Fascinating Piece on Reviews and Diversity

[davidgillon]

Malinda Lo, one of the major voices behind We Need Diverse Books, has produced an essay looking at how US trade reviews (i.e. meant for booksellers, librarians etc rather than the general book-buying public) react to diversity. The examples are YA, as that's her field, but I suspect things are probably even worse in other genres. Some of the examples will definitely make you wince, and the suggestion of a 'diversity ceiling' - that major parts of the industry don't believe a book dealing with more than one minority is viable - is particularly disturbing. Definitely worth a read if you're interested in diversity, intersectionality and/or publishing.

Perceptions of Diversity in Book Reviews 

Comments

[spaceoperadiva]

That was a very interesting read, thanks. I hadn't previously considered glossaries as a potential source of cultural aggression.

[davidgillon]

Yeah, me either, but as soon as you start to think about it, the point they aren't requested for other books, the ones with that straight, white, probably male, middle class universal narrative everything else is expected to conform to betrays there's privilege at work. (I'm kind of horrified I needed this pointing out when I've done so much thinking about diverse books in the past year).

[spaceoperadiva]

In middle school, I had a teacher who believed that fictional works with glossaries were not trustworthy. Her view was that glossaries were either lazy writing or at least encouraged lazy reading, and she was having none of that for her class. I suspect that she would have agreed with this deconstruction of glossaries as well.

There's probably material to write a really good paper in deconstructing glossaries in SF/F, especially considering how many series have not only glossaries but their own encyclopedias and atlases.

[davidgillon]

Good point, though we have an excuse for not being familiar for fictional worlds, which isn't so true for 'the other side of town' situations the article is taking on.

There's an interesting multi-way tension in this, from one side your writing shouldn't leave people needing a glossary, from the opposite there's the admonition against data dumps, while from a different direction there's the societal point that we shouldn't need glossaries to explain people who live the other side of town/the road/next door, vying with the reality that clearly some people do, and the other reality that not all white English speakers are completely familiar with American society.

[jesse_the_k]

Thanks for pointing me to this excellent essay. It made me rethink words often used in reviews which reveal a colonialist standpoint:

begin quote  I hope that when a reviewer encounters a diverse book, they will think intently about what they mean if they are tempted to describe the book as, say, “believable.” What are they truly getting at? Because there are better words to use: well-executed, daring, honest, real. quote ends

[davidgillon]

When I think about intersectionality in books (which is what that believable is usually being deployed against, I inevitably come back to the fact I probably know more gay crips than straight crips, so to reflect my world...

When we can run into things that denormalise us in the places we go for comfort, then it shows how things need to change.