On Diversity
I loved this post from Ryan’s “Torrent of Diapers” blog. Love that title, too!
As someone who cut his teeth writing category romances and has featured French Canadian lead characters, Japanese leads (that book didn’t see, though), and Native American leads, I feel strongly that the issue of an author’s race/gender/sexual orientation is largely irrelevant.
The events that trigger certain emotions may vary from race/gender/sexual orientation, but the emotions themselves are vividly similar, and so authors can empathise. More importantly, the triggers are going to vary from one black midget lesbian to the next black midget lesbian. And that’s what novels deal with: individuals, not categories of folks.
Enough from me. Here’s Ryan’s post.
Originally posted on Torrent of Diapers:
Or, I Don’t Think That Word Means What You Think It Means
There’s been a lot of talk recently in literary circles, especially among a select group of Science Fiction and Fantasy (SFF) authors and their fans, about “diversity.” It started with a call for diverse characters and settings, and has evolved into a general white noise of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth lamenting the lack of diverse authors.
This from a genre that peddles primarily in hermaphrodite space apes and elven warrior princesses, written by really oddball folk who are generally living on the fringes of society to begin with.
But I digress.
Diversity is a wonderful thing. It’s one of the reasons I gravitated to SFF in my early teens. I love SFF. Maybe not in the dress-up-like-a-Wookiee-and-go-to-conventions Überliebe1 of hardcore fandom, but in my own, quiet, avoid-crowds-and-people-with- way. Most other genres are fairly narrow—similar plots, stock characters…
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