The Trouble with Talking — or Not Talking — about Race

*This entry was originally posted on the website, diacritics.org, on May 5, 2014. http://criticalrefugeestudies.com/resources/blog/the-trouble-with-talking-or-not-talking-about-race

In 2003, before my first book came out, friends in the literary community warned me about how dire review coverage had become.

But no one I worked with at St. Martin’s Press on We Should Never Meet, a collection of short stories that involve “Operation Babylift” in Vietnam and its aftermath, ever mentioned that my ethnicity might play a role. Even now, it’s hard to imagine anyone in the publishing industry trying to explain the political murkiness and cold marketing statistics of landing book reviews to an elated debut author like me.

Few people read literary fiction, and those who do typically turn to critics to discover which books deserve their time. But if those critics are to be believed, few writers of color make the cut. According to rough counts for 2011 to 2012 compiled by writer and teacher Roxane Gay and a graduate assistant, 90 percent of the books reviewed by the New York Times during that time period were by white writers, leaving a 10 percent sliver for writers of color.

These depressing estimates, first published in the Rumpus in 2012, confirm what many writers of color like me have always feared: that the words over which we’ve labored and sacrificed ourselves for years—the books we’ve written, revised, edited, and finally published in order to contribute to the literary landscape that’s inspired us—don’t matter to the influential gatekeepers of the reading population.

If mainstream critics, who are supposedly curating and recommending the most notable works of contemporary literature, aren’t paying attention to us, then who will know how to read us? While some readers may bristle at the idea of critics telling them how to read, authors of color know all too well the amount of interpretation required for their work to become accepted by mainstream audiences.

Of course, writers of color are not responsible for promoting cultural awareness through their works. Within any ethnic literature, there’s a broad range of writers who experiment with form and subject matter. While my sources of inspiration do happen to share my ethnic makeup, other Vietnamese American authors write plenty of stories and novels that have nothing to do with their race. But if their characters don’t share their skin color, those authors are often questioned for their audacity in doing what white writers have done for centuries.

When Monique Truong published her second novel Bitter in the Mouth (Random House, 2010), the book’s official synopsis contained no mention of the protagonist’s racial identity—a crucial reveal in the plot. This clearly confounded some book critics, including Roy Hoffman from the New York Times Book Review, who spoiled this information in his opening paragraph:

Cheng, Salesses, and Zilka all offer smart, if differing, suggestions for addressing the lack of diversity in book reviews. ALIST Magazine, whose website states that it’s “dedicated to bringing mainstream attention and interest to Asian American leadership and excellence,” is a noteworthy example of the diverse media outlets that now provide a critical space for literature by authors of many backgrounds.

Other magazines like Hyphen, Diacritics, and Color Lines—along with a wide range of book blogs and literary arts organizations such as the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and Cave Canem—highlight writers of color who are often ignored by the mainstream media. Recently, Ron Hogan, founder of the literary site Beatrice (“introducing readers to writers since 1995”) and former senior editor of Galleycat, launched Beacon: A More Diverse Book Review.

But that doesn’t let other book review publications off the hook. Far from it. The majority of the reading public still consults the New York Times and similarly white-dominated bestseller lists for help with choosing which books to read—and buy.

Gay’s statistics have sparked responses in the Nation, Flavorwire, PolicyMic, and other outlets. Some editors have acknowledged the lack of diversity in their newsrooms and freelance contact lists. There’s an obvious solution: Hire diverse critics to write book reviews. Yet, this poses its own problems. It puts the responsibility for promoting the work of writers of color on other writers of color. And regardless, few authors of color are being asked to write reviews.

While Gay, Zadie Smith, and Alexander Chee have established themselves as critics who write about a wide range of topics, Truong has told me by email that, since the publication of her award-winning novel The Book of Salt more than ten years ago, she’s received only one invitation to review a book—and that was for a Chinese immigrant memoir. Henriquez also reported in our phone conversation that she’s never been solicited to write reviews, despite two acclaimed books to her name.