The Intersection of Publishing and Ableism - Part 1

Mary talks with founder and president of Row House Publishing, Rebekah Borucki about the lack of marginalized representation, particularly disabled representation in the publishing world, what needs to happen in order to change that, and how important access to books is for children (and everyone).

Rebekah “Bex” Borucki (she/they) is a mother-to-five, self-help and children's author, and the Founder and President of Row House Publishing, Wheat Penny Press (Row House's children's imprint), and the WPP Little Readers Big Change Initiative, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit serving students in under-resourced school districts.

You can learn more about Row House Publishing here.

The Politics of Disability was named Best Interview Podcast at the Astoria Film Festival in both October 2022 and again in June 2023.

Transcript

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[music playing as Mary speaks]

Mary: Hello everyone. Welcome to season two of The Politics of Disability. My name is Mary Fashik. I am the founder Upgrade Accessibility and your host. The road ahead is still a bumpy one and in fact, may be a bumpier one.  So, buckle up extra tight and let’s go.

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Mary: Hello and thank you so much for joining me today. Would you please introduce yourself to our audience?

Rebekah: Hello, Mary. My name is Rebekah Borucki, and I am the co-founder and president of Row House Publishing. I'm also a mother to five.

Mary: I really appreciate you joining me today. I know how busy you are. So, it is appreciated that you’d take time out of your schedule to join me. What made you decide to start Row House? Because starting any business is a big undertaking, let alone starting a publishing company. So, what drove you to that decision. 

Rebekah: Ultimately, what drove me to the decision to start Row House was not my decision at all. It was really a friend of mine who invited me when she saw how badly I was struggling with navigating publishing, particularly my publishing house that I was with at the time, Hay House–which is a leader in spirit, mind, body books and content.

And then also I had my own children's imprint, Wheat Penny Press. Because I was having that struggle navigating that space and getting my own children's books that feature a little girl of color, a little biracial black girl, Zara. I was having trouble getting her stories picked up by traditional publishers. So, I was in the middle of a particularly difficult crisis, I'll call it, where we were dealing with several of the authors from Hay House spreading disinformation around COVID and the pandemic–what a lot of people call “conspirituality.”

When I brought that to the leadership of Hay House, there was this real unwillingness to do something quickly or publicly or impactfully. And I knew that I had to leave. And it was an incredibly hard decision, filled with a lot of conflict and grief. But my good friend, Kristen McGuinness, saw all that happening and she said, “Hey, why don't you just start your own Hay House?”

And while I didn't want to just replicate a bad model, it was really exciting to me to think about how to create a publishing house from the ground up, built on anti-racist, liberatory practices. So that's how it happened.

Mary: I know in a recent interview, you said you were, I believe it was like a book fair. You were there with your publisher. You said, “Well nobody here looks like me.” Can you talk about that?

Rebekah: Yeah, I was working a book fair for my kids' school, you know. I volunteered with the PTO and there were a couple of things happening there. And I think that a lot of people can identify with this particular trauma. I was a kid that grew up in poverty and I remember what it was like to have these opportunities to go to Santa’s workshop or to go to the book fair, the Scholastic Book Fair, and not have the money, to watch your classmates be able to buy stacks of books and posters and pencils and erasers. And maybe I would have $5 to get a book.

And, you know, as a child and not having the understanding…and I'll say as an adult even, there's a lot of shame around not having what other people have. So, working this book fair in a community where a lot of folks are living under the poverty line, there's a huge wealth gap in terms of people who maybe own the farms or work in the city and come here to live in big houses.

And then the people that are native to here who are workers or migrant workers, immigrants, you know, I'm seeing these kids come in and not being able to buy books. I'm seeing a lot of Spanish speaking children come in and not have access to books that they can read or understand, or further, that their parents can't read or understand…not seeing people of color represented outside of one single table. Right. There's this like one table for like the special people over on the side. So, I'm lucky enough to have a nonprofit attached to my children's imprint. And we were able to contribute money so that the children who came in, discreetly, without money for books were able to buy the books on credit and get the books they understand or that they can relate to.

And then what was so important for me was that children that don't speak English were able to have reading materials or reading materials for their parents. And that's why our books, our children's books, are translated into Spanish.

Mary: We're about the same age and I know that growing up, the book fair week was a big week in school. And the people who raised me worked for themselves. So, money was hard to come by. And the woman who raised me would save for two weeks so I could go to a book fair and buy books. And so, my classmates didn't think we didn’t have money.

And so, I understand the going to that space and not having money to buy something. And I love books. I’ve read so much. And I remember the biggest thing for me was like Baby-Sitters Club. I loved those books. And they were expensive. And I would read a book in a few days. And I remember her telling me, “You have to slow down. I can’t afford to buy you books the way you’re reading them.” So, she would tell me like, “go to the library,” and I would check out like however many they would let you check out at one time. And I’d be done with them. 

But there is a lack of access to something so vital. And I know when I taught Sunday school, I had bilingual students. But their parents did not speak English. And I remember when we switched to bilingual textbooks, there was such a push back from the white parents. “Why is there a bilingual textbook?” And I told them, I said, “The parents deserve to understand what the children are reading. This is very important. Religion is very important in their culture. This is vital in their home, and you want to deprive them of this.” 

I mean I understood, but I didn't want to understand why people were so offended by something that one page was English and the mirroring page was Spanish. It’s not like it was intrusive or anything like that. And I remember one set of parents that I was very close to, and I was very close to their girls, and they were white. And the father wanted to argue with me about having a bilingual textbook. I said to him, “This is church. You want to say everything is equal and you love everyone. What does it bother you that there’s English on one page and Spanish on the other? He said, “Because on the cover, the title was in Spanish first.” 

Rebekah: I think there's a couple things going on here. I mean, obviously ableism, obviously xenophobia and racism, but this real need for people that have power to stay in power, to not want to relinquish any of that power. And that's what books offer, is education/knowledge, which invariably turns into agency, liberation, freedom and power.

So, when you give people access to learning materials, you are empowering them to do much more in the world. And it is important not just so that the parents can understand what their children are learning, but they can participate in the learning process with their children. That is critically important. And when we're talking about literally cardboard and paper–these are cardboard and paper–that we can provide pretty easily.

But then the next part of that is that this cardboard and paper means so much. It can mean magic. It can mean travel. It can mean real access to a world outside of our own, whether you're disabled or you're non-disabled. It's so important for children to have access to these materials. Libraries are wonderful. I love them. I could live in a library.

But there's also this feeling of having this book. You know, you imagine a child going to sleep with a book, their favorite book, carrying it around. I have books from when I was, you know, in middle school. It still means so much to me. And their pages are worn and dog tagged. And it's a treasure. It's a real treasure, even if it's a paperback book.

So to think that a child can't have access to that absolutely breaks my heart every time the book fair comes around. Every year my heart aches for the anxiety that the parents might be feeling or the shame that the child might be feeling. We're able to do it in our local school, and actually, I'd love to extend to anyone listening.

We have a small budget. But if you have a book fair, if your child is in a school where there's limited access for many of the students, we would love to supplement that book fair so that they might have access to it–the other kids. It just breaks my heart, the shame of it all. Because I felt that, and it's personal. Brings back a lot of really hard memories for me.

Mary: What are your thoughts about the lack of representation, particularly multi-marginalized identities, in publishing?

Rebekah: I mean my thoughts are: It isn't great, but I know why it happens. You know, whenever there's any kind of organization, industry, company, whatever, that, you know, white cishet, non-disabled men are in charge, they're going to perpetuate much of the same of their own experience. And I think they're not the only ones guilty of that. It's just they're the ones who are in power making the most decisions.

We all have our affinity towards what's like us. So, you know, I surround myself with a lot of Black and Brown women. That's my friend group. And it's what makes me feel comfortable. It’s what makes me feel able to be vulnerable and to speak on things that are in my experience. And it is an effort, as a publisher, to reach out to people who have different experiences than me and make sure that they're represented.

So, I have to also be held accountable on a regular basis to make sure that not only the books that we publish and the authors that we publish, but also the workforce is very diverse. So, I understand why it happens. And that's why it's critically important that more people are at the intersection of many marginalized identities, are in leadership.

You know, for me, I'm a woman. I'm a woman of color. I'm neurodivergent. That is my intersection. But I'm also a person that holds a tremendous amount of privilege in terms of what I'm able to do in a day, the access that I have with people in power, all of those things, financial privilege. So again, I have to be held accountable.

But with the systems that have been set up where white men are empowered, there's also just a lot of white men holding them accountable. So there really is no accountability. And that takes active participation, active awareness, from people who have compassion, who want to make a change. Because we all hold internal bias. We all hold unchecked bias.

Mary: Exactly. We all have implicit bias. And that's something that is hard to overcome, hard to reconcile. And I think we always say the first step is acknowledging that. And once we acknowledge that we all have implicit bias, it's “where do we go from there?” Following up with the representation question. Why is there a lack of disabled representation in publishing? And what is being done, or can be done, to change that?

Rebekah: It's going to be similar to what I just said. It's that, historically, disabled people have not held positions of power in a way that they can affect change. What's even more interesting to me is that the statistics supporting why there should be more representation are there. I look in the nonprofit sector. And just among different races, we'll say racial groups, when you have a person of color running an organization that benefits people of color, more money is going directly to the people that it's supposed to benefit than if you have someone that doesn't share the identity of the people that they are representing, serving, whatever. So, when you put people at the intersection of many marginalized identities, when you put them in power, it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone is going to be treated with equity. Because again, this implicit bias.

But it does at least put a person who has an understanding of what it's like to live in the margins there. So the solution is: Put more of those people in power. How do we do that? We have to have a collective voice of people from different identities coming together. That's my biggest criticism, I would say, of the progressive movement is that there's a lot of great people working against each other.

[laughs] Right? So, we have like: They're not looking at the intersection of identities. It's like “I'm disabled. I'm Black. I'm queer. I'm trans.” Whatever. And everyone is very much doing a good job for their own identities, fighting for their own identities. And there's not enough coming together and saying, “You're Black, I'm disabled. Maybe I'm Black and disabled. Let's conquer white supremacy together.”

You taught me, you know, in the workshops that you did for Row House, about the Black Panthers coming together with the disability rights movement. And that was a beautiful example and a reminder of how important it is for us to work together. And I think progressives, in a lot of ways, we eat ourselves. You know, it's a slow movement because, you know, non-progressives or conservatives or whatever you want to call those people that tend to only care about themselves [laughs], they have a singular goal and they stay very committed to it.

So that's why they win a lot. And that's a problem.

Mary: And I think it's vital that we talk about, like you said, intersection. Because one thing that I’ve experienced is not being seen as a whole person. So, you only see part of who I am. You see my disability, or my ethnicity, or you might see my chronic illness, or that I'm queer. But you don't see all of it together. And I think until disabled people are seen that way, we won’t have equity anywhere, let alone in a place that can be ableist like publishing–or whatever industry it is. Until we’re seen as whole people, we won’t have equity in that space. 

Rebekah: Yeah. And you know, I'll say that I identify as neurodivergent–Autistic. I have ADHD and OCD. I do not describe myself as being disabled. I don't identify that way because of the way that I navigate the world and I move in the world. It's not without struggle, but it's just not something that I qualify for myself as disabled.

So, it's a big learning experience for me to also not participate in the white supremacist practice. And I want everyone to really hear what I'm saying. I'm not a white supremacist, but I participate in white supremacist practices when I put people in boxes because that is what white supremacy needs to do. It needs to categorize so it can say you're better or you're less than.

And when we don't see the whole person, when we only see part of them, we are putting them in a box to try to sort them out and how to deal with that. And I will say, over the past several weeks, there's been things that have happened in business and my personal life where I had to sit back and question and say, “Am I seeing the whole situation?”

Am I treating this person differently because they identify this way or they have this marginalized identity? And for better or worse, sometimes you treat someone better because you see them or you pity or you elevate them, or you say they need more help. And it's something, again, that takes a ton of self-reflection. And I think without the examination of intersectionality, it can't be done.

You always have to look at the person and saying, “What are all the issues at play here? What are all the influences and how are they navigating the world?” But it starts with me and it's like, how do I navigate the world having this intersection of identities? And what does it mean for me and what do I want from the world?

It's like the golden rule, like, treat people how you want to be treated. I want people to see that even though I seem very capable, I seem very on top of things, I have lots of energy, that I also have a daily hidden struggle. Not because I want them to feel sorry for me, but I want them to understand how I operate in the world.

Mary: I have been in many spaces that want to put me in boxes. And I have to say, “Stop trying to put me in boxes. I don't fit in a box.” And that's where my quote about, “Disability is political, disability is messy, and disability is not palatable.” That’s where that came from. Because I was in a situation where they were trying to force me into a box. I’m like, “Please don’t do that.” I just don’t, and disability doesn’t fit in a nice neat box. And I think so often, people try to make it fit in a nice neat box. And there’s so many nuances to being disabled, to being chronically ill. There’s mental health that’s tied in there. There’s just layers upon layers. And until the disabled and chronically ill community is seen as whole people, I don’t see us moving forward. And I’ve said time after time, I feel like the disability rights movement is stuck. Like we haven't moved in 31 years. And how can we expect those around us to understand, and help us move forward, when we can’t even propel our own movement forward?

Mary: We’re all out of time for this episode. I know, I know. Just when things were getting good, too. That just means you’ll have to come back for part two.

[music playing while Mary speaks] Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Politics of Disability Podcast. As you navigate your journey, remember: disability is political; disability is messy; disability is not palatable--nor does it have to be.

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