This Week in Diversity: Boys, Girls, and Government

Yesterday we posted a video on the frustrations of biracial people being put into little boxes. Taking a very different view is Michele Elam, with a thought-provoking article about the pitfalls of “mark one or more races” on the census.

On her blog, author Shannon Hale takes a look at the lack of girls in children’s movies, the limited roles they play, and an appeal to parents: take your sons to movies with girl heroes. The same goes for books and the same goes for other types of diversity: give the children you know books with heroes who don’t look like them.

Race-Talk has an in-depth look at drug policy and the way it contributes to racial disparity in the U.S. There’s some speculation on why drug policy evolved the way it did, but also a concrete look at its effects.

In the speculative fiction world, Asimov’s has an essay on Western speculative fiction authors writing about non-Western cultures; Rose Fox at Genreville provides a rebuttal and a more nuanced look at the issue. (By the way, have you heard that we’re going to be diversifying MG/YA speculative fiction with the imprint Tu Books? And that we’re really quite excited?)

And on that note, we’re off! Have a good weekend and happy reading!

5 thoughts on “This Week in Diversity: Boys, Girls, and Government”

  1. Thank you for all the great links – esp Asimov. I am off to read…

    p.s. my MG book has a female protag, and my boys (all 3) love it

  2. Good to hear, Susan. A friend of mine made the claim the other day that what boys want is a protagonist who kicks butt, and the gender doesn’t matter as long as butt is being kicked.

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