When you are young and black and living in the inner city — people think they know you. They like to tell you what to read, why the way you speak is all wrong and why that outfit you are wearing is not appropriate for school. Sometimes they are right. Maybe that skirt is a little bit too short. But sometimes they are way wrong; so far off the mark that one wonders if they know you or your community at all. Lelac Almagor, who wrote "And Stay Out of Trouble: Narratives for Black Urban Children" (The Horn Book, September/October 2009), got it wrong when she said that the work of black authors like myself reinforced the born-bad image of black youth and that our work amounted to pep talks or “little more than story versions on the wall of pamphlets in the guidance counselor’s office.”

It seems as if people don’t know what to make of black youth or black authors. Sometimes I think they’d like us both to go away. But we are as American as apple pie, and here to stay. While neither one of us is perfect, I do wish people would quit asking us to be like other people. Almagor, it appears, would love it if I wrote like Harry Potter’s author or if Angela Johnson could figure a way to put a little Wimpy Kid in her stories. Interesting that Almagor, a teacher in an urban school, couldn’t find other black authors to compare our work to. It seems the high standard is white literature, and the rest of us be dammed.

Almagor latches onto the issue of badness in our books; meaning characters that we create that are beyond redemption and compassion. In my work she spies on Charlese, a bully who my protagonist says is the “baddest” kid in school. News flash: while Charlese has a host of ills, “baddest” in this case means cool, no nonsense, fearless, and not, as Almagor implies, deviant. It’s funny how she calls Charlese more dangerous than the bullies in Harry Potter. As I recall, one Potter bully tries to kill the headmaster. Now don’t get me wrong, Charlese is no angel, but the person she hurts most in The Skin I’m In is herself. She gets the bad grades. She gets kicked out of school and sent to live with grandparents. She misses out on the opportunity to have Maleeka as a friend and role model. And while she bullies Maleeka incessantly, she and Maeeka alike has helped to transform the lives of thousands of youth, both black and white. They write to me daily. The novel has helped them love themselves more, they say; speak up for themselves or meeker students; be more compassionate and thoughtful about their behavior; and even realize that bullies don’t have as much power as they thought. Charlese may leave the scene in the book, but she stays in the minds of readers; reminding them of what is virtuous and challenging in us all.

What I like about books is what I like about people and — given that I garden — flowers: we don’t have to look alike or behave the same to be of value. White authors who have a need for their readers to flee danger and threats far across the seas or the universe have it right — for them. When I was young I could care less about dragons and demons (even now they bore me to tears) — I just wanted my parents to quit arguing. Back then, my threats were as close as the boy across the street who joined a gang, and my fantasies weren’t about escaping my small home, they were about the boy at school liking me and my buck teeth one day being normal sized. My concerns were real and close and Almagor doesn’t get it when she implies that threats far away and more prevalent in white novels are the way to go, while threats that appear more close up in black novels somehow aren’t as valid. For the record, I wonder if white students living in 2010 would agree with her assessment of things. Like readers of color, they too face threats up close and personal every day: think Columbine, parents on meth, teenage pregnancy, or cutting. Danger can lurk both far and near. It knows no genre or zip code. So whether the threat is across the street, over the galaxy, or in oneself, it all has merit.

The world isn’t simply white or black, nor are the messages in black young adult literature. Like our white counterparts, our work is rich and diverse, complicated and funny, tragic and heartwarming. The boxes black authors sometimes find themselves in aren’t so much of our own making, but often put there by people who think they know us and like to tell us who they think we are. All authors worth their salt want to be analyzed, critiqued, and studied — it means people think your work has value. But we hope the critics get it right when they write about us and the children we create for the world. And we hope they let our readers — both black and white — fly, even if the route they take is not across the ages or on the wings of a dragon, or even if it is. If people will let us be free to be the storytellers that our readers know us to be, they will see we have no limits, nor place any on our characters.

At the end of Almagor’s article, she says that she does push her kids toward a richer matrix of options like Make Lemonade, which complicates the issue of goodness, badness, and their consequences, but it seems her students push back and ask for authors like me. Almagor doesn’t have to go far to look for such material. Sitting right in the Skin I’m In is John John, and standing beside him there’s Maleeka, a wonderfully smart kid being bullied into behaving in a manner that is not her own. And then there’s Charlese, an easy mark I guess, who is as complex as Almagor and other educators will allow her to be. After all, why does a bully bring clothes to school for a girl she can make do what she wants anytime she wishes? And why does she even care about handing in her homework, or allow her sister to bully her, without ever pushing back? Surely she’s "bad" enough to simply make the world do her bidding.

With so many black novels available today, there still remains a dearth of books for and about young people of color. Almagor’s students at AIM Academy in D.C. know this. As she mentioned, they gobble up the likes of Walter Dean Myers, Angela Johnson, and me. They pass our novels around and know our characters inside and out. They are not reading our work because they are starving and willing to eat whatever rot is set before them. Inner city youth are particular when it comes to books. Literature for them has to offer up a story at warp speed; heroism with a dose of spice; danger and threats that mirror the real world; adults that love and support them and writers that value and respect them. Often, we black authors are the writers that transform these kids into serious readers. We are the authors that educators and parents turn to when a switch needs to be turned on in struggling readers, be they black or white, or when a bibliophile or scholar is in search of a tasty treat. Weare the crystal stairs by which many readers climb to see themselves more fully, taking their rightful places at the literary table where they have not always felt so welcomed or appreciated.

Not long ago a parent wrote to me about one of my novels. “I was impressed,” she said, “that my son actually stayed up all night reading your book. This is a boy that is engulfed in basketball and just does enough work to stay afloat…and he lay in bed with his nightlight reading your novel.” She had invited me to his school, hoping I’d light an even bigger flame within his peers I, suppose. Yet Almagor says that African-American authors like me limit the work of fiction by the way we tell our stories. I think this mom, her son, and the students at AIM Academy would disagree. It is why they can’t stop reading the work, and why they won’t put down the books, no matter what some grown-ups say.

Sharon Flake’s You Don’t Even Know Me: Short Stories and Poems about Boys will be published in February 2010. Read Lelac Almagor's response here.