Lately, I've been doing a lot of thinking about my motives for doing this blog. How do I -- a White, middle-class person who has experienced life-long privilege -- have the authority to write about books written by authors and depicting characters with different backgrounds than me? Am I engaging in de facto segregation by writing about diverse books and labeling them as "diverse" and "multicultural"?
Q4: Othering inclusive books is a major concern. How can we avoid that in daily blogging and in inclusive features? #WeNeedDiverseBlogs
— Nicole Brinkley (@nebrinkley) October 19, 2015
Am I, as this tweet says, "othering inclusive books" by drawing attention to them? I know that my intentions are good, but I also know that good intentions can be damaging if they perpetuate unquestioned privilege and continue to draw lines between "mainstream" and "other."Just some questions I've been wrestling with. What are your thoughts?
It's definitely a fine line and tricky question. But I think as you say, including diverse books in general discussion topics rather than putting them in different categories helps to not "otherize" them.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your input, Janna! You're right -- diverse books are "normal" and should be treated as such. We need to draw attention to them, but not in a way that exoticizes them. This reminds me of a bookstore I went to that had a multicultural book section. At the time, I thought, "Wow, how great that they carry diverse books." But the more I thought about it, the more the idea of having a separate multicultural section troubled me.
DeleteJust found your blog. I really like this post and agree on blogging.There really is no shortcut. I strive to make my blog look nice, write quality articles, and interact with the wordpress community The Benefits of Mindfulness at Work
ReplyDeletei am new to your beautiful space and I’m so thankful to have found it. I really look forward to seeing what you come up with next..