Incite/Insight Spring-Summer 2019 Incite_Insight—Spring_Summer 2019 Final | Page 17

When The
Publisher
Won’t Let You
Check Out
Tomás and the
Library Lady:
Institutionalized
Racism in TYA
WRITTEN BY GILLIAN MCNALLY
“Love is necessary in the classroom. A teacher
should realize that if he has love for children
he will be creating lasting happy individuals.
A degree of love brings security to a child and
makes him feel worthwhile. A child realizes he
is loved and in turn will respond as a unique
individual to that love.” —Tomás Rivera, 1961
In the fall of 2016, after a bitter election in the
United States, where much of the rhetoric
surrounded the villainization of Latinx immigrants
in the U.S., I was challenged, angered, and
inspired with how to respond as a Theatre for
Young Audiences (TYA) artist. I came across José
Cruz González’s Tomás and the Library Lady and
read these hopeful, healing words by Tomás
Rivera. In this time, where white supremacy found
strengthened power in the US, how could our TYA
tour be a voice of empathy, justice, and healing?
The cast of the University of Northern Colorado’s production of “Luna”
Photo by David Grapes
Every other year, the University of Northern
Colorado (UNC) tours a TYA production to local
elementary schools, performing for 1500-5000
students. In the 2010 census, Greeley, CO had
a 37.3 percent Hispanic population and 25.1
percent of the population speaks another
language other than English at home . Many of
the schools close to the university have Latinx
populations well over 60 percent. Since 2006, we
have dedicated much of our TYA programming
to serving this population, many of whom are
bilingual, speaking both Spanish and English. For
the 2017-18 school year, we chose Tomás and the
Library Lady as our touring TYA play. The story
follows Tomás, the son of a migrant farm worker,
INCITE/INSIGHT 17