DiverseAThon! TBR and Recommendations

     

    I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain why diversity is important, but here we are. People are still making disgusting videos and posts fighting against diversity and representation. It almost makes my brain short circuit, I simply do not understand the want to read the same characters over and over in the same stories. I can’t understand not want to represent everyone. This world is a quilt of cultures and colors and beliefs, how can we NOT look for that in our books and media? There are untold multitudes of Diversity, I would love to see more if it reflected in literature – YA, Adult, SFF, etc.  I struggle myself finding my own sexuality represented, to me that’s a small part of me – but the fact that people out there can’t find their race or their culture, that’s the heart breaking part. I’m not going to link to anything that doesn’t support Diversity in this post, especially not the highly offensive video that triggered the DiverseAThon’s creation (check out the announcement video from Joce with links to all creators). Just take my word, it’s out there. You can find plenty of transcripts of the video (I wouldn’t recommend watching it to give it the supporting views) or posts with summaries of things said.
This post is to celebrate Diversity – I want to see more of it, and I’m purposely seeking it out this week (have been and will continue to do so) for the #DiverseAThon. Some amazing Booktubers created this readathon in response to the above mentioned video. I’ve been cooking up a TBR for it and as this is the first day I thought it’d be appropriate to share that as well as some recommendations. In fact, I’m going to skim through everything in my house/on my Kindle and just list anything and everything I can find with diversity in it.
I’m looking a Diversity in a very wide lens. I’m looking for Persons of Color, Gender Diversity, Cultural Diversity, Mental Health/Physical Diversity, Learning Diversity, Religious Diversity,  etc. I’m also looking at author and/or story for sources of these. I
have an especially keen interest in anything that might possibly have individuals of the Asexual Spectrum (#pride), and anything with learning disorders. I unfortunately only have one read on this list that hits the Ace Spectrum (that I know of) but if anyone has more please send them my way. That’s where I sit (as a Demi/Gray leaning into full Ace) and I would LOVE to see more of that. I also only have one book representing my own personal learning disorder (Dyscalculia) – I may have representation of others. Again, please bring on the recommendations.

    So for my very generous – won’t get to all of them but I’m going to try – TBR (bless the Library guys, I love it so much):

• Redefining Realness: My path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More by Janet Mock
• The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
• The Silent Dead by Tetsuya Honda
• Not Otherwise Specified by Hannah Moskowitz
• Chasing Shadows by Swati Avasthi
•  Underground Airplanes by Ben H. Winters
• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi (The Diverse-A-Thon’s official book!)
•  Out by Kirino Natsuo
• Out on God Behavior by Dahlia Adler FINISHED ALREADY! Very fun!
• Love Beyond Body, Space, & Time: An Indigenous LGBT sci-fi Anthology Edited by Hope Nicholson
• Superior by Jessica Lack
•  This Side of Home by Renee Watson
• Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

    Those are just the books I’m eyeing as possible reads this week. Here is a list of recommendations of things I have read/read about/seen, etc for anyone who is looking for more (this is an incredibly incomplete list, just a drop in the bucket if you will, but one I came up with at work):

• Any Uncanny Magazine issues
• Lightspeed’s Women Destroy, Queer’s Destroy Series
• Not If I See You First by Eric Lindstrom
• Say What You Will by Cammie McGovern
• Wonder by R.J. Palacio
• One by Sarah Crossan
• Anything by Nnedi Okorafor
• Maybe Someday by Colleen Hoover
• The Sacred Lies of Minnow Bly by Stephanie Oakes
• Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee
• Burn Baby Burn by Meg Medina
• Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older
• The Tribe series by Ambelin Kwaymullina
• Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour
• Backwards to Oregon by Jae
• Fire Logic by Laurie J Marks
• The Birth of Korean Cool: How One Nation is Conquering the World Through Pop Culture by Euny Hong
• Being Jazz by Jazz Jennings

More books that I pulled off my shelf. Most of these are TBR books, though a few are already read, so all of them have come to me highly recommended or that I highly recommend!

    And here are just a few more resources! Links to blog posts about Diversity, Organizations for Diversity, and other sources of diverse books and media (I lost a lot of my saved resources due to a computer reimage so these are seriously just a tiny few):

• http://weneeddiversebooks.org/
• An old but good post from the great Chuck Wendig – http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/04/30/why-i-talk-about-diversity-and-something-something-star-wars/ and another more recent one http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/10/19/about-that-dumb-star-wars-boycott/
• A short and interesting tumblr post about Diversity, and Tokenism http://seananmcguire.tumblr.com/post/111030900560/bad-representation-vs-tokenism-vs-diversity-just
•  QueerSFF with amazing lists and directories – http://queersff.com/
•  Diversity in YA – http://diversityinya.tumblr.com/
• The Children’s Book Council for Diversity – http://www.cbcdiversity.com/
• The Brown Bookshelf – https://thebrownbookshelf.com/
• DiverseAThon’s HUGE Reading Recs list: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Q-Ab1emQhlLZAfUsMKKgk_uTv0ahORqu1VmKfi-RprA/edit?usp=sharing
• Follow the #Diverseathon on Twitter!

Hit me with more recommendations, resources, or anything else! Hit those books and have fun!