Welcome back to a brand-new episode of the Awakened Heart. This week, Bill and Guadalupe are joined by a special guest. Be sure to like and subscribe to the podcast and share it with your friends.
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Awakened Heart With Jan Fenton
The origination point is connected to bias awareness and bias deconstruction. The origination point is the notion that all of our biases, implicit or explicit, have a point in time where they started, where we were given a narrative or had an experience with a small group of people that then we extrapolate to a larger group of people.
The reason why the origination point is so important is because that is the point of healing and understanding. As we are deconstructing and making our biases more conscious, the origination point supports us in understanding where they came from and healing any emotional impacts that they are having in our lives. Sit back, open your mind, open your heart, and let’s see if we can find your origination points to bias.
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You’re tuning in to another session of the show. As you know, this show, if you’ve been tuning in to it, is about people sharing stories, connecting, and rehumanizing themselves to each other. It is to see if we can get back to that place where we’ve been before and can be in community and in conversation regardless of how we see each other. This session is another session of the Awakened Heart. The Awakened Heart was created with my friend, Guadalupe, and me. We’ve got quite a few sessions under our belt already, haven’t we? It’s probably 6 or 8 and keeps growing.
We were having this conversation and talking about how we both know White people who are doing great things around inclusion and belonging and stepping outside of their cultural comfort zone. Yet, they don’t have a place to talk about it because so much of our socialization is rooted in seeing White people as saviors or people tooting their own horn, or people with privileges that don’t help other people. That’s not my experience, and I don’t think that’s been Guadalupe’s experience. We know people who are White who are doing great things from their hearts every day to be more inclusive, be more in belonging, and understand the nuances around a culture that is so vibrant and there for all of us, and don’t talk about it.
We live in this society where there’s so much fear about how people are going to react to what we say that, for many people out there reading, we’re not talking to each other. The conversation that we’re going to have is a conversation that you should all be having, being inquisitive, and wondering, “Who is this person in front of me? What are they up to? What are they giving back to the world? How are they?” That’s what the Awakened Heart is about. I’m honored to be able to share this with my friend, Guadalupe, who is unique and multicultural in her own way. I will let her introduce herself to you. How are you, Ms. Guadalupe?
I’m very fine. Thank you, Bill.
That’s good. As usual, it sounds like you had a good day. Why don’t you jump in and say hi to everybody? I’ll let you introduce our guest, and we’ll get into the heart of our show.
Welcome, everyone, to the show. Bill’s already provided you with a context. What I would add to it is I believe that humans are good. The human species is my favorite species. People are my favorite group to be with in the mammal world. In my years, I noticed that I primarily gravitate to people’s hearts and their spirits more than necessarily their gender, their race, or their age.
I have many wonderful people in my life, and we share stories. What I have noticed over the years is that many of my not only White friends but who also are wonderful allies are doing wonderful things in the world. I feel that those stories they share with me need to be shared broader and wider. Why? It is because we need this kind of inspiration. We need to feel hopeful at a time when our country feels divided. There is a lot of good happening in the world. There’s a lot of goodness.
My own background, in part, is my spiritual background. I became a Roman Catholic nun, so I could always talk about spirituality unapologetically. I am also of mixed heritage with a Jewish father. In the Jewish tradition, we are always committed to healing and repairing the world. This Awakened Heart session is a way to bring those together in service of storytelling or story sharing.
You sparked this thought in my head of a memory that I haven’t had in a long time, which tells me why we’re connected. When I was young, there was this point where I went to Catholic school. I had this mean nun. She would take a ruler and wrap my knuckles when I did bad things. I got so mad at her. I didn’t like her. I was traumatized by it. Being here with you counters all of that so thank you for that. We’re talking about stories so that’s a little story. It popped into my mind as you mentioned that experience.
I like to tell people that Guadalupe shatters stereotypes of nuns wherever she goes.
Go ahead. You can introduce our guest.
Thank you to the two of you. I’m going to introduce a longtime dear friend, Jan Fenton. Besides being good friends, Jan is one of my closest and dearest allies. We talk about everything under the sun, particularly often around issues of justice, oppression, and injustice. Jan has always had an awakened heart. That’s how I think of you, Jan, in all the decades that we have known each other.
It’s probably in the last several years when Jan began to have nephews and nieces. We were visiting that Jan would begin to tell me that she was reading books to her young nephews and nieces that had to do with other cultures, particularly Native American culture. I thought, “That’s such a good example of you don’t have to go out of your way. You take what you like to do and bring diversity into it.” If you like reading children’s books, then bring into that sphere diverse children’s stories of other cultures.
The other thing I want to say about you, Jan, is as long as I’ve known you, you have always done some form of civic engagement and volunteer work. It’s always been a priority for you to make the time and set your life up in a way that you can go to the farmer’s market. You go at the end when they have the food they want to not take back. You would collect that food, and then you would take it to the neighborhood school so that there would be food in Urban Gleaners.
I know that was one of your other projects, but I believe that you have had others. You’ve had an awakened heart for a very long time. Jan was telling me about her involvement with the Children’s Book Bank, and I was fascinated. I hope that you will tell us how you got involved with the Children’s Book Bank, how you’ve watched it evolve, grow, and expand, how you’ve been part of that journey, and how you continue to be part of that journey. Jan, tell us your story about the Children’s Book Bank.
I would love to, Guadalupe. Books are one of my favorite things in the world. When I’m surrounded by books, I feel so full, so happy, and so energized. I’ll tell you about the Children’s Book Bank first, and then I’ll tell you how I got involved.
Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, too, about who Jan is before you jump into the Book Bank?
I am 61 years old now in 2023. I grew up on Bainbridge Island, Washington. It is an island in Puget Sound outside Seattle. I’m Anglo-American heritage, English, Scottish, and Welsh. I had a privileged upper-middle-class upbringing on Bainbridge Island with very little knowledge of injustice. It was a majority White community, although when I lived there, we had a number of Japanese-American families. In fact, Bainbridge was the first place where Japanese-Americans were rounded up to be sent to internment camps.
I was wondering if there were internment camps up there.
The camps weren’t there. The camps were in the East of the mountains, but Bainbridge Island is the first place that they went and rounded up Japanese-Americans. I know one of the families. I grew up with one of those families. I did not know that happened to any Japanese-Americans until I was an adult because it was not spoken of outside. I’m sure the Japanese-American community spoke of it, but outside, it was not spoken of. It was not taught in our schools until after I left school. That was a shocking revelation when I was a young adult.
There was a Japanese-American community and certainly a Latino community, but very few African-Americans. It was an insular, White-dominant community. Fortunately, I was able to grow and move away. I got to go to college and have my eyes opened to a lot of the realities of the world starting in college. That made me want to understand what the world was like for others who didn’t have the privileges I had.
That’s the beginning of my awakened heart, Guadalupe. It is learning other people’s stories. Books were probably the first place that I learned a lot about other people’s stories and experiences. I certainly have since by knowing people, but books have always been a huge source of enlightenment for me. I love to read. Books are very comforting to me as well. I love to talk about books.
Books are probably the first place that one learns about other people's stories and experiences. Share on XIn my twenties, I got interested in social change activism. One of the first things that I did as a volunteer is help start a nonprofit social change bookstore in Portland called Laughing Horse Books back in 1985. It was an all-volunteer social change-oriented bookstore that was around for about 29 years. I volunteered there for about fifteen years.
When did you start it?
1985.
That was ahead of the curve in 1985 for a social justice bookstore.
There had been predecessors, but some had closed. There was one that was closing. The predecessors in Portland and elsewhere had been more, ideologically, sectarian. They were associated with a particular, radical political party, like the Socialist Workers Party or the Communist Party. After seeing what happened to those kinds of approaches, we tried to be non-sectarian. We had our own challenges.
I volunteered devotedly there for fifteen years and was exposed to incredible books, authors, volunteers, and customers. We hosted lots of events about political issues, music, and poetry. It blew my mind. I learned so much. I started working at Technical Assistance for Community Services with Guadalupe a couple of years after that. I continued looking for ways to fight injustice and learn more all the time about how the world works from that time on.
Books have always been a big part of my life. I left the bookstore after fifteen years because I was burned out from doing that. I’ve always loved being around books. Years later, fast forward to I don’t know how long ago, I heard about the Children’s Book Bank. It started several years ago. It is a nonprofit that start was started in Portland by a White woman named Danielle Swope who wanted to give away the children’s books that her children weren’t reading anymore to some kids who didn’t have access to books. She ended up starting an organization that did that.
The goal of the Children’s Book Bank is to collect donations of new and gently used children’s books. They give them to kids who don’t have access to very many books at home. They give them to low-income kids, specifically to every Head Start and Early Head Start student in the Portland area, and to schools and other avenues, too. That’s the biggest one.
Children’s Book Bank: The goal of the Children’s Book Bank is to collect donations of new and gently used children’s books and give them to kids who don’t have access to books at home.
I heard about it and was looking to volunteer occasionally somewhere. I was a little too busy to make a regular volunteer commitment anywhere. Hands On Greater Portland is an organization that connects, people who want to volunteer somewhere on a short-term basis with a lot of nonprofits. They had the Children’s Book Bank on their list of places you could volunteer for two hours only once if you wanted or go back if you wanted.
Several years ago, I volunteered to do a book cleaning party or a book cleaning session. The books that they donated have to be gone through, cleaned, and restored in case they have torn pages, stickers in them, inscriptions written in them, or anything that makes them look less than pristine. That was my first volunteer session with the Children’s Book Bank.
I went to a two-hour session where we were given a pile of children’s books. We went through and cleaned them and restored them as much as possible. I enjoyed that and did that occasionally. Coincidentally, Children’s Book Bank became one of our clients. Where I work, we do bookkeeping for only nonprofit organizations. I had another connection with the Book Bank. They weren’t my client, but I worked with them a little bit.
A couple of years ago, I had reduced my hours at work and felt like I had enough time and energy to make a regular commitment to volunteer somewhere. I looked into the Children’s Book Bank to see what volunteer opportunities they had for a regular volunteer, and they had a number of them. One is called a Book Steward, which, in my case, is a chapter book sorter. It means I go there to their warehouse where they have thousands of donated books in bins. I am given the bins that are books for kindergarten through middle school and I go through and sort the books into the grade level that they’re appropriate for.
I started doing that a couple of years ago. That’s when I got to see the Children’s Book Bank thoroughly. I go regularly and I know the people. I work there and see the whole process. One of the things they trained me to do as I’m looking through the books was to look for what they call Inclusive Books. It means books that have a main character or main characters who are not from the dominant culture. Those are people of color, kids of color, LGBTQ kids, poor kids, kids with disabilities, and all those marginalized communities.
They said, “Look for those books. We’re going to put those in a pile because there aren’t enough of them in all the books we get. We want to make sure that every kid that gets a bundle of books from us gets at least 1 or 2 of those inclusive books. It’s so important that children see both experiences of people different from them and experiences of people like them.”
That’s when I learned about the concept of books as windows and books as mirrors. This is a metaphor. Books as mirrors are books that show the reader a different world from their own or a different experience. That’s important for all of us. That’s how we learn about other experiences and other things. It is things we don’t already know about and people’s experiences we don’t already know about.
It’s also very important that books reflect experiences that the reader has had. Those are what are termed books as mirrors. Especially for children from marginalized communities who are constantly bombarded with the dominant culture, for them to see their own experience and their own identity reflected in stories is important. It is also important to the people at the Children’s Book Bank.
They didn’t realize when they first started that only a very small portion, maybe 10% of the books that are donated to them, reflect lead characters from marginalized communities. First off, the makeup of the Portland area because of the history of racism and other injustices means that it’s a dominant White culture. The publishing industry is still dominantly White. The Children’s Book Bank told me that in 2022, only 11% of children’s books published were by authors of color.
In 2022, for new books, only 11% published were by authors of color.
Yeah, and less than 10% of the donated books that the Children’s Book Bank receives have lead characters who are from marginalized communities. Meanwhile, of the kids that the Children’s Book Bank is serving and distributing the books to, 70% of them are kids of color and 80% of them are from marginalized communities. There’s this huge disconnect.
The Children’s Book Bank, over the first few years of its existence, started to realize that this was the case and that this was a problem. The Children’s Book Bank started several years ago. In 2015, they started a specific program called A Story like Mine where they purchase additional books. In addition to all the books that get donated, they raise money specifically to purchase books that have lead characters that are kids of color, kids with disabilities, LGBTQ kids, poor Kids, and all those marginalized communities. It was to make sure that all of the children they’re distributing books to get some books that represent diverse communities.
Every early Head Start and Head Start student in the area gets a bundle once a year of 14 books from the Children’s Book Bank, and at least 3 of them are what they call inclusive books. I’m sure that they have a goal for that to be even more over time, but that’s where they are. This was enlightening to me to learn both the facts of how non-inclusive the books they were getting were and the work they’re doing to change that.
Jan, I want you to recap the concepts of windows and mirrors again. We heard it at the beginning. Let’s hear it again at the end.
Books can be either mirrors or windows. Books that are windows take the reader into another culture or another experience than their own, what’s familiar to them, and what they’ve experienced themselves, which is fantastic. That is how we open our eyes to the rest of the world. Books as mirrors are equally important. They mirror the reader an experience of their own. They mirror the reader’s identity. They have characters that are from the same culture, the same identity, or the same experience as the reader. They reinforce the value of the reader, so they are both vitally important for all of us, especially children.
Books can be either mirrors or windows. Books that are windows take the reader into another culture or experience than their own. Books as mirrors mirror the reader's identity and reinforce their values. Share on XBill, do you have any comments or questions for Jan at this point?
I love the concept of windows and mirrors because the windows give you a view of something new, and the mirror reflects you. There’s another addition to that that I don’t know if you’ve heard, Jan. It’s called doors. The door is the opportunity for children to respond or people to respond. They are moving on to a new path or a situation to do something creative, develop and apply ideas, and learn to live out their beliefs and values. I bring that into our conversation. I understand that you have read some of these inclusive books to your own nephews and nieces. Is that right?
I’m not recalling the ones I did, but I do give books to my nieces and nephews. Thanks partly to my experience at the Book Bank. I make an effort now to look for a variety of books with characters who are from a variety of cultures and experiences. The Book Bank has been a great source of ideas. In fact, when I’m sorting the chapter books, I’ll notice an interesting book that features maybe a Native American character, maybe an African-American family, or whatever. I take pictures of them, and then I go read about them.
One of the series I was excited to find that I had vaguely heard about but I saw at the Book Bank, so then it became real, is a series by a Native American writer named Louise Erdrich. You may very well have heard of her because she is a well-known native writer. I believe she’s Anishinaabe. She’s written many novels for adults, but she’s written a series of children’s books. The first was called The Birchbark House about a nine-year-old Anishinaabe girl in the 1800s with her family living in what is now Minnesota. That was the first of what became a series of five books that are referred to as The Birchbark House series.
The Birchbark House
What was so meaningful to me about that is that I grew up reading the Little House on the Prairie books, which were beloved to me when I was 7, 8, and 9 years old. As an adult, I became aware that those books have terribly damaging stereotypes toward Native Americans. This is a great counter to that. I read 1 or 2, and I gave the set to my then 10-year-old niece or great-niece to read. That’s one of the great books I discovered from sorting books at the Book Bank.
Part of my inquiry is thinking about if they’ve asked you any questions about any of the book characters that they’ve read about or if you have had any conversations. Even as you’ve read about them, what kind of questions come up for you? Part of your motivation to do this is to look at other cultures and offer those opportunities to young people.
I’m curious if you’ve had experiences with them. I don’t know if you read books for children anywhere. It sounds like you love reading them yourself, so that’s great. You can do the history on it. I’m wondering in relation to that door aspect of this growing process if there are questions that have come up for them or for you or new insights.
I wish I had a good answer for that. Unfortunately, the niece and nephew that I give the largest number of books to live up in the Seattle area and I don’t see them very often. I haven’t had many conversations with them about the books that I’ve given them, which makes me sad. I haven’t quite figured out how to make that happen. Although, I’m going to see them at Thanksgiving. I’m going to see if I can try to make some progress on that. I do have two great nieces in Portland who are 4 and 8 and I occasionally give books. I do read books to them because I see them. The four-year-old is the one that I have read the most to. Since she’s four, she doesn’t ask questions. I don’t know what she’s already gotten there yet.
She is like my little four-year-old granddaughter. She’ll take it all in.
She absorbs it.
Why is that important for you to share this idea that it’s important to get to know other cultures, and if you can’t do it in person, using books is a great way to immerse yourself into somebody else’s culture. Why is that important for you in terms of expanding your own windows, mirrors, and doors?
I want to understand the experiences of everyone, not just my culture. I want to understand what people of all backgrounds have gone through in order to be able to be supportive and be close to people. I want to be knowledgeable about all the barriers and injustices that people face. When I have the opportunity to counter those or fight injustice, then I’ll make the right decisions and support the right causes. It’s certainly that, but it also enriches my life. It’s for personal benefit and community benefit. It broadens my horizon so much to understand other people’s experiences.
It broadens your horizons so much to understand other people's experiences. Share on XI appreciate you getting so personal with us. It’s an important flow of conversation so that the people who are reading can realize that it’s not this big magnanimous thing that we have to do where we’re helping in your community to find inclusive books and make sure they get into the hands of all children. All children need to understand regardless of what their label is. Guadalupe and I use the label White, and yet, we both can’t stand labels. We don’t market that.
They’re so limited.
For the purpose of our conversation, we use the label of White, and yet, we know that that’s not how you fully identify. There’s so much more to you. That’s partly why I’m asking you these questions. It’s to get you to share with our audience that as a so-called White person, there’s so much more to who you are, what you do, what you value, and what you believe. If we could get past the label, we could get to the person. What is Urban Gleaners, and how did you create that? What’s that all about? I’ve heard that in your recollection.
Urban Gleaners is a food bank in Portland that collects leftover food from restaurants, grocery stores, and farmer’s markets and distributes them to people who need food.
That was another place in your journey?
Yeah. I also love food.
A lot of people love food, too. You’re having a good impact with books.
The piece on Urban Gleaners that excited me was you would do it on your bicycle. You would go to the farmer’s markets and I remember you’d have your bike. You would take the food that they had at the end of their shift and put it in your basket. I don’t know if on your way home or the next day, you’d go to the school and drop it off.
I’d go straight from the farmer’s market to the warehouse.
When you think about what you’re doing with your service to the community, what would you like to see? We all live in this same crazy divided world in our country and our communities. What you’re doing through books is creating these windows, mirrors, doors, and visibility for connections. What would you like to see other people do? I’m getting what you’re hoping to do with books. What do you hope for?
To start with, I would love to see us all be able to open both our hearts and our minds to new ideas and new information and be willing to change our understanding of how the world works and what other people are like. I would love to see us be open to changing our minds. If we find that we have a stereotype or any sort of damaging prejudice about people, be willing to let it go. Don’t get defensive. Be willing to learn some new information and see things in a new light. Connect with more people. It’s great. Having an open mind allows you to connect more closely with more different people. It’s wonderful, and we’re all better for it. We can join in the beautiful fight to make the world better for everyone. How’s that for a grandiose general wish?
Children’s Book Bank: Having an open mind allows you to connect more closely with different people.
It’s beautiful. It gives us all to aspire to.
There’s so much passion and energy, Jan, in your voice when you talk about your projects, whether it’s the Urban Gleaners, the Children’s Book Bank, or striving for a better world. I love the energy in your voice and your passion.
It also fills your heart. Something that we all need to do on this planet is to fill our hearts a little bit more. Guadalupe, do you want to bring the end of our session?
The biggest questions I want to ask, you already asked, Bill. Jan, I want to say thank you for sharing your story and parts of your journey and inspiring others who will read this episode. It will inspire people on many levels on the importance of what books can do when they have diversity, particularly for marginalized, disadvantaged, or underrepresented communities and their children. I’m touched, impressed, and inspired. I feel like I sleep better at night because of what you’re doing in the world. It’s your piece of inclusion, equity, and diversity. It’s the way you take one project and put your heart into it. It does so much good. Thank you so much.
Thank you. I want to give a shout-out to the great staff and board at the Children’s Book Bank, which has prioritized this project of inclusion. Dani, a White woman, started the Book Bank, but she saw what needed to change in it. She brought people along with her, and they also diversified the staff over the years a lot. The staff is passionate about the A Story Like Mine project because they are from marginalized communities. They sometimes come to tears when they talk about sharing books with kids that are mirrors of their own experiences. One of the staff members is a trans woman. One of their favorite books is about a little trans kid. How many books like that were available years ago? Now the Children’s Book Bank can buy them and distribute them to children who need that.
That’s great. You answered my question, too. I was curious about how diverse the staff was. It sounds like you have a pretty diverse group. Thanks for what you’re doing. Is there anything else, Guadalupe?
Bill, I always want to thank you for your insightful questions. Jan, I want to thank you for showing up, sharing your story, and putting in a big plug for the Children’s Book Bank. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Thanks, Jan. I appreciate you being here. Guadalupe pretty much has full reign of this show. She tells me who we’re bringing on. That’s why I said, “Where are we going now, Guadalupe?” That is our production. We get on and go where the spirit moves us.
You can trust her to make it a good one.
I have complete trust in her for being a part of that. For those of you that are reading, we’ve been divided long enough. It’s time to get connected and stay connected. The way that we can do that is by sharing our passions, being more open to talking to each other about how we’re feeling, and recognizing that the way that we see each other, we have to own. If I see you through a lens of my stereotype, my bias, or my judgment, it’s not an authentic interaction because I’m seeing you through the story that I’m making up about you.
What we’ve been talking about is how you can use books with children and with yourself to create cultural experiences, windows, mirrors, and doors for new learning through reading. How great is that? You can read while you’re running with Audible. You can read on your Kindle. You can read anywhere. There is no excuse for us not to be reading. I hope that each of you can tap into your own passion and figure out how to become reconnected in your communities.
You’ve been tuning in to Awakened Heart. We are excited to bring you this show when we feel moved and to share with you the stories of White people who are doing great things in their communities and working to be engaged and create inclusion. We wanted to provide a space for those conversations to happen. If you have a story, you can email me at Contact@DeLaCruzSolutions.com. We would love to hear your story.
Maybe we can branch out a little bit and move out of Oregon. We can find some stories in other places in the world because, with the internet, we can hear your stories no matter where you are. Thank you all for engaging with us. I hope you can have a conversation. Thank you, Jan, for being our guest. We’ll see you in our next session. Take care, and remember to keep growing.