Vol. 30: Making the implicit explicit

Author

Allison Punch
January 04, 2022

One of my core communication values is about ensuring the implicit is explicit. I’m often wary of repeating myself, but as someone who has been sharing my thoughts about books on the internet for the past four years, I try to remain accountable to myself by remembering that people have various entry points to my work.

I’ve gained three subscribers in the past week (hi!) and realistically many of you didn’t see that IG story from years ago where I talked about how publishing is racist. I also don’t know if you follow the same content creators or news outlets that I do that discuss this (though you should - more on that later). Also, some things bear repeating over and over until the issue is resolved.

All this to say, you may have heard me say this before but we're going to talk about reading diversely. Specifically, reading authors of color in a white supremacist world.

Reading Diversely at its core means reading a wide range of books. A person is not “diverse.” A single book is not even “diverse.”

I want to be clear that I’m not coming for Black or POC-led organizations or initiatives that use the moniker “diverse” to communicate efficiently. That’s not my business. I’m talking to people (especially white people) who will read a book by a Black queer writer and say it was a “diverse book” rather than being specific about the author’s identity, who use “diverse” as a tokenization term.

I’m talking about reading diversely in terms of authors' gender and sexuality to account for the intrinsic racism, white supremacy and homophobia within publishing. Even if it feels like more books by Black authors or authors of color have been hitting the bestseller lists, there’s plenty of data to back up that it’s nowhere near equity - whether in terms of the sheer number of books getting published, the publicity budget disparity between white authors and nonwhite authors, or the many microaggressions and macroaggresisons that authors of color deal with daily.

I really like the term “decentering whiteness” but, being vulnerable here, I’m hesitant to use it as a white person in this context because this newsletter still represents my white experiences as a white person reading books by authors who don’t look like me. Is that my white fragility? Or is it a desire to communicate concisely? A bit of both?

Truthfully, I read mostly books by Black American writers so I don’t know that I can even call my reading taste “diverse.” On one hand, blackness is not a monolith - I’m reading authors of varying ages, genders, sexualities, regions and backgrounds. I also don’t personally think it’s a problem if most or all the books I read are by Black writers because they’re amazing books AND Black authors are still woefully underrepresented and underinvested in within publishing. I do however want to be aware of what blindspots I may have related to reading authors from a diverse (correct usage here) range of racial and ethnic backgrounds.

I took a look at my reading breakdown for 2021. If you’re curious, here are my very general, roughly tallied stats. There are lots of assumptions made in this demographic date so I don’t think it’s perfectly accurate by any means.

  • I finished 59 books in 2021.

  • By race/ethnicity (which are not the same thing, so again, my categorization is janky): 18 by white authors (4 which were Meg Cabot, LOL), 34 by Black writers, 2 by Latinx writers, 5 AAPI writers, and 2 by Indigenous writers (both Joy Harjo - so though I read 2 books, technically I read only 1 Indigenous author).

  • By genre: 29 fiction, 30 nonfiction

  • By author gender: 8 by men, 49 by women, and 4 by nonbinary writers. Casey McQuiston is represented twice, so I only read 3 different nonbinary writers. For books like Attached that were co-written by authors of 2 different genders, I counted both co-authors but for Blackout, which was collectively written by 6 women, I didn’t count them individually.

  • I also roughly guesstimated authors who are out and counted 19 books by authors within the LGBTQ community. Maybe someday I’ll write a whole essay on how complicated this data point is (you can also read this one). Publishing queer writers matters, but gatekeeping sexuality is not the path to liberation.

Now for my reflections: This past year was one of the first that I wasn’t super rigorous in reflecting back the demographics of the books I read throughout that year. Reading non-white authors as a whole is not particularly challenging for me even without paying attention. Years ago, I intentionally shifted my reading tastes - what books I own, the bookstores where I shop, who I take recommendations from. That said, the lack of regular reflection is evident in how woefully underrepresented AAPI, Latinx and Indigenous writers are in my list. I don’t even want to say “I’ll do better” because if you’ve been following my bookstagram over the years, you may know this is a consistently underrepresented area for me to the extent that those words could feel hollow. But I do know that it’s a problem.

If you’re a reader, particularly a white reader, who hasn’t reflected back on the demographics of their 2021 reading, I kindly ask you to do so. Here’s where I feel like a broken record: You're not well read if all you read is white people. Reading authors of color or queer writers isn’t charity work. It’s a step towards living an antiracist life, but it’s not sufficient. These books are just freaking good and because publishing is so racist, as a reader, we need to be intentional in what we’re picking up to both ensure we’re not missing amazing reads and to send what little message we can to publishers and booksellers.

And finally, as a white person, I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that readers, writers, Bookstagrammers and publishing professionals of color have been talking about this for much longer than I have. Check out this Publishers Weekly article from last year (which features a lot of the hard data to back up what I’m saying!) and this Ted Talk from Lupita. If you’re interested in tracking your own demographic data, I recommend becoming a part of The Stacks Pack since Traci offers an amazing spreadsheet.  Book Riot is another amazing resource that consistently features books by queer authors and BIPOC authors in all sorts of genres. One of the lies told to us by this racist book world is that BIPOC "just don't write good thrillers/history/etc." This is not true - you just have to be intentional and look. For other initiatives to decenter whiteness in your reading life run by some badass content creators, check out Cree Myles’ Allways Black or Melanated Readers’ 20 Books by Black Women. These challenges exist because they matter.

P.s. Tomorrow is my favorite holiday aka MY WIFE’S BIRTHDAY! This gorgeous, intelligent woman is turning 30 and I’m so excited to celebrate her all month long. I asked her for a favorite cause or nonprofit to include in today’s newsletter so you could make a donation in her honor and she said “an unproblematic environmental org.” Here are some suggestions (gratitude to chateau party friends for their guidance!).