The Pen is Mightier Than the Riot

 

If you want to convince people that lives matter (black, brown, white, or whatever), you can demonstrate and you can riot. Or you can write a book.

I don’t usually plug books on this blog, but I just finished Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson, and her contribution to the conversation is as powerful and more compelling than any demonstration or riot.

Here is the description from Amazon:

Jacqueline Woodson’s first middle-grade novel since National Book Award winner Brown Girl Dreaming celebrates the healing that can occur when a group of students share their stories.

It all starts when six kids have to meet for a weekly chat—by themselves, with no adults to listen in. There, in the room they soon dub the ARTT Room (short for “A Room to Talk”), they discover it’s safe to talk about what’s bothering them—everything from Esteban’s father’s deportation to Haley’s father’s incarceration to Amari’s fears of racial profiling and Ashton’s adjustment to his changing family fortunes. When the six are together, they can express the feelings and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world. And together, they can grow braver and more ready for the rest of their lives.

This isn’t just a story about the children we normally think of as minorities. The group includes a white boy who is bullied because he is the minority in that school. Woodson’s story shows you can’t judge any person by the color of his or her skin, but sometimes other people’s prejudices create negative experiences that children—and adults—must figure out how to handle.

Although the book is billed as a middle-grade novel, I would recomment it for adults, too.

With Harbor Me, Jacqueline Woodson proves that the pen is mightier than the riot.