Tag Archives: Middle Eastern

This Week in Diversity: Gender, Books, and Maps.

Welcome to another diversity-filled week!

As happens fairly regularly in the literary world, people have been talking about gender and books. Two different takes caught our eyes this week: The Book Bench at the New Yorker took an analytical look at the discussion with What We Talk About When We Talk About Men Not Reading, looking at both men’s reading and at the the publishing industry. Meanwhile, author Maureen Johnson took a personal look at the issue with Sell the Girls, in which she talks about how the vast majority of her assigned reading, in school and college, was by and about men.

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This Week in Diversity: Heat Wave

Most of the country looks poised for a hot weekend, so here are some pieces to read while you lurk in the air-conditioned splendor of indoors.

Hampton Stevens, guest blogging for Ta-Nahisi Coates, shares a story of a child trying to puzzle our increasingly globalized world, courtesy of the FIFA World Cup, and points to the communication issues inherent in terms like “African American.”

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This Week in Diversity: Memorial Day Edition

Book Expo America has finished and Memorial Day is almost here, but in between, here’s your weekly batch of diversity reading!

Looking back to the era of Civil Rights protests and Civil Rights legislation, Breach of Peace presents some amazing portraits of some of the 1961 Freedom Riders—with their mugshots, recent interviews, and recent photos. Some amazing stories here. Meanwhile, an editorial at the Washington Post looks at the 1964 Civil Rights act and government support of private segregation.

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This Week in Diversity: Beautiful Women of Color and White Privilege

It’s starting to feel like summer, and that means summer movies! We start this week’s diversity linkup with a post from Feministing pointing out the whitewashing of Jennifer Lopez in The Back-Up Plan.

Speaking of beautiful women of color, the newly-crowned Miss USA is a Lebanese American immigrant, Rima Fakih! It’s not clear if she’s the first Arab American or the first immigrant to win, but it is a movement toward a society in which all little girls can dream of being crowned for their beauty. Of course, we’re not there yet.

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