From: Uma <uma_at_gobrainstorm.net>
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2013 14:05:23 -0700

Sarah, I love that Adichie video. She speaks so powerfully to the dangers of a single view of any group of people. It's all personal experience she speaks from, and not data, and it resonates for that reason. I'd love to hear from more of the writers on this list--for us, in our line of work, opinion and personal hunch is the heart of story. It not only matters, it's everything.

In the personal experience category I know many writers of color who came to the field precisely for this reason--as children growing up, on at least three continents that I can think of, we never saw ourselves reflected in books. I know that I came to writing late, because as a young woman considering college options, it never even occurred to me that I could be a writer, nor did I really understand that I already was one.

Finally, regardless of my present concerns about what I see as a trend in the direction of oppression and social problem literature defining diversity, I find it somewhat shocking that in 2013, we should even be worrying about whether diversity itself is sufficiently present in the literature, among characters, contexts and authors. By now, you'd think we could take that for granted.

Uma

Uma Krishnaswami uma_at_gobrainstorm.net http://www.umakrishnaswami.com http://umakrishnaswami.blogspot.com
Received on Thu 28 Feb 2013 02:05:23 PM CST