Something about the 'books need to be more diverse' debate just...I just don't get it?
I always interpreted this as 'lets make local books more gobally available', maybe cos that is what I want.
I'd love to read more...I don't know, middle eastern or african contemporary fiction. You know, more genres than just 'a very serious story about the messed up thing happening here'.
Like, yes the latter is important and I will absolutely read those, but...man, just give me a ya urban fantasy novel based on persian folklore and set in Teheran. Or like, a random romance set in Ankara or Mumbai or some shit.
You know, the stuff that is constantly thrown at us from the US, from Canada and the UK and what not.
Cos I am pretty sure these books exist - I just don't get to see most them cos they're not being translated into the languages I personally speak.
I know cos it's the same with German books, too. We have about 30.000 authors that are currently active, many of which write in German. But you're likely not getting these books unless you speak German, cool as they are.
So THIS is a message I 100% support. Give me!
But when people say 'books need to be more diverse' they apparently mean the cast of the books. Not the stories, not the settings or authors - the fucking cast.
And that's where I start asking why.
Cos, like...why do we expect Sandra Johnson from Portland, Oregon to rock up with a diverse arse Netflix-style cast? Why does Lisa Marie MΓΌller from Halberstadt need to win the Pulitzer for Diversity?
I don't go read books by chinese authors set in Chongqing expecting to be represented in this story cos why would I be? It's a chinese story about chinese people. It's not a space for me? I'm just here for the vibe?
Even the argument 'well immigrants exist' is like...yeah, but there's immigrants everywhere. Even the most isolated countries have immigrants - sure, probably only like five in total, but they are there.
And I still don't expect an author from, I don't know, Islamabad to write me into her book.
I'm not even against diverse casts, either. My own casts are usually diverse and I spend a lot of my writing/plotting time researching the population of wherever my story is set so that, even while being diverse, it feels natural for the setting. So I am pro diverse casts, yeah!
I just don't get the pressure and force behind this, nor do I get the hypocrisy of demanding diversity in one direction and not in the other. It just doesn't make sense to me.
