Tapping the Great Wisdom - Your awesome women and PoC, no major political controversy prefered

[silveradept]

So, um, for my professional work (no, really), I was sent a list, [ETA] constructed by a vendor [/ETA] of people who are the possible targets for a series of middle-grade (6-8) biographies, according to the following criteria:

We are trying to stay away from anyone too political and want to make sure that each biography features someone who can inspire our readers to appreciate the importance of social responsibility.

The list of people currently, eleven strong are:

• All men,
• and about only half PoC or from outside the United States.

We were also asked for suggestions.

So, oh great Sophia, on whom we increasingly depend for our Awesome, what are your suggestions to add to this list? Where possible, I'd like to also submit back a short bio or list of accomplishments that makes it easy to say "Yes, they should be on this list."

I find it a bit cringe-inducing that they're trying to stay away from major political controversy, like middle-grade readers aren't brilliant enough to understand it, or like they're trying to sell to, say, Texas, and thus avoid "uppity" anybody that might not make people buy their books, but those are the parameters.

I have two strategies for this: The fire hose and the targeted strike. The second should flow from the first - if I can deluge the vendor with enough names, they should be able to pick out some that they think they can do, and good strong characters with some politics will slip through. Although it will probably be heavily sanitized. that's the targeted strike part - throw enough at them, and the ones you want should end up floating to the top to be picked up.

Comments

[hebinekohime]

Well. I think of models of responsibility as being people who said "If I don't do this, who will?". That's probably why my mind leaps to names of social reformers.

That and I'm contrarian. :P

I don't want to get you in trouble with your work, though. Hmm. Maybe Cesar Chavez?

[silveradept]

That would be a good one to add, yes.

And I don't give a rip about contrarian or not - I want to flood them with suggestions, political or no, and hope that maybe out of that lot, they'll be willing to take a few. I wonder what kind of sanitizing they'll do to them, though.