Editor’s Note: The discussion of diversity in publishing has
been ongoing for decades. Some authors take issue with their books being
categorized as “African-American Literature,” “Women’s Fiction” or
“LGBTQ” (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer). Others don’t
object to the labels, but decry the difficulty of breaking in when
publishers identify your readership as “niche.” At WD, we receive
letters asking: Where are the black agents and editors? Why so few
minorities on the bestsellers lists?
While we don’t have the answers, we’ve been heartened to see
campaigns such as We Need Diverse Books taking social media by storm (diversebooks.org).
In the spirit of change, we invited professor, award-winning author and
National Black Writers Conference co-founder Elizabeth Nunez to
contribute to the conversation as a part of our recent issue’s “It’s Never Too Late!” theme.
We want to hear your perspectives, too. Feel free to drop a note in the comments section and tell us what you think.
This column from the magazine is by Elizabeth Nunez. Nunez is the award-winning author of eight novels and the memoir Not for Everyday Use. Her novel Even in Paradise,
a modern-day retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear, will be released in
April 2016 to coincide with the 400th Anniversary of the Bard’s death.
Nunez is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, CUNY.
Photo by Leonid Knizhnik.
Readers, those of you decrying the paucity of diverse books are about
to get mad at me. To rephrase the famous line that propelled Bill
Clinton to the presidency: It’s the money! Let me be clearer: Publishers
will publish more diverse books if there are more readers for diverse
books. The color is green in the publishing industry.
You challenge me. Must we, you say, the minority communities, bear
the blame for the low numbers of diverse books published annually that
deal with our lives as black, Latino and Asian Americans, books that
reflect the lives of the LGBTQ community, the lives of the economically,
socially, physically and mentally challenged? What about systemic
racism? What about all the isms that shut people out: sexism, ageism,
classism? Are publishers simply innocent bystanders taking their cues
from the marketplace? Are they really not guilty of deliberately
withholding the publication of books that deal with the experiences of
minority populations?
A few years ago I attended the famous Calabash International Literary
Festival in Jamaica. The much-revered poet Sonia Sanchez, one of the
early members of the Harlem Writers Guild, was a speaker. At the end of
her reading, which was delivered with equal portions of rage and
celebration to the beat of her unique musical rhythms, the crowd
thronged around her, peppering her with questions and compliments. When
the audience finally thinned out, Sanchez turned to me, her face grim.
“You see that crowd, Elizabeth,” she said. “They say they love me; they
say they love my work. ‘Give us more, Sonia,’ they say. ‘Keep on
writing.’ ‘Keep on inspiring us, giving us words to live by.’ But that
same crowd will silence me.” (These are not her exact words, but an
approximation.)
I was stunned. “How so, Sonia?”
She explained that the very fans who claim they adore her work won’t
spend the money to buy a copy of her book. “They wear fancy sneakers,
some costing over $100. But $25 for a book? Sonia, that’s too much
money. Yet publishers won’t publish a writer whose book is not selling.”
The problem, however, is not simply that too many people do not buy
books. Indeed, some publishers make fat profits. The problem is also
that too many readers gravitate to books that will not disturb them out
of their comfort zones.
Recently, for a course I teach at Hunter College of The City University of New York, I assigned my students the novel
Crick Crack, Monkey
by Merle Hodge, in which the main character confronts discrimination
based on class and skin color. I have a first edition of the novel,
published in England 45 years ago. On the cover is a picture of a young,
very dark-skinned black girl who resembles the protagonist described in
the novel. Her hair is thick, coiled and upswept in knots on either
side of her head, and she wears a collared blouse. Surprisingly, I
discovered that the picture on the cover of the new edition my students
were using had been changed. The girl is not as dark-skinned, her hair
is longer, the curls looser and she is wearing a halter top that exposes
her bare shoulders.
Why did the publisher change the picture? Did the publisher think
that the girl on the new cover would be more acceptable to readers? I
know black writers who ask their publishers not to put their photographs
on their book jackets. These writers understand, as publishers do, that
a jacket cover is an advertisement for a book, and that there are
certain images that could telegraph to readers that a certain book may
not be “for them.”
But should we give the publishing industry a pass? Should we allow
publishers that canard (for canard it seems to me) that they would
publish more diverse books if there were more readers for such books?
The publishing industry has a responsibility to society. Publishers
hold important keys to the advancement of our culture. They cannot be
simply businesspeople, marketers, salespersons. Books have the power to
transform us, to inspire us to become our better selves, to warn us
against the dangers of worse selves.
The Word, as written in the Bible, and the writings of the Torah and
the Quran have served as moral compass for more than 2,000 years for
people of faith all over the world. Martin Luther King Jr. was armed
with the Bible, but it was also writers like James Baldwin, Richard
Wright, John Oliver Killens and Ralph Ellison who spread the word,
inspiring not just African Americans to demand their civil rights but
also people of the African diaspora around the world. Harper Lee’s
To Kill a Mockingbird opened the eyes of Americans to racial injustice but also to the unfair treatment of people with disabilities. Betty Friedan’s
The Feminine Mystique set the tone for the women’s movement, and Rachel Carson’s
Silent Spring
exposed the dangerous effects of pesticides on our health and the
environment. And long before the Stonewall riots, the plays of Oscar
Wilde and his imprisonment for his homosexual relationships raised the
public’s consciousness to the pervasiveness of discrimination against
the LGBTQ community. I could go on …
To borrow a metaphor from the much-quoted scholar M.H. Abrams, good
literature is both mirror and lamp. In much the same way that a lamp
illuminates, throws light on the dark and allows us to see more clearly,
a good book tells us the truth about ourselves, about the human
condition we all share, and inspires us to change for the better. When
we have a plethora of books that in no way function as lamp but simply
mirror majority communities while ignoring minority communities, we are
in deep trouble, and I, for one, am very scared.
In the May 25, 2015 issue of
The New Yorker, the Norwegian
writer Karl Ove Knausgaard tries to grapple with the mind of the mass
killer who, on an ordinary afternoon in Norway, on July 22, 2011,
slaughtered 77 innocent souls, most of them children at a summer camp.
“The shock in Norway was total,” writes Knausgaard. How could such a
thing happen in a country known to be relatively homogeneous, well
functioning and egalitarian? He writes: “The most powerful human forces
are found in the meeting of the face and the gaze. Only there do we
exist for one another. In the gaze of the other, we become, and in our
own gaze others become. It is there, too, that we can be de-stroyed.
Being unseen is devastating, and so is not seeing.”
And so, though there is logic in the contention of publishers that
they would publish more diverse books if there were more buyers of
diverse books, I want to point out the danger in their argument. It is
when there is distance between us and the Other that our society breaks
down. Evidence the tensions brought to light by recent coast-to-coast
protests surrounding incidents of police brutality, and by last summer’s
hate killings of nine people in a black church in South Carolina. A
report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs documents
2,016 incidents of anti-LGBTQ violence in the U.S. in 2012, with LGBTQ
people of color 1.8 times more likely to experience physical violence in
the workplace and shelters compared to their white counterparts.
According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, that same year, 1.3
million persons age 12 or older who had disabilities experienced
nonfatal violent crimes.
So, yes, as readers we need to acknowledge the exigencies of the
market that determine the kind of books publishers will publish, but
publishers need to understand that they have a crucial role to play in
narrowing that distance between each of us and the Other. Racism,
sexism, discrimination against others who are different from us thrive
best in that widening space we too often allow ourselves between those
who share our experiences and those who don’t. And our best hopes
against the forces that would destroy us are books that tell the stories
of the Other, that challenge us to engage with the Other, to see our
common humanity, our human flaws, desires, failures and triumphs in the
face of the Other.
As I watched CNN’s coverage of the spontaneous outpouring of people
of all classes and colors in the streets of New York City after the
announcement of the decision not to indict the police officers involved
in the fatal chokehold of Eric Garner, I was struck by a comment made by
legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin. Why this massive response from the
public? CNN’s panel of pundits wanted to know. Hadn’t the statistics
about incidents of discrimination already been recounted and much
publicized—disproportionate rates of arrests, excessive force by police,
lengthy terms of incarceration for drugs that are ubiquitous on Wall
Street? Toobin responded that it is not statistics that move people; it
is
story. And that night, the distance between the life of Eric
Garner and the people of New York narrowed. We saw his face; we met his
gaze. It was because of his story that we recognized our common
humanity in him and we no longer could remain bystanders. We had to get
involved.
We need books that are both mirror and lamp, books that mirror the
breadth of our enormously rich and diverse experiences and cultural
heritage, books that excite our aesthetic sensibilities, that stimulate
us to think, that cause us to see ourselves in the Other. We cannot
allow publishers to use the excuse that there is not a sufficient market
for these books to sustain a profitable margin for their business.
Publishers have a responsibility to develop audiences for these books.
When publishers decide to put their marketing dollars behind a book,
they quite often succeed. Most people rely on recommendations for the
choices they make, say for a brand of car, toothpaste, a pharmaceutical.
Look at the power Oprah has wielded with her book club.
Publishers need to use their clout to promote diverse books, and so
do writers from minority communities, those who’ve achieved a strong
following and monetary rewards, as well as those who’ve gained
recognition with awards and prizes. A word of commendation from these
writers to their influential networks, a blurb on the jacket of a new
book, can attract the attention of the public to an otherwise overlooked
title. Reviewers and literary organizations that support readings by
writers, as well as grant awards, have an important role, too, in
promoting diverse books. And we, readers, need to exercise our power and
influence by purchasing diverse books. Books, stories about diverse
communities, are not a luxury; they are a necessity.
