representation in literature

Diversity is a hot topic within the literary world. As a teacher of Gender and Post-Colonial Studies, the question of diversity and its representation within literature is at the forefront of everything I teach, read, and write. Even though the larger part of the canon is still made up of white heterosexual men who write about other white heterosexual men, things are gradually shifting. Self-publishing is doing a lot to alter the gender dynamic: more women are successfully self-published than men, and I have high hopes for self-publishing to open the way for non-white and non-heterosexual writers as well. Next to that, more writers are becoming increasingly aware of the necessity to include a more diverse array of characters in their work.

This last issue is the focus of my new blog series on Writing Diversity.

Each month, I will address the complexity behind the portraying of diverse characters in our work by diving deeply into a variety of topics, including essentialism, tokenism, gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, and so on. In this first post, I will go a little deeper into the question of representation, the two steps representation is made up of, and the reason why it is important to consider both these steps when we bring diverse characters into our work.Read More →