diversity

The #dreamrepbingo challenge is to make a bingo card with things we personally want to see in book representation. This isn’t a list of things that are the least represented overall or anything like that. It’s my personal bingo, for things I’ve looked for and rarely found.

My bingo is a different format to a lot of book bingos, because this is the form I grew up playing. I’m probably going to use this more as a reminder of things to include when I write, rather than read, because for some I don’t know any work that isn’t something I wrote. It wouldn’t work very well as a reading challenge for that reason. But if you manage to fill all the squares you will win the eternal prize of knowing you’ve read a lot of really obscure stories.

Here is the card. Click on it for a bigger version. The description below explains each square in text for those who can’t see the image, as well as providing some expanded thoughts on the choices.

Image Caption: A bingo card with three rows and nine columns. There are five content squares randomly placed in each row, which list an item of book representation. The other squares are plain blocks of colour. Each column is one rainbow colour: the text and plain blocks in that column are that colour. It starts at violet on the left and goes through to red on the right.

Bingo Items List:

1. Tinnitus from birth with hidden hearing loss – It’s rare to see tinnitus at all, but it’s usually shown as coming from later accidents. This is a problem in medical literature as well, to the point I’ve met doctors who are amazed I’ve had tinnitus from birth. Hidden hearing loss can go with that: this is a type of hearing loss that doesn’t show up with standard tests, as it only shows in loud environments. A lot of doctors haven’t heard of that either.
2. Delayed sleep phase syndrome – The daily sleep cycle naturally drifts towards going to sleep in the early hours or morning, rather than at night. In short, this means being nocturnal, but not due to being a secret wereowl.
3. Non-white character with uncertain ancestry – Not everyone knows their ancestry to the point of being able to list percentages. Uncertainty is not that uncommon in the real world, but somehow book characters know it all, unless they’re secretly descended from aliens/fairies (to be revealed by the end of the book). I’d like the character to be uncertain and stay that way without any tidy answers.
4. Marginalised in five or more ways – All in the same character or it doesn’t count, because people act like even two marginalisations is pushing it and totally unrealistic.
5. Multiply marginalised character is happy – Everyone is not dead, they have friends and family, and a fluffy pet kitten. Maybe they get what they want for a change.
6. Dyslexic character can read/write well – Dyslexia is often revealed because a character cannot read or write at all, to the point where it’s really notable when this isn’t the case. This focus also ignores how things change during someone’s lifetime, as though all dyslexic people are locked in childhood. Teens and adults can have other things going on, such as difficulty with schedules and organising tasks, which rarely gets shown because authors are obsessed with small children reversing letters. I still reverse letters sometimes, but it’s really not the most noticeable part of being dyslexic these days.
7. Ambidextrous character dithers on side choice – Often where an ambidextrous character is shown, it’s like a special superpower to not have a dominant side. So I’d like to see some of the un-superpowered realities of being ambidextrous, including the dithering that happens due to not having an automatic side for things. An example is being hit by a ball because it takes too long to decide which hand to use to catch the ball.
8. Not feeling emotions is totally fine – Not feeling certain emotions (or any emotions) is often used to show characters as being inferior. If they gain them, they become more human, and therefore more worthy. If they don’t gain them, they’ll probably be the villain. Less of that. More people with different emotional experiences getting to be the hero with no attempt to change them.
9. Human has phantom limb tail with no supernatural cause – This is me unless I’m secretly magical and don’t know it. I don’t mind the whole wish fulfilment thing of finding out you’re a werecreature and all that. I’ve written such stories too. But sometimes it’s nice to see these themes handled in a more realistic way.
10. Non-humans with marginalised humans – I love stories with non-humans of various kinds, be they robots, aliens or strange critters from the deep ocean. But so often they’re used to replace marginalised people, rather than being written as their own thing. I also like seeing how marginalised non-humans and marginalised humans interact.
11. Working class character is not the one good exception – It’s clear how middle class a lot of authors are by their handling of working class characters. You get the working class person with the heart of gold. But expect their community, and often their own family, to be the worst of working class stereotypes. Bonus hatred points if that one working class character gets to become middle or upper class by the end, due to their pure heart and hard work. It just reinforces the idea that most people are working class because they deserve it, and those who don’t deserve it will be elevated. Class structures are not fair, so I don’t want stories pretending they’re fair.
12. Intersex character with no genital descriptions – There’s apparently no possible way to know someone is intersex without someone feeling up their genitals, seeing them naked in the shower, or other such things. Maybe instead of ever more creative ways to show genitals, someone could just say they’re intersex.
13. Asexual character not placed in awkward sexual situations – It’s okay to have an asexual character say they’re asexual. It doesn’t have to be revealed by making them walk into the sexbot district and feel uncomfortable because everyone wants to have sex with them.
14. Non-binary person is not misgendered – It’s like authors think if they have a non-binary person, someone has to misgender them and highlight their gender assigned at birth. This links to a trend where non-binary people are constantly referred to based on their assigned at birth genders (AMAB non-binary and AFAB non-binary, but never plain old non-binary). Some people are really uncomfortable if they can’t continue to split non-binary people into binary categories.
15. Romani people aren’t inherently magical – I still remember that time I critiqued a piece and commented on the “gypsies” being shown as though they were inherently magical. The author replied that it was okay because she’d always considered them to be like magical fairy creatures and that was totally the vibe she wanted. There are a lot of other stereotypes, including even otherwise progressive spaces being happy to have the dark traveller as the shady criminal who attacks the pure blond main character, but the first step is to understand Romani people are not actually fairies. I’m starting small here.