Negotiating Agency, Voice, and Identity Through Literature
- Negotiating Agency, Voice, and Identity Through Literature
As incoming Bookbird editors, we are deeply grateful to Björn Sundmark both for his invaluable mentorship and for the exceptional work he has done as Bookbird editor over the past four years. Björn's commitment to Bookbird has recently culminated in the journal's acceptance in Scopus, an important recognition of the high academic quality, impressive range of subjects, and international relevance of Bookbird.
Building on Björn's legacy and on the legacy of the editors who preceded him, we are extremely proud of this first Bookbird issue under our editorship. It addresses a theme that is important and timely, and we are particularly happy to be able to open this special issue on agency, voice, and identity with the printed version of a powerful and moving speech delivered by Deborah Ellis at the 2018 IBBY Congress in Athens. As Deborah explains, she chose to title her keynote talk "Before They Give the Order" because there needs to be "a before":
We have had plenty of "After They Give the Order." Nearly seventy million refugees are on the move all around the world today because of "after they give the order." Animal species are on the brink of extinction because of "after they give the order."…
But what I really want is a "Day Before." How can we change things so that there can be a Day Before? I want a Day Before the order is given to drop the drone on the wedding party in Afghanistan. I want a Day Before the order is given to toss the chemicals in the river. I want a Day Before the order is given to produce more guns so that someone can take them and shoot up a movie theater or a rock concert or a gay bar or a school.
In a fast-changing world, where power is becoming more and more oppressive and undemocratic, agency, voice, and identity are the very life elements that can sustain us. Our sense of agency—our ability to assert our identity, exert our voice, and [End Page ii] make a difference in the world—is closely related to our drive to live, act, and hope. Citizens who contribute to, and receive from, their local and global communities strive to have a voice in issues that matter and to be part of decision-making processes that are of importance. Such empowerment comes from developing a strong sense of identity. One important way in which people do this is by sharing their stories. Experiencing acts of agency through reading and writing offers powerful ways to consider the potential for our own agency and to learn about other members of our local and global communities.
In her article in this issue titled "Reading Radiantly: Embracing the Power of Picturebooks to Cultivate the Social Imagination," Kelly K. Wissman argues that picturebooks may illuminate new ways of thinking, inspire new readings of the world. To read radiantly means to be open to books that may take us outside of ourselves, our own experiences, realities, and points of view. Drawing on collaborative inquiries with four elementary teachers in the United States who intentionally incorporated diverse picturebooks into their teaching, the article reveals the potential for cultivating social imagination and creating space for agency and activism.
The girl protagonists in a series of Australian historical fiction analyzed by Melanie Duckworth in her feature article assert their voice, agency, and identity through reading and writing, alongside comparable acts of creation, like storytelling, dancing, and drawing. Duckworth observes, "Reading offers the characters of these novels a chance to understand and question their worlds, and writing offers them a chance to remake them." She claims that the Our Australian Girl series introduces the reader to significant aspects of Australian history and cultural multiplicity while having the potential of nurturing agency development.
Sarani Roy demonstrates that literature even has the potential to reclaim an entire nation's social and cultural agency and identity. In her article "When Child Is the Father of Man," Roy explores the ways in which the Bengali fairy tale collections of the late nineteenth...
