On difficult questions, complicated answers, being conscious of what you read, and the wonder of stories:
I had plans to write about something completely different today. In fact, I was going to post about my very first Library Loot (!). I picked up a great pile of books and I couldn’t wait to share them with you all. However, as I was looking for the Library Loot button to paste with my post, I came across Eva’s “Reading in Colour” post from this weekend. See! This is why I hate hitting the “Read All” button in my Google Reader for fear I’d miss something like this. Before I go on, I should say that if you haven’t read Eva’s post (and really, judging by the number of comments, who hasn’t?), you should. I think the post drew some pretty heated comments (I skipped most of them), but while discord in our friendly blogging community is never a fun thing, it’s often necessary to get us to think about the difficult questions many of us would rather avoid or ignore.
I agree wholeheartedly with everything Eva says. Are there people of color out there writing amazing books? You bet. Are we, bloggers, reading as many novels by authors of color as we could or should? Probably not. But right now I don’t want to talk about what every one else is or should be reading. I want to talk about my reading. And I think what I have to say might bring an interesting perspective to this discussion.
So first let me say that most of the authors I read are white authors, although lately I’ve been branching out and reading novels by authors of different ethnicities. At the moment I have several books by Indian authors, Mexican authors, South American authors, and Middle Eastern authors sitting on my TBR shelf. And I have maybe two books by African-American authors. I like to think of myself as an eclectic reader, but a glimpse at the books I read last year shows quite clearly that most of the authors I read are white.
However, here’s something I never talk about on BiblioAddict: I’m a person of color. Both of my parents are African-American, though my father – and therefore I – have a little Native American blood running through our veins. So, how and why is it – and I’ve been asked this often – that I read more books by white authors than I do by authors of my own ethnicity? I can’t tell you what an agonizing question this has been for me over the years. There’s a measure of guilt attached to the fact that I read mostly white authors which is hard to explain, but I’ll see if I can do my best. There’s always this guilt or this question that maybe I have self-esteem issues (Am I reading so many novels by white authors because I secretly want to be white?) or that I’m not doing enough to support black authors. As an African-American reader, I feel almost duty-bound to read books by people of color because well, if authors of color can’t rely on other people of color to read their books, who can they rely on?
And, I want to see authors of color succeed, because I think the stories they tell are important and a necessary addition to the world of literature. I also think authors of color don’t get the publication or the readership they deserve, and those that do get published get the short end of the stick from publication all the way to the placement of their book in bookstores. (side rant: I hate the African-American section in bookstores and I don’t see the point of them. It makes a distinction between African-American books and everything else that simply doesn’t exist. Writers of other ethnicities are placed on the shelves with everything else. Only African-American books have their own little ghetto often in the back of the store – and I say ‘ghetto’ purposefully because the section hardly ever seems as well-kept as the rest of the store. It also hurts readers because it reinforces the idea that books with black characters are for black people and books about every one else is for, well everyone else. You wouldn’t put Stephen King and F. Scott Fitzgerald in the same section just because they’re white, would you? Would you? Why do it to Zane and Zora Neal Hurston?)
So, why don’t I read more novels by authors of color, one might reasonably ask. The answer is… complicated, and the first essay in Zadie Smith’s most recent book, Changing My Mind, discusses this subject more eloquently than I ever could (another must-read if you haven’t already). One of those answers is that I’ve always felt it was expected of me, which I’ve always resented. I went into a bookstore once and was stopped by an employee who asked me if she could help me with anything. I told her I was looking for a good mystery, and she then took me to the African-American book section and dropped me off. I resented that. I resented the assumption that because I’m black, the only books I must have been interested in reading were books by other black people. I don’t think she was being racist; I’m sure was sincerely trying to be helpful. It was her assumption about what I would like based solely on the color of my skin that simply bothered me. I don’t like people to assume they know me until they know me.
I also resent that as far as many African-Americans are concerned, I should be reading books by black authors because I need to support my community. I don’t have a problem with supporting my community, but I do have a problem with being told what I should do and how I should go about it. Besides that, I’m a contrary person. Telling me what I should do is a good way to get me to do something else. I like defying expectations, and many white and black people alike expect that as a black person I must (and should, in some cases) read books by black authors.
Then there’s this: In her comments on Jane Austen and reading, Fran Lebowitz says that reading should be door not a mirror. When I first became an avid reader I was all about doors. I wanted books to take me to foreign places where foreign people lived foreign lives and did foreign things. I was black, I lived in a black neighborhood, went to a predominately black school, had friends who were all mostly black, and as far as I was concerned, books about black people written by black people were mirrors. I figured I knew their stories, because I assumed (wrongly) that their stories were my stories because they were black and I was black. But what of books on the other side of the fence? What of Earnest Hemingway and Sandra Brown and Charlotte Bronte and Stephen King? What of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft? Doors, all of them. Doors that took me to places I might never have been capable of imagining had I not read their stories.
They were also doors that took me to places that didn’t make me feel angry and sick to my stomach. We read many books by African-American authors when I was in school. And many, if not most of them, had something to do with slavery or Jim Crow or racism. I hated those books. Not because of their content, but because of the way they made me feel. They made me (and often still do) angry, angry, angry. Every cutting remark about black people or a flick of the whip in a book about slavery was like a slap in the face – nay, a punch in the gut. I don’t imagine my reaction is very different from many white readers of these books. That’s what empathy is all about, after all. But it’s slightly different I think when you imagine that that could have been your mother, your father, or your grandparents 150 years ago; it could have been you. In fact, someone whose blood now runs in my veins was that person. It stings, that knowledge. And it’s not something I looked forward to reading about when I was looking for a pleasurable escape. So, I came to view books by black authors as a chore and a duty, not something I would or could particularly enjoy.
I know now that books by authors of color come in all different shapes and sizes (like books by white authors! can you believe that? *sarcasm*). Authors of color write novels of romance, horror, thrillers, science fiction, graphic novels, etc. and not all of them have anything explicitly to do with the color of their characters’ skin. I think readers often expect this to be the case with minority writers. In fact, some readers both black and white are offended when this isn’t the case. But we don’t expect that novels by white authors are always explicitly about what it means to be white and how being white affects their daily lives. The characters simply move in the environment they have been provided and we are left to draw our own conclusions about how and if their race matters at all. The same is often true for books by authors of color. Authors of color are first and foremost people writing about people. If there is one thing I have learned over the years it is that, from my perspective, novels by writers of other ethnicities might be foreign, but they’re not nearly as foreign as you would think. If you don’t believe me, hop over to Eva’s post and check out one those books she recommends.
As for myself, I do need to read more authors of color. I’d gotten into the habit of reading mostly white authors for the reasons stated above, and even after I realized those reasons weren’t worth much, well old habits die hard. I’d like to read more authors of color not because I feel duty-bound to do so or because I want to support my community (though, again, this isn’t inherently bad), but because I like to diversify my reading in every way possible. I enjoy diving into genres I’ve never read and reading books set in countries I’ll probably never visit, but more than anything, I enjoy stories. Stories are just as exciting and diverse as the people who write them, and I’ve always enjoyed a good story. And I’ve decided that if I should come across a story that sounds an awful lot like my story, well then there’s nothing wrong with that either. Doors are great, but mirrors serve their purpose too. Mirrors show us things we might never have noticed otherwise, and I question any person who says they have nothing more to learn about themselves.
So – and here’s where I wrap it back around to the original point of this post – I’ve been thinking I need to diversify my reading as it relates to ethnicity for a while now and I was happy to see that my Library Loot (woot! woot!) is another step towards achieving that goal. This week and last week I picked up:
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Home by Marilynn Robinson
Life, Sex, and Ideas by A.C. Grayling
Northwest Passages by Barbara Roden
Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles
The Lost City of Z by David Grann
The Book of Night Women by Marlon James
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
Censoring an Iranian Love Story by Shahria Mandanipour
Okay, only two out of nine of those books are by authors of color, but I’m trying to diversify my reading in many ways, which accounts for almost every other book. And, I think these two books plus The Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, which I read earlier in the month is a good start.
Finally, I’d like to encourage everyone to take Eva’s advice and read outside of their box, particularly their ethnic box. Where would I be if I didn’t read Waters or Austen or Gaiman or Hornby because they were white and I wasn’t and it seemed like an awful lot of work to figure out who they were and what they were writing? I suppose I’d be reading other things that might be just as good, but my reading life wouldn’t be as rich for sure. I know the publishing world doesn’t make books by authors of color easy to find, but I’m sure the pay-off is worth the research work. There’s a whole world of literature by non-white writers out there just waiting to be explored. I bet it’s gorgeous and I bet that you’ll love it. Let’s go together. We’ll have loads and loads of fun.
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I often read the inside flap of books I’ve never heard of before, but not so much if it’s a book with which I’m already familiar. If I’m in the bookstore just browsing, however, the inside flap or the description on the back of the paperback can make or break a book. If I find the description’s writing too cheesy or simply poorly written and the plot unbelievable or not to my taste, I’m very likely to put the book back down. If the description on the inside of the flap does pass muster, I’ll read a few first lines and whatever blurbs there might be. If I find all of that satisfactory, I’m likely to leave the bookstore with it or, at the very least, add it to my TBR list.
