We Need Diverse Books: Why Diversity Matters for Everyone

Throughout October, we’ll be partnering with We Need Diverse Books to bring you a series of blog posts full of helpful advice, tips, and suggestions for writing diversity convincingly and respectfully in your fiction—from people who know what they’re talking about. Today, Marieke Nijkamp shares why diversity matters for everyone:

Why does diversity matter? The answer to that question should be simple and straightforward: because everyone deserves to be a hero. Because everyone deserves to be seen. Because representation matters.

Junot Díaz famously said: “If you want to make a human being into a monster, deny them, at the cultural level, any reflection of themselves.”

Yet this is exactly what the vast majority of our stories does, whether intentionally or not. In a time when—in the US—more than half of the children born will be non-white, less than ten percent of books published are about characters of color or written by people of color. And while one out of five teens will deal with a serious debilitating mental illness, perhaps only one out of twenty books even recognizes mental illnesses exist…

For most of us, whether we’re disabled, LGBTQ, people of color, part of a religious minority, indigenous peoples, it is achingly hard—often impossibly so—to find a story about us. Not just about us, but stories that reflect the world we live in. Stories where we’re seen.

In fact, most readers would be forgiven to think that in the future there are no limps and autistic people never ran a spaceship. That only the white hero can slay the dragon. And that LGBTQ characters have issues, not happy endings.

But when our stories don’t include characters readers can relate to by shared experience, shared background, shared ability—in fact, when our stories continuously erase those characters—we teach readers that their stories don’t matter. We teach them that their voices don’t matter. We teach them that they don’t matter.

We rob our readers and ourselves of the chance to discover reflections in stories. We choose to keep them invisible and alone, when it’s those exact stories that can tell them they are not alone in the world.

Representation matters for readers without marginalized experiences, too. To introduce them to other perspectives and other world views. To teach readers that the world is far richer than their experiences alone. Because there is no one way to be different, and this world is not inhabited by stereotypes and tropes, but by real, multidimensional people.

But above all, diverse stories allow all of us to listen. They are not merely mirrors, but windows, too. Through those windows we see that we all bring unique experiences to the table. By recognizing that, we may learn to better understand and accept each other.

As writers—during NaNoWriMo and with every single story we write—we can change that. We have a whole spectrum of experiences with which to imbue our stories, without erasing identities, without perpetuating tropes and stereotypes. We can diversify to ensure our stories are both mirrors to all our selves, and windows to a wider world around us.

Marieke Nijkamp is a storyteller, dreamer, globe-trotter, and proud-to-be geek. As founder of DiversifYA and VP of We Need Diverse Books™, she is passionate about all things diversity. In the midnight hours, Marieke writes young adult stories, as well as the occasional middle grade adventure. She wants to grow up to be a time traveler.

We Need Diverse Books (WNDB) is a grassroots nonprofit organization created to address the lack of diverse, non-majority narratives in children’s literature. WNDB is committed to the ideal that embracing diversity will lead to acceptance, empathy, and ultimately equality. In October, the group will be launching its inaugural Indiegogo campaign to support its future initiatives, including a Diversity in the Classroom program, diverse author grants and awards, and the first ever Diversity Festival in 2016. Volunteer & sign up for its mailing list at diversebooks.org, or follow WNDB on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Instagram!