The Kids Are All Fight

Maggie Tokuda-Hall is the author of Also an Octopus, illustrated by Benji Davies, The Mermaid, The Witch and The Sea, Squad, illustrated by Lisa Sterle, and Love in the Library illustrated by Yas Imamura with more books forthcoming.

She lives in Oakland, California with her husband, son, and objectively perfect dog.

You can follow her on Instagram @maggietokudahall

It’s fair to say I’m not fucking happy about the United States’ hard turn into fascism. 

I’m forty years old. I was radicalized by George W. Bush’s illegal and immoral war on Iraq. My first march, when I was seventeen and in San Francisco, was against that war. I dipped when the riot police showed up with their shields and their batons and I got scared. 

Later, I’d hear about the brutality that erupted right where I’d been standing, amongst the peaceful who craved peace. My understanding of the world and my place in it shifted irrevocably. It was the first time I’d been called a traitor and a moron and a simpleton for not wanting war, and that was, unfortunately, pretty good training for the rest of my life. 

Now I am an adult. I’m still scared, but now I refuse to let my fear dictate my actions. If there was anything I learned during Trump’s first administration, it was to choose a lane and stick to it. Letting myself be pulled bodily into the oncoming traffic of every single injustice that will unfurl over the next few years will only exhaust and destroy me. So I’m choosing to be strategic. I’m following Timothy Snyder’s advice as enumerated in his pamphlet on resisting totalitarianism, On Tyranny – it’s literally lesson two in the book: DEFEND INSTITUTIONS. “It is institutions that help us preserve decency. They need our help as well…Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning,” writes Snyder.

So I chose my institution, and I’m protecting it. As a children’s book author and a founding member and national leader of Authors Against Book Bans, I have chosen to defend our public institutions of learning. 

It’s not the fight that feels the most pressing to me — our community members being disappeared off the streets by ICE without due process, the illegal war against Iran, and the complete failure of the judiciary are, I think, the most frightening — but book bans are the fight I know best. I know where I have expertise. I know where I can be of help, even be a leader. And it’s in this fight.  

The need to pick a single moral imperative to fight for is a sign that our nation is sick to its core — though if there is any comfort in that, it’s that we have never been without these issues. We’re simply at a higher rate of awareness about it. And it does allow me some clarity. And it’s also introduced me to some of the best people I’ve ever met. 

Just after the election, I was shipped out to YALLFest, a big YA book festival that happens in South Carolina every year. It was my second time attending, and it’s been a hoot both times. Teens come out in the hundreds to swarm their favorite authors, attend panels, and have a great, bookish time. Readers and authors alike get to hang out with all the people they’ve been IG friends with for ages, but never met in person. And sometimes you get to meet some truly incredible activists. This year, I had the absolute, bone-deep pleasure of meeting some of the kids of DAYLO.

DAYLO (Diversity Awareness Youth Literacy Organization) is a student-led organization across the state of South Carolina, where book bans are no longer in the purview of local school boards; but are, instead, being instituted by state legislators. And these kids, these fucking kids, are doing more to fight back than most dozens of publishing professionals put together. They speak at school board meetings, they’ve written OpEds, they’ve given interviews. They are putting their whole chests behind their words, and fighting for their freedom to have access to books as adults try (and largely succeed) to pull those very same pages from their hands. 

I grabbed coffee with a group of about eight of them. They were shy at first, mostly. But as soon as they got talking, they kept talking. What was immediately apparent to me was that these were kids who’d been ignored a lot. Kids who’d knocked on the doors of power only to be turned away, belittled, and disregarded as policies that directly affected them were decided. This would be enough to make most people give up. But not these fucking kids. We only had an hour to talk but I could have sat with them all day. I was so moved by them, so fired up. 

Children should not have to be activists. They should be fucking off. Making mistakes. Kissing the wrong person and maybe the right one. Learning the hard way, and doing the messy, consuming, delightful and liberating work of finding themselves. Not begging adults for their right to read, or the right to go to school without the fear of being shot, or protection from the environmental devastation that will no doubt define their futures. And yet, here they are. Fighting harder and smarter than many adults.

Every time someone says “the kids are all right” I want to scream because I do not want to live in a world where kids have to fix what adults have let fester. In a just world, adults would have it covered. But we don’t live in a just world. And I’m learning I need to let go of some of my own preciousness. It’s a foolish adult indeed who underestimates the strength and wisdom of kids. They shouldn’t have to be this strong. But they can be. 

I walked directly from that conversation with the teens of DAYLO to a panel I was speaking on about book bans. During the panel,a high school senior started sobbing as she asked “What’s going to happen to us? What’s my college time going to be like, if they keep taking everything away that we want to learn?” As she was speaking, I looked around and I could see she wasn’t the only one crying. It’s a scary fucking time. And I told her so. But students have always been on the vanguard of change for the better. If she so chooses, she can be part of that history. Because the kind of power that is accumulated through violence and oppression is a brittle power, craved only by small-souled, weak people. It cannot last because it’s not built to last. She wiped her tears. 

I felt that sense of the clouds parting to reveal my own purpose in that world at that moment. This is the job now. So I’m gonna take a second to talk directly to adults about what our job is right now.  Hey fuckos – we have a job right now, and we cannot afford to shirk it. 

The job is to take responsibility for the world we helped create. To treat life in this country like a group project, and not to assume the kids have the hard parts covered. 

To match their courage. To follow their leads. To listen to them. To offer them our wisdom when we are asked, and to step back when we’re told. In this way, our job is clear, easily defined. To be partners with the kids whose world this truly is. And most importantly, to be on the frontlines so they need not be. We cannot protect them from everything, but we should be using whatever adult privileges we have to stand between these kids and danger. To absorb the pain of what’s coming to whatever degree we can. To protect them like we wish someone had protected us. 

I don’t know about you, but having my marching orders gives me a real sense of peace. Of pleasure, even. I know what my role is here. And that clarity, that specificity, means I can focus the great, white-hot intensity of my full effort, intelligence, passion, and expertise where it can be of use. 

And sure. I’ve gotten my kids’ passports together. My partner and I have talked about where the red line is, when is it time to leave. We had the same discussion at the beginning of Trump’s first term. But I don’t intend to run, unless I have to. I intend to fight. 

Because I love my home. This stupid country that does not always love me back. I love the community I’ve made here, I love the career I have found, I love the freedoms I have historically enjoyed. And if that’s not worth fighting for, if that is not a just and joyous cause, then I do not know what is. 

Love Letters: Reasons to Be Alive is a yearlong essay series in which we acknowledge, celebrate, and examine the objects and experiences that keep us going, even through the hardest of times. The series is free to read, for everyone, forever.

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In the meantime, remember: Do what you can. Care for yourself and the people around you. Believe that the world can be better than it is now. Never give up.

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