Yahdon Israel
“To be disenfranchised is more than a not having a map, but the information, frameworks, process necessary to navigate the maps.”
What have you been working on? Gas yourself!
I'm a Senior Editor at Simon and Schuster who's acquired, within the first 10 months in this position and in this industry, 7 books. [For context: acquisition editors at major publishers are expected to acquire 8-12 books a year].
How does your culture inform your creative work?
When working for corporations, there's this idea that we have to "shrink", "sell-out" or "play the game" in order to create tangible change. So whenever one of "us" gets a position at an institution, there's a pride in the appointment but also a fear that the person will compromise their integrity for access. What this can sometimes mean is that "we" talk ourselves out of opportunities that provide us the ability to dismantle preconceived notions of how we *think* or have heard systems to operate instead of the first hand experience of understanding *why* they function as they do, and decided what practices we'd like to cultivate in the positions we have.
In the context of my position as an editor at a major publisher, book publishing, as an industry has always mystified a broader public because few people understand, and even fewer can comprehensively explain, how the industry works and why.
If you go to my IG page, you'll see that in addition to me sharing news about the books I've acquired, I also provide insight into the process of how a book is acquired--the time, the emails, the amount of people involved in the process of acquisition. What this does, to the extent that I can account for, is provide some clarity on processes.
To be disenfranchised is more than a not having a map, but the information, frameworks, process necessary to navigate the maps. There's the hustler saying that the game is to be "sold not told." While I understand that ethos, I also recognize how it perpetuates the cycles of inequality I'm invested in disrupting, so I make a conscious decision to tell the game, because the one we think we win by playing by its rules, is precisely the one we constantly lose because those rules we follow aren't ones we created.
What is your greatest struggle/challenge these days?
Understanding the concept of "having time." One of the reasons I transitioned from being an entrepreneur to an employee is because I, as a father responsible for more than just my own life, recognized that I was in this constant state of feeling rushed. There was very little time to build things in sustainable ways because most of my time was devoted to making sure bills were paid.
Working from a place of scarcity means I made a lot of decisions out of this fear rather than desire. I'm saying yes to offers that aren't opportunities, but believe I need to say yes because I'm afraid of the bill I can't pay if I say no. So I say yes to something that, while paying the bill, demanding time and energy that complicates my ability to bring about the future I want instead of the past I'm afraid to repeat.
What does community mean for you as a creative?
In All About Love, bell hooks writes about love being the "will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." When I think about community, I think about the people who are capable and willing to extend themselves for the nurturing of both our own and other's spiritual growth.
What inspires you in your creative process?
Knowing that there is someone who, without knowing all of the labor that went into creating the experience they value, will be able to identify that experience as an impactful and meaningful one.
Is there anything happening in your community that you'd like to shed some light on?
Publishing is looking to hire more people in other fields in the industry outside of just editorial (sales, marketing, publicity) and I see there are a lot of us with these backgrounds who need the health insurance and steady paycheck not even know these opportunities exist, so I want to do my part in bridging that divide.
