Hear Whose Voices? Commercial Publishing and the Pressure to Conform to the DEI Frame

In September, 2023, my middle-grade non-fiction book about the British Empire, Hear Our Voices: A Powerful Retelling of the British Empire Through 20 True Stories will be published. Wide-Eyed Editions contacted me in the summer of 2021 after they identified a gap in the market. In 2020, Black Lives Matters protests had erupted in the United Kingdom, and included a powerful demonstration in Bristol where protestors brought down a statue of enslaver Edward Colston and dumped it in the harbor. Told through first-person narratives, the book responds to calls for a more honest reckoning with the history of empire and its legacies in the present.

In this paper, I will discuss my experiences writing history for children, focusing on negotiations with my editor over which historical figures to include and how to explain their significance. I will discuss the genre conventions of juvenile biographic anthologies. I will also discuss how the sales team influenced the organization and content of the book. My experience has shown me how the commercial book publishing process collapses the complexities of individuals and communities in the past in ways that limit political possibilities for the future.

My experiences working with a commercial publisher have convinced me that historians should write for children. However, historians must be willing to engage in negotiations with editors and marketing departments if we are to convey complex historical narratives that serve struggles for decolonization and affirm Black and Indigenous children and children of color. How can historians bring our methodological and ethical investments to bear on commercial children’s publishing? What are the limits of liberal multiculturalism when it comes to the historical narratives that are possible in children’s literature? To shape public narratives of the past, we cannot ignore this crucial audience for history.