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Join host Brittney Carey in a captivating conversation with Gwendolyn Wallace, a distinguished researcher and children’s literature author, as they delve into the transformative impact of representation and authentic diversity in early childhood education. In this episode, they explore the intersection of children’s literature, social justice, and critical thinking, emphasizing the vital role of literature in shaping young minds.
Key Takeaways
- Representation in children’s literature goes beyond visual diversity and should include authentic and diverse content and messaging.
- Children should be included in conversations about social justice and viewed as valuable contributors to the process of freedom dreaming.
- Societal perception of children should be challenged, and their voices and perspectives should be valued.
- Children’s literature can contribute to social justice by promoting critical thinking and fostering a deeper understanding of diverse experiences. Early childhood literature is a powerful tool for teaching children about the world and how to relate to one another.
- It is important to start teaching kids about social justice, community care, and anti-racism from a young age.
- Children’s books can be analyzed with depth and used to support children’s understanding of complex issues.
- Education should be reimagined to follow children’s interests, provide equitable funding, and pay teachers adequately.
Transcript
Gwendolyn Wallace (00:00)
Reading books is one of the first ways that you come to understand the world, understand the people around you and understand how to make sense of things. And I think, right. If you’re teaching. The values of social justice, of community care, of anti-racism, anti-imperialism, what have you, then children don’t need to unlearn all of that messaging later in life.
Brittney C (00:27)
Hi, welcome to Conscious Pathways, the podcast where we explore the intersection of education and social justice through transformative conversations. I am your host, Brittney, and I’m so happy that you are choosing to spend your day listening to me. So thank you. I just want to start off by thanking everyone for the support and for just listening to the podcast and liking the podcast and sharing the podcast. Again, it really, really does help and find more guests and all those beautiful things. Also wanted to plug the Conscious Pathways Patreon. So for just $5 a month, you can join and you can get access to my newsletter that I release every month. And you can also ask an expert. So, you could drop questions for me to answer directly on the podcast, or you can ask a question directly to a guest or an upcoming guest.
From over there, he’s going to have a lot of fun. So I’m really excited to be launching it and to really connect with everyone on like just a deeper level. But again, just listening to the podcast, it supports me a lot. And I just really appreciate, again, you just wanting to spend time listening to my voice and my guest voices. So I just really appreciate that and just wanted to let you know. Thank you for listening. Anyways, I wanted to do today’s guest. She is such a spectacular being. Today I am joined by…
Gwendolyn Wallace. I am joined by Gwendolyn Wallace. Gwendolyn is a public historian and children’s literature author from Connecticut. She is the author of picture books, Joy Takes Root, which came out in 2023, and The Light She Feels Inside, which also came out in 2023, as well as a forthcoming book, Dancing with Water and Imagine New Suns.
An alumna of Phillips Exeter Academy, Gwendolyn graduated from Yale with a degree in history of science and medicine in 2021.
Gwendolyn graduated from Yale with a degree in the history of science and medicine in 2021 before completing a master’s in public history at the University of College London. She is also on the board of Reproductive Equity Access and Choice Reach Fund of Connecticut. Gwendolyn can usually be found gardening, exploring bookstores.
Gwendolyn can usually be found gardening, exploring used bookstores, or listening to the liberatory impulses of young children. I really loved speaking with Gwendolyn for a lot of reasons. I loved just picking her brain and understanding her thought process behind the children’s books that she’s written. We talked about representation and what true and authentic representation looks like and what that means to students all across the country and all across the world, really.
This conversation was just so enlightening. There was just so many things that I learned and I didn’t even know about just the process of publishing a children’s book. She is such a brilliant, brilliant person with beautiful thoughts and just an absolutely gorgeous energy. So I’m so excited to share this interview with you. So let’s go into it.
Brittney Carey (04:20)
Hello and welcome to Conscious Pathways. I am joined by the fantastic Gwendolyn Wallace. Thank you for joining me.
Gwendolyn Wallace (04:28)
Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here and so excited to see where our conversation takes us.
Brittney Carey (04:35)
Me too. I mean, I just met you, but you have such a like a beautiful, just calming presence. So I’m super excited. Yeah.
Gwendolyn Wallace (04:40)
Thank you, I appreciate that. Thank you, I feel like you have the perfect podcast voice. We’ve only been emailing, so this is the first time I’ve heard your voice, but it’s just perfect for recording.
Brittney Carey (04:46)
Oh, thank you.
Well, thank you. I was one of those kids that grew up and I never liked the sound of my voice because I felt like it was supposed to be like higher pitched or whatever. But I feel like as an adult, I’m like, I don’t think I need a high pitched voice.
Gwendolyn Wallace (05:03)
I feel like we all benefit from a range of voices.
Brittney Carey (05:05)
Yes, exactly. But I’m so excited to have you on and I was just like looking through all of your material and just the books that you’ve written and they’re just so beautiful and gorgeous. So I’m excited to just like speak on that. And usually I have educators on so my first question is usually how did you get your start in education? But can you tell me a little bit about how you got your start in just like writing and how you got your start in writing, you know, children’s literature and just where did this come from?
Gwendolyn Wallace (05:34)
Of course, yeah, I had a very untraditional publishing journey. And so I always like to share about that. I didn’t necessarily have any plans to be an author or a writer of children’s books. And so I actually got my start from a tweet in March of 2020. And it was interesting because so we had the pandemic, of course, in 2020.
Brittney Carey (05:39)
Thanks for watching!
Mmm. Wow. So, I’m going to go ahead and get my hair done.
Gwendolyn Wallace (06:01)
And we also had so many protests for racial justice. We had what people are kind of calling the Black Lives Matter movement really.
Brittney Carey (06:07)
this.
Gwendolyn Wallace (06:14)
You know, we had a lot of people out on the streets protesting and marching for racial justice against anti blackness, etc. And I think publishing, like a lot of other businesses and corporations. Tried to do something to acknowledge that I think whether those things were sustainable, whether they were just lip service, how useful those things were is another conversation. But I saw a tweet from an editor.
Brittney Carey (06:39)
Yep.
Gwendolyn Wallace (06:42)
that said, oh, if you’re an unagented black picture book author and you would like some feedback on a manuscript for free, reach out to me over email and I’ll give you some feedback. And so I had, I would say not quite a full manuscript but what I would call the makings of a manuscript because I was home, I was back in my childhood bedroom and I was in college, I was a junior and the semester before I had been working in a kindergarten classroom. And so kids were on my mind, I was reading a lot of picture books to them.
Brittney Carey (07:03)
No, no.
Gwendolyn Wallace (07:12)
And suddenly I was without them, but still thinking about picture books. And so I had this makings of a manuscript and I sent them to this editor and I didn’t hear anything back for a month. So I thought, okay, you know, this isn’t, this, I’m not cut out to be a children’s book author and that was fine. I really wasn’t, you know, too bothered, um, because I didn’t know how to write a manuscript. I didn’t, I didn’t know what the formatting was. So I understood.
Brittney Carey (07:30)
Mm.
Yeah.
Gwendolyn Wallace (07:38)
And then a week later, she got back to me and said, sorry, it took me so long to give you feedback. I actually had to check with our finance department because I want to make you an offer for this book.
Brittney Carey (07:47)
Wow.
Gwendolyn Wallace (07:49)
Yeah, and so that’s how I got into publishing. That book is now the light she feels inside. And this editor, Molly, also connected me with my amazing agent, Wendy, who I love and still work with today. And so that was kind of my journey into publishing.
Brittney Carey (08:10)
Wow, I love that, especially that it got its start in, you know, March of 2020, because that was just a time. That was a time in our lives. And just in a time of so much uncertainty, in a time where we just didn’t really know what was going on, we didn’t know what, you know, what this COVID thing was. Like we were washing our, our, you know, pantry supplies from the grocery store, like, I don’t know.
Gwendolyn Wallace (08:18)
Yeah, it was a time. It was a time.
Yes.
Yeah, no, and it was such a wild time. And for me, I actually got COVID because I was studying abroad during that semester. And so on the way, I was in South Africa, which then told all people from high risk countries, kind of, you gotta go. And so my study abroad program ended and I came back home to my childhood bedroom in my parents’ house. And I got COVID somehow on the way back.
and was very, very sick. So I was also kind of writing this manuscript and then my second manuscript, Joy Takes Root, in the midst of all of this, while also trying to do some digital organizing, trying to join protests in the summer when I was healthier. So yeah, it was a wild time to be beginning a writing career and a publishing career.
Brittney Carey (09:11)
Yes.
Yeah.
That is, but it’s also beautiful. Like I said, there’s so much uncertainty, but there was also a lot of growth and beginnings and a lot of things that are just taking shape that would, you know, change and alter the course of many of our lives, you know, and so that’s, that’s, you know, it’s a really beautiful thing to happen. Where were you studying South Africa?
Gwendolyn Wallace (09:44)
Yes.
I was in Cape Town. Yes.
Brittney Carey (09:52)
Oh, nice. I went there too. I studied in Johannesburg and then I was in Cape Town for my study abroad program. And so I was like, oh, South Africa. So beautiful. Such a beautiful place. And I just yeah, pretty much every year you go there’s like mountains and water and beauty and culture. It’s like, I love it.
Gwendolyn Wallace (10:01)
It’s amazing. I love Cape Town. So beautiful.
Yes, yes, I was supposed to, before we left in 2020, I was supposed to have three more weeks there. And I would like those three weeks there at some point. Yes, yes, exactly.
Brittney Carey (10:17)
Mm-hmm. Right? I’d like those weeks back, please. Yes. So what was your kind of inspiration between before those first few books of Joy Takes Root and everything? What was the inspiration behind those books?
Gwendolyn Wallace (10:34)
Yeah, so I think especially the light she feels inside, which even though it was the first manuscript I wrote, it was the second book that was published that was released. But I think that book was inspired by a lot of what I was seeing around me with the pandemic and with the protests. And I think for the first time, I saw people kind of talking about police and prison abolition, very, that kind of became a household topic in a way that I don’t necessarily think it was before. I had been…
Brittney Carey (10:50)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (11:03)
I considered myself an abolitionist and had been doing some abolitionist reading before that. But I think for me, I was really struck by a lot of the amazing art that was coming out of those protests, that was coming out of people better understanding the history of mass incarceration in our country, the history of policing, the history of the family justice system, the criminal justice system, etc. And then I think with COVID, the beginnings of our…
Brittney Carey (11:07)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Gwendolyn Wallace (11:32)
kind of racist healthcare system as well. And so I was watching people kind of uncover these things, but also people who were making amazing art and really thinking about the ways our system could be different, right? The ways these systems could be different without capitalism, colonialism, racism, et cetera. And I was really inspired by this idea that in order to get to a better world, a more just world, we have to tear down what isn’t serving us and what is actively hurting us. But we also get to go through this
Brittney Carey (11:34)
Okay.
Gwendolyn Wallace (12:02)
creative and imaginative and fun process of deciding what comes next and how we want to take care of each other and To me that was the inspiration for this book because as a kid growing up I think like a lot of kids in schools I kind of was learning that there were good emotions right like happiness excitement curiosity, etc And there are bad emotions like anger and sadness frustration, etc, and I was thinking about how confusing and
Brittney Carey (12:21)
Mm-hmm.
Thank you.
Gwendolyn Wallace (12:31)
wrong that is, especially for black kids, right, especially for marginalized kids, because your anger is incredibly important, it can be incredibly empowering and invigorating and exciting, right, and that people in the past have needed to use their anger to create change for themselves, the people they love, their communities, etc. And so I wanted to write a book about this, about a little girl named Maya.
Brittney Carey (12:44)
Yes.
Gwendolyn Wallace (12:58)
who is struggling with these big feelings about the world, about what she loves and what she doesn’t love so much. And she’s introduced to a kind librarian who introduces her to revolutionary black women of the past who dealt with these same feelings and teaches Maya about what these women did to change their communities with their big feelings. And by the end of the book, her anger and her sadness doesn’t feel too big at all. And she understands it’s just a part of and a reflection of the love she feels for herself and her community.
Brittney Carey (13:28)
Wow. And I love that connection to those emotions. Like you said, we get taught from a really early age that, as you said, there are good emotions and there’s bad emotions, or there’s emotions that we praise and emotions that, you know, we shouldn’t let out. And then it also gets genderized. So it’s like, oh, boys can feel angry. Girls have to, you know, they can only feel happy and only feel joy and only feel this. Which, you know, when you get to the root of it, like it’s just, it’s all very ridiculous because we’re human beings and
Gwendolyn Wallace (13:43)
Exactly.
Exactly.
Brittney Carey (13:57)
That’s part of the human experiences to feel thing. You know, it’s a beautiful part of the human experience. And yeah, it’s hard to grapple with some of these these complex feelings, but they’re important to have. And so I love that that’s a part of the book where it’s like, it’s saying that, you know, we’ve used these powerful emotions in the past, like that’s a lot of where this resilience comes from. You know, when I was talking to Dr. Tunette Powell, and she brought up this idea of freedom dreaming, right, and just thinking about
Gwendolyn Wallace (14:00)
Exactly, exactly.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Brittney Carey (14:25)
what all we’ve been through and how we’ve gotten to the place that we are, and really utilizing our anger and utilizing our pain and utilizing that to make change and have a future that we want to live in and dream of that future that we want to live in, right? And so, you know, especially with young children, these types of conversations can be, you know, they don’t generally have, especially young children, they don’t have a lot of room for nuance in their heads, right? Things are just generally very black or white. It’s right or wrong. It’s good or bad.
Gwendolyn Wallace (14:39)
Exactly.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Brittney Carey (14:55)
And so
Gwendolyn Wallace (15:08)
Yes.
Mm.
No, exactly, exactly. You’re so right. And I think that I love this concept of freedom, dreaming. I think that’s exactly, you know, what the light she feels inside it’s about. And I think it’s also right saying that children saying to adults and children that children can be part of the process of freedom, dreaming, right, that they can be change makers, that they have something to teach adults about the way that we act in the in the groups that we create and the ways that we treat each other.
Brittney Carey (15:29)
Mm-hmm.
Yes. Yes.
Gwendolyn Wallace (15:46)
And so to kind of center a young girl who, at the end of the book, she gets together with her friends and like thinks of a way to kind of do something for their neighborhood. And I think to say that, you know, your voice isn’t too small. And I think in our movements, they can really exclude children and not think about children’s role in freedom dreaming. And I think for me as a child is when I felt the most free and I felt like the world was most open and I felt the most willing to kind of express the world I wanted to see. And so…
Brittney Carey (15:47)
Yes.
Yes.
Mm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (16:14)
That book was kind of an answer to the question of, you know, why aren’t we including children more in our process of, of imagining new worlds in, in freedom, dreaming in, um, right. Imagining justice. Why, why aren’t children included in that process for us?
Brittney Carey (16:19)
Yes.
Yes, 100%. And, you know, and really get down to it, it’s the way that we view children, the way that we view, you know, them within our society. And oftentimes, it hurts to say, but I don’t think we often see young children as like full grown people, right? You know, fully fledged little humans. And while yes, their brains are growing and developing and their bodies are growing and developing, you know, and
Gwendolyn Wallace (16:37)
Yes.
Yes.
Brittney Carey (16:54)
it will continue to grow and develop until well into like the end of adolescence, right? And that’s again the joy of the human experience, but just because they are growing and developing in a lot of ways and just because they haven’t seen as much of the world as we have, that doesn’t mean that their dreams and their ponderings and their questions aren’t still valid, right? They’re, you know, they’re in this space, you know, with young children that they are trying to collect so much information about the world around them. They’re trying to understand
Gwendolyn Wallace (17:13)
Mm-hmm.
Brittney Carey (17:23)
what’s acceptable, what’s not acceptable, who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s good and who’s bad, right? They’re really trying to understand with their limited ability to grasp onto like these kind of deeper, more nuanced topics, they’re still trying to understand. And there’s ways that we can bring in these kind of very complex topics, you know, of, you know, systemic racism, of classism, you know, of sexism, like there’s still ways that we can start to have these conversations where we’re allowing them to think critically about the world around them and not just accept things
Gwendolyn Wallace (17:25)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Brittney Carey (17:53)
as they are. Yeah.
Gwendolyn Wallace (17:54)
No, exactly. And I think so often you’re right that, you know, we think of children as an entire group to be like tolerated you know, our parents see their children as kind of property and And for me, it’s so important to acknowledge that right childhood is a social construct Like race like gender right that structures our world and creates and makes children right a disadvantage and an oppressed group The only one in fact that we all Get to be a part of
Brittney Carey (18:05)
Yes.
Hmm.
Mm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (18:23)
And I think that part of understanding this is understanding that of course, there’s the biological process of aging, but the way that different people in different cultures structure off that, well, this time is childhood and this time is adolescence and this time is adulthood, and then assign different stereotypes, traits, rights, responsibilities, right? These things are social. And so to live in a place where we see children as, I think very much like a nuisance, right?
Brittney Carey (18:23)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Yeah.
Gwendolyn Wallace (18:52)
very many rights, without very many rights to speak up at all. And like you said, as people who have less important ideas and less important ways of knowing the world, and that hurts all of us. That hurts all of us so much to not be able to listen to them, not be able to collaborate with them and understand that they are at a different stage than we are, but a no less important stage and a no less formed.
Brittney Carey (18:54)
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely.
Mm-hmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (19:21)
stage, right? Because they’re developing and growing every day, but so are we. So why is that a reason to treat anyone differently?
Brittney Carey (19:25)
Yep.
Exactly. I love that. Why is it, you know, why is that a reason to treat people differently? And I had never really thought about that. But yeah, we do kind of put children in this box and, and treat them in a way that we would, you know, treat oppressed people where we’re, we’re stifling their voices, where, you know, the systems are constantly kind of putting them in a certain box and kind of stereotyping them. And, and, you know, it’s, it is one of the kind of groups that we all have to be a part of in some way at some point in our lives and what that looks
the interactions and how those things that we’ve learned in these early ages, they really do shape the way that we will continue to walk through life in adulthood. You know, there’s just so much, you know, the idea of like healing your inner child and all these different things that are, you know, have existed for years. So it’s not like a new phenomenon, but we’re hearing more about it now. You know, and looking at those, you know, I remember when I first started like my just
Gwendolyn Wallace (20:18)
Yes, yeah.
Brittney Carey (20:27)
I just remember being like, just kind of peeved that I had to like pause my healing journey. So I had to go heal my inner child. I had to go backwards. I was like, this is, this is some BS.
Gwendolyn Wallace (20:34)
Yeah.
No, no, but I think you’re right that this kind of, I’m really enjoying like internet conversations, whether I agree or disagree about like inner childhood or like this current like embrace of girlhood by, you know, celebrities in media or books or whatever. But I think it’s interesting to think about, yeah, that, right, children are this group that adults have nothing to learn from. And then we spend so much of adulthood trying to get back to our childhood interests and feelings and experiences. So apparently they did have a lot to teach us.
Brittney Carey (20:45)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Yes.
Gwendolyn Wallace (21:08)
And I think, you know, that’s so interesting to me. And of course, you know, being a child is also such a gendered racialized thing. What it means to get to be a child, who gets to be a child, and then, you know, adding on top of that. Exactly, adding on top of that, you know, thinking about like the foster care system, the child welfare, I’m putting that in quotes, you know, system in the US. And adding all of that onto these things that create a really…
Brittney Carey (21:14)
Yes. Who’s seen as a child?
Mm-hmm. Yep.
That’s right.
Gwendolyn Wallace (21:35)
uneven experience of childhood. And so even when we talk about childhood, we still can’t think of it as like a cohesive or collective group. And so yes, a whole different conversation to be had there, but I think it’s so interesting to think about children and how we view them and how we write for them at the end of the day.
Brittney Carey (21:37)
And then.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. That is…
Absolutely. And I’ve been loving seeing these types of shifts in, you know, the books and the narratives that you’ve been writing about. And I’m seeing more of these, you know, within children’s books. And I’m seeing more representation in children’s books, which was another thing that I really noticed in your writings is that there was representation there. And it was genuine and authentic representation. I always say, like, it’s important that when we’re in the classroom that we’re looking at
Gwendolyn Wallace (22:15)
Mm-hmm.
Brittney Carey (22:20)
you know, really taking a critical look at the literature in our classroom. What books are we bringing in? What toys are we bringing in? What images are we bringing in? What people are we bringing in? Because like it’s it’s important that not only, you know, children are seeing diversity within, you know, the diversity that exists in the world, that they’re seeing that in the classroom as well. Even if you have a homogeneous classroom, it’s important that that diversity is still there because it’s existing out there in the world, right? But also still being very.
Gwendolyn Wallace (22:26)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Brittney Carey (22:48)
critical and very analytical about the books that we’re seeing because there are books that I remember growing up with that I would not bring into my classroom today. You know, yes, books that perpetuate stereotypes or perpetuate harm unintentionally, or, you know, books that are perpetuating narratives that just I wouldn’t, I’m trying to break those narratives for myself. Like, I don’t want to bring that into these classrooms. Like, the giving tree, please, dear God, no.
Gwendolyn Wallace (22:56)
Yes, absolutely.
Yes, yes. Yes, yeah, what an interesting book. I’ll say it politely.
Brittney Carey (23:16)
What an interesting book. Yes, it’s an interesting thing to exist, right? And I remember that being a part of my childhood. And I look at that as an adult through a lens of I want to make sure that I want to be intentional about what messaging I’m bringing into this classroom. Right. And so if I am bringing a book like that, which I wouldn’t, but if it were in the classroom and it were being read, there would be some really intentional questions I would be wanting to pose to the group here about the messaging that’s happening. Right. And so.
Gwendolyn Wallace (23:21)
Yes.
Yes.
Brittney Carey (23:44)
But of course, those conversations can’t happen until we lay down the framework and we lay down just all these different aspects of who’s in these books, who’s not in these books. We’re asking those questions and we’re teaching children to ask those questions. But that’s one of those things that I really, really loved, that your books were very diverse and they took these really big ideas and broke them down in this really beautiful way that I know that children can connect to. I know that adults could connect to.
Gwendolyn Wallace (23:57)
Yes.
Brittney Carey (24:13)
And so that’s just a beautiful, beautiful thing.
Gwendolyn Wallace (24:17)
Thank you. I appreciate that so much. I think, right, I write all of my books have black main characters and will continue to I’m sure, but I think that this idea and this concept of representation is also so interesting to me and I feel like sometimes we get caught up in just the visual portion of it. Right, or sharing books with kids that have black characters or queer characters, etc. Without
Brittney Carey (24:31)
Mm-hmm.
Thanks for watching!
Gwendolyn Wallace (24:43)
actually thinking about the content of the book or how we teach them. And so I’m glad you brought that up as well, because when I wrote Joy Takes Root, which was my second manuscript, but my first book that was published, right? It’s inspired by my experiences gardening with my grandmother in South Carolina. And it was important to me that I didn’t just write a gardening book with a black main character, but I wrote like a black gardening book, which is why I reference, right?
Brittney Carey (24:47)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Gwendolyn Wallace (25:12)
the main character, Joyce, like ancestors relationship to the land, right? And the connections that are being made with Grammy, and I include like ginger snaps, which is a recipe that my grandmother makes and a lot of southern Black people make, and there’s a sweetgrass basket in the background because I’m Gullah Geechee, and so like adding these things because I think if we just stop with like visual representation, right, then we have a lot of white people writing books with
Brittney Carey (25:16)
you
Mm.
Yeah.
Mm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (25:40)
black main characters, but at the end of the day, it’s not representation if you’re not also writing like a black book or a queer book. And I think, you know, when we bring that into our classroom, it isn’t about, I’ll stay on the topic of gardening, right? It isn’t about just having books about gardening with a lot of characters with different colors skin. It’s about understanding how are the different ways that people past and present have related to land, have related to gardening, you know, that’s.
Brittney Carey (25:41)
Yeah.
us.
Yeah.
Gwendolyn Wallace (26:08)
culturally responsive and representative teaching. And so I feel like debates about representation, especially in our current climate of like book banning and attacks on children, especially trans children, I think that’s something that gets left out is kind of the limits of representation as a concept.
Brittney Carey (26:20)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Yes, I absolutely agree because while I do love seeing the incorporation of more, you know, children of color within books and, you know, even by white authors, I do love seeing that, like we want to see the incorporation of these types of things, right? Great. But then it continues to go steps further. Like that’s not the end point, right? We have, we continue to go, right? So as I was saying, I’m being, I’m very, very critical and very intentional about the books that I would bring into my classroom. So not only am I looking at
Gwendolyn Wallace (26:42)
Exactly, yes.
Exactly.
Brittney Carey (26:56)
the actual characters in the books and I’m seeing who’s being represented in this book, right? Is there a diversity of characters in this book or is there only one type of character in this book? And what are they doing? And like, is it stereotypical or is this authentic? I’m also looking at who’s illustrating the book, who’s writing the book, right? So I want to make sure that there’s a diversity of authors, right? Because we have, I remember this was years ago and, you know, someone was saying like, you know, oh, yeah, there’s like, you know, all kinds of books and everything out there. Like, you know, they’re they’re always talking about diversity and stuff like that.
Gwendolyn Wallace (27:10)
Yes, yes.
Brittney Carey (27:26)
Not necessarily. Like the books, the mainstream books that you find that are most popular most of the time are written by white authors, right? It’s either usually white male authors are like the kind of the most popular books that are out there, right? You think like the Eric Carlyle books and no shade to Eric Carlyle, his books are beautiful. But, you know, but like that’s the majority of what you see as like the most popular things, you know? And you do have to be very intentional if you wanna make sure that you have a bookcase that is.
Gwendolyn Wallace (27:32)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
No, I hear you, I hear you.
Brittney Carey (27:54)
authentically diverse, right? And that means it takes a little extra time on my end to sit there and actually I’m looking at each page by page. I’m looking at what’s what’s words are being written. I’m looking at what’s in the background. Like there’s so much that I’m actually looking into to make sure that I’m bringing in books that are authentically, you know, representing our world around us. And just, yes, representation just doesn’t stop at, okay, there’s like a black kid in this book. Like, no, there’s more to that, you know?
Gwendolyn Wallace (27:56)
Yes.
Brittney Carey (28:22)
And, you know, I could talk about this for days in movies and films and things like that. And people are becoming more aware of it. You know, I just finished watching the Fallout series and that was a whole fascinating, the whole fascinating show. It’s pretty good. I like games. So like I got all like the gamey references in it. But what I did notice is that this is a game that kind of takes place in like this like.
Gwendolyn Wallace (28:22)
Exactly.
Mm.
Okay, I haven’t seen it.
Brittney Carey (28:49)
alternate universe future that’s still kind of very past like. And so, but there are, there’s a lot of representation of black figures in this like, you know, future, futuristic not future thing. It’s hard to explain, but there are black characters there. And seeing that I was like, okay, that’s nice to see. I like, I love this because oftentimes when you think about, you know, things like Star
there weren’t black characters even in the future. And you’re like, okay, so we just don’t exist in the future? Like, oh, okay. You know, and so I was seeing that, I was like, okay, messaging has been getting somewhere. So there aren’t black characters here, but it still didn’t feel authentic. You know, just to like, okay, we put black people there. And I’m like, okay, yeah, that’s great. But like, you know, she’s got all this curly hair and she’s out in the wilderness, like, nah.
Gwendolyn Wallace (29:19)
Yeah, yeah. Yes, yeah. No, I hear you, I hear you.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
Brittney Carey (29:44)
Like, nah, nah. What is she doing with that? Like, have some commentary on this. Like, there, let me know what’s going on here, right? So there’s just a little bit more that would deepen this connection to these characters as people of color, not just by their presence being there, which is nice. I like seeing that, but I also want the depth of their experience as Black people in this weird alternate universe future thing, you know?
Gwendolyn Wallace (29:45)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is she doing with it at night? Like, yeah.
Yeah, no, I hear you.
Exactly. We want not just like different color characters but full but full characters.
Brittney Carey (30:19)
Yes, yes, yes, yes. And so kind of shifting gears a little bit. So how do you believe that like children’s literature kind of lends itself and contributes to social justice in the realm of education, and particularly with like early childhood, you know, we’re talking about children’s books and reading to children.
Gwendolyn Wallace (30:24)
Yeah.
I mean, I think early childhood literature is so incredibly important. I mean, that’s why I write it. But I think that for so many of us, right. We haven’t, you know, children as it has, I haven’t obviously lived full lives, haven’t traveled very much. And so I think that, right. Reading books is one of the first ways that you come to understand the world, understand the people around you and understand how to make sense of things. And I think, right. If you’re teaching.
Brittney Carey (30:44)
Mm.
Hmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (31:09)
the values of social justice, of community care, of anti-racism, anti-imperialism, what have you, then children don’t need to unlearn all of that messaging later in life. And so I think it’s incredibly, incredibly important to start teaching kids very young about the world and how to relate to one another. And I think for me, an issue that I run into a lot are some comments that I get, DMs that I get.
Brittney Carey (31:26)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (31:39)
right, is that my book, The Light She Feels Inside, which again shows Maya meeting with these real life characters from the past, that people are saying, oh, it’s too political, or someone replied to my tweet that it’s like a DEI book, whatever, which I won’t even tackle, I don’t even know what that means. But I think this idea, right, that there are certain concepts, ideas that are too political for kids, that are inappropriate to teach children, which again is the same line of reasoning as people who are trying to.
Brittney Carey (31:55)
Right.
Gwendolyn Wallace (32:06)
stop all other forms of childhood bodily autonomy, like gender affirming care, reproductive justice and healthcare, et cetera. But this idea that there are things that children aren’t old enough to learn, I think is so harmful, because you don’t need to give kids a lecture on the ins and outs of like the corporate private prison system. Nobody’s trying to do that. But to understand, but to help kids.
Brittney Carey (32:10)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm. Yes.
No.
Gwendolyn Wallace (32:35)
understand that there are people who we put in jail and we put in prison. And what does it mean to think of somebody as a good person and a bad person? These are things that can be taught through things like time outs, things like you’re playing tag and someone gets out. These are concepts that are part of childhood. And so I think if the reason that there’s so many wonderful children’s book writers, educators, et cetera, if you look hard enough who are
Brittney Carey (32:37)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (33:04)
who have studied this, who have researched, who have interacted with kids, and who are thinking about really important ways to describe everything to kids. And so I think I’m a very big proponent that there’s nothing that kids aren’t old enough to learn about and that there’s an age appropriate way to teach everything, every experience, concept, et cetera, under the sun, because it affects kids’ lives.
Brittney Carey (33:12)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Mm-hmm. Absolutely, absolutely. I 100% agree. There’s always an age appropriate way to teach a thing. We’re not out here trying to traumatize children with these deep statistics and images and videos. We’re not trying to do that. But especially in these earlier years, it’s preparing them to start questioning these things. It’s preparing them to start asking different questions and thinking about the world around us. And they’re already acting these things out in their play. Like you mentioned, already doing this type of thing.
Gwendolyn Wallace (33:40)
Exactly.
Exactly.
Brittney Carey (33:59)
you know, as kids, especially in early childhood, they love playing this game where like, you know, oh, we’re gonna, I’m gonna put you in jail, I’m gonna do this, right. And they don’t really truly have a concept of what they’re doing. Right. But they’re acting this out in their play. And their play is one of the most important ways that they are, again, they’re understanding their world, and they’re filtering a lot of their knowledge out through their play. And so I’ve seen so many kids just like, Oh, I’m gonna take you to jail, and we’re gonna do this. This is the bad guy, and I’m the good guy, right?
Gwendolyn Wallace (34:06)
Mm-hmm.
Brittney Carey (34:28)
And, you know, if I ask them some strategic questions, like, huh, what is jail? I’m like, well, it’s a place where you put the bad guys. I’m like, well, what makes a bad guy? Why is it a guy? Like I started asking some questions and you really get to the gist of it, that they don’t truly understand this concept, but they’re acting it out in their play. And I know that children are truly, truly, truly fascinated by this idea of power. Again, I don’t think we know what power is, but they do know.
Gwendolyn Wallace (34:38)
Exactly.
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Brittney Carey (34:56)
the experience of not having it. They know the experience of being powerless, right? Within their day-to-day experience. And so I think they’re truly fascinated by these concepts and these ideas. And we do them a disservice by not giving them the tools to speak about it, the tools to ask questions about it, the tools to experience these different things or to explore these different topics.
Gwendolyn Wallace (34:58)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Brittney Carey (35:21)
I think again, like I said, I think literature and children’s books is such a beautiful way to start doing that. There’s so many different ways that we can also, you know, do this in age appropriate ways. But I think the most accessible way and, you know, just one of the ways that is just so impactful for young children is through books, is through literature is through these types of imaging. And so again, we as early childhood educators,
Gwendolyn Wallace (35:27)
Yes.
Brittney Carey (35:48)
need to be very, very, very intentional and very specific about the books that we’re bringing in and the literature that we’re bringing in and really analyze it like really take some time to analyze what is this book actually saying and what is the messaging and what is that imaging? You know, all of these different things contribute to you know, how children are then going to, you know, go through throughout the rest of their, you know, K through 12, and even higher education experience, right? It starts here in early childhood. So like, why not?
Gwendolyn Wallace (35:57)
Yes.
No, and I totally agree. And I think you’re right that I think more people and more adults, A, need to read more children’s books because we all have children in our lives in some way, shape or form. But also like you’re saying, really go through and analyze them. If you’re in community with kids, think about the themes, think about who is represented, think about the questions that are being asked in the book. Think about the questions that you can ask about it. Think about what it’s saying about our world. Think about what it’s saying about children and adults.
Brittney Carey (36:24)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Gwendolyn Wallace (36:45)
All of these things are super important and children’s books can be analyzed with just as much depth as adult books. And I think another thing that’s really important is thinking about children’s literature as a way to help children write, support their friends. I remember I was teaching in a first grade classroom in New Haven and there was a girl whose mother had just been arrested that morning.
Brittney Carey (36:50)
Yes.
Mm.
Mm. Wow.
Gwendolyn Wallace (37:10)
and was going to court, right? And she shared this with me, and I think with some of her classmates, and they were confused, right? And I think, I wish I had a book then to talk to them about it. But I think my question often for parents who are like, I don’t want my kids learning about anything, in quotes, adult, is like, well, then how are they going to react to their classmates who may be going through
Brittney Carey (37:18)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (37:39)
very intimately some of the stuff that you deem is too adult. Yeah.
Brittney Carey (37:42)
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I guess that’s such a powerful question because, you know, even if, you know, you yourself are not going through that as a family, right? There, there are children in that classroom who might be going through those things. There might be just really hard, you know, conversations and things that are happening around those classrooms, right? And especially with young children, you know, they don’t quite understand the idea of boundaries yet. So they just be saying things sometimes and you’re like, oh, okay. They will tell you anything.
Gwendolyn Wallace (38:08)
Yes, for sure. They’ll tell you anything. They’ll tell you all the family secrets, anything. For sure.
Brittney Carey (38:16)
all yeah, all the tea, you know, they will spill the tea without any regard. And then they’ll just go out about their day. My favorite thing is like when you’re, you know, they’re going to the bathroom and they just they’re doing their business and they’re just having like the world of conversation, you’re like, can you just can you finish? Like, can we and he’s just like, and then I’m like, OK, buddy, like, let’s go. He just told me all this family drama.
Gwendolyn Wallace (38:34)
Like wrap it up.
Yes, yes.
Brittney Carey (38:45)
But, you know, these conversations are going to come up, right? And even when you think that, you know, you’re protecting your children and they’re not being exposed to these types of things, well, they are, right? They’re out there and they, it’s a fact, they are, they’re out there. They see things, even, you know, the most strict parents, even the most, you know, you know, helicopter parents, like kids are out there and they’re going to be talking to other kids, you know, if they’re going to public school, they’re going to be talking to other kids. They’re going to be learning about other things.
Gwendolyn Wallace (38:46)
Yes, yes.
Yeah, that’s a fact.
Mm-hmm.
Brittney Carey (39:15)
And so again, we don’t, it doesn’t help them to, it doesn’t protect them by not having these conversations. It actually hurts them more because they’re not equipped to handle these types of conversations. They’re not equipped to handle the big emotions that might come with these types of things. And we’re not actually protecting them. We’re just hurting them more and putting them at a great disservice because they’re, again, they’re not getting the tools and the language to really understand their experience and understand their peers’ experience.
Gwendolyn Wallace (39:23)
Exactly.
Exactly.
Brittney Carey (39:45)
And so, you know, the whole point is to just make sure that we have the tools to have these conversations, that we’re asking questions, that, you know, we’re not just like blindly following things just because that’s the way that we’ve always done them. Like it’s important that we are questioning, like is this still an effective practice? Does this still work for us? Does this contribute to the world that we want to see and we want to feel? And there’s a lot of things that we can be doing, especially in early childhood, again, to just prepare children to,
Gwendolyn Wallace (40:08)
Exactly.
Brittney Carey (40:16)
to be prepared for the world around them and to make those shifts and changes. And again, it’s important that we’re hearing them because again, going back to what we said before, that freedom dreaming, it’s such a powerful thing to dream of the future you want to see.
Gwendolyn Wallace (40:31)
Yes, yes. And I think I get a lot of questions from parents that are like, oh my gosh, how do I talk to a kid about XYZ topic? Whether it’s prison, whether it’s Palestine right now, that parents want to know. And I think for me, I’m like, well, have you seen the ways that your child has been asking about this or thinking about this? That I think, again, sometimes we need to put our pride aside as adults and kind of let children lead us.
Brittney Carey (40:41)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Yes.
Gwendolyn Wallace (41:01)
Because if this is a conversation that you think you need to have with your child, you know, you should ask them what questions they have. Have they heard about this thing? What do they think? Um, and see how they’re thinking about the world. I remember when I was working at another classroom in New Haven, um, there was kind of a, uh, like a match the object card game and one thing was like a, was a baseball cap and a boy was playing with a girl and a boy said, oh, that’s like a boy scouts cap.
Brittney Carey (41:06)
Mm-hmm.
because
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (41:31)
and the girl paused for a second and was like, no, that’s just a hat and like girls can wear them too. And he was very insistent that was like a boy scout hat. And so you see them trying to figure things out about the world in their play. Like kids are sponges, but they’re also creators of new ideas about the world. And you’re right that they’re experimenting with that in their play. And so I also, I remember I just paused for a second and I was listening, but I let them play that out. I didn’t necessarily like swoop in.
Brittney Carey (41:31)
Hmm.
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yep.
Yes.
and
Mm-hmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (42:01)
and was like, anyone can wear any hat. I addressed it after, but to kind of watch them go back and forth and figure this out and what makes something a boy hat versus a girl hat, it was like outlined, and so it wasn’t any particular color, which is really big, because they were thinking that if it was a certain color, they could determine if it was a girl hat or a boy hat. But you can learn so much from just watching kids play and watching them think about the world and then take their lead in these kinds of conversations.
Brittney Carey (42:01)
No.
Yep.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Absolutely. That’s such a beautiful way to go about it. And it’s definitely the approach that I usually take in my classroom as well is, you know, oftentimes, you know, parents get concerned and, you know, they think, oh, you’re going to be teaching my children about transgender gender things and blah, blah, blah, blah. And it’s like, I mean, it’ll come up if they have questions about it, you know, and it’ll come up, you know, if I’m noticing that they’re talking about gender a lot in play, then yeah, I’m going to.
Gwendolyn Wallace (42:48)
Yeah.
Brittney Carey (42:55)
you know, find some ways that we’re gonna start investigating that and asking some questions maybe I’m gonna bring in some books, you know, and I’ve I’ve definitely done that. I had one class where we had this one little kid who every day they would just come in and they would tell me like today. I’m a boy today and I’m like, okay, cool, you know, yeah, what do you want me to call you today? And it would be their name or it might be a different name and they’re like today. I’m 35 and I’m a boy and I’m like, okay, you know what live your life, dude. And so
Gwendolyn Wallace (43:11)
Amazing.
Fantastic.
Yeah.
Brittney Carey (43:24)
that was just something that they were just coming up with. And again, it didn’t necessarily mean that that child was going to grow up and be transgender. It just meant that they were exploring and experimenting with gender, and they just wanted to try different things on. And luckily, our family and our community was just very loving and accepting. And they’re like, yeah, yeah, they’re just doing this today. I’m like, that’s cool. And so that led us to exploring a little bit more books about, yeah, here’s a book about a boy who loves to wear dresses.
Gwendolyn Wallace (43:44)
Yeah.
Brittney Carey (43:52)
like, let’s just talk about this book where he just, he found this really beautiful dress. It’s his favorite color of orange and he just wanted to wear it. And it was just a beautiful, beautiful book. And so bringing those in and asking those types of questions. And so, you know, because this child was, you know, asking these questions and doing these things, the other children also had questions. And so it just naturally lent its way into, okay, what questions do we have about gender and how can we bring this into a classroom? And of course, in a developmentally.
appropriate way, you know, we’re not talking about anything explicit, we’re not talking, we’re not telling anyone that they need to be a certain way, it’s, oh yeah, you have questions about this, so let’s talk about gender, like let’s talk about how clothes are literally just clothes. It doesn’t, it doesn’t dictate anything else.
Gwendolyn Wallace (44:18)
Mm-hmm.
Exactly, exactly. And I know exactly and I feel like something I always love to talk about and mention and something a part of language I’m really intentional about is right saying that it’s necessarily about teaching like diverse or inclusive histories or right about teaching accurate history. Like, if you’re teaching kids that trans people don’t exist or aren’t real then you’re just not being accurate. Right, if you’re banning books if you’re.
Brittney Carey (44:51)
Yes. Yeah.
That’s not accurate.
Gwendolyn Wallace (45:00)
only showing books in which the world is all white, then you’re not giving a different version of history. You’re just not giving an accurate picture of the world. And so I think that’s something that I think about a lot. And one of the reasons I always say that book banning is violence. It isn’t just not nice or a different way of holding a classroom. It’s extremely violent not to give kids accurate information about the world.
Brittney Carey (45:05)
Mm-hmm.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, that is snaps to that. Absolutely. I feel that in my entire heart and soul. But kind of thinking about this and thinking about the future of education, how do you reimagine education?
Gwendolyn Wallace (45:30)
I’m sorry.
I think for me going back to something we were just talking about is a way that we can engineer classrooms in order to take children’s lead. And I, the classroom I was working in New Haven was a kindergarten classroom and it was an emergent curriculum classroom. So you come into the classroom at the beginning of the year, right, the walls aren’t like full of stuff yet. The classroom isn’t quite full of stuff, but the teacher.
Brittney Carey (45:55)
Mm.
Mm-hmm. Love it.
Mm-hmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (46:14)
has a syllabus of things, concepts the kids need to learn, right? By the end of this year, kids need to know the alphabet, like know how to count two, whatever, count by twos, et cetera, right? There’s a list of concepts, but not necessarily already decided the ways that the teacher would teach them. And so that was based on the interests of the students in the classroom. And then the walls gradually filled up with the questions.
Brittney Carey (46:18)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (46:42)
that students were thinking about. So for example, a student like found an unripe berry on the ground and the student was like, well what happens, will this berry like ripen if we take it back to the classroom? And so they did take it back to the classroom, right, they put it in a glass jar and then they wrote the students like questions about it on a little panel around it and like that was slowly how the classroom got decorated. And the students that year were really into space and
Brittney Carey (46:48)
Mm.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (47:11)
And so instead of sitting kids down and being like, this is how we’re gonna count to 10, it was like, okay, well then let’s make a command central. Right? And then, well, how many astronauts are we gonna have? Right? How many screws do we need on this spaceship? And so I think it was a really beautiful way to, like you were talking about, right, with gender, that kids want to learn about the world. It isn’t something you need to force them to do. And so it wasn’t like kids are never gonna learn how to count to 10 if we don’t.
Brittney Carey (47:12)
Mm-hmm.
No.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yes. No.
Yeah.
Gwendolyn Wallace (47:41)
sit them down, right? That like kids want to learn how to count to 10. They want to learn how to read and write. And so I wish that to me, it would be an education where we follow children’s leads based on their interests. That there’s no more like units and sitting kids down and explaining education in chunks. That kids get to do projects and I think work more with each other in order to kind of more organically learn the things that they wanna learn, especially when it comes to
Brittney Carey (47:47)
Mm-hmm.
Mmm.
Yeah.
Hmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (48:11)
information about each other, especially when it comes to learning about race, queerness, right? Immigration, borders, um, whatever we can think about that these things are taught organically that we’re taking their lead, um, and then slowly kind of introducing more information and guiding them, but not.
Brittney Carey (48:13)
Yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (48:30)
not like owning them and not owning the things they need to know.
Brittney Carey (48:32)
Yes.
Yes, I love that. It’s such a beautiful dream of education, because that’s very similar to how I see it as well, just really following the child’s lead and having the child kind of that banking model of education where that child or the individual, they are just as much of the process of education, as is the educator or the facilitator, right? So I’m not going to come into this classroom being the all being all knowing, omnipotent being of knowledge, right? You know, I’m just a human being.
Gwendolyn Wallace (48:55)
Exactly.
Exactly.
Brittney Carey (49:05)
So I don’t know everything about everything. I know quite a bit about a few things, but you know, I can’t, I’m not the one who knows everything about the ocean. I don’t know everything about space. I don’t know everything about the like the human body and the human experience. Like I don’t know everything and I don’t expect my students to know everything, but I can guarantee that whatever they want to learn, we’re gonna go on a journey and we’re gonna learn about it together.
Gwendolyn Wallace (49:06)
Hehehe
Exactly, yes.
No, exactly. And I think also, acknowledging that these kinds of experiences also can cost a lot of money. And so also I think I imagine first and foremost, a future of education with equitable funding and small classroom sizes, which again has to do with funding and places where schools aren’t wildly disparate in the resources that kids have access to, which I think that.
Brittney Carey (49:38)
Yes.
Yes, please.
Yes.
Mm-hmm. Yep.
Mm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (50:03)
any radical and just future of education needs to include equitable school funding. And pay for teachers.
Brittney Carey (50:08)
Yes. Yes, please. Like, can we just… please? You know, because it’s like in a perfect world, I would teach forever. Like, teaching is just what my heart feels, like it loves, and you know, I love it forever. But please pay teachers. You know, please, please pay teachers. You know, if money didn’t exist, if we didn’t live in capitalism and money would, you know…
Gwendolyn Wallace (50:21)
Yeah.
Please, please, please pay teachers.
Brittney Carey (50:32)
didn’t exist. I would still be teaching. I’d be like, yeah, cool. I’ll just do this for fun. Like, let’s go. Let’s go teach to you. But where can my audience find you?
Gwendolyn Wallace (50:35)
Yeah. Yeah, no, yeah.
Yes, so if you want to learn a little bit more about me, I have a website. It’s just Gwen So that is always a great place to check me out. But if you want kind of more recent and more continuous updates on my work and what’s coming next, you can follow me at my Instagram, which is G.M.Wallace. My middle name is Maya. And so you can follow me there. I post lots of updates about my books. I am right now booking for events for like schools or libraries or bookstores or museums, et cetera.
Brittney Carey (51:12)
Mm-hmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (51:13)
where those things will be. And also you’ll get more updates on my forthcoming books. I have another book coming out next year called Dancing with Water, and then another forthcoming book called Imagine New Suns, which is the first picture book biography of Octavia Butler. And so if you want kind of the hidden behind the scenes publishing journey for those, yeah, give me a follow on Instagram.
Brittney Carey (51:15)
Yeah, thanks.
I am so excited. Octavia Butler exposed me to my first science fiction book, and I didn’t think science fiction books were for me. I was like, I don’t know. And then I read that and I was like, okay, something’s going on here. Kindred, I think. Yeah.
Gwendolyn Wallace (51:37)
laughs
Which book? Which book?
Yeah, that was the first Octavia Butler book I read too.
Brittney Carey (51:56)
Yeah, and I was just like, oh, oh, oh, okay. Wait a minute.
Gwendolyn Wallace (52:01)
Yeah, no, and I think she’s also such a great example of someone, right? She was dyslexic and had a really bad experience in school and didn’t feel like school was for her, was not treated well, did not get good grades, you know, was not treated well by teachers and classmates. And so also an amazing story, right, of disability and thinking about disability justice, what justice would look like in our classrooms, you know, for kids with disabilities as well. But I think it’s so important for kids to hear that even if school
Brittney Carey (52:06)
Mmm.
Wow.
Hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Gwendolyn Wallace (52:31)
even if you’re really struggling in school, right, you are going to do great things. And so I think Octavia Butler’s story also shows kids that as well.
Brittney Carey (52:33)
Yeah.
Yes.
I can’t wait. I can’t wait. I will link everything in my show notes below. So if you want to see what Gwendolyn is up to, you can click any of those links. Gwendolyn, thank you so much for joining me and sharing all of your beautiful knowledge and insights. And I will definitely be keeping up to what you’re doing because I want to see that Octave your brother.
Gwendolyn Wallace (52:42)
I’m sorry.
Thank you so much for having me. I had so much fun. This was such a lovely conversation. And I hope that, you know, everyone listening can also think about their own dreams for re-imagining education.
Brittney Carey (53:05)
Yes.
Mm-hmm. Yes, thank you so much.
Gwendolyn Wallace (53:14)
Thank you.
Brittney C (53:17)
you so much for tuning into Conscious Pathways. Don’t forget to like, follow, and subscribe to Conscious Pathways wherever you get your podcasts. I’m on most major podcasting platforms from Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio. So you can find me pretty much wherever you get your podcasts.
I also have the video version of this interview available on YouTube. So if you’re interested in watching the video version, you can head over there and subscribe to my YouTube channel. And of course, all of that is linked in my show notes below. If you’re interested in checking out any of Gwendolyn’s books, I’ve also linked that in my bookshop .org. So you can click that link. It’ll take you to my conscious friends
And it has the available authors on Bookshop. The book’s available there, so you can check out Gwendolyn’s book, so you can check out Dr. Casey Stockstill’s book. Dr. Denise Jones’ book is there as well. So if you’re just curious on who I’ve talked to on the podcast, I’ll always try my best to link them into my bookshop .org. And if you follow the link, I get a very small commission, but you also get to support…
small locally owned independent bookshops as well. I’ve talked about bookshop .org on the podcast before and it’s just a really amazing platform that supports small independent local bookshops and creators like myself. So it’s a great option. If you’d like to support the community and support Conscious Pathways, you can link that right there. Of course, I’ll always link that into my show notes. And until next time, don’t forget to navigate your conscious journey with courage and kindness.
and I’ll see you there for my transformative conversations. Bye.
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