About Guinevere & Libertad aka Dos Twinjas

(Can't tell us apart???That's okay sometimes we can't either!!!)

We @ Twinja Book Reviews are sisters extremely passionate about Diversity in Books. We really are Twins and we were lucky to have been nicknamed the "Twinjas" after showing so much promise in all of our studied forms of Martial Arts(Tang Soo Do, Cuntao &Wing Chun Kung Fu).....That and we have these unusual first names! >_<  Twinjas was just easier and gotta admit it sounded catchy .

Here @ Twinja Book Reviews, we hope to open the discussion about diversity in YA, NA, MG as well as Science Fiction & Fantasy themed books.The lack of diversity in Science Fiction and Fantasy is bone chilling. Instead of writing depressing posts about stories without any diverse lead characters or love interests, Our idea was to come up with a book blog featuring stories that do. 

You may ask yourself, Why is Diversity in Books so important to us? Shouldn't we see the world's population as equal? Aren't our struggles the same? Can't we look past the fact that most characters in Fantasy and Science Fiction are White, Able Bodied, Straight, Christian and Cis-Gendered?

The short answer is Yes. The long answer is way more complicated.

Growing up Cuban American(and on top of that "Negra"or Black), we never really read characters like ourselves in our favorite genre of books, Fantasy and Science Fiction.

 Maybe Black characters(which we held onto with dear life)But Afro-Latinas...Yea, we may be waiting a long time for that. 

 

Anyways, being an invisible entity in the world's atmosphere(1. Being Girls 2.Being Black 3. Being Latina)made us come to the understanding that we can't be the only two that feel like they haven't seen the proper portrayals of people who look like us, act like us and come from similar cultures as us.

So why books? Well, books are one of the first things children are introduced to as entertainment. Think about in pre-school...Think hard....For us, that was along time ago >_< But if anything, we remember being read to at story time. We remember being read to at night before we went to sleep. Like it or not, Books are some peoples first introduction to how they'll see the world, and if the story just features a small range of like characters, Imagine how that can shape your image of the people in this world?

We're not on some kind of agenda, we don't believe in writers meeting kind of quota when writing diverse characters, All we want to do is promote the idea of capturing the world as it is today, Colorful, Interesting and Diverse. 

 

So why not show that in Books???