Guest Post: Jen Breach on Nonbinary Narrative Structure in Solstice
[Posted by Jen Breach for Writing With a Broken Tusk]
…And by nonbinary narratives, I don’t mean narratives about characters with a nonbinary gender identity,* I mean narratives that are fundamentally structured to embrace spectrums of experience, prisms of identities, and the countless ways we humans can be in the world.
Here’s how it all started for Solstice: Around the World on the Longest, Shortest Day. One day I found out an educated, engaged, grown up friend didn’t know that seasons are reversed between the northern and southern hemispheres, that summer in the US or France or China is winter in Australia or Botswana or Argentina.
I knew just enough to explain to him that seasons happen because of the tilt of Earth’s axis. “Huh, cool,” he said. But I knew my patchy understanding would never have satisfied a second grader. Picture Book Lightbulb Above My Head goes BING! Itchy Spot in My Imagination goes tingle. Research muscles go f-l–e—x.
“One day I found out an educated, engaged, grown up friend didn’t know that seasons are reversed between the northern and southern hemispheres, that summer in the US or France or China is winter in Australia or Botswana or Argentina. ”
Photo courtesy of Jen Breach
Turns out the science is pretty simple and well explained all over the internet. Plenty of examples of solstices and equinoxes with fun graphics showing the earth’s rotation and orbit. Which is, truly, very, very cool. But many videos and articles explained the seasons in terms of the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, how the poles have months when the sun doesn’t set and then months when it doesn’t rise. But a sphere is not a binary entity–it’s not like seasons change with the flick of a lightswitch. And what the heck does a solstice look like on the Equator? Suddenly, I had three points of reference. The binary was broken, and the whole world opened up. (ICYDK: on the Equator, a solstice is also an equinox. Every day is an equinox there. So cool.)
A picture book is usually anywhere from eleven to fourteen spreads. A location per spread? That’s fourteen data points, fourteen perspectives to illuminate a global spectrum of experiences. And I’m not just talking about light at different latitudes: what about cultural experiences? The places where the solstice is important–either with ancient rituals or brand new rites–or the places where it is just another day. And places where they don’t have four seasons, just “wet” and “dry,” or “monsoon” and “everything else.” I wanted equal distribution between the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, equal representation of continents, all to show off that magnificent gradient of light and dark that happens when one lives on a tilted sphere.
Now, at first glance picture books have built in binaries, too: text and image, for instance. But it’s actually less clear cut than it might seem–the way that text and image work to create a story is not either/or, it is AND. And the binary of writer and illustrator looks more complex when we add in editors and art directors and designers. AND even more complex when, for Solstice, we added in fourteen different artists illustrating a place they live in or come from. What a thrilling way to squash the binary right out of a truly global story.
Solstice is out now in the US, the UK, and Australia. And the solstice is coming in less than three weeks! How do you celebrate it?
*Although, yes, there are some of those in Solstice too!
Uma adds: Congratulations, Jen, on a beautiful book with much to say to young readers about the multiplicity of ways in which we humans relate to the dazzling phenomena of the natural world.
