Mr. Audet, “is that, out of my five partner-owners, two are women from visible minorities. Internally, 33 to 40% of our employees come from diversity. What we saw in our catalog was much whiter than what we see in our offices. “
Bring albums from Haiti
This shortfall in representativeness, between the people of Quebec and the characters in the books, is what prompted Gabriella Kinté Garbeau to open, four years ago, the Racines bookstore, to give “a fair place to authors. and racialized histories ”, and specifically black. To find enough children’s books to put on its shelves, it must also bring in books from Haiti or the Caribbean, which is not easy in times of pandemic, she says. Because Quebec production, and even Canadian production, is not enough.
Mme Kinté Garbeau illustrates his point by talking about the potato characters found in successful children’s books. “Everyone loves talking potatoes. My son also loves books where trucks talk, she gives as examples. How is it that I have trouble finding a Quebec album with a little black boy for him, when there are plenty of them with cats, pink monsters or trucks as heroes? »Asks the bookseller.
The ANEL committee has already determined areas for change. “There are ways to improve diversity in three specific places,” says Audet. In our stories, in our authors and in our teams. In stories, it’s easy to do concrete things quickly. We now emphasize this to our authors, when all their characters have the same skin color. For Véronique Fontaine, of Fonfon editions, it is already not so simple.
“There is often a very strong and important attachment between an author and his character. Often the author was inspired by someone he knows, like his son, someone who looks like him. Even arguing to get more girls in a story is tricky and complex. ” For meme Fontaine, it is by opening up more to racialized authors that the stories and characters of diversity will increase.
Freedom of expression and writing
And here too, everything is in the nuances. “Because it is essential that all authors can write what they want, as they feel,” says M.me Fountain. Expecting a diversity author to write a diversity story is objectification, and that’s not what you want to do at all. “In addition, underline Mme Fontaine and M. Audet, upon receipt of a manuscript in which only the name of the author and the title appear, it is difficult to detect the voices of diversity. One can be baptized Tremblay or Picard as much as Thuy… The fear of making cultural appropriation, or of being accused of it, was also named by several of the speakers as an obstacle to the inclusion of diversity in the stories .
Anne-Laure Jean, Gabriella Kinté Garbeau, Marc-André Audet and Véronique Fontaine agree that publishing houses must expand their networks to reach new authors and illustrators who do not imagine that their voices can be hosted in Quebec publishing houses. Kata and Les Malins are turning to training to increase their pool of creators: we want to find authors or illustrators other than literature, or not specialized in youth, and help them in the new context.
The Canadian branch of Scholastic Publishing, of American origin, for its part makes specific calls for texts. “We want to know and find them, these authors of diversity,” explains Vice-President Chantale Lalonde. “Scholastic Canada is currently interested in unpublished manuscripts written by authors from underrepresented communities, including black, Indigenous, color and disability authors, LGBTQIA2S + authors, and authors who identify with other marginalized groups, ”the website read.
Draw a portrait
The hardest challenge, according to the publisher of Les Malins, is to increase diversity in the editorial teams. “Most publishers in Quebec have a very small team of two and a half people, made up of a girl, her boyfriend then of his best friend, who have worked passionately among themselves for years, he barely caricatures. It is not true that tomorrow they will hire 25% of diversity employees. “
In order to have a precise idea of the composition of the Quebec publishing world, the Société de développement des entreprises culturelle recently launched a research mandate. The goal ? Make an inventory and an analysis of the challenges of the representation of cultural diversity in the book sector, cultural periodicals and the literary milieu.