Why Reading Diversity is Important
There was a great question asked in my post last week about reading diversity that I want to unpack with a story. There’s a very good reason why I fret when I realize that I’m only reading white men, and it all goes back to high school.
[Pretend there are wavy lines indicating that we’re going back in time.]
I am taking the AP English Literature exam, and I’ve entered the free response section. The task is to read a short excerpt and write an essay. I have 40 minutes. I begin reading the piece and realize that I do not understand it. I do not know what a nativity scene is. I do not know the word crèche in this context. I cannot picture what this is about any more than you can picture a scene set in a sukkah and write a timed essay about the importance of a lulav and etrog. (Unless, of course, you come into the exam knowing about Succot.)
I go to the proctor and explain to her that I don’t know what a nativity scene is. She looks at me in alarm as she reads the prompt and then says, “I can’t tell you anything. Just do your best.”
[Wavy lines again, back to the present.]
At 15 years old, I had never seen a nativity scene and didn’t know much about Christmas. It sounds silly, but it’s really easy to not learn things if you don’t expose yourself to them. I knew the most basic, surface information about Christmas. Knew about Christmas trees because I saw them in the shopping mall, candy canes because people passed them out at school, and that the holiday celebrated the birth of Jesus. But I didn’t know at that time about the three wise men or midnight mass or nativity scenes. All of that knowledge came later during college and beyond.
If I had read the excerpt outside the walls of the exam, I would have looked up “nativity scene” and understood what it was. Reading would have introduced me to this foreign idea that was outside my life experience.
Instead, I had to struggle during the exam and find out what it was after the exam was over.
The inability to understand applies to everything in life. We need exposure. You can do that through an experience — for instance, celebrating someone else’s holiday and asking questions or traveling to a different place and experiencing a new culture firsthand — or you can do it through a book or movie. It’s a cheap form of travel: You can read a story from someone else’s point-of-view and get exposed to all the things they know that you don’t.
EVERY person who is not me has something to teach me, but if I stick with authors from a single background, I am likely to encounter the same ideas again and again. Even when a person is not specifically writing about their culture or race or sexuality or gender, they are still writing through it, and it weaves its way into that science fiction or horror or fantasy story. Maybe not directly but indirectly. Authors write about what they know, even when they’re making up a fictional world. And what they know is what I’m trying to glean.
So when I say that I’m worried because all the authors I’ve been reading lately come from the same white, male, British background, it’s because I’m thinking about that AP exam and how much I don’t know. I would say the same thing if I was reading mostly Canadian women authors or mostly young African-American men authors. If I want to organically encounter what I don’t know (because without knowing about it, I don’t even know to look it up), I need to pay attention to the authors I’m reading and shift things around when I see I’m reading too much of the same thing.
I’ll never pick up what I don’t know if I don’t expose myself to it.
12 comments
Wow, Mel. That is a really interesting story from high school that gave me an entirely new way to look at what what you meant by your last post. And you are right…there is so much I wouldn’t know if it weren’t for reading blogs from people of all different backgrounds and experiences. Thank you for this perspective.
Exactly! I may not be comfortable or familiar with the subject matter, but that’s to the net good – I used to read Faye Kellerman books, which gave me some further introduction into Jewish faith and customs. I still am completely uneducated, but it makes life better to understand that I don’t understand. Not everything is for me, and there is so much to learn.
Omg. Similar experience. Jr or sr cp English. As part of an exam we were supposed to read a poem and interpret it (which, alone, is wtf). “Right” answer had something to do with armageddon. Well I was not raised Christian had never read bible and obviously I didn’t pick up that reference. I complained to the teacher who said something like “well everyone knows about that.” Um, NOT.
Years later I wished my parents would have put up a bigger stink. First amendment violation! (Same, re making me sing adeste fidelis in fourth grade).
It’s also important because as we read widely from people from underrepresented groups, we realize that within these groups people are individuals with their own histories and stories. When we stick to white male authors with only white male characters and maybe a token stereotype, we are likely more likely to treat individuals outside of our experience as if they are stereotypes and not actually people. For that reason it’s important not to read just *one* diverse author or story, but many from within each group. Each time we see something or someone that contradicts our inner stereotypes, the easier it is to start implicitly seeing people as individuals.
Very good point, Mel (and shame on the creators of the exam for assuming that everyone taking the test would be familiar with the term nativity and what it meant… shouldn’t there be a choice of questions to avoid situations like this??). You need to read Tara Westover’s memoir, “Educated.” 🙂 (I read & reviewed it on my blog earlier this year.) She grew up in an isolated Mormon community in Idaho, in a fundamentalist/survivalist family, and never attended school. She was homeschooled, which meant she didn’t receive much of a formal education at all — most of her reading consisted of the Bible, and tracts by Mormon prophets and the Founding Fathers of the U.S. — but (with her brother’s encouragement) she managed to teach herself enough to pass the ACT exam and get accepted at Brigham Young University. I don’t think I’m giving much away by telling you there’s an incident she recounts in her book (it’s been widely mentioned in reviews of the book and in interviews with her) where she was in a class where the prof mentioned the Holocaust… and she raised her hand and asked, “What’s the Holocaust?” Needless to say a lot of jaws dropped around her — and some people thought she was being a smartass — but there was nothing in her life experiences or learning that had given her any idea of what the Holocaust was. She eventually earned her PhD in history. 🙂
You are definitely stuck if you try and read most British “classics” without a working knowledge of Christianity. I certainly found that having spent my early years outside the U.K. in non-Christian countries and then returning to England for secondary school. I find I tend to read in waves – for a while in my 20s I read predominantly Indian subcontinent writers writing in English before ever setting foot in India. Then it was a wave of Latin Americans in translation. And so on. It’s good to mix it up.
I think you’re touching on something incredibly important. We all look at the world through a lens based on our experiences or understanding of something. With infertility, so many who have not walked that road will fail miserably with supporting those in the trenches because of their inability to relate. But it goes further than that with so many other aspects of life. I cannot understand what it means to grow up in a village in Africa as I’ve never experienced it. I can get an insight from stories and literature, but even then it requires experiencing to get a better perspective. Similarly, I can only relate with Judaism based on my relationships with others and my own experiences with the religion (which were also greatly limited until I hit college). Hence the importance of being open and listening.
With the upcoming elections, I really worry our leadership hasn’t learned this lesson. The reading I do from the other side suggests we really aren’t as divided as many would like to believe we are. But coming back together means venturing outside what we know and are comfortable with. Something that is such a shame because there is so many amazing things in this world that we can all discover.
So very true. And a really good way to make the case for reading more diversity. When I read your initial post, although I was intrigued, I wasn’t motivated to switch up my reading list. My comment at the time alluded to the fact that if I read for enjoyment, who cares what I read? After more thought, obviously that’s a very naive thought. I have the luxury of not reading outside my “comfort zone” because, in reality, I don’t have to in order to get on in the world. But getting on isn’t enough, And I’m going to be actively seeking out new authors. Thanks, as always, for the perspective.
First, I find myself really angry that something that is so culturally myopic was part of such an important exam. Grrr.
Secondly, agreed. It used to be very easy to talk around ppl about LGBTQ stuff and have them not have a clue what we were talking about. I could name a name, or a singer, or an event, and it would tell a whole story without me having to tell it. It’s one of the nice things about being a subculture.
OTOH, I recently bumped in to a quote from a young lesbian saying she was glad to be able to study the ’90s of lesbian history and understand it but equally glad she wasn’t there so she didn’t have to deal with the =ppl= who had made that history. (They, WE, were amazing back then and once in awhile I would catch my breath knowing I got to live in that time as well as cry a lot of tears over the many deaths that should never have happened.)
Reading lets us in, but it doesn’t 100% let us live it. But I still know more about the British Raj in India than most. 😉 Now to try and understand the importance of a lulav and etrog. 🙂
I could not love this more! I love reading other perspectives because it does teach me about things I don’t know, and the world is full of bias towards the white and the well-to-do.
I took a course last year at school called SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity), and it was amazing because it looked at race, and religion, and socioeconomic status, and mental health, and disability, and gender, and sexual orientation — and a host of other ways that people identify and that categorize them for better or worse in our society. One of the main themes is windows and mirrors (windows are materials that allow you to see into other people’s perspectives, mirrors are materials that reflect your particular background or identity), and how important those are. That AP test for you assumed everyone had the same experiences and the same background knowledge going in, but it was biased against those who didn’t have a Christian experience, or background on Christianity. I’ve seen math tests for angles that talk about starboard and port and other sailing terms that many of my kids who don’t have the means for things like sailing have to unpack before they can even draw their diagram for the angle. It’s so important to have diversity and an awareness of bias in materials for school, and in your own reading life, so you can see through others’ lenses. I really think it would do wonders for the state of empathy today, too.
Love this post!
Yes, I totally understand this, and agree it is important to have a wider understanding than our own experiences. (I may have known what a nativity scene was at 15, but I’m not sure I would have known at 12!)
I think “diverse” needs to mean geographically diverse as well as gender/ethnic/religious/cultural diversity too. A white middle class male or female author from the south of the US will be different from one from the north, let alone from one from the UK, or South Africa, or New Zealand, etc.
I don’t read as widely as I like, but I have favourite books from every (populated) continent, and find that reading diverse authors (geographically as well as ethnically) is a bit like armchair tourism, without the long flights, and a lot more in depth, and I love that.
Such a great example.
I’ve been thinking a lot about blind spots lately. The whole thing about them is that you don’t know they exist. You only know it when you let something new and unfamiliar in. Score another point for diversity.