This post is inspired by the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign that developed when the first ever BookCon, which took place this past weekend, announced an all-white author lineup. The Twitter campaign that followed garnered 162 million impressions in its attempt to raise awareness of the need for more books by and about people of various ethnicities and races. This post is not about that campaign (which you can read about here), but about my own growing realization that I need diverse books.

Nope, I’m not going to try to persuade you that you need more diverse books, or your children or your school or your library need more diverse books. So take a deep breath and relax. I’m just going to share how important reading diverse books is for my own life.

For one thing, even the local world of my neighborhood doesn’t look like me. I see saris and headscarves and skin much darker than mine. I hear other languages, and even sing some of the worship songs in our church in Spanish because we have Spanish speakers who are part of our worship. Certainly the world of the university where I engage in campus ministry doesn’t look like me. We have over 3,000 students from China alone and growing numbers from India and South America. We also have students from  the “hyphenated” communities in this country: African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latino-Americans. And there are many from all these groups who call themselves “brother” or “sister” in my faith who I believe I will spend eternity with. Better start understanding each other!

Reading Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow for example portrayed to me afresh what it is like to be stopped simply for driving or walking while black, and the practices of illegal searches in this country that violate our Fourth Amendment protections.  Sheryl Wu Dunn’s Half The Sky reminds me of the systematic injustices and violence we do to women around the world, and how women have courageously fought back.  Jhumpa Lahiri’s collection of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies, helped me look at life through the lens of immigrants encountering very different value systems and trying to hold onto something of their identities. Julie Park’s When Diversity Drops helped me see  our collegiate ministry as students of different ethnicity encounter it. John Perkins books and the writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. help me begin to understand the difficult experience of Blacks in America, and challenges me to match their Christ-likeness in pursuing justice and reconciliation.

This year I have been listening to a variety of voices, mostly outside my own faith community, who are writing about the future of higher education. Some of this has to do with a conference on this subject I am leading this summer. Why this is valuable for me is that if we are going to participate as responsible partners in conversations about the future of the university, we need to understand the issues and each other well. For similar reasons, I’ve read science writers like J Craig Venter on genetic research and Sir John Houghton (actually a committed Christian) on issues of climate change. Sometimes they open my eyes to issues I haven’t thought about. I don’t agree with all I read–what would be the fun in that?

I need diverse books because I believe God’s intention is to form a “beloved community” that is a mosaic of the peoples of the world. What a great design for engaging the diverse peoples and problems we confront in this world! Yet I come from a white, working class background that has shaped my outlook, for good and less than good. Beginning with the diverse narratives of the Bible, diverse books that help me understand the parts of the world that are “different” for me, and diverse friendships, I hope to be able both to offer what is unique in my own gifts and background and to welcome the abundant variety of gifted people that make up a “God sized, beloved community.”

Those are some of the reasons I need diverse books. What diverse books would you suggest I read? Who knows, you might see them in future reviews on this blog.