Reading Diverse Books
A friend recommended Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz. It is so much fun, he promised. Totally your thing. And he’s right: I just read Magpie Murders, and it was totally my thing.
But I felt enormously guilty when I was about twenty pages in because I was looking back over my reading list for the year and realized that the vast majority of the books were by white men. And here I was starting yet another book by a white man, and I was loving it. It was like eating a veggie burger for every single meal: it’s a protein source, so we can’t say that it’s “bad” for you, but it’s never a sound idea to have a single item defining your diet. Even if you love veggie burgers. Even if veggie burgers tastes really good, and you’re now a grown-up and not having your dietary choices dictated by another human being. (That’s, like, an analogy to being in school and being told what to read. Or something like that. I hate being told what to read.)
I spent the duration of reading Magpie Murders talking about this realization with friends and family, and everyone kept missing the point and making book suggestions. It’s not that I don’t know about other books. My TBR pile is very diverse. Building my TBR pile isn’t the problem. I’m talking about this because I’m bothered by this.
The problem is that I tend to read a lot of genre fiction (science fiction, mystery, horror, or fantasy) to relax, and those genres are clogged up with white men. They write enjoyable books, and they’re prolific writers. When they produce another novel, I’m likely to grab it and push the other options on my TBR list to the bottom of the pile. I tend to go with an author I know I like over someone I don’t know yet. It’s book choices without deep thinking.
Anyway, I’m chasing Magpie Murders with Jade Chang’s The Wangs vs. the World just because I felt like I should have something other than another veggie burger. It’s totally enjoyable (I’m still in the middle of it) — a case in point; there are other delicious books out there. But I’ll also admit that post-Magpie Murders, without thinking, my hand was about to grab a Robin Sloan book I just bought.
Then I checked. He’s a white man. I went back to the TBR pile and consciously brought Jade Chang to the top.
If I made a list of my favourite books of all time and looked down that list at the authors who created those books, there are a lot white men. What do you do when you have a set of authors you love, ones where you’re willing to give every book they write at least a chance, but they’re mostly white men?
And you don’t know if you like their voice because you were taught to like their voice, or you like their voice because it honestly appeals to you and entertains you?
All I know is that when I look at my favourite authors, they tend to be British and they tend to be men and they tend to write genre fiction and they tend to be white. Some are alive and some are dead. But it’s like eating meal after meal after meal of veggie burgers, and knowing it isn’t healthy but loving veggie burgers at the same time.
I don’t apologize for liking Lev Grossman or Neil Gaiman or David Nicholls or Jasper Fforde or JRR Tolkien or CS Lewis or Blake Crouch or, now, Anthony Horowitz. But I clearly need to slip other writers in between or risk having a limited point-of-view when it comes to fiction.
What does your favourite author list look like?
10 comments
Writing has been such a male-dominated field for as long as I can remember. I think a big part of this comes from social suppprt and make-up, but there’s also an underbelly where certain sources have been accepted and supported over others. Which makes me now wonder if there’s an online space for those who can’t crack into the formal publishing world. Or is it something that’s still untouched territory (I’m hoping for the latter)?
I read a lot of sci-fi which tends to be very white,but I also love young adult fiction and nonfiction those tend to be a lot more diverse. I have had this bookmarked to add too my Goodreads list for a while: https://theportalist.com/black-science-fiction-and-fantasy-authors
I have a lot of white women, although I recently read two books by Celeste Ng and loved them so much. Still a woman but… not white, so maybe a bit of diversity. I try to include diversity but sometimes it’s just easier to stick with what I know. There’s a lot that is hard in life and reading for enjoyment shouldn’t be. My feeling is that as long as I’m not avoiding books *because the author is a race or gender, I can’t worry about everything.
I do consciously choose books with diverse characters and authors for my young daughters, but that’s more about showing the world for the diverse place it is. And who knows what they will gravitate towards as they make more of their own selections?
I have been consciously trying to diversify my reading list (authors and subject matter) – sometimes it’s successful, sometimes not. I’ve always been a fan of the romance novel, though, so I have leaned less heavily on white male authors. I’m still gonna read every Stephen King that comes out, regardless. But, now I don’t feel obligated to read things like Infinite Jest or any more of the classics than I’ve already read. And when picking other books to read, I’m loving the diverse authors lists that have popped up over the last few years.
(I feel like I may have left a similar comment here before; if so, I apologize for the duplication.)
Over the years, most of my favorite authors have been white men. However, through no intention whatsoever, I noticed about halfway through this year that I have read mostly female authors in 2018. Some of the books were chosen by my book club (and as a result, not necessarily my choices), but most of them were books I chose to read.
I’m not sure whether my tastes are changing, or whether it’s just becoming easier to find books by female authors in the marketplace these days.
Most of my reads are female-authored and many of them aren’t white. There’s a lot of really excellent work out there not by white men. It’s just often harder to find because, you know, patriarchy. And the stuff that does make it tends to be amazing, because it has to be just to be published.
YA has been enjoying a huge surge of amazing not-white-men authored books. Romance has been enjoying an increase in self-published not-white/not-CIS authors. And I’m hoping that the film success of Jenny Han and the Crazy Rich Asians franchise will encourage mainstream publishers to publish more diverse books by diverse authors. I LOVE reading books that take well-known tropes in different directions because the author and the protagonists have different perspectives. I’ve really been enjoying GLBT stories and light historicals with minority protagonists. Not every diverse story has to be a difficult but important read. And fluff doesn’t have to be 100% hetero white (or white with a sassy marginalized best friend).
Personally, I don’t worry too much about whether my reading list is diverse enough. I read what I want to read, the authors & topics that interest me — although I will admit to trying to get in a Canadian author here & there for patriotic reasons. 😉 I will admit that most of the writers I read are probably white, although I think I get a good mix of women & men. I read a lot of non-fiction, a lot of memoirs, and a lot of feminist writing, which probably helps balance things out a bit. By the way, I have “Magpie Murders” in my TBR pile, so I’m glad to hear you liked it!
Certainly if I’m in a book club or taking a class, though, I’d expect to be exposed to authors & genres I might not otherwise read.
Out of curiosity, I checked my Goodreads lists for the past couple of years. I’ve read 21 books so far this year — 13 by women, 8 by men (including one Asian — Kevin Kwan & “Crazy Rich Asians”). Last year (2017), I read 17 books — 7 by women, 10 by men. In 2016, I read 24 — 12 by men, 12 by women.
Most of my list is women, but this is partially due to a guilty pleasure in romance novels (generally Victorian era). But my favorite sci fi
/fantasy authors are women – Madeleine L’Engle, Anne McCaffery, Anne Bishop. N.K Jemison is on my TBR as a conscious choice because of an article I read about the Hugo awards a few years ago. As you might expect, the voters for the Hugo’s tend to be white dudes. And they tend to vote for white dudes. Well, there was a year where N.K. Jemison’s book and Ready Player One were both up and then there was “outrage” about diverse authors being up for awards. So, I vote with my wallet.
But I also enjoy Patrick Rothfuss and Dan Brown. It’s about balance and modeling for my daughters (who are currently working their way through Harry Potter and Goodnight stories for Rebel Girls).
This is interesting, and I am curious why it bothers you so much to have (or not have) diversity in your authors. I am not sure I believe that a book will feature diversity just based on who writes it. I think a lot of that is subjective. I agree with Beth’s statement about reading for enjoyment and choosing authors.
I find this so interesting because while I know most of what I read is from female authors based on the genre, I really have no idea their race or ethnic background or even where they are from. I read on a Kindle mostly, so you don’t see the author on the flap in color, if at all. And I usually skip those pages anyway. So I really don’t pay attention to how diverse or not the authors are, I read what I want to read.
Ah, yes! I was just given a recommendation to read the Magpie Murders, too. I read a lot of women, and I love memoirs. But, now that I think on it, a lot of memoirs I’ve read are white women of some kind of privilege. I do love reading about experiences in other countries, other religions, and other cultures. I’ve also read Celeste Ng and Kevin Kwan lately, and my favorite new fantasy book last year was Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi, which is based in West African mythology and culture. I love Toni Morrison, but I also love Margaret Atwood. I feel like at school we read a lot of diverse books, and there’s the movement #weneeddiversebooks that is awesome because it’s not just race, it’s sexuality and gender identity and religion and other factors. I could do a better job reading non-heterosexual books, and getting more perspective into what it is like to be transgender. You have inspired me to shake up the order of my reading list, too! (Especially since I’m reading a British white man RIGHT NOW…)