Changing the Map: The Jane Yolen Gateway

How do you get to the wondrous realms of speculative fiction?

Why, you open a door and fall into another world, or pass through a gateway, one of which is the “The Jane Yolen Memorial Gateway to the West” — the arch through which you step, tentatively at first, elated but nervous, into the map.

There are many entrances, both secretive and hidden, but one of the most populous gateways to the genre is through the worlds of Jane Yolen. With over 386 books published (you could read a book a day for over a year), Jane Yolen is one of the most influential gateway authors. Today we’ll venture through her Gateway into the West, long known as a land of enchantment.

Everyone has their gateways and their gateway authors.  Some find the the hidden wardrobe door of C.S. Lewis, others step through the hobbit doors of J.R.R. Tolkien, or the wizard’s door of Ursula K. LeGuin.  These authors open the portal to the worlds beyond.

We find these doors (for the most part) when we are young, through the libraries and school systems. Often these are “carrot” books assigned by teachers — you know these books — they’re the one’s teachers assigned that you enjoyed reading. Traditionally, the guardians of these gateways have been male, and white. Despite even Ursula K. LeGuin using the brown-skinned protagonist Ged in A Wizard of Earthsea, she denied women entry through the wizard’s gate — barring them from formal magical education. (In Ms. LeGuin’s defense, she did remedy the situation with women — eventually.  After 35 years.)

But for those of us of Gen-X and beyond, Ms. Yolen was, is, and continues to be, the gate through which we venture into the fantastic — beloved by librarians and teachers for her representations of the diversity of humanity.

Jane Hyatt Yolen Stemple was born in 1939 and as her parents were writers, grew up writing. Like many writers, she turned her talents to editing.  One of her first jobs was as a Children’s Book Editor for Knopf — and the first book she edited there was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. She soon started submitting her own work, and has become known primarily as a writer for younger audiences, although she is also a noted poet, folklore author, interpreter of fairy tales, reviewer, and editor.

These gateways, these portals through which we enter, are vitally important, because they are part of the journey of self, of becoming. We search for representations of ourselves. We journey to explore options and what might be. We see what we can become. Most importantly, we learn to be the other, and through the other, learn to identify and empathize. Jane Yolen’s emphasis on diversity of cultures and ethnicities allow us to both see through the eyes of the other, and to see ourselves in all of our shades.

With so many books to choose from, it is an impossible feat to pick only a few, but let’s look at a few of her most popular gateway books.

The Pit Dragon series is set in the far future, on Austar IV, a planet populated by convict exiles. The outcasts adapted to their prison planet, breeding the native dragons for food and fighting. The series follow the slave Jakkin as he forms an unbreakable bond with one of the dragons, changing the fate of the entire planet. The parallels to the penal system of early Australian settlement and the impact of intrusion upon indigenous populations is unavoidable.

In The Devil’s Arithmetic (winner of the Jewish book Council Award), teenage Hannah Stern travels back in time during the Jewish Passover to Poland at the end of World War II, where she’s sent to a work camp and experiences the horrors of the Holocaust. Though Hannah’s eyes, we live through the holocaust and the importance and power of memory is engraved upon us.

Her children’s book Owl Moon, illustrated by John Schoenherr, was awarded the Caldecott Medal. In this picture book, a young girl ventures out on a moonlit night with her father and experiences a magical encounter with an owl, allowing adults to see through the eyes of a young girl, and for many young girls, allowing them to see the first representations of themselves.

Briar Rose, winner of the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award in 1983, is based around the German version of Sleeping Beauty. Here, the grandmother Gemma tells her children the story of her experiences of the Holocaust. Once again, Ms. Yolen allows us to become the other as we live through memories. We also experience love — familial and romantic, both hetero and homosexual.

Keep in mind, fellow travelers, that there’s plenty of other Jane Yolen books to enter through, all of them offering diverse cultures and experiences — ones in which we can both see ourselves more clearly, and learn empathy through experiencing other perspectives.

Ms. Yolen acknowledges responsibility in ensuring diversity in books. It is vitally important to have writers from all cultures share their primary experiences, but it is equally important that writers learn how to write the other.

[…] I was writing diverse books in the 1960s. Alas, we have badly served our people of color, our children of different ethnicities and different religions, in our schools and in our children’s books for years. And of course we should be encouraging — and actively seeking out — authentic voices. But we should also be encouraging the use of diverse characters in all kinds of books that are not by people of the same color, ethnicity, etc., or we are in danger of Balkanizing children’s books further (Yolen, 2016).

So, fellow travelers through the wilds of the map — venture through Ms. Yolen’s Gateway and experience the joys of becoming the other.