I mostly read (hard) sci-fi written by straight white dudes, so the tweet on the screenshot made me feel a bit defensive. In the replies and qrts people are patting themselves on the back for reading marginalized fantasy writers exclusively and this "consumption as activism" seems rad-libby to me, but maybe I'm wrong.
RTer is basically spot on. If you just read things that you happen to find, whether through being generally popular or recommended to you by friends, most of the time you will not get very diverse authors because the systems that make books popular are already biased towards cis white dudes.
The systems that enable you to be an author are biased towards cis white dudes.
I agree. People in that thread talk about how important diversity in entertainment you consume is and I wonder if it's actually important or if the the whole "I'm trying to read more fantasy written by women" thing is a bit performative.
No it's definitely important imo. It broadens your perspectives. I'm not saying that white dudes aren't going to have anything of value to say, or that people who aren't should always be taken seriously, but a diversity of viewpoints is I think a good idea. Someone who directly experiences racism, misogyny, or transphobia is fundamentally going to have a different understanding of things to someone who doesn't, and if you don't make an effort to listen to those people you cannot hope to get a complete perspective. Of course, this doesn't preclude you from being a liberal.
super performative, imo. fixing the systems that stand in the way of marginalized people becoming authors is important. reading more books by certain authors (let alone talking about how you're doing it) accomplishes very little. also, hand-wringing about media consumption is generally cringe/bad imo, with some exceptions for more extreme cases.
Blaming individual consumption choices isn't a more effective tactic here than it is for the environment or anything else.
People complaining about how white and male certain genres and going out of their way to read things written by people other than white men does impact what gets published. If sci-fi novels by Black women routinely do well financially, publishers are less likely to see sci-fi books by Black women as "a gamble" and will publish more of them.
Like it's obviously not as effective at addressing structural inequality as overthrowing capitalism, but making a point of reading books by authors from underrepresented groups is still better than not doing that.
I don't necessarily completely agree, but in the spirit of "the right to disengage", I'd ask whether you are interested in discussing this further vs you wanted to add something, but don't have the energy for a whole conversation about it?
I mean that was pretty much my point, I know it kinda sorta has some effect to some degree since I spent quite awhile working adjacent to the publishing industry and know a lot of people who are pretty plugged in to how publishers make decisions about what gets published.
I'm not terribly invested in this discussion and might not reply, but def feel free to add your thoughts if you've got em!
I guess the only thing I'd add--or maybe ask, since you have experience here--is to question the extent to which it has an effect beyond representation. And representation is important!! But typically, as I'm sure you know, one of the problems with idpol alone is that, for example, the publishing houses will publish more books by a small group of Harvard-educated black authors, and it will help with representation, but do little to address the systemic issues that underlie the disparity.
Oh yeah, I mean that's definitely still an issue, and there's a further issue of the people making the decisions about what gets published being libs and capitalists.
You're totally right that a blanket "publish more books by authors of color" policy doesn't do anything to make sure that representation within that group is actually diverse, but the current publishing stats are pretty bleak as-is — I think something as little as 1-3% of books published in some recent year (maybe 2019?) were written by Black authors. (I could be off on this stat but I remember it being extremely bleak.) iirc there was some kind of backlash/push against that in 2020/2021 following the George Floyd uprising, but I don't known if I've heard any updated stats or anything about how all that's going since.
But when you're talking about numbers that small, any improvement helps IMO. Like obviously the systemic barriers are still in place — if you're poor, grew up in a heavily underfunded school district, have to work multiple jobs, etc, it's going to be much harder to write a book and get it published than if you're affluent and connected. And there's still that same component of structural racism too, people reading more books by Black authors doesn't fix that.
My point is more that the material impact of a big swath of people making a point to diversify and decolonize their bookshelves is still nonzero, so there's no reason to actively disparage it as long as no one is pretending that they're fixing racism by reading one NK Jemison book.
Just want to recommend Octavia Butler and Ursula K. Le Guin if you're looking for good stories not written by white dudes. I'm reading Parable of the Sower right now off and on and it's sometimes honestly fucking eerie how accurately Butler is describing our reality, like sometimes word-for-word.
I read the first few pages of one of N.K. Jemisin's books and thought it looked good but she's a fuckin' Warren lib.
Most of the "classic" books were written by white dudes throughout history because nobody else ever even had a chance to write. That being said, Sappho is a truly great poet and people should check out books like Romance of the Three Kingdoms (wikipedia has a free version with lots of pictures and Chinese), the Shahnameh, The Arabian Nights (super racist and sexist in its own way and its best translator (Burton) was a weird imperialist), and Aimé Césaire's A Tempest. Pushkin and Dumas are technically not white dudes. I've been getting into this Korean novel called From Wonso Pond, the author was supposedly a communist feminist and it's great.
Earthsea is supposedly good for fantasy but I haven't read it. Honestly am not aware of any fantasy novels not written by and for white dudes.
I am technically a white dude SF writer. Publishers these days seem interested in two kinds of fiction writers: debut writers who are not white dudes (and who seem to vanish after they publish their first novels), and then white dudes who write, like, spy fiction that basically pays the bills. Almost every literary agent is a liberal white woman. A handful are liberal white dudes. After querying hundreds of them I finally managed to get an agent. He happens to be a white dude, and he said he could only take me if I published a novel together with my spouse, who is not white. My spouse and I agreed to go for it: I would write a book, she would read and edit it and approve it, and then both our names would appear on the book, with hers first. (She is not a writer.) There was just one problem: no publishers were interested. We pumped out two books that way before we gave up. I have some SF novels out under my own name on amazon now. They're military SF, which is a super reactionary genre (reviewers complain about taking the lord's name in vain, I'm serious), so I had to be very sneaky about packing the books with communism. I'm working on a communist fantasy series now.
Butler yes, LeGuin no. And I say that as someone who counts Ursula LeGuin as my favorite writer. I don't think someone who reads mainly "hard" sci-fi would enjoy LeGuin, personally. Her writing can be pretty abstract, which I love, but might seem annoying to a hard sci-fi person. But definitely the Xenogenesis trilogy from Butler. Really good stuff.
i think the point of the whole exercise is to expand one's reading horizons. LeGuin might not fill her writing to the brim with mind-bending imaginary future tech (the only real exception i can think of is the ansible which ironically was used by name by Orson Scott Card), but her social science and anthropology are much harder than the majority of the SF canon.
Thoughts on Kate Wilhelm? I was a big reader of hers back in the day but don’t know if she would appeal to the hard sci-fi audience either.
I've never read anything of hers. Someone gave me a collection of her SF short stories called The Mile Long Spaceship around the same time I started reading Marxist theory, lol. My mom loves Wilhelm's mystery stuff, though, and I trust her taste in literature since my mom was the one who put me on to Vonnegut.
i think the broken earth series by jemison is must read for anyone into speculative fiction. it's fantastic. if youre a big le guin fan it'd hard not to read it as directly in dialogue with a lot of her work too, and if anything it feels like itd be slightly more in line with my politics & the politics of this site than big ursula, as much as i love her.
there's a lot of stuff about characters walking away from conflict and trying to establish their own societies (like in a lot of uklg) but it's pretty much always presented as a dead end and ends in a failure. it's very angry and very focused on a confrontation with power, where le guins politics rarely allowed for that. there's a very direct parallel to the ones who walk away from omelas too, and the upshot is that walking away is completely inadequate.
it's great, honest
been reading her latest novel this week (sort of gaimany scifi/fantasy set in modern day new york) and I've been pretty disappointed overall and especially with the political stuff, i didn't know anything about her personally but the lib tendencies are pretty obvious in a real world setting. bit of a shame. theres definitely a heart in the right place tho imo
Oh I tried to find parable of the sower on lib gen some time ago but didn't find it. The dispossessed is on my reading list
Have you read NK's "The ones who stay and fight"? I think she might be more left inclined than the average warren lib.
Less compelling once I realized that "fight" in the author's mind meant "vote for big structural bailey"
She actually answered me once when I attacked Warren on twitter. I'll look into this. Like I said, I think she's a good writer, just maybe not the best person.
Goddamn though, Twitter is absolute brain poison. One of the things I always think about with Jemisin is how she got caught up in the "I Sexually Identify as an Attack Helicopter" scandal. Write up about that here, if you're not familiar, though content warning for transphobia and suicidal thoughts. And, whatever, it was just one moment of thoughtlessness from Jemisin, what happened to Fall wasn't her fault, and she had a pretty minor role in the whole thing anyway. She took a lot of shit for it all. But it's just such a clear example of how fucked the performative outrage machine that is twitter really is. Here you've got an author, a noted progressive, has positive trans rep. in her novels, and she still stumbles ass-backward into this kind of fuck up because she had to go and have a hot take about some story she hadn't even read. Twitter, it's bad.
Ah, fuck that then. I wish the dumb libs could actually understand the difference between attacks from the left and attacks from the right.
Earthsea is supposedly good for fantasy but I haven’t read it. Honestly am not aware of any fantasy novels not written by and for white dudes.
Aside from Earthsea which I remember loving when I was young, The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker and Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke are both great fantasy novels. Both are set on near modern earth which isn't everyone's fantasy cup of tea of course.
EDIT: Oh also Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is also really good. I also like The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North, which is about a man who lives the same life over again every time he dies, and who comes into a very complicated conflict with one of his reincarnating peers.
Shahnameh
:yes-hahaha-yes-l: definitely my favorite dusty poetry
Marie of France is a good medieval author to add to the list.
Diana Wynne Jones is a good fantasy writer. I like Trudi Canavan as well. Lots of good female fantasy writers out there.
That said, I also feel like this line of discourse (the tweet) is a classic example of "idpol without material analysis". It's just virtue signaling, and it doesn't help anyone. I don't think most people know or care about the author, and when they do, it's usually only after they've read the book and realized it's really good or really bad.
If you don't make these choices consciously, someone else makes them for you.
Partially true, but you also make them subconsciously.
It's the same institutional bias you see all over the place. White men are preferentially selected for in roles of power because it's only been white guys in those roles in the past. Wonder if there's a name for that.
Anyways, I don't think it matters terribly what you choose to read as an individual, but there certainly should be attempts to popularize minority voices in literature because they're overwhelmingly passed over in favor of the Rowlings and Kings of the world by people who might honestly have no clue they're doing it. Affirmative action for authors.
Wonder if there’s a name for that.
There is, it's in the sociology of power, and I'm not going to tell you because jargon addles your brain and prevents communication.
I'm just going to assume that you as a scholar of power know better than to share the power of knowledge.
This is a good example of a systemic issue. I also read a lot of sci fi, and yeah, it’s almost entirely white dudes. However, what the libs want you to believe is that you are choosing to read books by white guys instead of anyone else because of your inherent bias. That might be true, but the fact is that most of the published authors are white guys. If you look at any list of the best sci fi, it’s going to be 80% white, male authors.
The reason for that is that white men are more likely to get published. Are white men better authors? Inherently not, but there are more of them with the opportunity to become authors, so it’s likely that a lot of the best stuff is going to be written by them. It has little to do with consumer choice and much more to do with all of the social and economic structures in place that give white men an advantage.
This is analogous to the FBI crime statistics argument. Black men commit most of the crimes because a) the system puts them in a position where their material conditions lead to criminal behavior, and b) the laws and justice system unfairly target them.
Making a conscious choice as an individual to read more books by marginalized authors is fine, and it’s true that you’re more likely to get more and different perspectives in your literary diet, but it won’t make much of a difference to the problem of white dude authors taking up most of the bookstore shelves. That problem is upstream from retail book sales.
Basically, this is standard identity politics/representation in media blah blah. Individual consumer choices aren’t going to solve racism, or any other social problem. For your own sake it would be helpful to try and branch out from the white guy authorsphere, but that’s not going to change the fact that a lot of the books out there, and therefore a lot of the good books, are still going to be published by white guys. There’s no point in not reading them just to make some statement about diversity.
the difference between performative or not is if you think you're a good person for doing it.
(reading Borges who would be considered White anywhere except the US) checkmate. I'm so enlightened
I used to love Borges but he is so fucking reactionary. Not a word about communism in any of his work but he has a short story about like a Nazi writing a play in his head while he's about to be executed. A long time ago I mentioned Borges to someone from South America once and the guy immediately said that the dude was super racist and would say things like "Africans have never achieved anything of note." Play a drinking game when you read Borges's short stories—down a shot whenever he mentions that a character has "Indian features" and is therefore indifferent to killing or being killed. As a lib I thought I understood philosophy because I read Borges's entire book of essays but its all idealistic shit, nothing about dialectical materialism is in there, not a single word. I haven't read it in awhile but I think Funes the Memorious is a great story though and I'm also partial to The Aleph. Also Borges hates Peron and Evita so, so fucking much. All I really know about those two is that Borges passionately reviled them.
he has a short story about like a Nazi writing a play in his head while he’s about to be executed.
I think it's about a dude being executed by Nazis, actually. Supposedly Inception is influenced by this story.
I googled around and I'm mixing up Deutsches Requiem (about an unrepentant Nazi on trial) with The Secret Miracle (about writing a play in your head before you're executed).
it has more of an effect on the world than posting, which is saying very little. i think in the end the question is "where is our time best spent" and that is a much bigger question
I don't think the point is that reading a fantasy book written by a black woman is an effective way to fight oppression, but that if you're going to read a fantasy book you should buy one by a marginalized author. I guess there's a material component if the author actually gets money, but I haven't paid for a book in like fifteen years. Libgen baby!
But I don't want original. I want the same books Peter Watts and Greg Egan had written twenty years ago.
But I get glimpses occasionally. I'm sure I can get back. Peter Watts is probably writing Blindsight 3 right now...
I think reading Peter Watts as your comfort books is about the most distressing idea I've heard expressed today.
I mean isnt that statistically average? Just a function of population numbers
i might have misunderstood you but white men dont make up 80% of the population
lol imagine a world thats 80% men that really says a lot about our society
Don't worry I'm too much of a bimbo to read anyways :blob-no-thoughts:
Depending on who counts as white America is only about 60% white these days.
I would be interested in reading a more diverse range of authors but I only really like reading incredibly dumb pulpy action.
Not wrong, but my honkey ass is wondering how this meshes with the idea of "no ethical consumption under capitalism"
I guess "consumption" isn't the same thing as just hearing what POC have to say
Kinda thinking out loud here
If it helps, frame it not as a consumption choice, per se, but rather a decision to expose yourself to different perspectives.
Reading doesn't have to be consumption, I pirate most of the books I read.
okay, so you're consuming for free. you've divested yourself from the marketplace, but every other aspect of the consumer relationship, (in particular how you relate to the work, how it relates to you, how you experience the written word generally) remains intact for you
i mean trying to communicate with the abstract "POC" through choices in what books you read is exactly an act of consumption. writing has aspects of selfishness and selflessness, but reading can only be a self-centered act.
Helen Oyeyemi's What is Not Yours is Not Yours is one of my favorite books, it's litfic/magical realism in a bunch of interconnected short stories
I also enjoyed Nnedi Okorafor's Akata Witch, which is more YA fantasy and is set in Nigeria
