Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Time to Get Meta

Some brief musings:

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"?
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?