Semionaut, Signifying Everything

Diversity 5: Emma

1. What one thing comes to mind for you first and most profoundly in relation to your personal history and the theme of diversity?

Transport. I’m a traveller, and although I love arriving in, being in and absorbing a new country or culture, one of the things I love most is moving: the feeling of traversing through and making my way across lands on trains, buses, planes, by car, on foot. I’m half-Thai and half-Irish and was born and brought up in the melting pot of South London. I’ve travelled and lived in a number of countries and cultures, married someone also half this and half that and have children with very interesting genes, so ostensibly, the word ‘diverse’ applies to me as well as my life experiences and my milieu, but my take on that depends on the interpretation of what ‘diverse’ means. The word ‘diversity’ is itself a hybrid, formed from the fusion of the Latin prefix di (which can mean both the number two and ‘aside’ or ‘away from’) and the verb versere (to turn). Thus ‘diverse’ is open to two readings: it can mean one (e.g. route) that turns into two, or to turn away from (e.g. a route or path). Although it would seem I personify the former definition of diversity – one nationality and culture on one side, another nationality and culture on the other, and me an amalgam of the two, I didn’t know my Thai father so the second definition is more apt: Thai-ness as a culture, language, collective psyche was turned away from me (or me from it) and I felt alienated from it. At the same time, my inherent Thai-ness meant that physiologically and psychologically, I was turned aside from the English and Irishness around me.

I went to Thailand for the first time when I was 19 and the thing that struck me, first and foremost, were the motorbikes and pick-up trucks. Riders sat on motorbikes with no helmets, women drove themselves or sat side-saddle on the back, whole families and children lined up on one bike, some precariously holding babies. In the back of the Isuzu pick-up trucks (the

car manufacturer was also new to me at the time) groups of workers were ferried to and fro. The thing that struck me was the openness – bike riders weren’t helmeted, unidentifiable, uniformed in black leather– you could see them clearly, and as individuals. The backs of the uncountable pick-ups were open too, carrying people I could see to destinations I couldn’t imagine.

Those two modes of transport became a metaphor for the two nations I was connected to. As Thailand moved forward, anything was possible: yes, it took risks, but it was defiant, unmasked, trusting, and it seemed to me, as I drove into Bangkok for the first time from the airport, so free. Things were visible, people were visible. When I thought of Britain, with its helmet-clad motorbike riders, overbearing regulations, conventionality, closed-top cars taking closed people to predictable places it seemed, conversely, contained, reserved, safe, obedient, tame, stiff and filled with people terrified of doing anything socially unacceptable. I don’t feel that any more, about myself, or about the two countries, and I know that initial impressions aren’t always right, but the associations remained with me and transport has remained in my mind a thing much greater than itself.

2. Give me (what feels intuitively like) an emergent example of diversity now where you are. 

The publishing world is undergoing a shift from white, male, Judaeo-Christian, imperialist (Residual) themes and characters to multi- and cross-cultural leitmotifs, if not yet in areas of book production then at least in attitudes towards it. A study in the US last year revealed that of 3,200 children’s books published in 2013, only 93 were about black people. This study exposes two things. Firstly, that despite the (Dominant) culture of diversity in Britain and America, Asians and people of colour are still notably under-represented in books, films, plays, TV programs, MA and MFA writing programs and all areas of media production.

Secondly, even if the books on our shelves are not yet embodying the diversity in our culture, the simple fact that a study has been undertaken to highlight this discrepancy demonstrates this changing attitude towards what is being published (and read). Junot Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, award-winning short story writer and Professor of Creative Writing at MIT, recently wrote a broadside on the ‘too white’ bias in MFA programs (May 1, 2014). Additionally, the #weneeddiversebooks trend on twitter and other social media calling for diversity in

literature (and, as per the knock-on effect, films) focuses on the rationale that we live in a diverse world and thus under- or mis-representation is, therefore, ‘inauthentic’. As authenticity is an emergent trend in itself, the trend of calling for diversity in public platforms is sure to lead to an emergent pattern of behaviour in reading, literary discourse and publishing, which in turn will lead to a more diverse rendering of narratives in the semiosphere.

http://emmashevah.com

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Junot Diaz photograph by Carolyn Cole for the LA Times

Screenshot of Twitter page linked to #weneeddiversebooks