Writing contest winners witfully fight racism
Can a lesson in diversity and inclusiveness be learned from a flock of narrowminded chickens? The winner of an inspired literary contest for Montreal high school students says yes, it can.
The Diverse Minds Creative Writing Competition, launched by B’nai Brith Canada in 2019 and open to all Montreal students in Grades 9 through 11, solicits illustrated stories on the aforementioned themes of diversity and inclusiveness; the winners are then published in hardcover book form and distributed to elementary school readers. In the words of B’nai Brith’s mission statement, the competition offers students the chance “to become active human rights role models for their younger peers.”
The society’s pitch found fertile ground at Royal West Academy in Montreal West, where teacher Gloria Koyounian seized on the concept, convinced four groups of two in her English class to enter, and provided structural guidance, technical assistance and general encouragement through the process.
Remarkably for a contest with such a broad catchment area, all four pairs in Koyounian’s class were ranked in the overall top 10 by the nine-person judging committee. Among those pairs were English-language grand prize winners Liem Yip and Gabriel Morin, who share the $ 2,000 prize for “The Eggnapper,” their story of how farmyard chickens apply discriminatory stereotypes against their fellow farm animals when a series of egg thefts occurs, and how they finally get their comeuppance and learn their lesson.
The French-language winners, also awarded $1,000 each, were Omar Ghazaly and Wesley Yan of Collège Saint- Louis in Lachine, for Le Voyage de Pierrot.
“It had to be about diversity,” said 15- year- old N.D.G. resident Yip at Royal West last week, “so I wanted to have a whimsical, childappropriate story that still has a message.” (Co-author Morin was unavailable on the day of this interview for the good reason that he was writing an exam, but in the competition’s Montreal presentation ceremony said that he was inspired by observing, as a frequent babysitter, how effective stories can be as a tool for teaching kids.)
“I chose chickens ( as protagonists) because they’re just funny, and of all animals they’re some of the most talkative, always in little groups clicking and clucking. So, I figured a group of rather racist chickens would be a good subject.”
Having struck on an effectively counterintuitive set of villains, Yip and Morin set about the nuts and bolts of writing and illustrating.
“It took about a month,” said Yip. “Most of the sessions were in class ( hours). The teacher was kind enough to let us set up a table in the hall and get down to work. There was a lot of bouncing around of ideas, a lot of typing and erasing. Once we had a solid page- by- page layout for the book, we started illustrating. We tried to make those simple, because we had to colour them and we didn’t have a lot of time. But I think it turned out pretty good.”
He’s right; it did. What’s more, “The Eggnapper” isn’t just a good book for a pair of 15- year- olds to have created — it’s a good children’s book, period. Yip and Morin avoid the common pitfall of talking down to their young readership: their prose is plainspoken but rich, and peppered with some sophisticated vocabulary — “maliciously,” “theorized.” They also achieve something that has eluded many a more experienced author: they’ve managed to both instruct and amuse without shortchanging either option. This is a book that is funny without trivializing the decidedly unfunny forces it seeks to fight against.
Yip, who said he “has never been the most organized person” (though somehow that’s hard to believe), professes to have learned some valuable lessons from the experience of creating the book.
“Now I know I’ve really got to start right at the beginning,” he said. “I kind of slacked a bit, and that’s why we ended up cramming a lot.”
As for how the aspiring professional writer felt the day his first allotted shipment of the book came back from the printer: “It blew my mind.”
Information regarding next year’s Diverse Minds Creative Writing Competition will be announced by B’nai Brith Canada in early November. For details, visit bnaibrith. ca/ diverseminds.