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A review by briannadasilva
Invisible: Personal Essays on Representation in SF/F by Jim C. Hines
3.0
As I've been doing a podcast on this topic (representation in fiction) for a year and a half, and participating in the conversation online for longer, I can't say I got much new out of this book.
I think it serves well as an introduction to the topic, but there does come a time where it feels like you're repeating yourself. "Don't write stereotypes," and "feel free to not be limited in the kinds of people you write about, because representation is powerful." This remains true for every conceivable identity (or intersection of identities) imaginable, so you start to have the broken record effect when you talk about this for a while.
Nothing much here really moved or inspired me much (partly, again, because I've heard it all before), but I will say that Katherine Kerr's essay called "Boys' Books" was particularly emotive for me, and I liked it a lot. Honestly, though, that's probably because it's the one essay that was most closely related to my own experiences. 😉 So, take that with a grain of salt!
A positive note worth mentioning: This book, and each of its essays, are quite short. You could conceivably read the whole thing in an afternoon. So if you're on the fence about reading it, maybe just pick it up anyway—it's not much of a time commitment, but if the ideas here are new to you, I think they're very worthwhile to be familiar with.
I think it serves well as an introduction to the topic, but there does come a time where it feels like you're repeating yourself. "Don't write stereotypes," and "feel free to not be limited in the kinds of people you write about, because representation is powerful." This remains true for every conceivable identity (or intersection of identities) imaginable, so you start to have the broken record effect when you talk about this for a while.
Nothing much here really moved or inspired me much (partly, again, because I've heard it all before), but I will say that Katherine Kerr's essay called "Boys' Books" was particularly emotive for me, and I liked it a lot. Honestly, though, that's probably because it's the one essay that was most closely related to my own experiences. 😉 So, take that with a grain of salt!
A positive note worth mentioning: This book, and each of its essays, are quite short. You could conceivably read the whole thing in an afternoon. So if you're on the fence about reading it, maybe just pick it up anyway—it's not much of a time commitment, but if the ideas here are new to you, I think they're very worthwhile to be familiar with.