Diversity and Reading

[calissa]

It’s that time of year where readers and reviewers are taking stock of what they’ve read, looking at their stats (if they track them) and make goals for the new year. You’ve probably noticed I’ve been doing the same. It was in this spirit that Andi of Estella’s Revenge posted her thoughts on the slippery slope of diversity tracking. She set herself a goal this year to make sure 40% of her reading was written by authors of diverse backgrounds. However, she quickly discovered this was going to be a very complex issue.

This led to the question on Twitter…

“If you’re tracking diversity in reading, how do you actually know if the person is of a racial or ethnic background you consider diverse?”

I got some answers like “I Google them!” or “I go by last name.” But if Google comes up dry, is evidence of a non-white skin color or an international-sounding last name enough to deem that author diverse? In itself, it seems that using qualifiers like skin color and last name as a deciding factor promotes the same stereotypes we’re trying to get around by reading diversely.

I’ve been mentioning the importance of reading diversely almost from my very first post here on Earl Grey Editing, so this is not some shiny new concept to me. Nevertheless, I have not tracked diversity in my reading. Partly, it is because of the issues Andi touches on but mostly it’s because I’m lazy. Why spend time researching authors when I could be reading?

We Need Diverse Books shares some very important reasons why I should spend the time:

What benefits are there to reading diverse books?

1. They reflect the world and people of the world
2. They teach respect for all cultural groups
3. They serve as a window and a mirror and as an example of how to interact in the world
4. They show that despite differences, all people share common feelings and aspirations (Source here)
5. They can create a wider curiosity for the world
6. They prepare children for the real world
7. They enrich educational experiences (Source here)

(For more information on why diverse reading is important, try their list of key posts and links. Also, see this excellent article on reading diversely by BookRiot.)

This still leaves the quandary of determining what constitutes diverse. For some, this means anything not written by white, straight men. For others, it means work by authors of a different race, gender, sexuality or religion. Andi concludes that it is ultimately up to each of us to determine what diversity is for ourselves. This strikes me as being a reasonable approach. Diversity in the USA looks very different to diversity in Australia, for example. As Andi puts it:

I’ll research every author. Not just the ones with non-white skin or cool last names. There’s so much more than that to discover. Our definitions of diversity will ultimately prove as diverse as the authors we choose to read.

This year I’ll be tracking diversity in my reading. I won’t be setting a target percentage like Andi, but I’m curious to see how diverse my reading really is.

Do you need to know that I’m doing this? Not according to Didi from Brown Girl Reading. In her post Reading Diversely?, she says:

 I say, if you want to read a variety of literature then stop talking about it and do it.  In the end, when you do it no one is going to give you a prize because you do.  Lumping authors all together because they aren’t white, straight, males doesn’t valorize at all the differences in authors.

While she makes some excellent points (and the comments are well worth reading), I disagree that this is something we should stop talking about (as might be evident by the fact I’m posting on the topic). Back in September, Aarti from BookLust ran her annual A More Diverse Universe reading challenge. I participated by reading The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf by Ambelin Kwaymullina, thus discovering a new favourite author.

Would I have discovered Kwaymullina anyway? It’s possible–the Australian spec-fic industry is a small one and we have friends in common. However, it is far from certain, especially since I already have plenty of books to read. So you could say that it was Aarti’s discussion of diverse reading that lead to me reading more diversely, just as Andi’s post has encouraged me to do the same. Perhaps speaking about the issue here will encourage someone else. Diversity in reading is a complex issue and requires complex and diverse approaches. I feel that discussion and the tracking of statistics is part of that for some of us.

In that spirit, I’d love to hear any thoughts you have on the subject.

For now, I’ll let Andi have the last word:

It takes a little digging and it definitely takes some thought, and so far I’m grateful not only for the books read and authors found, but for the exercise of thinking through these issues because they’re that important.

 

Mirrored from Earl Grey Editing.

Comments

[davidgillon]

"For some, this means anything not written by white, straight men."

Which points out the danger of assumptions! I'm a straight white man, but I'm also disabled (not something you can work out from my name either!), equally SWM doesn't rule out being in a religious minority, or membership of a regional group (I'm a Geordie, and there are a lot of assumptions, many negative, built around my native accent). It's a complex issue, when I'm writing about disability I'm almost inevitably doing it from a diverse viewpoint, in that I deliberately focus on issues of disability discrimination, and disability is poorly enough understood there's an inherent spokesperson role in the writing, but if I was doing it from the Geordie perspective, then it would be very context dependent as to where it was diverse writing or not.

Diversity is good, and hunting down diverse authors has undoubtedly enriched my reading this year, but I'm not sure subjecting it to statistical analysis really adds anything to the average person's reading.

[onewhitecrow]

The whole idea distresses me rather, but then I can only self-reference how crushed I'd feel if someone read something of mine not because of the story but because I/my characters were social justice collectables. That said, I don't - and am not really in a position to - read much new fiction, so I'm aware I'm seeing the downsides without a way to appreciate the boost some much-deserving non-majority authors might get from being patronised by those looking to discover.

Also, I am very jaded and suspicious of the Pythonesque balkanisation of social justice terminology...I think this person hits it right on the nose: I really do want to read about people of all sorts, but describe a character by tickyboxes and not their character, or an author likewise and not their work and I am instantly put off. [/deep possibly-useless ambivalence towards topic]

edit: just to add that in terms of old/nonfiction (and wherever myths fit in) I do actively seek out voices rarely heard, as they're often ones we've lost.Archaeological instinct, I suppose.

[kaberett]

I (very crudely) track gender and race, leaving the field empty if I can't find anything definitive (and indeed was chastened to discover I had made entirely incorrect assumptions about Tobias Buckell, which was the point I started being more careful). I keep a mental tally of trans status and queernesstude. I don't seem to care particularly about disability in fiction I consume unless it's wrong, in which case it gets my back up.

The effect of this is to encourage me to ask friends for recommendations; to read well outside my comfort zone and discover lots of new favourites; and to begin to put together a piecemeal idea of the canons and cultures that aren't Greco-Roman or (my flavours of) Christian. Which in turn means that I look at the world differently and I look at the inside of my head differently; I know that if I'm not paying attention I read books mostly by white men, and conscious rejection of continuing to immerse myself in worldviews largely defined by them is a great relief, because fundamentally however well they mean that isn't escapism for me.

And then, of course, I come across someone like Max Gladstone, who writes brown disabled trans female queers whose identities are mostly irrelevant apart from the ways in which they highlight that they are damn good at their jobs, and he's some white dude, and I'm sufficiently astonished that I once again consider setting up a blog called "this [book] didn't annoy me", because... yeah. Yeah.