Returning to Blogging

I’m back! After over a year off, I am feeling ready to get back into writing about books, podcasts and the general challenge of consuming entertainment in a socially responsible manner. In general, I just love noticing and commenting on the ways that stories are told in our media, and I hope to amplify voices that don’t always get the attention they deserve.

I first started blogging about reading when I attempted to read no white men for a year. This journey was documented in a blog called “Reading Diversely”, which you can visit by clicking the link above. The experience was a rewarding one and one that challenged some of my preconceived notions. While I read a lot that year, at the end of the year, I was still disappointed in how many of the books I had read were still by white women.

Since that point, I have continued to seek authors of color, books in translation, books from smaller publishers and other books that do not traditionally get the same media presence or marketing money that most bestselling books do. However, the most lasting effect of my year of reading “diversely” has been the way that I have started to notice the absence (or presence) of diverse representation in everything else that I consume. I find myself checking my impulse to cheer for the thin white girls on my favorite television shows or appreciating when a TV adaptation of a book upholds the book’s many descriptions of characters of color.

I will be back this weekend with a few posts about books and book awards and then I am hoping to get back to once a week posts about books and anything else I am noticing and interested in at the moment!