AILA announces its Literature Award Winners
February 15, 2010
So I know this is kind of old news by now since it was announced at Mid-Winter, but AILA chose a Native Hawaiian book as a recipient of its American Indian Youth Literature Award. Now, as excited as I am about a PI author and book receiving this honor, it brings to mind a few questions…
AILA is the American Indian Library Association and ” is a membership action group that addresses the library-related needs of American Indians and Alaska Natives.” Usually, Native Hawaiians don’t fall into this category due to their different political status than American Indians and Alaska Natives. Normally, they would get roped in with Asian Pacific Islanders and APALA. But, APALA gave all of their awards this year to Asian books, with no PI representation, which would’ve been fine and whatever to me, except that it got me thinking about whether or not a book like “Between the Deep Blue Sea And Me” was even considered for the APALA Literature Award.
AILA gave it a Youth Literature award, but personally, browsing through the book when it first came out, I thought it was more adult, which would explain why, as a member of APALA’s YA Literature Committee, I did not receive a copy to review. I wonder, though, if the Adult Committee received a copy. I have heard through the grapevine that perhapsp PI authors who publish through PI publishers don’t get a fair representation in this awards circuit. That maybe APALA is only dealing with the large publishers, which would greatly decrease the number of PI books in consideration. Last year, the children’s biography on Duke Kahanamoku, “Surfer of the Cenutry”, received an award from APALA for Children’s Picture book. So that’s one book in the nearly ten years that APALA has been giving awards that went to a PI when there have been so many books published between now and then.
I know I’ve expressed this concern before that PIs are under represented when grouped into this APA category, but I feel like its not getting any better and that people are so stuck in their Asian focused world that even AILA felt the need to take it upon themselves to review these works which are representational of a decent number of the APA community.
As I gear up to work on the 2011 APALA Children’s Literature Award Committee, I think that I will also work extra hard on ensuring that PIs are represented in the sample available for contention, now that I know how this system works.
