Just because you don't see the agenda

[conuly]

doesn't mean there isn't one. Yeah, pretty much any literature worth reading has some sort of political agenda, and just because you want to go "lalala that's not the point of literature" doesn't make you right. Every time an author makes the choice not to have any black people in a setting where black people ought to exist, that's their agenda you're looking at. Every time you watch a movie, and there's eight guys and two women and the women never talk to each other, that's their agenda talking. Every time you read a story about settlers in the West, and first of all there are no black people or Asians and secondly Indians are always either Chaotic Evil or just gone away somewhere, probably pursued by a bear, that's their agenda. If you don't want politics in your fiction, stick to Pat the Bunny.

Also, I don't believe for one minute that your book-diet as a child in the 1980s or whenever was chock full of a demographically appropriate amount of diversity. You can't say that with a straight face.

In other book related news, I read But Not The Aardvark, and it's a worthy follow-up to But Not The Hippopotamus. Some of us aren't joiners, and that's okay.

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Before Banana Republic Was Mainstream Fashion, It Was a Weirdly Wonderful Safari Brand

The Mystery of Babies’ First Words

The origins of children’s literature

The Ecological Impact of Browser Diversity

Wearable sensor detects child motor deficits (Starts with an anecdote of a young man who had had a massive stroke as an infant, and nobody knew until he was almost grown. On the one hand, that's a bit scary. On the other, it's amazing how the brain can recover!)

“Probably New to Science”: Locating Indigenous Knowledge in Colonial Archives

These women got married. But it wasn't for love

Men Have No Friends and Women Bear the Burden

Conservatives Have a Different Definition of ‘Fair’

Prison of The Mind

We Prosecute Murder Without the Victim’s Help. Why Not Domestic Violence?

Pentagon report shows sharp rise in military sexual assaults

Bodies in the Borderlands

Comments

[rhoda_rants]

I'd argue that even "Pat the Bunny" has an agenda, and that's Promoting Early Literacy. Agendas can be good!

I'm reading Claudia Gray's latest Star Wars book, because she's awesome, and so is her agenda. <3

[author_by_night]

I'd argue that even "Pat the Bunny" has an agenda, and that's Promoting Early Literacy. Agendas can be good!

Hey, there you go. :)