{"id":754,"date":"2013-07-26T12:35:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-26T17:35:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/?p=754"},"modified":"2013-07-26T12:35:38","modified_gmt":"2013-07-26T17:35:38","slug":"diversity-guest-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/26\/diversity-guest-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Diversity Guest Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adrianne Russell <\/a>is my wonderful guest poster for today. She has written an incredible post about diversity in young adult books (or well, the lack there of) that she wanted to share on my blog as well. I couldn’t agree more with her feelings on this subject\u00a0and I truly hope we see more diversity going forward. If more writers write it, the industry would be more open to representing\/selling it.\u00a0Enough fo me, read her thoughts and leave a comment below!<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reading since I was three years old and I can\u2019t remember a time when diversity wasn\u2019t an issue in children\u2019s literature. Week after week, I\u2019d peruse the Scholastic book orders<\/a> searching for brown faces. Other than Michael Jackson biographies or the occasional Dynamite <\/em><\/a>magazine cover featuring Kim Fields or the cast of The Cosby Show, the pickings were slim. It didn\u2019t keep me from being a voracious reader but I have to wonder how I internalized the lack of representation and if it\u2019s still affecting me today.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve written about the lack of diversity in young adult covers<\/a> and the negative message that sends. I\u2019ve raged about recent studies <\/a>that demonstrate how books are utterly failing to represent their readers\u00a0 both in content and authorship. I\u2019ve face-palmed myself nearly to death over authors being asked to \u201cstraight-wash\u201d<\/a> LGBTQ characters. It\u2019s enough to drive you insane.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know what it\u2019s like anywhere else but in the United States, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation permeate everything<\/em>. Our collective fixation is almost pathological. We obsess over those issues yet when it comes time to have meaningful discussion about them we either run and hide or throw out knee-jerk responses or platitudes of the \u201cgays are an abomination\u201d or \u201cwe have a black President so racism is dead\u201d variety.\u00a0 We know we need to do better yet we\u2019re so afraid of the work it takes to improve that hardly any progress is made.<\/p>\n

Feeling so much rage, anxiety, and frustration about this is effing exhausting. Some days I just want to quit the planet. But I can\u2019t stop thinking or talking about it. Not just because I\u2019m a writer and a black person but because this crap is wrong and is endemic of just how far out of whack society is in general and the publishing industry in particular.<\/p>\n

Case in point:<\/strong> Publishers won\u2019t buy stories about people of color because people don\u2019t read those books so agents won\u2019t represent stories about people of color because publishers won\u2019t sell them so readers can\u2019t buy stories about people of color because they aren\u2019t being published but publishers won\u2019t buy\u2026etc.<\/p>\n

See how ridiculously crazypants that argument is? If we\u2019re not buying anything, it\u2019s that crappy rationalization.<\/p>\n

\"smell<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s annoying on so many levels. If I write a story featuring white characters, I feel like I\u2019m actually doing my bit for diversity because that\u2019s not representative of my native culture. But because white folks are so over-represented, it\u2019s like I\u2019m contributing to the problem. If I write multicultural characters who aren\u2019t struggling with some aspect of their ethnicity or gay characters who aren\u2019t harassed about their sexuality then it\u2019s not believable. If I make no mention of the characters\u2019 features at all it\u2019s problematic because supposedly readers\u2019 brains will explode if they don\u2019t know what the characters look like.\u00a0 *strangled scream*<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wouldn\u2019t have to consider any<\/em> of this nonsense if the stories being presented were more diverse across the board. Industry gate-keepers (publishers, editors, booksellers, librarians, bloggers, et al) must push past their comfort zones and make meaningful efforts to reflect the real world in the books they publish, buy, sell, and promote. Readers must continue to express their displeasure with being patronizingly told what their wants and needs are.<\/p>\n

Most importantly, writers must continue to create the stories that move them. \u201cWrite what you know\u201d is a myth. We\u2019re not afraid to write about global catastrophes, aliens, or shape-shifting werebeasts, so why should writing outside our cultural or sexual experiences scare us? If we research well, write authentically and honestly, and know that we\u2019ll make mistakes, it will be fine.<\/p>\n

As writers, we\u2019re constantly told not to chase trends. So why would anyone purposely configure their stories to fit into the ridiculously narrow molds of a publishing industry that requires everything be filtered through a straight, all-white lens?<\/p>\n

Not gonna. And you shouldn\u2019t either.<\/p>\n

We control the story. We can change how it ends. We have that power. We just need to claim it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adrianne Russell is my wonderful guest poster for today. She has written an incredible post about diversity in young adult books (or well, the lack there of) that she wanted to share on my blog as well. I couldn’t agree more with her feelings on this subject\u00a0and I truly hope we see more diversity going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[64,41,48,40,55,50,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-754","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-audience","category-characters","category-cliches","category-current-event","category-guest-post","category-musings","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2YHlB-ca","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":760,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754\/revisions\/760"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rachelhorwitz.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}