I know a lot of bad words. Words that would make your grandmother blush and have your mother wash your mouth out with soap. Words that destroy, devastate, and hurt. Four letter words that cannot be said on television or public radios. Most of us know some, if not all, of these words. They are imbued in our society so that everyone recognizes these words of hatred and pain.

But in the plethora of curses, insults, and swears that exist in our cultures, diverse is not a bad word.

Diverse is a word that uplifts and gives voices to the quiet. It gives hope to the hopeless. It has the power to change the book publishing industry, and hopefully our world, for the better. A single word can make our community better and improve us as readers and people.  

There are so many ways that diversity improves our world, and I am not just talking about in literature. Films, music, and every field should be diversified to represent the real people. The world is not full of the same type of people, so why does our media suggest that? 

Diversity is a big and heated topic in our community and world right now, and one post and one opinion will not do it enough justice. I plan on writing many more posts to campaign for greater representation for all people in literature through a series of blog posts.

But for now, I have compiled some inspiring tweets, posts, and other resources to show that we are not alone in the fight for diversity.

Click the link to join in the discussion and see the social media compilation I made to bring awareness to the need for diverse books. 

Panellists: Kate Elliott, Mary Anne Mohanraj, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, Mahvesh Murad, John Hornor Jacobs, Marieke Nijkamp (vice president of We Need Diverse Books)

From Earthsea to Noughts and Crosses, The Summer Princeto Akata Witch, children and teens need to see books with characters that represent the diverse world they live in, whether they are dystopian romance or fantasy adventure. Organisations like We Need Diverse Books are helping to promote diversity in children’s literature, but what actions can we take – as readers, writers, publishers, and book-buyers – to help them in their goals? And who are the great authors of the past few years we should be catching up on?

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Panelists: Jed Hartman, David D Levine, Rosanne Rabinowitz,Laura Lam, Cherry Potts (moderator)

In a 2013 column for Tor.com, Alex Dally MacFarlane called for a greater diversity in the way SF and fantasy represent families, pointing out that in the real world, “People of all sexualities and genders join together in twos, threes, or more. Family-strong friendships, auntie networks, global families… The ways we live together are endless.” Which stories centre non-normative family structures? What are the challenges of doing this in an SF context, and what are the advantages? How does representing a wider range of family types change the stories that are told?

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"Well, let's start out with what we know, which is that publishing is overwhelmingly white...Now, that's not a controversial fact, but sometimes to point it out becomes a controversial thing — to speak that truth.

...to get work published by a major house, a writer usually needs to get it past a white gatekeeper, an agent or an editor.

You have to always be conscious of that. Am I going to be submitting something that is going to put the person on the defensive? Is my voice somehow going to be somehow alien or unrecognizable to the person I am submitting it to?

That kind of self-editing is one reason why writers of color would like to see more change in the industry."

"We need diverse agents, we need editors, we need diverse book buyers, we need diverse illustrators, and we need diverse executives and CEOs at the top, too."

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My whole April project is finally up! Analytic reviews of various romance novels through the lens of intersectional feminism, including but not limited to discussions of:

• disability
• bisexuality
• gender dynamics in the romance industry
• race
• colonialism

... and so much more!