Interview with author and publisher Cheryl Willis Hudson, Co-Founder of Just Us Books
Kekla Magoon: I’ve crossed paths with Cheryl Willis Hudson many times recently, and I never cease to be inspired, both by her personal presence and her dynamic contribution to our industry. She is an author, editor and co-founder with her husband Wade of Just Us Books, an independent publisher of Black-interest books for children. As an author, I often think of editors and publishers as the “gatekeepers” of children’s literature: they decide whose work gets out to the world and whose doesn’t. When I think of Cheryl, I don’t think of a “gatekeeper,” but rather, someone whose mission it is to throw open those heavy gates to admit a new crop of often overlooked, yet exceedingly talented authors with important stories to share. I’m inspired by Cheryl’s commitment to publishing books for all kinds of young readers, and I’m curious to know what goes on behind the scenes at Just Us Books.
Kekla Magoon: Hi, Cheryl! Thanks for joining us here at Hunger Mountain.
Cheryl Willis Hudson: Thanks for that kind introduction, Kekla. I’m delighted to join you at Hunger Mountain. It’s an excellent publication and I feel honored to be in such good company.
KM: Tell us a little bit about Just Us Books, which recently celebrated its 20th anniversary—quite an achievement for a small press. I understand that you and your husband started the company in response to a need for more Black-interest books. Why was it important to you to fill this void?
CWH: When Wade and I started our press in 1988, our youngest child, Stephan, was 4 years old. Wade and I had been 
collaborating since the early ‘70s on a number of projects for children, none of which had been accepted for publication by major commercial presses. Books were at the center of our lives as professionals, but as parents it was almost impossible to find contemporary books for our children that reflected our lives as African Americans. Wade and I had an epiphany and said, “Hey, we know how to do this.” We took a leap of faith by self-publishing AFRO-BETS ABC Book.
As parents, we wanted our children to have the kinds of books we never owned when we were young—books where positive Black children who looked and talked and acted like us were center stage. We started with a basic alphabet concept book and our company has been building on those blocks ever since. Starting a Black publishing house for children was an empowering act twenty-some years ago and although the country has changed in a number of ways, publishing Black-interest books still fills a void that’s even greater today.
KM: When you look for authors, are you most concerned with publishing books for Black readers, books by Black authors, or both?
CWH: We are always interested in publishing stories that resonate with our readers. The stories must be authentically centered in African American life and culture. So we pay special attention to voices from the African American community because they reflect who we are and what we are about. From the very beginning, the AFRO-BETS Kids (Tura, Stef, Glo, Robo, Langston and Nandi) were based on the personalities of real children that we knew. For endorsements and encouragement in our publishing mission we reached out to authors whose work we respected: Eloise Greenfield, Tom Feelings, George Ford, Walter Dean Myers, and Valerie Wilson Wesley. We also reached out to editor-writers like Veronica Freeman Ellis, whose experience as a native Liberian educator grounded the concept of Afro-Bets First Book about Africa, one of our first published titles. We also enlisted the skills of new and emerging writers, such as Sharon Draper (Ziggy and the Black Dinosaurs), Toyomi Igus (When I Was Little), Dwayne Ferguson (Kid Caramel), and Debbie Newton Chocolate (NEATE to the Rescue), and illustrators, such as Higgins Bond (Susie Taylor King), Michael Bryant (Ziggy and the 
Black Dinosaurs), and Anna Rich (Annie’s Gifts). Our latest picture book, The Secret Olivia Told Me, was created by a new author (N. Joy) and a relatively unknown illustrator, (Nancy Devard) and it recently won a Coretta Scott King honor award for illustration.
KM: Your publishing group recently launched a new imprint, too, as I understand. Tell us a bit about what’s going on at Marimba Books.
CWH: Marimba Books is an imprint of The Hudson Publishing Group (Wade, myself, and our children Stephan and Katura)
and the titles in this new program are distributed by Just Us Books. Launching these new titles has taken up quite a bit of our energy during the past two years.
The mission of this imprint is to educate, empower and entertain children by providing multicultural books that reflect the diverse makeup of classrooms all over this country. We’re especially excited that our Marimba authors and illustrators have a wide range of stories to tell. Our new titles include the story of a Puerto Rican girl growing up in the northeast who’s eager to learn to speak Spanish like her elders (What Did Abuela Say? by Karen Valentin); a picture book about a diverse group of kids playing in a suburban park (Places I Love to Go by Wade 
Hudson); a story about little girl who’s relocating from the mainland to a new school in Hawaii (Aloha for Carol Ann by Margo Sorenson); a novel about a Southern White family dealing with the drought of 1937 in rural Georgia (Peach When the Well Run Dry by Peggy Mercer); and a picture book portraying the infectious energy of young Black street performers in New Orleans (Bottle Cap Boys: Dancing on Royal Street by Rita Williams-Garcia).
KM: There’s been some discussion in the publishing industry about the “audience” for Black books. Yet, as a self-proclaimed publisher of Black-interest books, you’ve clearly found an audience. Are you responding to a niche market, or a population often overlooked by larger publishers?
CWH: There are a couple of forces working here. Our audience is anyone who reads our books—Black or White or Brown. What we targeted in the early days of marketing our press were African American children because of the obvious lack of variety in the offerings via traditional avenues. Our marketing efforts have always been broad-based: independent vendors, craft and street fairs, schools, libraries, barber shops, beauty shops, mail order catalogs, book clubs—all of these became avenues of access to get to our target audience. We experimented with as many venues as possible and carved out a niche market to sell our books via alternative routes because they were not readily available in most non-Black bookstores or retail outlets. I would say that “diverse books” about African American life and culture for children were extremely limited. Most published books were biographies of George Washington Carver, Martin Luther King, etc.—institutional books that could be found in libraries. Most of these existing books were not written or illustrated by people of African descent. That is still the case today although the canon of contemporary Black writers and illustrators has indeed expanded over the past 40-50 years.
The short answer is Wade and I thought that larger publishers had obviously overlooked contemporary Black families and children. Just Us Books’ readers initially responded to our titles as a breath of fresh air—i.e., here are nice little books featuring positive African American children, not just more books about slavery or recycled biographies about the same historical Black personalities.
KM: Do you find that the audience for your books is broader than African-Americans? Is it ever a challenge to get so-called Black books to non-Black readers?
CWH: The answer is yes and yes. When they are made available, our books are embraced and welcomed in non-Black as well as Black communities across the USA. The challenge is usually distribution beyond Black History Month! Our books are culturally specific but our audience is universal.
KM: Could you elaborate on that a bit?
CWH: I think that White children as well as Brown children need to read widely and across cultures.
Getting so-called Black books to non-Black readers can be a challenge because there needs to be a paradigm shift in the way that we as Americans look at ourselves—beyond race—as a “people.” This is not to say that in order to be “universal” books need to be color-neutral or white-washed. It doesn’t mean that race and class and color don’t matter. In fact, these concepts matter very much. But we need to think about these concepts in a different kind of way that celebrates diversity through inclusion not marginalization.
As Nancy Larrick wrote in her 1965 article “The All-White World of Children’s Book Publishing,” the impact of all White books on White children is probably worse than it is on brown children because although Whites are in the minority worldwide, the White child learns from books that he is the kingfish.
Educator Rudine Sims Bishop, on the other hand, in her study on the history and development of African American literature, Free Within Ourselves, writes about the need for Black authors and illustrators to create stories that resonate with specifically Black audiences that are “free within ourselves.” That phrase is taken from a 1926 essay by Langston Hughes where he addressed criticism that his focus on writing about African American life and culture was somehow not universal or literary enough for the mainstream.
Part of Just Us Books’ mission is to publish good children’s books focusing on African American life and culture that appeal to a wide and inclusive audience of readers.
KM: In addition to running a publishing company, you are an author with over twenty published books. Do you find it challenging to juggle dual roles within the industry? How does your writing experience impact your role as publisher, and vice versa?
CWH: I love the whole process of bookmaking but I especially enjoy creating my own stories.
Writing for me is cathartic and liberating. It helps me to remember my own childhood. Recapturing those experiences and sounds and smells from my youth brings me a sort of comfort and it’s wonderful to learn that children today relate to my childhood memories from over 50 years ago! It’s been great for me to have books published by some thoughtful and caring 
editors (from Scholastic, Candlewick, Colorbridge and Abrams) because it has given me some distance from my editorial-business side and has helped to loosen up my creative juices. Working on Construction Zone, for example, was an amazing experience because I was challenged to work backwards and create a text and storyline from thousands of images already taken by photographer Richard Sobol. He in turn had been commissioned to document the construction of an amazing architectural design at MIT by Frank O. Gehry. I had to do quite a bit of research to try to understand the construction process before I could even begin to write the story. Then I had to rely on my editor’s eye to narrow the thousands of photos down to about a hundred that could form the basic framework of a story that could be told in 32 pages.
Working on My Friend Maya was a joy because illustrator Eric Velasquez is an über-professional. His vision brought such majesty and grace to the story that I had originally envisioned. His paintings are simply stunning and the staff at Abrams treated the entire project with lots of tender loving care.
As an author, there’s nothing like a good editor to help your work shine. I love doing promotional and school and author visits and it’s really nice to have someone else pick up the tab.
As an editor, it’s challenging for me to help guide other authors to a place where the entire editorial team can see that author’s original vision come to life, or to take on another life with illustrations and photos. At Just Us Books and Marimba Books we love nurturing new talent as well as working with the elders.
As a publisher it is all about the “big picture.” That can be extremely rewarding, but running a business is hard work. Finding the money to cover all of your expenses is always a challenge for a small independent press. Carving out the time to do it all is a never-ending process.
Wade and I end up juggling a lot of hats but our experiences having started as self-publishers helped us learn how to run a business and it has given us so much more appreciation for the total publishing process. We love it!
KM: After twenty plus years in the publishing business, how do you feel about the state of the industry today, especially as it relates to Black (and multicultural) books? How far have we come, as a professional community? Are we facing the same challenges, or have new ones emerged?
CWH: I have very mixed feeling about the state of the publishing industry in this regard. There are so many challenges and so many roadblocks, but so many opportunities, too. I’m encouraged by the possibilities of a country that’s smart enough to have elected an African American president to lead it—an event that I’d frankly never imagined would have happened in my lifetime. Yet, I’m discouraged by the number of teachers and parents who lack vision and who think that Black-interest books are written only for people of African descent. So often we run into issues surrounding gate-keeping which restrict access to talented Black creators and storytellers. The result is lots of missed opportunities for sharing wonderful stories and learning opportunities for everybody.
(For an interesting discussion see Diversity in Children’s Book Publishing covered by C-SPAN2- Book TV, Harlem Book Fair, July, 2010) People of color are still underrepresented in editorial and marketing positions in major publishing houses. People of color still have a hard time getting their stories accepted by major publishing houses. Access to books is still problematic in communities of color in spite of the growth of the internet and information portals. There is a digital divide across racial and socioeconomic lines. I think major publishers have to take a much more pro-active stance in terms of recruiting and retaining people of color on their staffs.
I’m encouraged by the number of young people who blog about reading lots of books cross culturally, yet, I’m very much discouraged and outraged by publishers who whitewash book jackets in an effort to sell more titles to an audience that is perceived to not want to buy books with people of color on the covers.
Author Tanita Davis wrote something very profound in her recent “Reflections” posting on Hunger Mountain and it bears repeating:
“Where we bear responsibility in the present day is in allowing race to be reconstructed as a barred gate to the imagination, when it should be as common and integral to the function of inclusiveness as the hinges holding open that door.”
KM: What’s next for you? We’d love to hear about some upcoming projects that you’re excited about.
CWH: We are especially excited about a forthcoming revision of our most popular title, Afro-Bets Book of Black Heroes From A to Z by Wade Hudson and Valerie Wilson Wesley. We’ve updated this volume with a fresh look and new entries that include among others Nelson Mandela, former president of South Africa; Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, current president of Liberia, West Africa; and of course President Barack Obama of the USA. That’s very exciting for Just Us Books and that revision will be available beginning 2011.
My personal goal for the end of this calendar year is to finish a Black History manuscript for ages 8-12 that I’ve been working on for ages. I’m excited by the thought that I may actually finish it and that it may be published by 2012! Starting in 2011 I’d also love to collaborate on more projects with my family and partners, Wade, Katura and Stephan Hudson.
KM: You publish diverse books for a range of age groups. What type of work are you most eager to receive? If folks want to submit their work for consideration by Just Us Books, what is the best procedure to follow?
CWH: Please visit our website for specific guidelines: www.justusbooks.com/submissions. We have already acquired titles for the next several years.
KM: Finally, what advice would you offer to aspiring authors?
CWH: Aspiring authors should read widely and write often. Respect the reader but be true to your own voice. Keep your writing fresh and authentic. Network with other writers and illustrators and learn as much about the industry and related technology as possible. Keep honing your craft and have fun with words and images as you develop your own unique style. Ultimately, aspiring authors should let the act of writing open gates of their own imagination so they can create books for children that will be the powerful vehicles for self-discovery, as books are meant to be.
Thanks very much for the opportunity to be interviewed by Hunger Mountain.
KM: Thank you, Cheryl!
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I can’t even imagine what the Hudson’s had to go through to start Just Us Books and its still around 20 yrs later. Beautiful.
Delightful interview! I like how Ms. Hudson states that books with all white characters hurt white children even more so than Brown children. That is so true because it gives them a falso notion of superiority and keeps them from learning about other cultures. Thus they can’t function at their best in the real world.
I’m looking forward to the revised AfroBets List of Black Heroes from A to Z
Great interview. I’ve selected a lot of Just Us Books titles to read to my kids in my summer reading program in East St. Louis, IL. Now I also understand why I can’t find the submissions guidelines on the updated website. They’re probably not there because as Hudson says, “We have already acquired titles for the next several years.” Keep up the good work. Maybe I can submit my work in the future.