Posts Tagged representation

toys with disabilities

The #ToyLikeMe campaign calls for toys with disabilities

Recently, a trio of British mothers started the #toylikeme social media campaign calling for better representation of disability in the toy box. On Facebook and Twitter, parents of kids with disabilities all over the world have been sharing photos showing the creative lengths they’d gone to making over their kids’ toys. 

Recently, a trio of British mothers started the #toylikeme social media campaign calling for better representation of disability in the toy box. On Facebook and Twitter, parents of kids with disabilities all over the world have ...

It’s time for Hollywood to take advice from Octavia Butler and stretch its imagination

In this deliciously rare clip, Octavia Butler talks about how she began writing science fiction in response to an absence of great storytelling she felt. After seeing a terrible sci fi film when she was 12, she explains, “I turned off the television and said to myself, I can write a better story than that.” Let Butler’s thoughts on the possibility inherent in science fiction serve as talisman and inspiration:

It’s a wonderful way to think about possibilities. It’s a wonderful way to explore exotic politics. It’s a wonderful–it’s a freedom. It’s a way of doing anything you want. There are all sorts of walls around other genres. Romances, mysteries, westerns. There are no real walls around science fiction. We can build them, ...

In this deliciously rare clip, Octavia Butler talks about how she began writing science fiction in response to an absence of great storytelling she felt. After seeing a terrible sci fi film when she was 12, she ...

What Nicholas Kristof gets wrong about public intellectuals

In the not so distant past, Politico reporter Dylan Byers engaged into a rather public spat with The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates’ contention that Melissa Harris-Perry is “America’s most foremost public intellectual.” Byers offered a list of intellectuals to counter Coates’ claim made up entirely of white men and a singular (deceased) white woman, provoking yet another proper sonning from the Twitterverse. It was telling that Byers couldn’t imagine or embrace the idea that an African-American woman could be a public intellectual. His default model returned to white and male.

A similar myopia resurfaced this past Sunday in a NYT column penned by Nicholas Kristof bemoaning the “absence” of academics in the public square. 

In the not so distant past, Politico reporter Dylan Byers engaged into a rather public spat with The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates’ contention that Melissa Harris-Perry is “America’s most foremost public intellectual.” Byers offered a list of ...