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Jessica Herthel’s I Am Jazz – Challenge Accepted

By September 28, 2016Children's Literature

Jessica Herthel is a wife, a mum and the author of I Am Jazz, a children’s book about a transgender girl. She is straight, she has the classical nuclear family and as far as she is aware none of her daughters identify as anything but cisgender and heterosexual but that does not mean that she was unaware of the challenges that children who identify as LGBT, gender fluid, and all those who refuse to be categorised faced every day.

In a recent article she wrote for The Guardian about an experience when her own book was challenged she explains her thoughts on what banning and challenging reading material actually achieves.

Jessica says that when she became a mother she “began to feel a primal protective instinct over all children, and I became profoundly aware of what a huge undertaking it is to raise children in such a way that they grow up to be decent adults.” And for her that meant “teaching my girls from a young age to be aware of their societal privileges – namely, our presumed privilege as white, straight, cisgender, able-bodied people – and what responsibilities come with those privileges.” And this desire to instil in her girls an acceptance and understanding that people are not things to be labelled lead to her writing I Am Jazz a book based on the real life experiences of Jessica’s friend Jazz Jennings.

As soon as the book was released Jessica began receiving letters from children who had been struggling with their identity and had no idea that how they felt was perfectly normal until they read about Jazz
“I knew we’d made the right decision: suddenly kids struggling with gender had some vocabulary to articulate what they were feeling. We hoped that, by giving those children words to describe their feelings, we could spare them what might have otherwise resulted in years of confusion, self-doubt and even self-loathing.”

Of course along with the outpouring of gratitude and thanks there were the inevitable negative comments although Jessica says that at the beginning she was surprised at just how little negativity there was (however it should be noted that she still receives death threats and hate mail even now). Then came a watershed moment; an elementary school in Mount Horeb, Wisconsin who had a transitioning first-grader announced to parents its plan to read the book to students last year. It didn’t go well; The Liberty Counsel threatened to sue and not in a delicate manner, so the school panicked and agreed not to read the book.

Fortunately for the pupils a group of parents got together, determined to read I Am Jazz to their children and chose to do so in the local library; one of those parents emailed Jessica to let her know what their plans were. “48 hours later I was on a plane from California to Wisconsin to personally show my support. I showed up at that library completely unnerved and not knowing what to expect.”

Expecting around 40 attendees the group were shocked when over 600 people turned up to hear I Am Jazz being read aloud by Jessica “When I finished reading our book aloud, the entire room applauded – and I knew at that moment that censorship is bound to fail. Ideas cannot be contained. The answer to hate speech is more speech; intellectual freedom will always find a way. That experience was profoundly empowering, and it made me more determined than ever to get our book into every school and library in every corner of the world.”

Jessica finishes her article in the guardian by touching upon the current political climate in the US “…now, with the rise of Donald Trump and the wave of xenophobia, racism, misogyny, and Islamophobia that has accompanied his campaign, the sharing of stories has never been more crucial. Without the authentic stories of immigrants, women, LGBT people, and Muslims, people will become more entrenched in their view of those groups as the Other. What we need now is more information, more voices; otherwise the diversity that has long been one of our greatest strengths will end up tearing the US apart.”

As Oscar Wilde said “The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”



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