“Broader, Better Literary Conversations”

by Nicole Cliffe · September 10, 2013

the-book-of-negroes151qUYmcwqpL__SY346_Roxane Gay (who writes dynamite movie reviews), in her first piece for The Nation, takes on another glaring editorial omission:

The Los Angeles Review of Books is most diverse, with 12.9 percent of their review coverage going to books written by writers of color. Bookforum brings in the rear at 8.7 percent and NPR and The New York Review of Books are tied, with 10.7 percent of their coverage going to books written by writers of color. In the selection of 2012 reviews I looked at from the LARB, only one book written by a black woman received coverage. It was the Highlander of reviews. There can be only one.

These numbers suggest, quite plainly, that the people shaping the literary conversation are not reading diversely. If they are reading diversely, it’s a well-kept secret. Editors are not expanding their editorial missions. They are explicitly and directly responsible for the narrowness and whiteness of the literary conversation. They are responsible for the misguided notion that there simply aren’t that many writers of color or books written by writers of color. Of course people make that assumption. There’s no evidence to the contrary in most mainstream publications.

This kind of analysis, recently dismissed as “bean counting,” is vital not just for the underlying concept: we should do a better job, it should also be seen as excellent news for people who love books! LOOK HOW MANY MORE BOOKS YOU COULD BE LEARNING ABOUT that no one has bothered to review.

On a sidenote, one of the biggest books in recent memory here in Canada (yes, I’m back for two weeks, sorry, get ready for a lot of blah-blah-blah Canada) was Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes, which is the kind of sprawling work of brilliantly-done historical fiction that usually eats up the charts and the award lists. Literally everyone in Canada read it and talked about it, not because we’re so great about race here (we’re not, maybe we’re a little better) but because we’re relentlessly positive about all things written by Canadians, and it never got that kind of traction in the United States (despite, to be fair, getting a small review in the New York Times.

Of course, you might not recognize the book in that review, because, as Hill will tell you, they made him change the title for the American release.

Read it! Then, read The Men We Reaped, as per Roxane’s suggestion. Then tell us all about the brilliant books by people of colour that we should be reading, too.

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Nicole Cliffe

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55 Comments

  1. anninyn +7

    I am especially interest in sci-fi, fantasy and horror works by writers of colour, if any of you have any recommendations! The spec-fic world is such a white boy’s club.

      1. anninyn +2

        I did not! But she looks like my kind of thing. Thanks for the tip.

        I mostly buy my books from charity shops these days because of poverty so my purchasing is pretty random, but should I see anything of hers I shall immediately pick it up.

          2. KivrinEngle +4

            P.S. Not that Le Guin is a woman of color, obviously. Still, woman in a male-dominated arena. Her Earthsea series blew my mind: She built a world as lush as Middle Earth with a fraction of Tolkien’s words.

          1. anninyn +3

            I sm reading one of the sample chapters of the first book right now. OMG SO GOOD I MUST FIND THIS BOOK.

          4. wallsdonotfall +2

            I just read the first sample chapter and I’m kind of into it, but what do you think about the romance aspect? Just looking at Amazon reviews, a lot of people seem to think that the love story stomps over everything else in the book(s), and I really hope that’s not the case.

          5. KivrinEngle +5

            Hmm, well, all 3 books in the trilogy deal with various forms of romantic affection and relationships. So if you don’t want any love/lust in your fantasy, then these books might not be for you. These are not Tolkien-style chaste fantasy novels.

          6. wallsdonotfall +2

            Awesome, that sounds like a good balance. I’m not turned off at all by love/lust, but some people seemed to consider it more like paranormal romance with a light fantasy dressing. Thanks!

    2. rkfire +4

      A friend of my husband’s recently recommended Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist as a must read. Octavia Butler is also regularly mentioned whenever this topic comes up, so I’d also welcome suggestions of any other authors.

      1. literarysara +1

        I loved the Intuitionist. It’s just such a neat concept.
        I didn’t love Whitehead’s Zone One as much as I loved the Intuitionist, but I kept thinking about Zone One for days after, which is a good sign. It’s not yo mama’s zombie apocalypse.

    3. SarcasticFringehead +5

      Me too! I’ll second the recommendation for Octavia Butler, but I know there have to be more out there.

      (Also, not a woman of color, but Joan Vinge is criminally underappreciated, and tends to have some decent diversity in her books, as well as really good female characters. The first book I read of hers I found in a used bookstore, so you might be in luck there)

    5. Raineydays +3

      Seconding Jemison, Butler, & Delaney. Also, Tobias Buckell, especially the Xenowealth series. Saladin Ahmed was nominated for best novel Hugo this year for “Throne of the Crescent Moon.”

      Chuck Wendig blogged a similar question recently: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2013/08/26/crowds… Lots of good recs in the comments.

      There’s also the World SF blog (http://worldsf.wordpress.com/), now defunct, but with years of recs and links and orig content.

    6. stuffisthings +2

      Haha I was going to recommend Zoo City (which is, to be fair, really good) but it turns out the author is white. God dammit, South Africa.

    7. depizan +5

      Nnedi Okorafor, her novels Who Fears Death and The Shadow Speaker are post-apocalyptic fantasy/horror set in Africa (her YA novels are also very good).
      Alaya Dawn Johnson has a series about vampires set during 1920s New York, and a new YA futuristic matriarchy set in Brazil.
      Sherri L Smith has Orleans, a post-apacalyptic YA novel
      Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi, scifi with a queer WOC main character
      Michelle Sagara (aka Michelle Sagara West), Chronicles of Elentra and the Queen of the Dead series

      1. quotidianc +2

        Not SFF, but I enjoyed Sherri L Smith’s Flygirl, about a black girl who passes as white so she can join the Women’s Airforce Service Pilots during WWII. Flying, friendship, personal identity all that good stuff.

        Also Neesha Meminger’s Shine, Coconut Moon, about an Indian American girl balancing her different heritages and finding her own identity.

  2. Clara +1

    I don’t like historical fiction at all but I would love some nonfiction and contemporary fiction recommendations!

    1. catnamedvirtute +4

      Anything by Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie, Skim by Mariko Tamaki (graphic novel), The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans by Kazuo Ishiguro (really all of Ishiguro is amazing), Revenge by Yoko Ogawa, and Roxane’s own writing!

      1. spring chickens +2

        wait, are we including the entire nation of Japan as “people of color”? Because soon this will just be a list of world literature books, which, nothing wrong at all with that, but the list will go on forever and risk being a little bit meaningless/a funny dividing-up of the world/a projection of very American racial categories onto the rest of the world.

        I’m going to stick to “African” nominations. Senegalese author Mariama Ba, A Very Long Letter. Zambian author Tsitsi Dangaremba, A Nervous Condition. Ivoirian author Marguerite Abouet’s graphic novel Aya. Anything by the classic Algerian author Assia Djebar.

        1. catnamedvirtute +6

          It’s my understanding that when most people use the term “people of colour” they are referring to people who are not white of European ancestry. those people being the institutors and beneficiaries of white privilege. There is a lot of discussion about how “people of colour” is a not very useful/falsely homogenizing term, which is a complicated but useful discussion, but I think for Roxane’s purposes (and the chart in her original posts does track reviews of books by Asian, Native American, Black/African, and Latino writers), she is talking about anyone who is not of white European descent. So yes, Japanese and Japanese diasporic writers would be included.

  5. Amy

    On the topic of not reading (or reviewing, or writing) diversely, check out Sarah Schulman’s recent “Gentrification of the Mind.” Her main focus in that book is the effect of AIDs and its aftermath on the GLBT arts community, but anyone who’s reading this post will easily recognize the effects of what Schulman terms “gentrification” in the arts.

    I will be more than happy to look up the mentioned books at my local library.

      1. catnamedvirtute +3

        I LOVED her way of using Ifemelu’s blog to focus and catalyze both recognition and deep awful discomfort in her reader, depending on the reader’s own racial baggage. I loved that it was such a fuck you to Nice White Ladyhood while still being completely centred on Ifemelu’s experience and and Zed’s frustrated love story. I found the beginning dragged a little for me (I am not really into this ubiquitous literary device of starting in media res and then flipping back and forth between the past and the present), but I loved how it picked up more and more speed as we went along. Also Dike. DIIIIIIIIKE.

    2. spring chickens +2

      yes! It’s very good and I really liked how she described the weirdness of being part of the diaspora in America. That’s the part that a lot of reviewers singled out as being less well-done than the part set in Nigeria. But I don’t know — I felt like that might just be that she defamiliarizes America in a way they don’t like even though (because?) it is very realistic, whereas her depiction of Lagos is exotic and unthreatening for them. So I found a number of the reviews quite irritating. Though maybe that is unfair?
      Did it change your experience of Americanah to be reading something so close to home, the fictionalized experience of a blogger/free-lance writer?

      1. Hi There!

        I also loved the blog as literary device! And loved the book entirely. But, did anyone else thing Zed as a character was a little too flawless?

        1. puddleglum

          Well, what about the way his wife gets short shrift. She’s beautiful and brainless, so it’s ok for him to leave her and take up with his true love. We’re rooting for that. She exists as a cipher.

          Does anyone have any thoughts about how Ifemelu says the solution to race in America is deep passionate, no-holds-barrred romantic love – and she seems to have that kind of love with Obinze – so does that mean there is no solution to race in America? or it has to be that kind of love between American born Americans – and, conversely, is it saying something about her relationship with Obinze (the problem of race or class isn’t a problem between them, is their story “just” a love story (which I loved) or if it is the solution to a problem, what’s the problem? I don’t mean to be programmatic about that line, but it makes me curious.

    2. Nicolepants +2

      I WAS GOING TO COME HERE AND RECOMMEND HER
      Brown Girl in the Ring is one of my faaaaavorite novels. It’s about a post-apocalyptic world, with gods! and it’s pretty gruesome but also so cool.

  8. catnamedvirtute +3

    I had the horrifying realization in July that I’d only read books by white people so far this year, so I’m diversifying with new releases. Best by far are the always terrific Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s new book, Americanah, which is about a Nigerian woman who moves to America for university, and her experience of returning thirteen years later, and Revenge, which is a bunch of creepy surreal short stories in a slightly Aimee Bender vein by Yoko Ogawa. Highly recommend both.

    I am also REALLY looking forward to the new Jamaica Kincaid novel like crazy.

  9. catnamedvirtute +4

    Two other thoughts:

    It seems to me like publications feel this obligation to review whatever the big publishing houses are putting out, because they are the big publishing houses. I think reviewers and editors have to make a conscious decision to review smaller presses where a lot more diverse writing is happening, and worry less about all being part of the same conversation (this is something I love about Bookslut, though I do think they still skew pretty Euro-centric).

    But also big publishing houses seriously need to start “taking chances” on more writers of colour. Because let’s face it, THAT + great marketing is how this mess is most likely to change.

  10. sheistolerable +1

    Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan. Short stories, that are actually pretty long (only 5 in a pretty large volume) about children in Africa. “Gripping” is an overused word but I’m only through the first 2 and I don’t think I’ll ever forget either.

    1. catnamedvirtute +8

      VIDA counts for gender, not for race. I follow Roxane on Twitter and she has developed this count project explicitly as a reaction to/conversation with the VIDA count (Roxane, I hope I am representing that right).

  12. tanglethis +3

    In addition to loudly affirming the recommendations of Octavia Butler, Colson Whitehead, and Victor Lavalle, here are a few more:

    metafiction + (fairytales – binary moral universe) = Mr. Fox by Helen Oyeyemi

    Edgar Allen Poe’s universe + George S. Schuyler’s sense of humor + some unfortunate sizism, but no book is perfect = Pym, by Mat Johnson

    Gertrude Stein + Ho Chi Minh + the ghost of Auguste Escoffier = The Book of Salt, by Monique Truong

  13. chickpeas

    I am of two minds on this. The stats that Gay cites are atrocious and horrible and awful and we should all be angry about this because yes, we are being deprived of information about good books and thus happiness.

    On the other hand, the vast overwhelming majority of book reviews are self important masturbatory drivel. I work in the industry and cannot stand to do more than skim the headlines on the New York Times Book Review to see if any of my company’s books are being reviewed. (I usually know ahead of time but sometimes I am completely out to lunch on this. So fire me.) I would much rather get book recommendations in a setting like this one — personal comments from people with presumably good taste (otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this website.)

    (I also have about 100 books in my to be read pile right now, so there’s that.)

    1. catnamedvirtute +1

      Fair enough, but the exposure that reviews provide, along with interviews and whatnot, is of tremendous importance for marketing and selling books, and many smaller publications look to bigger publications for cues on what’s current and “worth” talking about. Obviously that can be a pretty artificially constructed conversation, but if big reviewers make books by POC sound worth reading and discussing, hopefully the buying public will take a cue and we can increase the number and longevity of POC voices in our literary conversations.

  14. nicole_fcd

    sprawling historical fiction, you say?

    why, that’s my favourite kind!

    (it’s on my kindle already)