When I did my end-of-year stats earlier this year, I was really depressed by how few of the books I’d read were diverse, when I felt like I’d been trying to focus on reading that more accurately reflects the world around me.  So I decided to set a goal: 60 diverse books this year, including both authors and characters, but trying to focus more on authors at least for ethnicity. (I’m finding myself hesitant to probe into author’s sexual preferences, so I’m going to stick with character diversity there, unless authors are really upfront about it themselves.) That would be a touch under a quarter of my reading, just because 63 seemed like an odd goal.

I further decided that to increase my accountability to myself, I’d post about it monthly.  That way if I find I’m off-track, I can try to correct it.

I logged 21 books in January, (oops… I only logged one of the dozen or so books that I read for my Diversity for Daisies project.)  If I include authors from countries other than the US and the UK in my diversity count, I’m close to a third of my reading being diverse.  And if I look only at ethnic diversity but include character as well as author diversity, I’m very close to 50% of my reading.  Those are number I’m much happier living with than the 13% diverse authors I had last year.  I will keep trying!

Author Ethnicity/Nationality

Latino/a – 2
Black – 1
Other – 1
LGBT – 1
Non-American or British (French, mixed) – 2

Total Diverse Authors: 7

Character Representation

Black – 3
Latino/a – 3
South Asian – 1
LGBT – 2
Other diversity, including dyslexia, low income, non-Christian religions – 5

Here are the books with ethnically diverse characters by white authors:

Total ethnically diverse reading combined: 10

Total other diversity, including orientation, religion, non-neurotypical, low income: 7

As always, if you have any good diverse fiction to recommend, especially fantasy, please let me know!