#Diversiverse is coming

4 September 2015


It’s bang on a month until Aarti’s A More Diverse Universe events begins. In case you missed it the first few years it is all about diversity in your reading.

Reading diversely is important because we live in a global world. Period. If you read books only by white authors, you are limiting yourself to less than 30% of the world’s experience of race and culture. If you read books only by Christian authors, you are limiting yourself to only about 33% of the world’s experience of religion. If you read books only by authors in developed countries, you are limiting yourself to a very privileged view of what the world has to offer you. If you read books that focus only on Western thought, history, and philosophy, you are missing out on many rich and varied traditions and worldviews that have informed and continue to enrich the way we view the world today.

And it is simple to take part, all you need to do is :

  • Read and review one book
  • Written by a person of color
  • During the first two weeks of October (October 4th-17th)
  • Personally I am expanding my universe for the whole month of October, I will only be reading books by people of colour or books that are translated into English. The translated one might mean books from the West/Europe/white peoples, but it is still important to take a look at different cultures around us. I will mainly be concentrating on authors of colour, but October is also RIP month [ref]this year (year ten!) it being hosted by The Estella Society[/ref] and I do want to read some horror from around Europe.

    If you want to sign up go here and add your details

    You may also like...

    2 Responses

    1. Richard says:

      Interesting. Great idea, Fence, but the thing is I don’t pay any attention to the race, creed, color, country, gender, size, appearance or whatnot of the author. I only pay attention to what’s between the covers of the book. So I’d have to go looking specifically for books by race, which seems a little backwards from not using race as a criteria at all. Am I confused or wrong-thinking this?
      Richard´s last blog post ..Current Reading, August 31-September 6 – Sherlock Holmes Month begins

      • Fence says:

        Hi Richard, the thing is that while you may not pay attention to race the reality is that publishers and book shops often do. I’d bet that if you checked 90% of the books toy read are by white authors simply because they are published more often and stocked more often. And so are read more often and make more best of lists and win awards. And so in turn white authors are seen as a better option by publishers and book shops and so the circle continues.

        Unfortunately there is a huge amount of unseen racism in the world. Events like A more diverse universe are all about just experiencing a wider view of the world. You never know, you might stumble across a great author that you may otherwise have never heard of.