This post has been written with neurodivergent individuals in mind and therefore includes sections that are bullet pointed, step-by-step instructions, and examples, for a thorough understanding.
Reading diversely isn’t often a conscious choice. It can come from a need to connect with other people in similar situations, especially if you’re experiencing tough curveballs from life such as grief, divorce, children moving away, depression, social anxiety, or you or someone near and dear is questioning their sexuality or gender identity. We, as humans who seek not only to fit in but also guidance from those around us, seek to find representation of ourselves and books offer that in a way television often can’t.
What does reading diversely actually mean?
“Diversity” means something different to everyone, often, and I’ve always seen a sort of beauty in that – connecting with others over what makes us different, through something we have in common: books.
For the common understanding, what most mean by “diverse” – when you see it mentioned on social media, or labelled on a library or bookstore stand – is identities that are less common in publishing.
PEN America looked at the racial demographics of publishing in 2022, reporting a study which showed 95% of American fiction published between 1950 and 2018 was by a white author, and an enlightening 2020 movement #PublishingPaidMe that “called on authors to disclose their advances to expose discrepancies in payment between white authors and those of color”. (You can probably guess fairly accurately how that went!)
Meanwhile, USA Today shared statistics in October of 2023 in light of Banned Books Week (Oct. 1-7). “Of the record 2,571 unique titles targeted for censorship in 2022, most were written by or about LGBTQ+ people, Black people, Indigenous people and people of color.” This was the highest number of challenged books in 20 years.
These types of reports and statistics are what lead us to categorise “diverse” books as including and written by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of colour) people, queer and gender diverse people, and disabled people (while sources could be found, it was hard to find solid reported statistics on representation of disability in books or authors identifying as disabled).
However, you can also take diversity challenges a little more personally. As a white, queer, disabled woman, this could mean I focus my reading on other queer stories which uplift me, or conversely focus on identities outside of my own identification as a lesbian. Perhaps I’d prioritise a book about an MLM (men loving men) relationship over that of WLW (women loving women) or sapphic, or a main character attracted to all genders. It could also mean reading representations of disabilities I and my close friends don’t have, so I can better accommodate and understand other disabled people in my community.
How to create a diversity reading goal
Start by focusing on two main points:
What values do you hold in your personal life?
What communities and/or minorities do you fit into?
Your values may guide you to prioritise understanding Indigenous voices of your country of residence to try and dismantle unintentional biases held by your community (e.g. white Australians negatively stereotyping Indigenous Aboriginals). They could also guide you to explore voices that represent the state of the world today, with rising mental illness statistics around the pandemic and pressures on school-aged people today. You may want to understand more about Palestinians as a community or ethnic group, and how the decades of oppression has shaped their lives today, even if they’ve moved away from their home country.
Minorities can also guide you, both in your own communities and those on the rise around us. In a practical example, I am a cis woman engaged to a nonbinary person, so for 2023 I tried to read accounts of other people who identified as gender diverse, writing characters who are also gender diverse. This included the memoir Gender Queer, the Young Adult (YA) novel Felix Ever After, YA fantasy Pet, and a speculative fiction where gender was entirely removed from the main character and their family, Sorrowland.
Setting your numbers
In setting your goals as numbers, you want to allow wriggle room. For one, this allows for upcoming, unforeseen community issues to be allowed to reflect your reading, such as George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020 impacting reading goals, and the Reads for Palestine push for November of 2023 as a result of the genocide. The other reason this is good is that it allows for mood readers.
Some people thrive (like myself) on order, and need to have a set list and be told what to read, in a sense. I am guided solely by the dates my library books are due back, set reading movements’ challenges such as awareness weeks or months inspiring focuses on those topics, and upcoming book signings I want to read an author’s book for in advance.
However, others can fall into reading slumps easily if their “mood” isn’t taken into account and the wrong book is chosen, and this is where it pays to give yourself more wriggle room in your goals. As they say: Set yourself up for success.
Giving yourself “wriggle room” means:
Setting a total goal count that’s significantly higher than the amount of diversity reads you want to read; e.g. 50 books for the year, 15 of which are diversity reads.
Making your categories broad enough you can still follow your mood; e.g. 10 books by BIPOC authors, as opposed to strictly Indigenous authors, which allows more room to manoeuvre and meet your goal while still supporting people of colour in the publishing industry.
Taking into account the means by which you acquire books; e.g. scope out preorders so you can allocate your money towards supporting minorities, remember to place library holds a tad ahead of time so as to account for waiting periods, and if you thrift a lot of books, remember a lot will be up to chance which means your categories might have to be broader than if you were to select off a new release shelf at the bookstore.
My own goals for 2024
Given that I work with books, I do read a lot, however I read meticulously and am not a fast reader by any account, and I don’t count books I work on edits for, as often they aren’t going to be published the same year as I get to read and offer insights on them. This means my goal usually sits around 50 books, allowing a week per book plus a little wriggle room for mental health. Last year, however, I managed to knock out over 90 books (I still don’t know how that happened, so don’t ask me for tips), so I’m upping my overall goal to 60 for 2024, and to allow myself to focus on my own writing on top.
I’ve discovered a few things recently which have impacted my upcoming goals. The first is that I don’t read many Aussie authors, and as an Aussie writer, I’m all about supporting my people, my future peers when I publish (fingers crossed). Therefore I wanted to make sure I include Australian authors and their stories in my goals.
The second discovery I made was that reading memoirs has been exceedingly enlightening for me in a way that first person representation hasn’t. While reading first person stories of minorities, by a minority author, has been one of the best things I did in 2023, I found the memoirs hit a little closer to home, as I could picture a real face and personality going about their very real lives in a more intimate way than I could a fictional character – and that may well just be a “me thing”, but it has encouraged me to want to read more memoirs and autobiographies.
I received some amazing books last year which I’m sadly yet to get to which highlight mental health struggles, and I love not only seeing myself reflected, but also understanding how different people and personalities experience the same struggles and diagnoses that I do. Therefore, mental health focused books also got a spot in my goals.
Lastly, I want to expand further again in reading LGBTQIA+ stories, not just of WLW stories, but specifically including gender diverse individuals and people who love more than one gender.
Therefore my goals for 2024 are:
60 books total (including graphic novels, fiction, and nonfiction), including:
10 LGBTQIA+ stories,
10 mental health focused stories,
10 stories by Australian authors,
And 5 memoirs or autobiographies.
Of these, 10 books must come off my physical TBR of books I own, in order to focus my spending where I’ll actually benefit and cut down on unread books crowding my shelves.
So, what are your goals for the new year? Feel free to drop yours in the comments and lift each other up in our efforts to read diversely and make a difference with our reviews and spending habits within the publishing industry.
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