Go Renay go! Great post. Many things I think about all the time, well said.
I have been finding this year that my problem with reaching my personal goals for diverse reading has been thwarted by the buying habits of pre-conscious-about-this-stuff Nikki. My to-be-read shelf is probably 90% white males because when I didn't think about this shit all the time, my book lists reflect the publishing biases etc etc. So I have been doing a little of what you mentioned: adding books to my want to read list very consciously so that I have a ton of awesome choices when it comes time to decide on a purchase, and then most importantly buying 90% books by female authors or authors of color or female authors of color or authors who don't identify on the binary, etc, etc when I do buy books. That has made it easier...
But I have to admit, I reached some sort of critical mass of "had enough of this bullshit" with those lists you refered to at the beginning of your post and then thinking about all this again and again and again and again as more and more essays (yours, Nina Allan's, Liz B's) came up on my screen. White male authors who write lists like that are just so...oblivious!...and if I expect one thing from authors it is that they are observant. That they notice things about the world that other people don't and bring those observations to light in their work. Acting like an all-dude all-white book rec list made by a person with a voice that is going to be heard and then acting like "but those are just my favorite books this ahs nothing to do with systematic discrimination in the industry" basically says to me: I am not at all observant, so you can just stop reading my work now.
This shit has been annoying me as long as I've been thinking about it, but like I said, critical mass this month. I've reached a point where I don't even want to touch the books on my shelves by dudes and I've only been reading female authors since. Every time I touch one it makes me feel like I am giving the people who already have the majority of the power even fucking more of it. Of course, I can and will still read dudes (because pod damn it I need to decimate the to be read shelf and I dont like getting rid of books) but I will also continue to make a point of writing about them less than about the other authors I read.
Ramble ramble. Thanks again for the great post. Keep up the awesome.
Yey!
I have been finding this year that my problem with reaching my personal goals for diverse reading has been thwarted by the buying habits of pre-conscious-about-this-stuff Nikki. My to-be-read shelf is probably 90% white males because when I didn't think about this shit all the time, my book lists reflect the publishing biases etc etc. So I have been doing a little of what you mentioned: adding books to my want to read list very consciously so that I have a ton of awesome choices when it comes time to decide on a purchase, and then most importantly buying 90% books by female authors or authors of color or female authors of color or authors who don't identify on the binary, etc, etc when I do buy books. That has made it easier...
But I have to admit, I reached some sort of critical mass of "had enough of this bullshit" with those lists you refered to at the beginning of your post and then thinking about all this again and again and again and again as more and more essays (yours, Nina Allan's, Liz B's) came up on my screen. White male authors who write lists like that are just so...oblivious!...and if I expect one thing from authors it is that they are observant. That they notice things about the world that other people don't and bring those observations to light in their work. Acting like an all-dude all-white book rec list made by a person with a voice that is going to be heard and then acting like "but those are just my favorite books this ahs nothing to do with systematic discrimination in the industry" basically says to me: I am not at all observant, so you can just stop reading my work now.
This shit has been annoying me as long as I've been thinking about it, but like I said, critical mass this month. I've reached a point where I don't even want to touch the books on my shelves by dudes and I've only been reading female authors since. Every time I touch one it makes me feel like I am giving the people who already have the majority of the power even fucking more of it. Of course, I can and will still read dudes (because pod damn it I need to decimate the to be read shelf and I dont like getting rid of books) but I will also continue to make a point of writing about them less than about the other authors I read.
Ramble ramble. Thanks again for the great post. Keep up the awesome.