People of color offer testimony about their experiences in publishing and are dismissed, more often than not. Instead of problem-solving, we count as a means of highlighting just how underrepresented people of color are, in all area of publishing, and how very little changes. This inability for publishing to find people of color is one of the great unsolved mysteries of our time, I suppose. We are many but somehow, publishing can’t seem to find us unless we do the work of three or four writers and catch a few lucky breaks. On and on it goes.Īnd, of course, it’s not as if there are no people of color who are eminently capable of participating in publishing. People of color are underrepresented in bookselling. People of color are underrepresented editorially, in book marketing, publicity, and as literary agents. When our books are published, we fight, even more than white writers, for publicity and reviews. There are not enough writers of color being published.
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I mean, look at this room, where I can literally count the number of people of color among some 700 booksellers. This problem extends to absolutely every area of the industry. I am so very tired of talking about diversity. And here we are today, talking about diversity yet again. We talk about it and talk about it and talk about it and nothing much ever seems to change. Diversity is a problem, seemingly without solutions. The word diversity is, in its most imprecise uses, a placeholder for issues of inclusion, recruitment, retention and representation. In a 2015 article for The New York Times Magazine, Anna Holmes wrote about the dilution of the word diversity, attributing its loss of meaning to “a combination of overuse, imprecision, inertia, and self-serving intentions.” The word diversity has as of late become so overused as to be meaningless. We are asked to offer “good” white people who “mean well,” absolution from the ills of racism. We are asked about how white people can do better and feel better about diversity or the lack thereof. People of color are not asked about our areas of expertise as if the only thing we are allowed to be experts on is our marginalization.
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This is the state of most industries, and particularly contemporary publishing. When I received the invitation to speak at Winter Institute, I knew, even before I got the details, that I would be asked to talk about diversity in some form or fashion. For many, Roxane Gay’s opening keynote, which called on booksellers to stop talking about diversity and do something and to step up their role in providing sanctuary, set the tone for one of the most political and energizing bookseller gatherings in recent memory. With demonstrations going on simultaneously at cities around the country, booksellers felt a sense of urgency, not witnessed in previous years, about their role in changing times. Given the current political climate, the Winter Institute that just ended in Minneapolis was like none other.