Writing the Other: A Practical Approach by Nisi Shawl & Cynthia Ward

Writing the Other: A Practical Approach by Nisi Shawl & Cynthia Ward is a short, easy to read primer on writing about people and cultures by using ROARRS (Race/Orientation/Ability/Age/Religion/Sex) responsibly and respectfully. Writing the Other strives to give authors the confidence to be more inclusive in their writing to better represent society as a whole. As someone who has worked hard to be inclusive in my work for a long time, I bought this book hoping to find some tidbit that might enhance my work but quickly discovered I'd already done the work in the book.  Some parts of Writing the Other seemed a bit outdated, which is a reminder that things change over time and also that authors will get things wrong as well as that what is acceptable in one time period isn't in another. Writing the Other offers a useful starting point for writers striving to get it right when talking about other ethnicities, cultures, societies, identities, etc.






Check back soon for my thoughts on other books I'm reading including:

Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark
It's Ok That You're Not Ok: Meeting Grief and Loss in a Culture That Doesn't Understand by Megan Devine
We Should All Be Feminists: A Guided Journal by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
The Collected Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning


Reviews will be posted as I finish these books.



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