How to turn awareness into action?

 

How to turn awareness into action?

                                                                 

    

When Kate Schatz (Stevenson ’03, literature and inventive writing) began her career as an author, she wrote short fiction stories for an adult audience. Yet, at intervals solely many years, Schatz would notice herself in a very completely different context: The New York Times Bestseller list for pioneering feminist children’s literature.

Schatz spent her time at UCSC specializing in feminist studies and inventive writing, 2 majors that flowed directly into her future work as a significant feminist children’s author.

“I terribly genuinely desire my UC Santa Cruz education is that the foundation of a lot of the work that I do,” Schatz same.

However, the prospects of her studies didn’t continually appear to attach to the longer term. She remembers a time once a lot of her family–though supportive–looked onto her studies with confusion. In spite of her family’s questioning, Schatz knew the worth of a feminist studies education, and would carry that understanding along with her in understanding the globe as an entire.

 It was in my feminist studies categories, that I came to know political economy, and so I came to actually believe history in an exceedingly completely different method. I understood I learned tons regarding science. I learned regarding literature in a very completely different method. For me, it had been simply this, it had been an intellectual lens that went over all of those completely different fields.

Schatz's latest book, Do the Work! co-written with comedian and tv host W. Kamau Bell, focuses on transferral the teachings Schatz shared in her children’s book series Rad women to an adult audience by mistreatment an interactive medium–an activity book. By employing a lot of interactive approach, Schatz aims to directly interact her readers with anti-racism, and switch awareness into action.

The book is termed Do the Work, and therefore the whole purpose is just got to do one thing,” Schatz same. “Change does not happen if you are simply sitting around worrying, fretting, freaking out, or simply posting on social media—you got to find out one thing to try and do, and there is such a lot of various things we will do. therefore, why not produce a book wherever you find out about that whereas really doing things?

Schatz began her encroach upon children’s literature as her time protestant within the streets came to a finish, with new circumstances preventing her from collaborating in policy as she once did. although she began her career with short stories once following a Master of Fine Arts in artistic writing, Schatz remembers continually desperate to write a children’s book – and many years into parentage, Schatz would notice the proper reason to satisfy that want.

“When I had the thought for [Rad Women], my female offspring was two: it had been additionally a time after I felt my expertise an identity as an activist was in an exceedingly shift time,” Schatz same. As a replacement mother, I wasn't as ready or willing to travel intent on protests to be within the streets, risking arrest as I had before. I had a baby reception, and that I felt a shift that I needed to be impactful, however in an exceedingly completely different method.

Schatz printed her 1st book of the Rad women series, Rad yank ladies A-Z, in 2015, which might win itself an area on the New Times bestseller list and place feminist history within the minds of youngsters across the state. With Schatz’s transition from street activist to feminist author, she would move her policy from the physical world to the mental one, and went on to publish varied alternative works within the Rad women series, writing on women worldwide and throughout yank history.

After years as a powerful feminist activist, Schatz still traces back the formation of her feminist understanding to Bettina Aptheker's course “Intro to Feminism,” that she took in her half-moon at UCSC. She remembers what proportion of her understanding of feminist theory came from that category, shaping the terribly lens with that she understands the globe.

I got such a radical understanding of intersectionality at such an early age, and an understanding of tons of ideas that area unit at the center of tons of white women's anxieties regarding race, privilege, and everyone these items that build individuals tense up and acquire extremely defensive, Schatz says, I extremely desire I encountered those things at such a young age at Santa Cruz, and was able to method them, perceive them and progress intellectually–and that shaped the premise of thought on behalf of me.

Schatz currently spreads these same lessons round the world through her writing, teaching her wide audience regarding an equivalent structure of power and privilege she grew to know at UCSC.