50 Books POC

[rachelmanija]

I am participating in 50books_poc, a challenge to read and review 50 books by people of color in a year. Read a book, write a post, post it to the community and, if you like, to your LJ too.

Any books count, including comics. However, I am choosing not to include manga, manhwa, or manhua in my totals. This is not because they are not written by POC, or because I think comics don't count as real books. It's because in my mind, the point of the challenge is to read and review books that you might not otherwise read and review. I already read and review a lot of manga, and already eagerly look for manhwa and manhua to read and review. Since I'm already doing that, it's not a challenge.

For me, this challenge is as much about reviewing as it is reading. I would guess that I do read 50 books by people of color per year. But my posting skews toward works that I think will get discussed, which skews it toward sf and fantasy, which are notoriously white genres.

This is the vicious circle: Most writers in the genre are white. Authors of color look at this and decide, with perfect justification, to write in a genre that has more people like them already in it. The genre continues to be white. Fans of color are unwelcome and excluded. They go elsewhere.

The even-more-predominantly-white fans and publishers unconsciously or consciously select within their cultural comfort zones, choosing books about white people and portraying characters of color as white on the book covers. More fans of color go away. Publishers decide, unconsciously or consciously, that clearly, what sells is whitey whitey whiteness. They print more of that.

All fans remaining are now reading many of the same books by white authors. If they want lots of discussion, they have to discuss those books. The discussions skews toward those books, giving them more publicity and the books by authors of color less. The latter books sell poorly, proving to the publishers what they already believe. And so the cycle continues.

This happens in other genres as well. It's just especially obvious and disgraceful in sf.

I am doing this challenge because, to crib from my reply to a commenter on meganbmoore's LJ:

"In America, publishers publish more white writers and bookshops carry more white writers, and so it is harder to find and read books by authors of color without making a special effort. So making that distinction in order to read more authors of color both broadens readers' horizons, and provides royalties and publicity to authors of color.

There's also the phenomenon in which white writers writing about POC frequently get more sales, publicity, etc than authors of color writing about POC. Good explanation of that here: http://jonquil.livejournal.com/799057.html

Basically, especially if you're white, if you don't make the distinction, you will end up primarily or entirely reading books by white authors. In that case, the distinction you don't make gets made for you by the way that society works. And I'm sure you don't agree that reading only books by white authors is the ideal state of the world."

Plus, I think it will be fun!

I invite you all to join this challenge with me. Please comment to let me know if you decide to do so.

Comments

[kintail.livejournal.com]

I've been hoping to try a modified-for-my-brain* version as soon as I get settled post-move with an updated library membership (so I can request books to be held for me at my new local library), and have unpacked enough that I can justify sitting around with a book instead of dealing with boxes.

* It has one of the biggest frustrations of life-after-the-car accident that I ended up with what some doctors call "Post-Concussive Syndrome" (and some doctors don't believe exists) which among other things makes my brain go through phases where reading for pleasure and even sometimes just for comprehension just isn't in the spoons, or the neurons won't fire correctly, or something. So I'll have to be more much flexible with my books-to-timeframe ratio -- I've been averaging less than 5 books a year most years since then, but I've been wanting to find ways to increase that anyway.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I've read a bit on post-concussive syndrome; it's a very common injury in modern warfare as well.

I certainly don't want to be all doctrinaire as to how many books "count!" But FYI, tomorrow I'll be posting a review of a very short and very beautiful novel by African-American YA novelist Angela Johnson. (I mention in case shorter is easier.)

[kintail.livejournal.com]

I've found it hard to find much at all on PCS that isn't OMG DIRELY-BRAIN-DAMAGED-people-needing-constant-supervision-support-groups-for-family-and-friends!!1! ... but I haven't tried looking again since that one otherwise-useless-and-rude doctor suggested it as a diagnosis. I should have another go at it, I could do with some new strategy suggestions.

I will definitely be looking out for book recs, and I've bookmarked the ones above, too. Thanks!

The prose style matters more than length, in general. I can read Pratchett much more often and much faster than I can read Naomi Novik, much as I love both their books, but even with Pratchett I sometimes lose track of characters or plot points and need to flip back to figure out "wait, I'm lost, who did what three chapters ago?" so in that sense short also helps.

(Edit: Yes, I'm aware I'm giving two white authors as examples of different writing styles -- more reason I need to do this challenge in some form.)

[rilina.livejournal.com]

I heart Angela Johnson SO MUCH.