medievalpoc
ktempest: I Challenge You To Stop Reading White, Straight, Cis Male Authors For One YearThe “Reading Only X Writers For A Year” a challenge is one every person who loves to read (and who loves to write) should take. You could, like Lilit Marcus, read only
ktempest: I Challenge You To Stop Reading White, Straight, Cis Male Authors For One YearThe “Reading Only X Writers For A Year” a challenge is one every person who loves to read (and who loves to write) should take. You could, like Lilit Marcus, read only books by women or, like Sunili Govinnage, read only books by people of color. Or you could choose a different axis to focus on: books by trans men and women, books by people from outside the US or in translation, books by people with disabilities. After a year of that, the next challenge would be to seek out books about or with characters that represent a marginalized identity or experience by any author. In addition to the identities listed above, I suggest: non-Christian religions or faiths, working class or poor, and asexual (as a start). This article by my friend K. T. Bradford for XOJane seems to have attracted a silly amount of controversy, and unfortunately, hatemail. I have certainly done versions of this Challenge myself in previous years, more than once. Which is how/why I have so much to say and post for Fiction Weeks here at Medievalpoc. All this is about is making thoughtful choices about what you read. It’s about diversifying your own empathetic capabilities. Instead, a rather ridiculous bunch of people seemed to take this as “Gaiman hate”, which is of course, absurd. Especially considering Gaiman’s response: Pretending that grabbing books at random is somehow “more fair” than actually making thoughtful choices about the books you read not only ignores systemic inequality in the publishing world, it’s silly. We all choose books to read for reasons. A challenge to read, say, only women authors, only disabled authors, only authors of color, for a limited time is a fantastic way to discover new and fascinating worlds and perspectives.
ktempest: I Challenge You To Stop Reading White, Straight, Cis Male Authors For One YearThe “Reading Only X Writers For A Year” a challenge is one every person who loves to read (and who loves to write) should take. You could, like Lilit Marcus, read only
ktempest: I Challenge You To Stop Reading White, Straight, Cis Male Authors For One YearThe “Reading Only X Writers For A Year” a challenge is one every person who loves to read (and who loves to write) should take. You could, like Lilit Marcus, read only books by women or, like Sunili Govinnage, read only books by people of color. Or you could choose a different axis to focus on: books by trans men and women, books by people from outside the US or in translation, books by people with disabilities. After a year of that, the next challenge would be to seek out books about or with characters that represent a marginalized identity or experience by any author. In addition to the identities listed above, I suggest: non-Christian religions or faiths, working class or poor, and asexual (as a start). This article by my friend K. T. Bradford for XOJane seems to have attracted a silly amount of controversy, and unfortunately, hatemail. I have certainly done versions of this Challenge myself in previous years, more than once. Which is how/why I have so much to say and post for Fiction Weeks here at Medievalpoc. All this is about is making thoughtful choices about what you read. It’s about diversifying your own empathetic capabilities. Instead, a rather ridiculous bunch of people seemed to take this as “Gaiman hate”, which is of course, absurd. Especially considering Gaiman’s response: Pretending that grabbing books at random is somehow “more fair” than actually making thoughtful choices about the books you read not only ignores systemic inequality in the publishing world, it’s silly. We all choose books to read for reasons. A challenge to read, say, only women authors, only disabled authors, only authors of color, for a limited time is a fantastic way to discover new and fascinating worlds and perspectives.