Tag: diversity

If You Must Be Creative With Our Stories How About You Be Creative

Leave a comment

So it happened, I woke up opened my book and began to read as I do almost every single day. Reading is what I do. I consider myself more than anything to be a connoisseur of books. Sometime during the trips of my eyes from left to right across the page of my current read I got that feeling. The one I get where I know that I won’t be able to continue reading the book without doing a little research.

I tell myself not to. To at least wait until I’ve completed the book and have a true opinion about the story before I go internet diving for clues. But I don’t. 7.5 minutes later I’m looking into the face of a white appearing woman or man, standing next to their white appearing spouse, with their white appearing children in their suburban or gentrified ass white appearing neighborhood.

I know as you read those words you’re probably coming to conclusions so I should say here, I am not angry. If I am anything I’m bored.

images-4.jpeg

I’m not angry that a white appearing person has written yet another bestselling YA novel about yet another African American teenager. Nor, that they have taken liberties with this teenagers life and given them the crackhead parent, the absent parent, the problems in school, the job that they HAVE to work in order to contribute to their family because of the crackhead or absent parent.

But, as I continue to do research on this person: looking up their parents, researching their childhoods, the cities they were born in, thinking maybe just maybe their best friend was black, looking for stories in which they describe where they got the idea for this story, looking for anything to help me feel better about the fact that yet another of our stories is being told by other people while we’re still not given the equal opportunities to tell our own; I do get a little annoyed.

images-5.jpeg

See, as a writer I know that we have the creative license to write whatever we want about whatever we want however we want and that we don’t just have to tell the stories that we know. But, as I look at how stereotypes are developed and perpetuated and have been perpetuated for years and years I can’t help but wonder why a person who took ALL of the creative license with a story would continue to write these lazy stereotype ladden stories.

When I read a story about these issues that do in fact exist for some black people written by a black person I know that most likely they have experienced these issues or that the issues are at the very least in their orbit. But, when these stories are written by white appearing people I can’t help but question why if they felt the need to write about black people, why they didn’t use their creative license to write about magical black girls or as Danez Smif requests black boys playing with dinosaurs in the hood. 

Social Media airways, news and media outlets for once in our history are being flooded with Magical Black Girls and Black Boy Joy and  Black Super Heroes and yet television, movies, and books are still full of the same stereotypical stories about food stamp dependent, thugged out, drug abusing black people.

There will always be these stories to be told like their will always be a new movie about slavery. So, I’m not asking white people to not write stories about black people. I’m asking them to give us the whole stories. Like they do for white people. I’ve yet to read a story about a white crackhead teenager without being informed that she was a jock who broke her leg, had surgery, was placed on oxycodone, and became addicted. They’re humanized. So can we be humanized in these stereotypical redundant ass stories? I’m just asking  if you must be creative with our stories then how about you be creative or at the very least, tell the whole story.

 

Diversity Must Start At Home

Leave a comment

Currently there is a lot of attention being paid to the lack of diversity in the Tim Burton directed Ms. Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children. As a constant reader I have read and enjoyed these books for years and was not surprised at the lack of brown faces on the screen. There aren’t any people of color in the books. Why? One would have to ask the writer. The stories are fictional books about children who do everything from be invisible,  float, eat through a second mouth in the back of their heads, to emit fire from their hands; surely with an imagination that can create these characters some of them could have easily been a shade of brown.

Even more astonishing; the novels are set in a fictional version of Wales. Where is Wales? The United Kingdom. Are there black people in the Wales, UK? Yup. For the record black and brown people are everywhere.

So if this is true and people write what they know then why is there such an abysmal lack of diversity in books, movies, and television. Why is there always only one black person or Asian person included in these settings? And then why are those people usually comic relief or the villain? (See there’s a black person. And some potentially brown people. Their villains.)miss-peregrines-home-for-peculiar-children-poster-banner

 

Simple: The people who get chosen to write movies- the directors, casting agents, financiers, decision makers, screen play writers-the authors who get chosen to have their novels first published and then made into movies; are usually white. Are usually male and they were usually raised in a home in a place with at best one black family or one Asian family-with one other family. Thus we end up with a world whose entertainment is written by people who don’t know how to write other because they don’t know other.

As long as white people continue to love segregation (Thirty years after the civil rights era, the United States remains a residentially segregated society in which blacks and whites still often inhabit vastly different neighborhoods.) the lack of diversity in their lives, the lives chosen so frequently to be portrayed in the media- will continue to exist. Thus the lack of diversity in media will continue to exist.

How do we fix this? Simple: We give publishing contracts and publish books written by POC. We hire POC directors,screenwriters, casting agents, financiers, and decision makers. Who will then hire POC talent. But As long as a small segment of the people continue to be in control the rest of us will always be left out.

Oh and if you’re wondering if I’ll watch the movie, I will. I’ll just wait until it comes out on Netflix. I’m the best silent protester I know. Don’t include me? Cool. But you won’t be getting my money.

 

Don’t Let Me Go- Yay For Diverse Books

Leave a comment

Mrs. Hyde crafted a remarkably realistic novel. 

The characters were well developed and relatable. I cared about every single character and all of their nuisances and I could barely stand to be away from their apartment building until the story was over. 

The diversity of the cast was so realistic. I get really tired of reading books where the characters don’t reflect the community that they live in. This is not the case with this book. I can’t recall another book with such a diverse cast of characters who were so thoroughly researched and represented. 

The plot line kept me interested and invested from beginning to end. 
 She handled such sensitive subjects as suicide, drug abuse, racism, and advanced age with such grace. 

I’d recommend this book to anyone who feels alone. There is always a community waiting to accept you.