Representation made me do it.
I want to start this piece with 4 facts about me.
Fact 1. From the age of about 6/7 I was ‘diagnosed’ dyslexic — so whenever it was reading time in class, Diana would come in, take me to a corner table and we’d have a private reading lesson.
Fact 2. I lived and went to school in Ghana (West Africa — MSS massive), for about 5 years of my teenage years, and I can’t tell you what books we did in English (in the Ghanaian language we read a lot of Anansi The Spider — but in Twi, so I was LOST)
Fact 4. After university — after reading was no longer compulsory. Reading became a MYTH to me.
Fact 3. I hadn’t read the word ‘Plantain’ in a book until 2019 — ‘Queenie — Candice Carty-Williams’
Okay now, we can start…
It’s 2022, as I write this, and I’ve been running a Book media platform — Dopereaders, coming up to 2 years now, (and just about to launch our Black Boy Book Club) The idea was initially brought to life in 2020 with the Instagram page — @Dopereaders.club. simply sharing books I read and liked. 2 years on we have successfully placed bookcases in Hospitals in London, London Railway stations, co-working spaces, and have more coming, we have worked and partnered with the largest publishers — Penguin, Harper Collins, Bloomsbury etc, to deliver projects, promote new books and run awesome initiatives all revolving around literacy. And we have distributed over 1,000 books to communities that need them. Some of our longer-term goals are to influence the library system in the terms of layout, book choice, etc — but that’s for another thought piece. The point is I went from not liking or wanting to read to running a platform with the SOLE aim of encouraging reading and increasing literacy.
The question is how?
The answer is representation.
To start this off right, I must add I am a Harry Potter reader, These books will always have a special place in my heart. So the first official book I read was Harry Potter and the philosopher stone I want to say I was maybe about 10 years old. Anyway so back to the story.
Somewhere between 2010–2015, my memory is awful, I read Malorie Blackman’s — Noughts and Crosses, and immediately fell in love with reading again! Something about the story, the plot, the twists, the characters everything, but it was honestly the first time I think I realised I was reading a book with a majority of Black characters. And it honestly spurred me to keep reading. From this point, I did what all wanna-be-bosses do, we stock our bookcases with self-help books, and a butt load of motivational content. (Disclaimer — there are some amazing books that fall into this genre) Now we enter 2019 and I pick up Queenie (alot of mixed reviews about this book, but I think it’s awesome) and saw characters that I could relate to and see around me, I could viscerally understand feelings and thoughts that characters expressed, it was a nuts feeling. WILD dare I say.
The moment I read a book that had words, characters, ideas, and themes that I could relate to, it changed the world of books for me, almost felt like it gave me a new lease on my reading life. I now know and have access to books written by us, about us and our stories. I wanted to read it all, I wanted to read what Ghanaian writers were writing about, and I wanted to smile at the small details they add-in that spoke to me culturally, it honestly inspired me to write my own stories aswell.
Our platform is aimed at encouraging reading and promoting literacy with a specific aim at young (Black & BAME) men — and the first and I believe the easiest way to support this aim is to promote books that speak to them. There are a plethora of books out written by Black & BAME authors that speak to young ethnic people culturally. The next question is how do we get these books to the audience we want to target? It’s highly unlikely that one of my followers would willingly follow Penguin Books, — we present it to them in a way they would most likely receive — enter dopereaders.
I believe how these books are promoted to them, the channels, the mediums, and the language, all need to come from a place that speaks to them. On paper, it’s simple as right. But who is on these marketing boards? Who is correcting with the grassroots influencers to help influence reading, the question is who?
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