Change and Transition: Here We Go, 2026

we inevitably experience transitions at different periods in our lives. My oldest grand girl seems to have recently moved into what is something like late childhood. She seems much more contemplative and she’s taking fewer risks, she’s less likely to try something just for the novelty of it, but more likely to try what really appeals to her.

I’m a bit (!) older than her and I’ve been experiencing a transition, too. My process seems to need a lot of attention, patience, and introspection for me to understand where I’m going with all of this. Maybe the transition in me seems so profound because it’s happening at the same time that this country is in the midst of social and political changes that are centering ideas that are antithetical to what I believe.

Because of all of this, my work in youth literature is definitely evolving. The collective work of Black librarians has always changed with the times and much of this process is documented in the Handbook of Black Librarianship. I work as part of that legacy.

The way I articulate representation in youth literature is progressing from me considering equity and inclusion expressed through representation to being work that nurtures literacies that embrace communal storytelling. This means empathetically finding ways to build and sustain alliances that support those who have been disenfranchised; working in safe spaces; building in a community of care, and really trying to bring love into what I say and do. Sustaining alliances is really challenging work, but it begins by taking the time to know and care for individuals and building from there.

Even in our libraries, if we were working to become places that diversified staff and our collections by better representing LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC people then, in addition to that, we continue doing the work by being a community of care. Considering our young people, what are they seeking? Is their hunger for information, food, attention, or for ways to express themselves? We know they still need the stories that are theirs, and we’ll need to be subversive in our fight to resist the bans. Libraries can address or community’s needs and when we do, young people will remember these important institutions as the havens that they are.

My work in public online spaces has provided for collective participation through the sharing of ideas, concepts, books, and activities that are part of the library community. But, I think as my conversations have shifted from public conversations on social media to private talk that is based in connecting, empathizing, and sharing materials and information that I’ve been doing the work to meet today’s urgent anti-racist, anti-homophobic and anti-ableist needs in a new and limited way. Do we dare to continue to do this publicly? I’ve noticed that the criticisms of book lists that lack diversity or of books with misrepresentations, biases, and homophobia no longer get as much attention online. Can’t we simultaneously expect marginalized stories to remain in libraries at the same time we examine how stories situate young minds? And, can I (I—me personally) do this by calling in rather than calling out?

Representation still matters.

I think good public libraries have always been spaces for communal storytelling literacies because libraries are spaces where people gather to interact with information, to make sense of it, and to create new information products. Of course, libraries house books, archives, speakers, and book clubs, but they also house community mapping projects, local history storytelling walks and murals, community seed gardens, printers, and community theaters. They can bring together people of varying ages, cultures and experiences to commune over ways to resist, evolve, and create. If we’re about community building then we embrace diverse, multicultural, and multigenerational members of our communities and their stories. We consider cultural and community literacies; participatory literacies; oral storytelling literacies; Indigenous and decolonial literacies; place-based literacies; multimodal literacies; and critical and counter-narrative literacies. These communal storytelling literacies offer transformative ways to read and navigate our world so we can sustain our communities. Our communities are building blocks of well, everything.

Libraries should give young people nurturing environments where they’ll take the risk to ask a question, share an opinion and learn new ideas. I know there are many who don’t want young people thinking or asking questions or reading things that prompt them to think for themselves. But as books continue to be challenged, we have to continue to find ways teach all the literacies that are necessary simply to survive because these literacies will provide ways to challenge narrow mindedness and this is critical when stories are no longer as representational as they should be.

In a recent article, writer Shannon Mattern reminds us that libraries index, archive, and provide access to the information that communities hold in common, and she continues on to describe how that information is used by community members to create important information products. Unfortunately, that good work is threatened in library land. Government cuts and political actions have threated services that provide access to a wide spectrum of information whether it be LGBTQIA+ stories and authors, interlibrary loan materials, or online databases that libraries can no longer afford. Libraries that care will find ways to resist and to evolve by embracing new literacies based in practices and methodologies that are proven ways to navigate this new world order.

Marginalized voices matter more than ever. What if libraries continue incorporating relevant ways to empower and uplift? Including marginalized voices is how we continue to build communities. I can’t say it enough: marginalized voices matter more than ever. This is one small example that’s been sticking with me lately. So many are proclaiming AI as this wonderful way of finding new ideas when Gen Z, Y, or X, queer, neurodivergent, Black, brown, and Indigenous minds are poised with and non-western thinking – – with “new” ideas.

I think in our scholarship, it’s important to trace how these new literacies are practiced not only in our libraries, but also how they’re expressed in our books and stories. How do middle grade and young adult books center ancestry and collective memory? How do traditional stories, so often transmitted in speculative fiction, express ways to adapt, remember, grieve, or celebrate? What participatory literacies are told in nonfiction books that describe ways to create with new technologies, with old things, or by adapting from other cultures? How are youth brought in to collaboratively tell stories in public spaces through visual art, zine making, or performance poetry?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve burrowed in for a while now, and as I begin to read through things like “Because We Need Each Other” series in The Forge; Let This Radicalize You (Haymarket, 2023);  Libraries Amid Protest: Books, Organizing, and Global Activism (University of Massachusetts Press, 2020), what I needed to know started to come together. I know we all have our own work to do, maybe me sharing here is making things clearer for you or maybe it helps you understand what I’m trying to do. The online work of people like Tiffani Carter, Sonia Cherry Paul, adrienne maree brown, and Megan Madison, really inspires me. Karen Lemmons recently shared Working for Justice: The L.A. Model of Organzing and Advocacy which could provide insights to use as mimetic isomorphisms as well as place literacy. I look for purposeful inclusion in work that inspires me: accessibility features, anti-racist ideology, and language and images that honor community members. I look for a positive humor, insights, and policies that are not oppressive.

I’m really feel energized when I realize the way to move forward is based not just in community involvement, but in community care. I mean, I began this blog talking about self-care as community care and all this time, I’ve wrestled with something that was right in front of me! I think using these literacies as a framework for library work and for new ways to consider the books our young people are reading that my transition is taking meaning. I’ve done all this writing here about my work and library work and I really tried to keep a focus on young people because they are why I do my work. They are why I continue to work so hard at what I do, and I really hope in least in some small way that it’s paying off. Honestly, most of this post just flowed over the past day. I think it’s worth sharing, I hope it makes sense.

Be well and do good

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