Diversity in young adult fiction
[2] In the several years following, diversity numbers seem to have improved: One survey showed that in 2017, a quarter of children's books were about minority protagonists, almost a 10 percent increase from 2016.
[3][4] Looking at The New York Times bestseller list for young adults in the late 2010s demonstrates the selling power of diverse narratives.
[7] For a large portion of history, young adult fiction focused on cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied characters and authors.
[12] In 1979, Rosa Guy published Ruby, which became the first young adult novel featuring a lesbian woman of color.
In 1994, the organization began to track the number of Asian and Pacific Islander, Native and Latino authors as well.
In their report, the CCBC found that, collectively, authors of color published about 9 percent of all books directed towards children and young adults.
[1] The young adult market bloomed in the 2000s, largely in response to some high-profile, bestselling YA series (such as Twilight and The Hunger Games) and their subsequent film adaptations.
[8] The statistics gathered by the CCBC and various other independent researchers show that the market does not reflect the diversity of the U.S.[8] In 2013, less than 9 percent of best-selling novels featured characters with disabilities.
[16] In 2017, a 20-year analysis of National Book Award winners between 1996 and 2015 found that only five of the novels were written by non-white authors.
[18] In the UK, 90 percent of the best-selling YA titles from 2006 to 2016 featured white, able-bodied, cisgender, and heterosexual main characters.
[21] It is claimed that this is not possible when 85 percent of children's and young adult books feature white characters.
It originated in September 2015 when author and co-founder of the website Disability in Kidlit[27] Corinne Duyvis created the Twitter hashtag #ownvoices.
[31] In the UK, there has been a notable increase, with the percentage of YA authors of color being published more than doubling over a 10-year-plus period.
"[32] Publishing companies commonly distort the perception of diversity on book covers to conform to traditional standards based on the assumption that book covers with diverse character representations are less marketable than those with white, heterosexual, and able-bodied models, resulting in a white-washing effect.
In a 2001 interview, Le Guin attributed the frequent lack of character illustrations on her book covers to her choice of non-white protagonists.
[33] In the novel, the protagonist is described as an African American, but the advance reading copy (ARC) featured a white cover model.
