Yesterday, I left my career home of twelve years. I was a baby when I started and I am still sort of a baby now (at least that's how I feel). And those who are interested want to know what's next. "Where are you going, Jevon?" It's hard for me to just say the company and the job title without sharing the weight of what I feel this next season is all about for me, and, really, for anyone who has an ear to hear what the Spirit is saying to them during what I believe is a time of major transition for God's people around the globe. So I'll start with a little background.
Toward the end of 2014, I received a picture of what kind of contribution I could make to the world over the next ten to twenty years. What was sketched out before my mind's eye was my being able to operate in a creative compilation of all the passions of my heart that began to develop within me as a child. Let me just tell you, God is faithful to complete what He has begun in us. He will give us the desires of our hearts and deliver on them.
What was revealed was sort of like the end point but not actually the step-by-step of how I would get there. While I felt energized by what I felt I saw, I was left with anticipation for how God would make it so. To share an overview of what I saw, here is a portion of my statement of purpose that I wrote for my application to graduate school:
...Literature is the art of telling a story that allows the reader to be infused into a life or world they may never have been able to experience had they not opened the pages. Stories take us by surprise, and before we know it, our guard is down and we’ve spent the whole day in another world without having felt the time pass by. Being engaged with various stories broadens our understanding of who we are as human beings—how we are alike and how we are different. The more diverse the stories we encounter, the better we are able to see differences in others and celebrate them—or at least have our context deepened.
We often express fear of the unknown when we don’t have context. Stories, many of them all together, increase the depth of our context. Lack of adequate context is a causal factor for much of the prejudice and oppression that exist within systems of the world and between people groups and individuals. People’s responses to difference and change are fueled mainly by their context—what they have or haven’t been exposed to.
I desire to aid in the effort of disarming fear of the unknown we all fall victim to from time to time by becoming an advocate in the fields of education and publishing for the telling and retelling of heterogeneous stories....
[Therefore, I sense that it is imperative that I be] invited to the table where such things are discussed and determined as to what stories should be included in a high school or college literature anthology or English curriculum or what events should be included in American history books that give a broader view of the diversity in our country and world. These are decisions that affect larger social and cultural systems. What is decided now in this regard affects the future of human cultural relations. What stories are told to children today shape what decisions they make tomorrow and how they will interact with diverse people as they become publishers, doctors, educators, restaurateurs, police officers, politicians, and more.
This brings to mind a conflict public school teachers in Tucson, Arizona, are facing, where the outgoing superintendent of public instruction is trying to enforce legal measures that prohibit the teaching of history and literature from an ethnic perspective reflective of the city’s diverse population. He says that these “‘culturally relevant courses’…illegally promote ethnic solidarity and the overthrow of the U.S. government.”[1] It is unfortunate to me that this official drew the correlation between ethnic unity and pride and tyranny against one’s own government. The two are mutually exclusive. What stories have shaped this key decision-maker’s mind-set that have led him to believe this way?
His actions prove the limited understanding of the school district’s multicultural, minority constituents and communicate a fear of collapsing stereotypes, raised expectations, and the leveling out of the balance of perceived power when students of all cultures are educated by ethnically diverse historical and literary perspectives. More of this will follow from generation to generation if more stories are not injected into the spaces that contribute to more complete appreciation.
One of my favorite storytellers, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, said this:
“Stories matter. Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign, but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people, but stories can also repair that broken dignity....The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”[2]
Over the last decade, it has been noted that race and ethnic relations in our country and around the world are in turmoil. Some say racism is so yesterday. Others say it is alive and well; nothing has changed. Both perspectives say something about a disconnection that seems to be widening by inadequate address over the course of time. I believe we are at a critical time in our culture where this disconnection needs to be confronted head-on once again and until a connection is made—not by protest or rally only, but also by deliberate, extended, and purposeful exposure to diverse stories.
An emergence of violence is flowing out from our hearts into our speech and into our actions in our neighborhoods, workplaces, religious meeting places, and governments. Anything along the continuum of thought to deed is rising up again with a similar silhouette of times past. We—the decision-makers in the film, music, book publishing, and education fields—are cordoning off stories, only to let out the few that many times further perpetrate stereotypes.
According to Publisher’s Weekly’s annual salary survey of book publishing professionals, “90 percent of the survey’s respondents identified themselves as white; 3 percent identified themselves as Asian; another 3 percent identified as Latino; and 1 percent of the respondents identified as African-American.”[3] These are the kind of stats that will cause the single story to continue to be the only story. One of the main missions is to [not only be one of the few but also to be a source of empowerment and equipping for this next generation of diverse youth who desire] to become professionals who will break the single-story cycle in book publishing, [education, and the many other spheres that need to be infused with it]....
So what does this mean in regard to next steps for me?
Step 1: Go to graduate school. Get a PhD. And while I'm at it...
Step 2: Learn how the minds of younger readers work. Broaden my areas of expertise as a publishing professional. Learn the felt needs of a wider, more diverse audience.
Step 3: I have no idea! LOL! But I keep "hearing" I need to get a passport ASAP.
So now I can answer the question, where am I going? I am going to join the team at Scholastic, who is the world's largest children's book publisher and the best at "helping children find the pleasure and power of reading." I will be functioning as senior editor over their nonfiction kids' books and book-plus imprint called Tangerine Press, exclusively aimed at the Scholastic Book Fairs' audience, ages 8-12. How very perfect, right? I could not have planned this if I tried. This is God's doing.
At the time I wrote the above statement of purpose, I had no idea that I would be leaving Charisma House. Truthfully, though, I did think that I would have to in order to accomplish what I had been shown. I just didn't know when or how. Then almost seven months after I received this "vision," I came across the job opportunity with Scholastic. I applied, and they were impressed enough to offer me the position. But they didn't just offer the same position as listed; they made customized changes to the original position to fit my skill level, experience, and education. We negotiated some of the terms and landed at a place I am completely wowed by. And, yes, I have a massive learning curve to get over and I am so super excited about that. I am going to soak up every juicy bit.
I believe this next opportunity is the beginning to my being available to respond proactively to the injustices that I see every day. I do not believe the solutions can be enacted overnight, neither do I believe they come about by one way only. It takes a multitude of simultaneous, synergized efforts on every level. It is also my desire to bring much-needed support to the many voices and advocates within the body of Christ (and I believe we need more Spirit-led advocates in this area. Just saying.) and without who desire to see the cultural and ethnic diversity of God's children be accepted as the norm, bringing down power structures that say otherwise.
So that's it. That's my news. I am excited about the future. You'll see that I still have a significant relationship with Charisma House. I love them like family, and they blessed my socks off on my last day with prayers, gifts, and words of encouragement that will propel me from here to eternity. And with that, I press on to the things that are ahead.
[1] Roque Planas, “Teaching Hip Hop Illegally Promotes Ethnic Solidarity, Arizona Official Says,” HuffingtonPost.com, January 5, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/05/arizona-hip-hop-illegal_n_6419558.html.
[2] Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, "The Danger of a Single Story," TEDGlobal, July 2009, http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?quote=558.
[3] Diane Patrick and Calvin Reid, “Six Hacks to Improve Diversity in Book Publishing,” PublishersWeekly.com, December 12, 2014, http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/awards-and-prizes/article/65043-got-diversity-six-hacks-that-address-book-industry-diversity-21st-century-style.html.