This week the host is Rebekah of She Seeks Nonfiction. The prompt is Diverse Perspectives. Nonfiction books are one of the best tools for seeing the world through someone else’s eyes. They allow us to get an idea of the experiences of people of all different ages, races, genders, abilities, religions, socioeconomic backgrounds, or even just people with different opinions than ours. Is there a book you read this year from a diverse author, or a book that opened your eyes to a perspective that you hadn’t considered? How did it challenge you to think differently?
I think the book I read that most reflected a perspective that was different from my own was Life Among the Qallunaat by Mini Aodla Freeman, a memoir by an Inuit woman whose life, even in the 1950s, was so different from my own, growing up at the same time. In the memoir, she portrays herself as a very naïve young girl, but at the same time there is lurking in her writing a little bit of humor as she explains the differences between her people’s ways of thinking and behaving and our own.
Another book that reflected a different kind of “modern” life was Fenwomen: A Portrait of Women in an English Village. What struck me about this book is that the lives of the people were so remote from those of everyday English people in the 1970s even though their village was located only about 30 miles from Cambridge. The fact that for years there was no easy transportation between the village and larger towns and even between the fen dwellers and the village made the villagers’ lives a lot more primitive than others’, and the situation, although it has improved with many people having cars, has only gotten worse for the poor with transportation issues such as the removal of bus routes.
I don’t feel as if this topic works that well for the books that I read this year, though.
What? Me Read? 
You’ve done pretty well, I think! I haven’t read a single non-fiction book this year that could be called ‘diverse’. These two both sound interesting.
It’s not too much of a reading interest for me, so I had to think about it. Not that I have anything against diversity, but I tend to look for it more in fiction.
I don’t tend to look for it at all, (lazy, rather than uninterested), but contemporary fiction tends to give plenty of diversity without having to make an effort.
I guess that’s what I mean.
You have two very good choices there. I have not even started to think of this weeks theme. Soon, though. Interesting lives. It is strange how people can live such different lives, although living quite close to each other.
I have a dear friend who has a strong First Nations heritage in Canada, and she has some interesting perspectives. Both of the books you present sound fascinating. It seems odd, for sure, that an English village could remain in a (to us) primitive state in the 21st Century.
Well, most of the village wasn’t that primitive, but I think the people out in the fens, which had no easy access to the village, were more so. And anyway, the book was written in the 1970s. Their biggest difficulty was lack of transportation to bigger towns and cities.
Actually, I live in a similar situation here in Florida, U.S.A. We live out in the country, and it is absolutely necessary that one has a car in order to go anywhere — hospital, doctor’s office, grocery shopping, church, etc. There is no public transportation out here, either. My use of the word “primitive” was inappropriate. I apologize. Out here, the lifestyle isn’t primitive . . . but some people’s opinions and attitudes are . . .
No, I might have used the word because I couldn’t think of another one. Yes, by the 70s, the people had to have cars to get anywhere, and some of them didn’t.
If the broadened your perspective then they are a perfect choice for the prompt. Thanks for sharing!
I’ve recently become interested in First Nations heritage from walking in Windsor Great Park past the totem pole which was a gift from that community in Canada to Queen Elizabeth II in 1957.
Life Among the Qallunaat sounds fascinating. The 1950s is one of my favorite time periods to read about.
I almost included Life Among the Qallunaat in my round-up, too, as it certainly taught me a lot, but I’ve quite a few striking reads this year myself. It does vary though, year by year!
Both of these books sound fascinating. I love it when modern day culture comes up against people living very different lives than one expects,
My 4th week post: https://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com/2025/11/nonfiction-november-week-four-diverse.html
Both those books come from very different perspectives than my own too. So much to learn from nonfiction – I love it. 🙂
I think both those books explore diverse lives. When I read about people who live lives outside my own time and space, I tend to become a more understanding, a more compassionate person.
I think that’s true.