A few nights ago, I had a call with friends in the animation industry, as is our monthly tradition. We were lamenting the rise of AI and what that meant for us as writers as well as our artist friends.
A few weeks before that, I was getting advice from someone in the industry that I looked up to. I asked, what will you do if it doesn’t bounce back the way we hope? She told me she planned to write a children’s book. It seemed like the most logical next step.
That was everyone’s response, really, when I asked how they were handling the mass layoffs and show cancellations here in Los Angeles. I know some of them have already had luck making the transition but for others, who were more politically aligned with me, I held my tongue and didn’t say what I wanted to say the most.
The publishing industry has already failed you.
Hello,
My name is Danielle and I’ve been working at SCBWI since October 2022. Quite honestly, I didn’t know anything about the organization before I found it on an Idealist post. I was realigning after fumbling my departure from [redacted] where I was pursuing an MFA in creative writing. I had contracted a neurological immune disorder and when I couldn’t pick up a pen or walk my dog, I dropped out. I spent a few months living with different friends and family but wanting to live in Los Angeles to pursue my passions. To sustain that, I needed work.
It failed me years ago due to its blatant exclusion of the Black writers that didn’t meet its standards: keeping their book subjects to social critique, not using AAVE, or just making non-Black readers uncomfortable. I just insisted on being a part of it because I knew how much sway it had on our daily lives and nothing felt as important.
Jokes, pop culture references, and even entire philosophies have been shaped by the books we collectively consume. Especially those we read as children. People still quote their childhood favorites verbatim or save them to read to their own families. What could be more powerful than that?
It has failed us because it has been bought. By none other than the new brand of McCarthyism, racism, and general ignorance that exists today surrounding the Palestinian genocide. Perhaps only after entertainment, publishing is one of the most influential industries in the world. Yet it allows itself to continue being quietly shaped by the same people that thought posting black squares a few summers ago meant that the work was done.
I’ve told this story before in many ways because I have a history of activism and speaking out when wronged. I created a literary magazine that hung around for a few years solely to combat this constant feeling of being pushed out of the writing world. I had always thought that since I had found myself in the world of books, that it would allow me to return the favor. So far, I’ve been nothing but disappointed.
I secured an interview with SCBWI and met with one staff member, then later on, the executive team. Despite the job listing showing $40k to $45k on Idealist, I was offered $36k. After pushing back a bit, I was told the offer was for $35k to $38k and when I was able to show proof of the listing, I was bumped to $40k. I took it because the other interview processes I was in were taking weeks to get back to me.
Some months would pass at SCBWI and I would finally attain a salary of $50k/annually, which is what I make now. For a while, I lived with a comically evil roommate in [one neighborhood]. But the bump now allows me to live in a small studio in [another neighborhood].
When I joined the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators as a staff member in 2022, I didn’t expect much from the experience. I was left to my own devices as one typically is in a nonprofit. It was a means to an end: find work in Los Angeles, work on your writing, and get published or sell a show.
I had one coworker who seemed excited to misdirect me, which I later learned was just an odd brand of envy hidden behind faux friendship. The rest were initially pleased that I had joined but it evolved into a classic display of the “pet to threat” concept that so often plagues Black women in every workplace.
Once my suggestions for improvement became irritating, the novelty wore off and I was simply another underpaid assistant who would join the list of those who quickly came and quickly left.
They half-assed every interaction with their members and were excited to find a new scapegoat amongst each other each month. I found myself caught up in the drama as well, pointing out little mistakes made by my coworkers until I realized it’d be more efficient to simply do the abandoned tasks myself.
We held overpriced events that only a certain affluent few could afford to regularly attend and then balked at the lack of marginalized folks present. Refund requests went ignored for months. Members were mocked for being unaware of “how the industry functioned” despite the rampant lack of transparency and outdated articles within the material we shared.
Though the membership dropped, it was somehow a steady community with seemingly unlimited, albeit mismanaged, resources.
One year after I started, not much had changed. By then, two people had been let go after being painted as the enemy and I absorbed their duties with no increase in pay. The organization was somehow hemorrhaging funds and yet executives attended expensive events like the Bologna Children’s Book Fair or a chapter-based conference in England.
I still felt on edge when bringing up anything because I was gaining a reputation as a complainer, rather than someone who sought to do their strenuous job more efficiently. I was being chastised by leaders who refused to look me in the eye and who could barely attach a PDF to an email.
I was burnt-out, irritated, and realizing that I was no closer to feeling like a part of the industry I desperately wanted to join just the year before.
Then the political landscape shifted.
Any shift in my paycheck would push me to the streets, I can say with certainty. So I’ve ignored the discomfort I’ve felt at times over the past year and pushed on, knowing that when it was time for me to move to a different role at a different company, it would show itself, but mostly fearing that I shouldn’t say anything to jeopardize my situation.
Today, something in me broke and I felt the need to speak my truth in the mandatory staff meeting we had to discuss ideas for the “Israel/Hamas” conflict.I know how I feel personally about the “conflict.” It is not a conflict. It is not a war. It is an ethnic cleansing. It is genocide of the Palestinian people.
After October 7, all hell broke loose. At first it was simply a discomfort amongst us, since there was an SCBWI chapter in Israel. On the organization’s listserv, folks from all over the world sent their condolences to them. Up until then, we had kept political expressions to a minimum because everyone on staff seemed to assume the others held their same political beliefs.
I spent every night for two weeks glued to my cell phone and hyperventilating myself to sleep as the horrifying videos rolled in. It didn’t take long for the executive director to call for a meeting where she demanded we brainstorm ideas to support Israel’s chapter. Apparently, they were questioning her true stance as a Jewish person. She had to do something, after all.
I, along with at least two other staff members, including another Jewish colleague, pushed back against the publication of a pro-Israel letter signed by us as a staff. It simply did not reflect my views.
The executive director then offered to sign it by herself, pulling what my mother would refer to as “crocodile tears” when referencing the 40 beheaded Israeli babies that no one had actually seen. I then shared the CNN coverage that clarified how our president was lying about those accounts and I was instantly silenced. The tears dried up.
This wasn’t uncommon with her. When faced with a challenging moment, she was quick to weaponize her white woman's tears to silence those around her, and the other white women on staff were eager to jump to her rescue.
I knew I was about to be fired in a creative way for challenging this but I tried to not care. Marginalized lives will always matter more to me than whatever falsehoods white women seek to protect.
Later on, another executive would claim that offering any support for Palestinians in addition to the letter would be as good as supporting Hamas. The executive director would draw a false equivalence between antisemitisim and what she would call “anti-Muslimism,” instead of the correctly named Islamophobia.
I was clearly surrounded by racists so I decided to drive the final nail into my publishing career’s coffin.
On October 17, I wrote and sent the letter I’ve broken up throughout this piece.
I grew up in a small, isolated [U.S. state] town with a lot of bigotry and harm at the heart of it. So I made it my mission to become a global citizen as fast as I could and I quickly learned that the brownest people everywhere are usually the most oppressed. Black or otherwise.
I was actually taught about anti-Zionism by the Jewish students in my undergrad, many of whom are close friends today. I learned similar things from Arab students who have long been affected by the “conflict” and similar ones in their regions. All I could think is that it mirrored the Black American struggle in the United States: often being considered a threat, whether or not you actually do anything threatening. Your words being seen as weapons. Your existence as an instant danger to those around you. Death as an inevitability for those in your community. So I could sympathize.
After being used by this organization as one of three people (and two Black people) in a meeting standing alongside a logo that has been vocally protested amongst Native creators who took the time to plea for our understanding (and were dismissed); after watching this org sit in silence as our peers in the publishing industry were laid off en masse; and after having to stifle my own exploitations within this group, I was asked to do further value-challenging again today.
How can I be asked for ideas to speak as neutral as possible on this “conflict” and to share children's books about hope when it is not a neutral conflict? What about when we are the only ones who can deliver the hope by not supporting genocide?The "conflict" already, in fact, has direct consequences for our children and neighbors built upon lies, misinformation, and disinformation, which I was told in a recent meeting "does not matter." I am not comfortable being asked to be a silent token any further. I am not a tool. I am a person with values and experiences, many of which align with the most oppressed people on this planet. That is where my loyalties will forever lie.
I was instantly logged out of my staff email the next morning and, a few days later, placed on leave. I was roped into an internal investigation with two Black board members and a Black lawyer. It wasn’t made clear who was being investigated, but they later found themselves clear of any wrongdoing.
Still, this was all unsurprising. The executive director was used to using marginalized folks to shield herself from any real complaints. Luckily, as a queer Black person, I’ve always known that all skinfolk ain’t kinfolk so this did not faze me in the way I’m sure she expected it would.
What did get to me, however, was the rest of the ruse.
I attempted to send that letter to the entire staff and the org’s advisory council, consisting of children’s book writers and illustrators whose work you’ve almost certainly held in your hands at one point or another.
It only made its way to staff. I later learned that a different white woman I worked closely alongside and who pretended to care about my concerns was the one to block it from reaching their side of the listserv.
The last of the three board members, who was not present in my investigation, was an Israeli woman. Aside from scheduling board meetings over email, I’d never met with nor spoke to her at any point, but it came out that she had signed off with the others on firing me two months later and a week before Christmas.
A staff member later revealed to me that the radio silence I experienced from the rest of the team immediately after the letter they had all seen was intentional. They were told not to speak to me, and they didn’t.
The SCBWI-hired lawyer also told me to contact staff to see if they could speak to the situation at hand during the investigation. I did.
After being fired on December 18 for insubordination and “not being a good fit,” I spent months believing they had all spoken against me to the lawyer, stomping on my character and work ethic. However, none of them were ever a part of the initial investigation. It was simply a tactic to make me feel isolated and abandoned. And it worked.
I blocked everyone I could as soon as they let me go, and knew I could never trust this industry again, given the surprising reach of this particular nonprofit.
Here are some things I know: Anti-Zionism is not anti-semitism. I am not anti-semetic because I am pro-Palestine. War crimes are not self-defense. "Anti-Muslimism" is not a word. It's called Islamophobia and it looks like perpetuating anti-Muslim sentiments. I've seen harmful things in this organization such as conflating the Palestinian people with Hamas, which has been the case up and down our Slack and message boards, and a desire to not educate and to remain as ignorant as possible.
Business-wise, I do not work for SCBWI Israel. (As of right now lol) I work for SCBWI, a global children's book organization which somehow has a majority white, affluent membership despite frequent claims to want more than this. Please be upfront with the intentions of this organization or just stop hiring figureheads that are flaunted and used as shields whenever a controversial decision must be made.
Here are a few resources compiled by my friends and I.
Thanks for reading.
I questioned myself. Perhaps I had overreacted. Maybe it wasn’t my place to speak out on genocide like this. I was also terrified of how I’d make rent once my funds ran out. Once again, speaking up against injustice had landed me in hot water. But I was able to snap out of it, and it was their blatant contradictions that helped me do so.
I had to sign a separation agreement to depart SCBWI with a check in hand. I requested that two certain clauses be removed from the agreement because they did not reflect my experience.
(d) Employee also affirms that Employee has not reported internally to Employer any allegations of wrongdoing by Employer or its officers, including, but not limited to, any allegations of corporate fraud, and Employee has not been retaliated against for reporting any such allegations internally to Employer.
(e) Employee also affirms that all of Employer’s decisions regarding Employee’s pay and benefits through the date of execution of this Separation Agreement were not discriminatory based on race, color, religion, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, national origin, ancestry, mental or physical disability, medical condition, age, pregnancy, denial of medical and family care leave, pregnancy disability leave, or any other classification protected by law.
I was denied and required to sign with the clauses intact if I wanted to receive the severance.
Given that these clauses were blatant lies, I signed them anyway and then decided to report them to the California Civil Rights Department, where the case is currently being processed.
I thought about what it meant to do this. To report them. To write this article. Especially since those exact lies likely voided the entire agreement.
I’m not scared of SCBWI. I’m not scared of speaking my truth. I am, however, damaged by the rampant McCarthyism ruining the lives of myself and my peers.
Over the last year, organizations like SCBWI and PEN America have been foaming at the mouth over preventing book bans for certain types of communities. But they’re easily able to perpetuate the internal racism taking place within their own groups.
I’ve heard similar stories of authors and illustrators who have had their speaking engagements canceled, their representation dropped, and their lives threatened simply for speaking up. I am repeatedly traumatized by the videos and reports of war crimes, assaults, and horrific accounts of tortuous murders, including people being burned alive. Then I’m given whiplash by the folks who insist that these dead civilians, women, and children deserved it.
But we keep going. And we don’t let these genocide apologists keep us quiet.
As Arundhati Roy so aptly put during her recent PEN Pinter Prize acceptance speech, “Not all the power and money, not all the weapons and propaganda on Earth can any longer hide the wound that is Palestine. The wound through which the whole world, including Israel, bleeds.”
I now work elsewhere and make over double what I made when I initially started with SCBWI. They’re openly pro-Palestine, so I don’t fear speaking out. I continue to pursue my writing goals in other avenues outside of the children’s book world. I support my peers at Story Sunbirds, a volunteer-run collective that prioritizes “a dynamic and inclusive children's literature community rooted in justice and anti-racism and anti-colonialism.”
Every month, I see a slew of stories about young editors being pushed out by older ones and writers of color having their careers stamped out by others. I’ve even watched author Ta-Nehisi Coates have his image besmirched by a demographic that claimed to be awakened by his words just a few years ago.
So, I know that I’m not alone in this fight. But I do pray to be one of the last directly impacted by the failures that exist in a culture-shaping industry that continues to drop the ball year after year.
I don’t know that we’ve ever been safe amongst our “peers” in the publishing world. But I do know that we are not delusional for caring.