Eye of the Tiger: Ellen Oh on Rising Up for the Right to Read

The Reading Culture

On Today's Show

The author of the “Prophecy” trilogy and “Spirit Hunters” series and the founder of We Need Diverse Books, Ellen Oh is equal parts no-nonsense and hilarious truth-teller.

• "We all know the importance of representation in books and how life-affirming it can be for those who are historically underrepresented. Books are powerful. There's a reason for all this book banning. Books are more important than ever.” - Ellen Oh

Ellen Oh learned early on that she would have to fight against the bullies at her school. Growing up as a Korean-American in New York City, she experienced discrimination often. Public libraries became her safe haven, a place to escape and let her imagination wander. Even as an adult, Ellen finds solace in them and wrote her first novel at the library.

On this episode, Ellen joins us for a live conversation at the 2023 American Libraries Association LibLearnX conference in New Orleans to share more about how racism and social injustice inspired her writing and her activism. In this wide-ranging conversation, Ellen shares very personal stories, her work as founder of We Need Diverse Books, as well as her sentiments on, ‘soft censorship’ and the recent spate of book bans disproportionately impacting the diverse books she has fought so hard to cultivate. Ellen is truly a one-of-a-kind author, mom, and activist.

Contents

Chapter 1 - The library a.k.a the babysitter (2:52)

Chapter 2 - Spreading the horror (4:04)

Chapter 3 - Don’t Feed the Tiger (7:11)

Chapter 4 - The Joy Luck Club (10:01)

Chapter 5 - We Needed “We Need Diverse Books" (14:42)

Chapter 6 - Soft censorship (24:36)

Chapter 7 - What can you do? (25:55)

Chapter 8 - The power of a librarian (28:49)

Chapter 9 - You Are Here: Connecting Flights (31:38)

Chapter 10 - Books Save Lives (33:26)

Chapter 11 - Listener Questions (37:26)

Links

• beanstack.com
• ellenoh.com
• thereadingculturepod.com/ellen_oh
• diversebooks.org