Earlier this month in Minneapolis, the
Association of Writers and Writing Programs held the largest annual literary conference in North America, with more than 12,000
writers, teachers, students, editors, and publishers gathering for four days of
networking, readings, panels, and lectures. The social news and entertainment
website BuzzFeed decided this was a good opportunity to stir up antagonism and resentment
toward the predominantly white publishing industry.
An annual salary survey by trade publication Publisher’s Weekly last summer quantified the lopsided racial
numbers in publishing: of the 630 respondents who identified their race, 89% described
themselves as white/Caucasian, 3% Asian, 3% Hispanic, and 1% African-American.
Most seemed to agree that this near absence of minority employees directly
affects the types of books that are published, and that more needs to be done
to address the imbalance.
BuzzFeed asked conference participants if they had any messages for publishers in
response to these numbers. The resulting article was titled “23 Writers with
Messages for Straight White Male Publishers,” though it’s unclear why straight males were
targeted. It featured photos of 23 participants (none of whom was a white male,
straight or otherwise) holding up handwritten signs that ranged from the sensible
(“Hire women. Diversity makes you strong”) to the belligerent (“Grow up”; “We
owe you nothing”) to the illiterate (“Read less straight white men”; “Plz
stop”) to the threatening (“Sit down and let us abolish you”). In one pic of a pair
of female writers, one holds a sign that reads “She’s coming for you” while the
other woman gives the viewer – straight white male publishers, presumably – a
middle finger. Maybe not the best networking strategy.
The overall point seemed to be summed up in
the top message on the list, which read, “Diversity is not publishing the one story. It’s publishing multiple
stories from people of diverse backgrounds.” Come on. Granted,
industry employees lack diversity, but one story? Are Buzzfeed and these
writers seriously suggesting that the publishing biz promotes only a straight
white male worldview, whatever that is? Are they denying that bookstore
browsers and online shoppers have a dizzying, virtually limitless variety of
authors and perspectives to choose from?
In terms of
diversity of writing voices, one thing to consider is the demands of the
marketplace. Publishers are perfectly happy to provide underserved audiences
with tales from a diversity of writers as long as the writing is of worthy quality
and, more importantly, the sales numbers justify it. If you are a minority writer
and your work is amateurish and your readership is limited to friends and
family, you can’t fault publishers for not welcoming you with open arms and a
big book advance. The same goes for straight white male writers.
Sure, if there is
enough demand, even books with no discernible literary quality can get published
and become bestsellers. But the point is that publishing is a business. To turn
one of the messages in the Buzzfeed article on its head, publishers owe you
nothing. Whether you are talentless or brilliant, if there isn’t enough demand
for your work, publishers don’t owe you a living, regardless of your color or
sexual orientation.
But there is a larger and more critical point
to address here than just getting published, and that is the right of writers
to their own imagination and individuality, unbound by skin color, gender, or
sexual preference. The article suggests that there should be fewer white male
voices in publishing and more that are black, female, LGBT, etc. But what
Buzzfeed and the writers with chips on their shoulders are getting wrong is
that people are individuals. Their life experiences, perspectives, ideas,
attitudes, and imaginations are not, or should not be, limited by whatever physical
category they were born into. The assumption that, say, white male authors can
or should speak only to the white male experience, or blacks only to the black
experience, is the very definition of sexism/racism/bigotry. Do all
Asian-American female authors share the same experiences and worldview? All
lesbians? All Arab-Americans? What if the characters and themes of a book don’t
conform to the author’s own demographic – does that de-legitimize him or her?
This Balkanization of writers according to such
limiting categories underestimates the transcendent power of the imagination as
well as the ability of good writers to empathize with those who aren’t like
them. “Madame Bovary, c’est moi,” straight white male Flaubert said of his famous
female heroine. Straight white male William Styron won a Pulitzer Prize writing
as a black insurrectionist in The
Confessions of Nat Turner. Straight Jewish-American novelist Michael Chabon
is so successful at drawing three-dimensional gay characters that he is often
assumed to be gay.
This is not to defend only the straight white
males Buzzfeed picked on. Authors of other colors and orientations are successful
at creating characters outside their own categories as well. The point is that all
writers should be defined by their talent and creativity, not their
demographic. The human imagination is the ultimate diversity.
(This article originally appeared here on Acculturated, 5/1/15)
