Seeking Our Reflections in Writing: The Diversity Within
By Porter Anderson (@Porter_Anderson) | January 15, 2016 |
Image – iStockphoto: shinnji
‘Those in Whiteness’s Thrall’
Whiteness is…more of a genre than anything else.
Erik Anderson
This is the Erik Anderson, author of The Poetics of Tresspass. He’s writer in residence and director of the Emerging Writers Festival at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
In an essay at Salon, White bro reading: Yes, I’m reading men and women equally — but they’re still mostly white, Anderson is getting at a difficult thing.
Much as, in my writing, I often bristle at the constraints of genre, I also find myself objecting to, and pushing against, the way whiteness delimits me, and those around me. But troubling literary genres is one thing. Troubling whiteness is another. A person is practically consigned to whiteness at birth: it becomes, like it or not, his métier.
The Poetics of Trespass
As sincerely as many of us may want to see more diversity in our books culture and industry, can we find that same drive in ourselves?
- It’s one thing to say that we need more racial range on publishing house staffs. No contest.
- It’s another thing to consider what we’re reading. When no one is looking.
How often do you read outside your own place in the socio-economic landscape? What if we and others don’t read beyond the comfort zone of our own “whiteness at birth,” per Anderson. This works not both ways but all ways: do you read outside your own blackness or maleness or femaleness, or your Asian heritage or your Hispanic background or your Polynesian family tree?
Can we accomplish authentic diversity in the business of publishing if our private literary lives aren’t diverse?
Here are some of Erik Anderson’s best lines:
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I can work harder, in part through my reading, at valuing the lives and voices of people of color.
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I can track and confront those places where my whiteness (and yours) rears its head, where it silences and marginalizes others.
We know he’s right. And we also know he’s asking a lot of himself. And of us.
Provocations image by Liam Walsh
In a Mirror, Darkly
This is my provocation for you today. Anderson starts, as his headline implies, in an important place.
Like a good bro, I have been possessed of the delusion that my voice matters, that my opinions have value even if they’re fatuous. I’ve spoken simply because I could. Because I’m a white man. And because my behavior is not just representative of power. It is power.
We can all, in quiet moments, list our various privileges and limitations. Anderson speaks of “those in whiteness’s thrall.” There’s an awful beauty to that line, isn’t there? Maybe that’s a lot of us, operating “in whiteness’s thrall.” Or it may be a few of us. It may be me. It may be you. Only in our hearts, with help from our minds, can we know and name this. And we have to do this in private, for ourselves.
One reason the now tired term tribalism has been so resonant for us in social contexts is that we feel its truth. Even against our will, we are creatures of various tribes. Never mind the characters we create, what of our own character, our own nature? We are driven not only by who we are but by who made us. Becoming what we want to be?—that’s what a lifetime is about.
And yet are we not to try, then, to change things on the exterior plane? Of course we must. Surely it’s good news from my colleague Sarah Shaffi this week at The Bookseller that a crowdfunding campaign has been launched in the UK for a festival celebrating black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) writers’ achievements. Shaffi writes:
The Bare Lit Festival, organised by non-profit advocacy group Media Diversified, will take place on 27th–28th February in London. Novelists Leila Aboulela and Xiaolu Guo, poet Jane Yeh, London’s young poet laureate Selina Nwulu and journalist and fiction author Robin Yassin-Kassab are among those scheduled to appear at the event.
The need? Shaffi goes on:
Business coach and consultant Mel Larsen last year calculated that in 2014, just 4% of the authors appearing at the three big literature festivals—the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Cheltenham Literature Festival and the Hay Festival—were black or Asian…
As Anderson puts it, “I can count,” and so can we all.
The imbalances built into our industry’s culture and our culture’s industry are evident. But although “VIDA inaugurated a Women of Color count in 2014,” Anderson notes, “the organization admits that the dataset was too incomplete to produce a ‘statistically sound study.'” A bit like our inability to see sales figures for ebooks, we’re unable to calculate fully the divides that lie all around us.
There’s no excuse for not pressing forward for fairness, for conscious efforts in thoughtful representation at every turn. These things are critical. But as the hammer-headline on Anderson’s essay puts it, “We need more than a VIDA-style count for writers of color—we need to confront the implicit whiteness of literature.”
‘The Implicit Whiteness of Literature’
Where does that lie? How do we get our hands on it? Our heads around it? Our hearts into it?
Here’s Anderson:
The very act of identifying with a character or losing yourself in a story can obviate the ways, at least in aggregate, your reading, and my reading, is racist.
We all stagger under a historically unprecedented load of cultural messaging today. We’re to some extent creatures of spectacularly effective commercial constructs that tell us, one ad at a time, who and what we are. Put aside any disappointment or frustration you may feel in yourself and think about the truth of what Anderson has said.
As we read, we reveal to ourselves—if we can just take our self-criticism out of it—where our ingrained affiliations lie. Then we might be ready to tackle something from a sexuality alien to our own…something from a racial construct we can’t experience in daily life…something from an ethnic perspective baffling to us.
But we must choose to do this.
Otherwise, how successful will we be in trying to make “external” VIDA-count-like changes in publishing? If we switch out the people but never read their books, what have we gained?
‘Those Who Identify With Whiteness’
Image – iStockphoto: adisaktounjuntuek
At a recent conference I covered, a panel of black authors spoke to an overwhelmingly white audience of writers about how they could be injecting people of color into their stories. The white authors were assured that they could ask questions of their black friends and literary colleagues without embarrassment, in order to get things right. This felt helpful and inviting, even collaborative. Until it dawned on me as I watched this long session that the black panelists never once suggested that they, themselves, might bring white or Asian or Hispanic or East European or Arab characters into their own work. I don’t want to make them “wrong” for this. They were operating on a one-way street that their culture has cobbled together as durably as my own once managed the slave markets in my hometown of Charleston. Theirs was a failure of reciprocity shared by every one of us in the room.
We were not, as a group that evening, as yet, so evolved.
Anderson:
The deeper, underlying problem here is that even if I’m ready and willing to accept (cf. James Baldwin, Eula Biss, Ta-Nehisi Coates) that my whiteness is a damnable lie, the lie is still real, even if it’s not true…That said, I can interrogate and trouble the ways whiteness has been projected onto me, how these projections have enabled and empowered but also hindered me, and how, more damningly, I have internalized the mask of whiteness in my literary work.
We can interrogate ourselves, he’s right. Lift that “mask of whiteness.” And again, I’d say do it with compassion: how many of us woke up one morning and decided to be biased?
I like what Anderson is talking about. I appreciate his courage in bringing it forward. He wants to do something better than hit the stations of the cross “in the acquisitive fashion of a boy scout working toward his diversity merit badge, one step among many on the well-meaning road toward white enlightenment.”
Me, too. But it’s not easy, is it? Nor quick. Anderson has tracked his own reading for two years to see if he can detect progress. After the second year:
I was happy to see that the proportion of books written by women increased this past year (36 of 63), [but] the number of books written by people of color only increased by a sliver (13). That something like 80 percent of my reading was produced by white writers suggests that, as a genre, whiteness may extend to literature in at least one glaringly obvious way: Those who identify with whiteness seek its reflection in writing.
What reflections do we seek in writing? Is Anderson right? I get the feeling that he’d understand my counseling patience with ourselves, too. But pressure. Patient pressure. It’s probably going to take a lot of it for many of us to begin reading fluently in other cultural contexts.
What’s your experience? How easily do you read someone else’s reflection?
[coffee title=”Wish you could buy Porter a glass of Campari?” icon=”glass”]Now, thanks to tinyCoffee and PayPal, you can![/coffee]
@Porter_Anderson is a fellow of the National Critics Institute. He is Editor-in-Chief of Publishing Perspectives, the international news medium of Frankfurt Book Fair. He co-founded The Hot Sheet, a newsletter for trade and independent authors, which now is owned and operated by Jane Friedman. Priors: The Bookseller‘s The FutureBook in London, CNN, CNN.com and CNN International–as well as the Village Voice, Dallas Times Herald, and the United Nations’ WFP in Rome. is a recipient of London Book Fair’s International Excellence Award for Trade Press Journalist of the Year. PorterAndersonMedia.com
What a thoughtful commentary. I had not considered how we fall into our comfort zones in what we read. As I did a quick inventory of my reading and writing habits, I realize I do not have a lot of “color” there. Some, which I am proud to say, but maybe not enough.
And I found it interesting what you wrote about the panel of black authors talking to a white audience. Made me think of a black author who accused me of being racist because I did not finish reading her book for review. She immediately thought I had not finished the read because the characters were black. That thought had not even crossed my mind. I just ran out of time before I could finish the book and do a fair review, so I just posted a preview on my blog. I often do reviews on a Sunday, and the following Wednesday the author is my Wednesday’s Guest.
So I think there is a lot of room for growth on all sides of the color line.
Hi, Maryann,
Many thanks for these thoughts and your kind words. I agree, the sensitivities around these issues can be baffling at times and then tend to drive folks to odd assumptions (as in the idea that your not finishing a book was automatically a racial consideration). If anything, this kind of external confusion and travail — “external” as in how we conduct our exploration of these issues in public life — can cloud how clearly we’re able to think of who we are and what we really believe inwardly, the level on which Erik Anderson is working so well in his essay.
As you say, a lot of room for growth. Surely the more we start with our own inner thoughts and feelings — in the privacy of our own minds and hearts — the better we can resopnd to the social and cultural needs related to them.
Thanks again!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter-
I grapple with the issue of diversity at work. The publishing industry remains woefully under-representative, though it is improving. At my company I find it easy to find staff from some of our human spectrum, but not all of it.
I grapple with the issue of diversity in literature, especially genre literature. That is why I’ve put a special focus at my agency on finding *genre* writers of diverse backgrounds, since a literature cannot grow if it is frozen in cultural time.
I grapple with the issue of diversity at home. I am white, my wife is white, but our two African-born children are not. In our world of adoption we hear a lot about white privilege, the trauma of removal, preserving culture, keeping language alive and so on.
It may be that we are unwittingly shaping our children to conform to white expectations, but honestly we find that the greater challenges are to help them have faith in things that have nothing to do with race or background, especially their safety and the security of our family.
Indeed, the more I work with folks unlike me, writers unlike me and children unlike me, the more I realize that while the challenge of diversity is to celebrate our differences, the need that brings us together is to discover with relief that we have so much in common.
I’m white, can’t change that, but even more than that I am human. And as a human there is a universal feeling that removes all fear from diversity and instead makes it a joy, and that feeling is love.
Hey, Don!
What a beautiful response here. (Sorry I’m late getting back to you.)
The line I really love is this: “The need that brings us together is to discover with relief that we have so much in common.”
And certainly you and Lisa and the kids do indeed know much more about this than many of us. I’ve long admired how you’re handling this and it’s interesting to hear your comments on issues of hiring and diversity in the agency.
I especially like your saying that you’re white, can’t help it, and yet the universality of love is within your grasp as it is anyone else’s. (Years ago, Athol Fugard made a very similar point when asked how, as a white South African playwright, he felt equipped to create black characters (as in his “Master Harold and the Boys” and other scripts.)
Fantastic of you to have such a sensitive and thoughtfully parsed response, thank you and happy 2016!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hey Porter – Forgive me, but I’m seeking to lift myself from my post-holiday viral muzzy-headedness to thank you for this challenge. My own genre, epic fantasy, does not have a good diversity track record. But I see change happening, incremental and slow but sure. We’ve come a long way from the mostly all-white European medieval settings in the wake of Tolkien.
Speaking of Tolkien, I had my white perspective jarred five or six years ago by a Tor.com sponsored online re-read-along of LOTR moderated by Korean-American Kate Nepveu. Having her point out Tolkien’s chauvinism and racial bias in the text of the book that inspired my journey was humbling and enlightening. Whether it was intentional or not, malicious or not on Tolkien’s part (I certainly don’t believe so), there was so much I’d never noticed. I should write her a note of thanks. Her perspective has changed my reading and writing since. Again, perhaps incremental, but a conscientious change.
In looking back at my recent track record, I can see that I needed this renewed challenge. Gender-wise I’m doing well, but very much need to work on seeking racial and ethnicity diversity, both in characters and in authors. Thanks again, bro!
Bro!
As Erik Anderson alludes to in his fine piece, we do have special concerns with all this, and I think the patience of my “patient pressure” can be the hardest part. It seems it should all be so much easier to take care of, doesn’t it?
Always interesting to me, in fact, that fantasy as a genre has had probs with diversity. To look at Elves, Orcs, and Hobbits (and Ents, gents), you’d think even J.R.R. dwelt in the Land of Diversity, wouldn’t you? Without having made much of a study of it, I would say that I think sometimes diversity that doesn’t reflect our own era’s and culture’s tribes doesn’t look like we think diversity should.
Overall, I think we’ll look back at this era someday and know that we were doing better on the exterior — societal diversity concerns and responses — than on the interior. Most of us can perform, pretty competently, the critical behaviors of tolerance and embrace when we need to. And most of us, at heart, want to do that. Intolerance is ugly even to boors and doing the right thing is not as hard as we sometimes allow it to be.
But trying to understand what we learn about ourselves when we’re honest — and maybe trying bear it and forgive ourselves for it– that’s the final frontier.
As ever, bro, a fantastic diversion to have your input.
Yours in patient pressure,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
This is a post you don’t see out there on the blogosphere every day. Very stimulating, Porter. I grew up in a small New England Wonder Bread town. When I lived in New York City as an adult I became enchanted and curious with the ethnic varieties of people I met. As a reader I love to read the old Chinese poets, Lao Tzu and Li Po. As a writer, among my three novels, I have a Cuban, Russian composer, African college professor. These characters just sort of popped up and sent me scouring for historical and cultural facts, reading biographies, Cuban poetry, Russian novels, and hours of PBS shows. I do agree that creating diverse characters in our fictional world is one path to enriching ourselves and our readers. This question you propose: ‘What reflections do we seek in writing.’ No easy answers. And I suspect will take some serious exploring.
As you say, Paula, no easy answers,
But it sounds great that you have such diverse influences on your own work, sounds like you’re ahead of the curve on this.
I think the question of authors’ authenticity in the creation of their characters has to start with their actual feelings about this in their internal experience. And there’s the toughest element, perhaps because what we find in our leanings and biases may not be what we want the world (or readers or otherwise) to know about us.
Many thanks!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter:
In what I hope is a legitimate effort to avoid “the acquisitive fashion of a boy scout working toward his diversity merit badge,” I resist Erik Anderson’s siren song (provided via another Anderson) to doubt my reading choices.
By cleverly identifying a particular race–Caucasian–with the concept of “genre,” Anderson creates the kind of provocative, attention-grabbing idea that keeps people reading. Unlike articles in juried academic journals, it’s what readers of an “online news and entertainment web site” like Salon look for.
But because I admire witty ideas and phrases like (Erik) Anderson’s, I am at risk of enacting in my reading of him (and you) something else Anderson cautions against: “The very act of identifying with a character or losing yourself in a story can obviate the ways…your reading…is racist.” In other words, being in the “thrall” of Erik Anderson’s cleverness, I risk over-valuing or over-trusting his message.
Encouraging readers to be perpetually reflexive, keeping only one eye committed to the story on the page, while reserving the other eye for self-scrutiny is an approach much in vogue in those departments of the academy devoted to the humanities. It is, in fact, consistent with what you call “the now tired term Tribalism”–in this instance, the tribe of youthful academics in the humanities.
The writer tribe is the one this bifocal approach really applies to. Writers must create, while simultaneously examining what they’re doing.
But for me, all fiction writers are obliged to strive for the same thing: to create stories that hold readers “in thrall.” This applies even to writers from Polynesia. Because publishing is a business in search of such stories, my sense is that publishers seek them out, because that’s what readers respond to.
Are those editors and readers confined in what enthralls them to stories written by members of their own race? I don’t think so, and can site many successful books to make the point. That’s why I’m not persuaded by statistical analysis.
I went to the website for Franklin & Marshall College. It seems like a conventional American college. I also read about Erik Anderson–where his work appears, and what he’s published. I found no reason to doubt his sincerity.
Hi, Barry,
Glad you seem to have felt that Erik Anderson is sincere. So is this Anderson. :)
I don’t think I’ve fully followed your difficulty with all this but thanks, as always, for logging in a comment.
All the best,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Hi Porter,
This topic confounds me because there is an inference of required self loathing that seems to go along with it. I was born white, I cannot change that, just as anyone cannot change the race or culture in which they were born. It’s like DNA, it just is. And when I read article’s like Eric Porter’s my first reaction is that I am supposed to feel shame in my ethnicity over which I have no control.
I also reject the inference that I pick up a book because of the race of the person who wrote it. I pick up a book because it looks interesting to me and I think I might enjoy it or learn something from it, or discover a great new writer. I don’t care who wrote it. And while there are people who may select books based at least in part, by the race of the author, I doubt that most readers do.
As one of your readers commented, publishing is a very tough business. Just getting noticed by readers is a Herculean feat, especially for indie authors. Regardless of whether the author is white, black, Asian, Arab, pink or purple. Readers pick up books based on their interests, and read for different reasons. For example, if a reader prefers to read stories that offer escape they aren’t likely to select a book that details terrible struggles, war, death, poverty or other ‘unpleasant’ topics. If they want to laugh, they will seek out funny books. If they want to think, they will likely seek out literary books. People read to their own tastes, not some arbitrary list based on what someone else believes they should read.
And I think that as long as we use guilt as a sort of crowbar to make people read ‘what they should’ we are going to have problems. And the same would go for guilting writers into including characters of various ethnicities and/or lifestyles in their stories for the sake of diversity, rather than strength of story.
I guess all I’m trying to say is that you cannot force enlightenment on people or shame them into it. These are conclusions they must come to on their own, from their own true hearts. Not something that can be dictated by others.
I don’t really know what the solution is to this problem. Personally, I encourage anyone to pursue writing if that is their dream and to write the stories that are in them to write. Still, it is up to them to find their audience. White or not, authors have no privilege when it comes to readers – they have to win them one reader at a time. And rather than finding yet another thing to drive a wedge between people, we would be better served as writers, to simply support one another and encourage one another in writing our stories and releasing them into the world. There is room for everyone and every story that begs to be told. And readers too.
As always, thanks for this thought provoking post. I’m a real fan.
Annie
Thank you, Annie. You said all that I wanted to say, but could not (ironically?) form into words. :)
Two birds with one stone, then Melissa! :)
Thanks for chiming in, and you’ll see my response to Annie below. Since her comments to me did the job for you, perhaps my response to her will strike a chord as well.
All the best, and thanks for reading me.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Thanks, Annie.
As there is no “Eric Porter” here — we are Erik Anderson and Porter Anderson, lol — I can’t speak for Eric Porter. But I can say, for my own part, that I know of no interest either in Erik Anderson’s or my work in forcing enlightenment on people or shaming them into it. Most assuredly, no one has asked you to change the color of your skin. (It’s not “like” your DNA, in fact, it IS your DNA at work, lol.) I’m white, too, and I have no problem with that. Indeed, I’m proud of my Caucasian ancestry and I hope you join me in that, as well. Nobody’s holding your color against you here. If they are, send them to me.
You’ve generously commented before — as in this case — on my “provocations” here, and so I’m going to share an honest reaction with you: Yours is a kind of response I see to many serious writings today, a response that I would call “Hey, this doesn’t apply to me so why did you write it?”
My quick answer: If something doesn’t seem to match your experience or concept, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong or in any way an affront to you. It means this piece is not about you.
That’s all.
You feel that you are not swayed by racial considerations (and perhaps by other typical human biases, as well) in your choices of reading material? — I’m perfectly prepared to believe that, and I can congratulate you on it, warmly. Congratulations, and I envy you.
What’s interesting, however, is that you seem to think that:
(a) this article said that you do choose material on such criteria, and
(b) no one else chooses material on such criteria.
Neither thing is right. I’m not suggesting, and I don’t think Erik Anderson is, that *every* person chooses material to read out of racial bias. And at the same time, I feel very sure that some people *do* experience more of such impulses in themselves than you tell us you do.
Isn’t it interesting that you take the anecdotal position of your own worldview to form such a powerful rejection of the issues suggested here? You pretty much dismiss the whole thing out of hand.
I’m sorry that you seem to have derived such negativism in all this, there’s certainly no pleasure in giving you an unhappy moment. Not the intent.
And I’m more than a bit baffled about how reading (or writing) beyond one’s usual purview can be expected to, as you put it, “drive a wedge between people.” Readings in other cultures normally can be expected to bring people *closer together*, not drive them apart.
I see Erik Anderson’s original article as a useful and courageous effort to look at the quiet and usually hidden interior examination that many of us conduct — and healthily — of our own motivations and interests. I do say “many” of us, again because I’m fully happy to leave you out of it and I would never make a claim that everybody is doing or thinking or feeling anything whatever.
I believe that we learn a lot by asking why we’re reading what we read, why we’re writing what we write. But no one here is insisting on this in you. I’ll give you a note to get out of class, free of charge. :)
I don’t think guilt is a factor in this, either, certainly it doesn’t have to be. If you find guilt in all this, I believe it must be coming from something in your own construct, and it might be something you’d like to look at.
The toughness of being noticed by readers will continue to intensify, I’m sorry to tell you, because the digital dynamic continues to make it increasingly easy for people to publish. (For example, the SELF-e program from BiblioBoard and Library Journal is effectively being rolled out to make your local library a platform for self-publishing with a system called Pressbooks Public. You get the feeling that some day we’ll all stop by Walgreens to toss in a manuscript and pick up a ready edition of the book a bit later, just like having vacation pictures made into prints.)
You’re facing what I call our “Wall of Content” and it is a rock face soaring up into the skies. There are too many books. Some estimates tell us that the US alone is producing up to 700,000 titles a year. The readership is hopelessly overwhelemed. There are too many people who think they can and should write books. As you know, nothing goes “out of print” in a digital era, and so your work competes with everything ever published, by and large. And while independent authors struggle to find readership, it might be helpful (or not) to remember that even the largest publishing houses must also win readers for every one of their books
But be that as it may, the point of this exercise was neither to demean the difficulty of selling books in a glutted market, nor to suggest self-loathing or recommend guilt.
This column, in fact, tackles a good issue, not a bad one, and it obviously has struck many nerves, which I’m glad to see.
Thanks again for being so engaged in our exploration of it. Until the next time, I remain the one called:
Porter Anderson. :)
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I believe this is an excellent time to talk about this subject. Inclusion in all aspects of our lives is important and like Donald, yes, we are all part of humanity, but we all can do more to live up to what that means in our living and in our writing. Once upon a time, I grew up in a middle class neighborhood of whites, Catholics and Protestants. If there were clashes, they were between the last two–like a priest telling us we couldn’t frequent the YMCA. Fortunately, those days passed, along with lots of others that included racial discrimination–insidious, but present. I wrote about this in a post: Fires a Story About Anna, THE HELP, in My Life. When Anna cleaned for us, I was a child and I had some understanding and empathy–but not enough. In high school and college I began to live in a more integrated world, but teaching in an integrated school truly woke me up. My close friend Linda and I attended what our high school called a Human Relations Workshop. We were eager to participate, our desire to be fully a part of society newly awakened–after all we were college graduates bearing the shining flags of freedom, inclusion and yes, empathy. But the awakening that night was daunting–the African Americans who ran the sessions at one point singled me out and accused my father of raping black women. I didn’t get it–I shouted out NO, I started to cry–how could they say that–my father was a good man who died at a young age. The method was to break me down, to take away the barriers I didn’t realize I had built. I get it now. I had to cross some threshold, to realize how prejudice lodges deeply in the brain and rears its ugly head–sometimes when we are not even aware of it. And we are channeled in our reading and our writing in similar directions. But how wonderful that through reading WE CAN CHANGE. We can welcome NEW IDEAS, that might frighten us at first, but certainly educate us and open us.
I have one diverse character in my WIP. And at the Women Fiction Writer’s Retreat we talked about the need to incorporate diversity in our writing AND HOW TO DO IT. Suggestions are always helpful. Maybe that’s a future post.
You do know that the YMCA is the Young Men’s Christian Association, right? Who knows what could happen in there.
Tina.
:)
Hi, Beth,
Thanks for this comment.
Vis-a-vis your phrase “how prejudice lodges deeply in the brain,” I have a far milder thing that comes to mind from my Southern upbringing (in and near Charleston, seat of the Confederacy), not as difficult a moment as you describe, but something that shook me, too. When I was a boy, my grandparents were quite devoted to several black friends, including a housekeeper named Harry who was treated as near family and yet expected to eat in the kitchen, never at the table with us. I came to realize that my grandparents had developed a way to think of African-American people they knew as their friends, not as black people. People of color whom they did NOT know were considered part of a problematic black sector of society. (A bit like the old vaudeville line, “That’s no woman, that’s my wife.”)
This odd double standard was very common in the old South and can still be found “deeply in the brain” of some in that culture.
So much of this seems to touch on our immense capabilities for denial, doesn’t it?
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I tried to read This Is How You Lose Her, but failed.
I read The Kite Runner and succeeded at reading “someone else’s reflection”.
I like your trying, Tina. And look back at Junot later. Sometimes I find that something I couldn’t get into at one point is much more accessible later.
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter,
This is a timely post. Especially if you look at the Oscar nominations this year, or for that matter the year before. Or look to a couple years back at that Vanity Fair cover shot of all the most important, new upcoming female actors in movies. Glaring white.
It’s a poorly kept secret that possessing an appearance akin with Hitler’s ideal of the master race is an unspoken advantage for a film actor.
Diversity…
It’s a word that’s bandied about a lot. But its true meaning is not really understood much in our western world.
According to most dictionaries diversity means “a range of different things,” there is nothing about labeling and categorizing these differences in that definition. However, when a person of a skin color other than white, or a cultural creed other than western, or a sexual preference other than heterosexual, manages a breakthrough in arts like writing, their art is then boxed into a misnomer label of “black writing”, “Hispanic writing”, or “alternate voices.”
And that to me is where the problem lies and maybe the solution.
Because the more we read these “other voices”, the more we begin to understand what science already knows, our similarities outweigh our differences.
There is no “other”. there is only us. It’s a scientifically proven fact. “Other” and “race” are manmade labels and just as erroneous as the concept of “royal blood”. DNA proves this conclusively. Diversity is the human condition.
Hey, Bernadette,
You’re making an important point here, and one for which we so far really have no good answer. I’m going to take the somewhat perverse sounding stance and say I’d be careful about heading down “Just Like Us” Lane. :)
In fact, I’ll go so far here as to say that the reason the Motion Picture Academy’s failure this year is so frustrating is not because the film industry isn’t recognizing “how much alike we are” but how significantly and validly different we are.
We can, basically, understand “diversity” campaigns only as meaning that they raise up and give visibility to those who are in one way or another outside the majority. “Not like us” does not have to be a criticism. It is, as it happens, more of a fact than we like to admit at times.
This actually is perfectly understandable. Nature has animals and plants “recognize” in one way or another their own and others’ delineations, after all, so that procreation and species integrity is maintained. “The other” may be more conceptual than tangible in human concerns but boundaries of many kinds are integral to how our world functions.
The answer is to remember that this is part of the fix, not a barrier. It’s an intriguing and challenging stage in the journey, not the destination. Granted, it makes many feel better to think, “Oh we’re all just alike.” But exploring and cultivating differences is probably more honest, engaging, and informative, maybe more entertaining, funny, and endearing, ultimately, than heading for the sentimental fix: “It’s a small, small world after all, after all.”
No, it’s a big, big world, thanks anyway, Disney, and we need to stop lying about it. We just freaking don’t understand each other real well at times, and that might be just great!
I recall as a kid being rather afraid of an elderly blind woman who lived near us until my mother got me and my sister involved in picking out a Christmas present for her that would be “nice to the touch, since she can’t see it.” Suddenly her difference was fascinating and I had a way to think about it and maybe honor it without having to think “she’s just like us.” She wasn’t just like us. She was blind. And taking that on board and responding to it as a reality not to be covered up was much more edifying and instructive to me than trying to smooth over differences and act as if this person wasn’t different from us. From then on, I had a way to approach this (very nice) woman. I could think of something I might do that she could recognize — an arm to lean on at church, etc. We knew her by her difference, not by her being “just like us.” And finally, she came into focus.
Diversity is, indeed, the human condition, as you say, but — with respect for what you’re saying — I think it might be those very differences we need to celebrate and not worry so much about the commonalities, which, as you say, are a fait accompli.
We fear difference. Any difference, all difference. It unsettles us. My heart sinks when I hear newlyweds talk about “how much alike we are.”
I’d like to see us get better at welcoming Difference. Which, by the way, does not mean we have to like a given difference or practice it or perform it in some silly way. But getting along better has never meant we have to get married and have a family. Cordial accommodation, healthy curiosity, trusting exchange, and respect for boundaries — for what makes us different, not the same — might very well be the key we’re so often missing.
Our similarities automatically outweigh our differences, as you say. So why not focus on the coolness of how radiantly we’re NOT alike?
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I grew up reading a lot of British and Indian literature — the whole issue of diversity was a non-issue. After I came to the US, I discovered a lot of American fiction, mostly by white people, but also ethnic minorities. There aren’t enough books written by minority groups, but is it because the general public is not interested, or because the group they target won’t buy the books? I don’t know the answer. Like anything, stories are market-driven and for a publisher to take on an author, he has to know the books can sell. I am so thankful for the publishers who do take a chance on something different. I remember reading a little Dutch translation of a children’s book: The Book of Everything by Gus Kuijer. Such a gem. Later I learned that it didn’t do very well. But it was one of the publisher’s favorite books so he was pleased to bring it to the American market.
I bristled at the idea of having cameo “diverse” characters just to have them there. This does not help increase diversity; it only perpetuates stereotypes. Every character needs to be there for a reason that makes sense. I too would like to see more ethnic MCs in genre fiction. And that goes for religious diversity as well (don’t even get me started on that …)
We have to write what interests us and hope there’s a market for it. In the end, we may have different backgrounds, but the best stories in all their specificity point to our shared humanity.
Hey, Vijaya,
Thanks for this — and no, preacher’s son that I am, I won’t get you started on religious diversity, LOL.
Your point about marketability is right and somehow far too easily overlooked by folks who have trouble remembering the business side of literature. Publishers, especially the majors — which are large corporations and usually parts of even larger corporations — are driven by market reality. And finding “the audience in diversity” can still be more difficult than we might think. (It’s one thing for many of us well-meaning people to say, “Hey, we’ll buy those books and pay for those films,” and quite another thing to get us to come through once in the privacy of our book-buying patterns and film-watching habits.)
What I like most in your comment is that you get at the universality that we once seemed to be more in touch with in good literature. Maybe we just trusted it more. Something in contemporary life is less subtle, less willing to find the universality in something. We seem to want more ham-handed demonstrations of diversity at times than we have always had, don’t we? I agree with you that tokenism — those “cameo ‘diverse’ characters” you refer to — isn’t a good answer. It responds to the ham-handed impulse but doesn’t authentically integrate the interests of an author’s creativity with much more than a staged response to diversity demands.
Nevertheless, I think that Erik Anderson is right when he talks of reading authors from other cultures and races and stances than his own. If they’re published without compromising their own authenticity, we can hear their voices. And that’s worth doing.
Thanks again,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
This post got me thinking about my own reading habits, and of course, my writing.
I love diversity in the stories I read and in the ones I tell. My life, through experience and travel, has been peppered by people of all stripes, so why wouldn’t I want to include a variety in my tales?
Also, because I experienced prejudice growing up (the daughter of Ukrainian immigrants), those trials informed me and though it was a painful part of my life and I wouldn’t want to wish those experiences on anyone, I am richer for having gone through them. Maybe because of what I went through, I’ve developed empathy for anyone experiencing prejudice of any kind.
Like this year’s Academy Award nominations, I am surprised that there were only white actors nominated. I continue to find racism shocking, no matter what cloak it wears.
It’s up to us as writers, not to necessarily adopt a mission to change people’s minds, but to tell the truth. Each story, if well told, can erase or alter pre-conceived ideas of certain races, religions and sexual orientations. I’m an eclectic reader. For example, I found that books like The Help, The Kite Runner, Honeymoon in Purdah, and the one I’m currently reading, A Mountain of Crumbs, have given me a new appreciation of cultures I’m not familiar with. And I have other books on my shelves from black and indigenous authors that I can’t wait to get into.
As for including those who are different from me by way of background or colour in my stories, I do what I can as long as the story makes sense and are ones I can tell.
Hi, Diana,
I like how you write, “As for including those who are different from me by way of background or colour in my stories, I do what I can as long as the story makes sense and are ones I can tell.”
The rational protection of story and good sense — not crossing over a line you can’t handle because of lack of experience, etc. — is perfectly right. If you overweight the integrity of your work with the effort to expand its base, you’ve ended up with a warped product and that won’t help the cause of greater diversity.
Nicely said: “It’s up to us as writers, not to necessarily adopt a mission to change people’s minds, but to tell the truth.”
Thanks for this,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
I had an interesting conversation the other day about the characters in my latest novel. I asked my friend if she identified with any of them. She said “Yes. I lived this life. How did you get inside my head?”
I wonder then, if what we write, panders to our demographic, the same way cultural writers pander to theirs. I write what I want to read. And I read what I want to write.
I will be 53 in April. I certainly don’t read the same kinds of books that I read in my twenties. I find myself drawn now to characters that are my age. Who remember when there were telephone booths, and moon landings, and record albums. I went to Catholic school and wore a uniform back in the 70’s. I remember Andy Williams and his Christmas Special. I know a lot of you who read that last sentence probably did too.
I don’t know if it’s “whiteness”, or the kindred experiences that we as part of our demography remember. And we can identify with that in the writing. Perhaps it’s comfort we crave by reading in “whiteness.”
Keenly perceptive, Anne.
I agree completely. Much of what can drive our choices in reading and other engagement in cultural events and entertainment are far less related to social, racial, diversity-relevant choices than to sheer familiarity, comfort, nostalia.
One of the hardest things to remember in a diversity-obsessed era (even as right as much of that obsession may be) is that we tend to assign political motivations to such effects without very good cause.
The flip side of this, of course — and those who remind us of this, like Erik Anderson, are not wrong — is that we need to become more conscious of what our natural inclinations for something as familiar and cozy as an Andy Williams special means we’re missing. There might be something far less familiar available that we’d find fascinating or at least informative if we tried it instead of settling down for the 4,555th rerun of Peanuts special, right?
The point is that you’re not wrong, you’re very right. This is, after all, the origin of so much surprise for many of us when we find ourselves accused of racism or sexism or some other element of intolerance when, in our minds, we’ve simply reached for what we know, done what we do, walked where we usually walk.
If anything, the real value in what someone like Erik Anderson’s work gives us is the chance to be shaken with him, to let his concern niggle at us a little bit. Maybe, in fact, it’s our characters who need to find that they no longer remember phone booths, moon landings, and record albums. What goes down when now happens to them?
Much to contemplate, and from a good point of honest reference, thanks to you.
Cheers,
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
“[T]he black panelists never once suggested that they, themselves, might bring white or Asian or Hispanic or East European or Arab characters into their own work.”
This sounds like you’re extrapolating what was said in this specific panel, by this specific panel of black authors, with the actions of every single black writer. And skates perilously close to the falsehood of “reverse racism.”
Unless you have read every novel written by these unnamed panelists, I don’t know how you could even assume that they are not inclusive of all races/ethnicities. Also, did you stop to think that maybe, just maybe, these authors did not feel it was their place to discuss how to write non-black POC? Also, how do you know one or all were not of mixed heritage or Afro-Latin@?
I suppose this column was written with good intentions, but it echoes loudly of resistance to the premise.
Overall, POC are forced to enter the inner lives of white people/characters of any background, to ingest and digest them as universal hero/ines. Yet, for white readers, the reverse seems to spark anguish, resentment, and the ubiquitous “I don’t see color, so I don’t base my reading habits on race–and it’s racist to do so.” Completely ignoring the infrastructure churning in the background that makes it seem like you choose the best books based on your writing tastes.
That a narrow range of diverse voices are represented by agents and published by traditional publishers, that a tiny percentage of these voices make it to the front shelves of B&N, that you have to browse for these voices in order for them to appear in your Amazon recommendations, that most of these voices don’t get ARCs circulated to book bloggers, and so on…that doesn’t even occur to you.
Hi, Evangeline,
In the same way that you assume I have overreached in terms of what I know of the panel event I describe, you do the same when you declare that something “doesn’t even occur” to me.
In truth, you know nothing of what occurs to me.
And you don’t know that anything in my article “skates perilously close to the falsehood of ‘reverse racism,'” because you are extrapolating, yourself, from what I have written in order to make the points you want to make about the experiences of people of color. Your tone—it comes across as angry, sarcastic, “maybe, just maybe”—is the kind of thing that contributes much more to discord than to understanding; to hostility rather than interest; to intolerance rather than communication.
Did I “stop to think”?
Yes, I stopped to think. Many times.
I do that a lot, stopping to think.
In fact, Evangeline, I recommend it to you.
And when you write, “I suppose this column was written with good intentions,” you suppose correctly.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
As soon as someone says, “I don’t care if people are green or blue” or “I don’t see race”, or “there’s no differences between us, we’re all human”, what comes next is their own defensiveness.
All you have to do is reach out on the internet to easily find groups that are primarily made up of people of color. All the book recommendations you need to eliminate the bias of major publishers are there. Try askharriet.com, or The Ladies Finger, or TuBooks (kids and YA), Diversity In Fantasy, Diverse Book Tours, and WeNeedDiverseBooks. And yes, read a book JUST BECAUSE the author isn’t white!
Read, then recommend. Make an effort!
Rightly said, Eileen.
“As soon as someone says, ‘I don’t care if people are green or blue’ or ‘I don’t see race’, or ‘there’s no differences between us, we’re all human’, what comes next is their own defensiveness.”
Exactly. They protest too much, and to me the most dangerous of those defensive comments is “there’s no difference between us.” There are, in fact, differences between us. And the problem so many people have in our culture with differences is what’s really at issue. It’s actually great that there are differences between us. Trying to smooth them over is such a waste, when it’s actually the differences (the word is “diverse,” after all) that make us such an intriguing array of human beings, not the commonalities.
We are terrified of difference, aren’t we? In another comment on this piece, I’ve mentioned how sorry I always am to hear newlyweds carry on about how “we like all the same things.” Why is that a token of something positive? Because they’re afraid of being different, distinct people.
We love to chant our allegiance to individualism in this country, but in fact we’re horrified by it.
That’s what really has to change, and will do so only over time, of course as we keep that “patient pressure” in place on ourselves to try new things, look for something scary and different.
Great to have your input. I’m with you: Read, then recommend. Make an effort!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
In Sisters in Crime, our annual publishing summit report will look this year at diversity in the mystery and crime writing world. We started out thinking we’d be looking at publishers, reviewers, and booksellers and calling them to task, then quickly realized we needed to start by looking at ourselves, and so our project is quickly morphing into a “report for change.” All institutions need, I think, to start by examining ourselves. And so — as both Porter and Erik Anderson are stressing — do we as individuals. It’s critical to read, review, and recommend more widely, yes, but also to think and discuss. It’s a great start to deliberately choose to read books by people outside our own categories — my reading challenge for year — but to paraphrase the old bromide, if you can count ’em, there aren’t enough.
Craft issues go hand in hand with “who are you reading?” and “how does it challenge your thinking?” SinC’s annual SinC into Great Writing workshop, the day before Bouchercon, will focus on the craft of writing across our differences, featuring a special keynote speaker. (Sorry — can’t say the name yet!) If you’re writing mystery and crime, I hope you’ll be interested in the report and consider the workshop.
A terribly helpful comment, Leslie,
And my apologies for the late reply — lots of international travel intervened.
This is the key and you say it well:
“All institutions need, I think, to start by examining ourselves. And so — as both Porter and Erik Anderson are stressing — do we as individuals. ”
As it’s dawned on me and Erik, certainly, I hope that more organizations can take as enlightened an approach as Sisters in Crime and the SinC workshop are doing. This is terrific, and the key is to remember that these need NOT be negative events in which everybody stands around confessing some sort of limitation in terms of reading or writing with a wider purview. Instead, this can simply be a freeing, exciting exploration together, of even a small part of great genre writing and its potential. If someone did no more than look closely at cozies and determine what track record and potential for diversification of theme and character and comment might be there, everybody would benefit.
Congratulations on what you’re doing. And could you please be sure I get the word on the keynote speaker you’re referring to when the news is available? My contact page is here, love to hear from you: https://porteranderson.com/contact/
Thanks again, all the best with it!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
This rings truer for literary fiction than certain branches of fantasy and science fiction, where authors often assume a future or alternative universe should include diversity, whether alien or human.
A few days ago, I realized I hadn’t read any good escapist fiction months. I perused my Kindle, and stopped at the first fiction title I saw, something I’d bought ages ago: Forest of the Heart, by Charles de Lint.
Its protagonist is a Latino woman, another character is a Native American man, and several others are immigrants — human and non — to the locale. He’s not so subtly but creatively exploring what it means to be an outsider. His genre has done this for decades.
I’ll admit I’m not so good at seeking out BAME authors unless they hit the best-seller lists.
It takes a great deal of effort and self-awareness to seek outside one’s milieu. I constantly try NOT to write about white female middle-aged late bloomers, yet I usually end up there. We all have a long way to go in this regard, not just as writers but as people. Initiating the discussion is the first step. Well worth a Campari, Porter.
Thank you, Debra,
And thanks for this smart comment. It really is hard to get outside one’s own milieu, I think we all find it harder than it sounds on first thought.
I agree, too, that the literary realm tends to have less track record in this than fantasy and sci-fi (though many debate this, especially in fantasy, per Vaughn Roycroft’s good comment on this article). I tend to find that literary work arrives from one quarter or another, crossing fewer boundaries in a given book. And that, of course, puts the onus back on us to try to read from some of the quarters to which we’re not naturally inclined. Again, not easy.
Good on you for thinking so cogently on it and trying, though, this is where we all need to go.
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter, I apologize for my late response here, but this is wonderful article! As a historical fiction writer, I welcome diversity on every level–historical context, language, foods, customs, peoples. I wouldn’t consider myself “the problem”. What sells at market is. For example, I have a degree in Cultural Geography with an emphasis on Latin America–politics, commodities, customs. I did my field work in Belize, a hugely diverse culture racially, culturally, and historically, as well as a few other countries in the same region. I’m DYING to write a story set in Latin America. In fact, I have two ideas in mind that I’ve been chewing on since I began writing. The question is, would it sell? I’ve been counseled by fellow well-established author friends to steer clear of that path. It won’t sell, they say. And if it does to a publisher, it won’t sell at market. What gives me the right, after all, to write from a Latin woman or man’s POV? I’m afraid this is how a book set there would be received.
Fear is what prevents many of us from venturing in that direction.
That being said, all three of my novels are set in a country not my own. What gives me that right to call myself an expert on France? For starters, I’m white and the majority of the reading population there and here who read about France are as well. Where does that leave me? DYING to push that boundary. In my fourth WIP that I’m just beginning, I’m tackling this very issue–race and socio-economic class. We’ll see how the sparks fly. ;)
Hey, Heather,
Sorry for MY tardiness, too – as soon as I’d put out this article I got onto a plane and was swept away in travel for a bit, only now getting back to all these good comments like yours.
This is such a practical issue you’re raising here. We have to realize that authors, like publishers, are constrained by market realities (unless making no money is just fine with them, lol) and that there are real questions about how diversity-friendly a readership is waiting for more diversified material. The outlook, at least on the face of it, isn’t good, I agree.
One of the most interesting explorations of this in my recent memory is Barbara Kingsolver’s “The Lacuna,” with its Trotsky-era Mexican basis — not at all safe in terms of what a lot of the primary US audience might be ready to read. She pulled it off beautifully, of course, and it’s one of the most unique bits of historical fiction I’ve read in ages, but there must have been a lot of questions in the minds of her team at Harper.
Good for you in trying to tackle this in your next book, and all the best with it. Keep asking the hard questions and testing your own readiness to experiment, that’s how that “patient pressure” on ourselves works.
Thanks again!
-p.
On Twitter: @Porter_Anderson
Porter, I just wanted to say that I applaud you for considering this topic, for writing about it boldly and with an open heart, for addressing the wide range of comments, and for recognizing that we all have so much work still to do.