Let’s Talk Bookish – Under & Misrepresented Characters and Tropes

Good morning dear readers! How are you doing today? It’s pretty cold here in Atlanta (in the 40’s! Fahrenheit though), which is something, since just a few weeks ago, the temperatures were in the 90’s. I hope you’re keeping warm (or cool), and enjoying the weather wherever you are!

Anyways, welcome again to Let’s Talk Bookish! Let’s Talk Bookish is a weekly meme, created and hosted by me, where we discuss chosen topics, share our opinions, and spread the love by visiting each other’s posts.

Today’s topic is: What are some tropes/characters that you think are poorly or under represented in books?

You can choose to write about just tropes, or just characters, or about misrepresented ones, or underrepresented ones, or all four all together. This post is already super late, so I’m just going to do two character types that I think are underrepresented.

Home Schooled Students

I’m going to say that this is underrepresented because I’m pretty confident that I have never read a book with a home schooled main character. And I’m talking about the present day/contemporaries, and not historical fiction novels.

I’m home schooled and I love to see books with such representation because there are many different ways to home school. I do an online school, and take classes with teachers and other students, but another home schooled student might just do text books and end of year exams at home. It’d be interesting to read about what’s it’s like for other home-schooled kids, and seeing them being just normal out-going, or introverted (you can come read my life story for this…), kids.


Female Muslim MCs

I am a Muslim girl, and I love reading books with all sorts of representation, especially female Muslim representation. And I’ve found so many good books with this, but I’m also a bit disappointed. They are still not really common. And many of these girls in these books are not like me at all, and I’m kind of trying to find something that I can relate to more. And so while I love the rep and the fact that YA or books in general are diversifying to include other cultures and religions, I find myself still feeling a little left out because I don’t have a favorite character, that is really kind of like me.

This Week’s Participants:

Line @ First Line Reader | Jane @ Blogger Books | Kelly @ Books on the Brain

What are some misrepresented or underrepresented characters or tropes? Have you read a good book with home schooled students? What’s your favorite type of character? What’s one trope that you love to read? Chat with me in the comments below!

26 thoughts on “Let’s Talk Bookish – Under & Misrepresented Characters and Tropes

      1. Walaikumasalam! im good alhamdullilah, you?? I totally agree, it’s almost impossible!! I’m making a lot of changes to my blog – I want to make it more Islam-orientated and more authentic to myself, so I hope to do more posts on books I have found to be more relatable in terms of Muslim MCs!

        Liked by 1 person

  1. Great suggestions! I’ve homeschooled my 3 kids (2 are now in college!) and I agree, it’s underrepresented in fiction. The few books I have read with homeschool students are about kids transitioning from homeschool to public school. Thankfully the book world is changing and we’re seeing so much more diversity!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Thank you! Wow, congrats lol. It’s definitely underrepresented, and it’d be awesome to read about it, and in a positive light too. Which ones are those? I’d love to read that at the least! Yeah, it’s definitely changing 🙂 Thanks for reading and following 💚

      Like

      1. Let’s see… I know of Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli; Feed by M.T. Anderson; The Girl Who Could Fly by Victoria Forester; Schooled by Gordon Korman; Wonder by R.J. Palacio; Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon, and Going Places by Kathryn Berla (which is a public school teen who decides to homeschool his senior year). I know there are more, but that’s all I have at the moment! 😉

        Thanks for the follow back!

        Liked by 1 person

  2. Great choices! I just realized now that I know literally no book with a home schooled character?! And wow, you’re home schooled!! That sounds so cool! One question here: do you have specific times when you have to take a class or how does that work (just curious, I know no one who’s home schooled haha)
    Happy reading!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Thanks dear 💖 Yeah, it’s surprisingly pretty hard to find a home-schooled character. Haha, sure. Yeah, I do have specific class times, and I’m usually in different classes starting from around 9 in the morning to almost 4 in the afternoon. So it’s pretty much like regular school, it’s just that it’s online. And I also have homework, and assignments, and studying, and tests, and everything else 😂 It’s not necessarily easier to be home schooled, beyond the fact that if I want, I can do it in my bed 🙂

      Happy reading to you too!!

      Liked by 1 person

  3. You raise such good points, I’ve barely read any books with homeschooled characters – particularly contemporaries! I’m always looking to read more books with Muslim rep, too. It’s not YA, but have you read Sofia Khan is Not Obliged? I really enjoyed it and the MC is a Muslim woman. 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

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