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Every time I see someone make the argument that representation in fiction isn’t a big issue, and that advocating for diversity is just a waste of time because audiences can identify with anyone, and anyway, trying to include a wide range of backgrounds is just…
See, the diversity advocates piss me off because they often seem to go after published writers and I’m convinced that’s both the wrong target and highly counter-productive.
I know what I write is a product of my own background, experiences and neuroses. Given I’m a straight woman from an entirely white culture fucked up by religion, its history and poverty, it’s not surprising that I’ll write about that sort of thing. I suspect this is true of a lot of writers.
I also believe that writers happen pretty much everywhere - that in any culture, there will be people with the talent to write, given the chance. Somewhere there will be people from mixing pots who want to write stories about people from all over the place. Everywhere there will be people who want to tell stories about their place and culture.
Why don’t we see them more? Maybe they never get the chance to write. Maybe the gate-keepers of attention, publishers, reject them for all the bigoted reasons you suggest.
(Also maybe they do write and get published, just not in English. Most of the world doesn’t speak English as a first language and books can have pretty small circulation. The other night I discovered that a number of my favourite childhood books, which were set in Ireland, were only ever sold in Ireland. Just because something isn’t in the US doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.)
None of this is the fault of the writers who are published. All you achieve by having a go at them about diversity is telling them that their stories are invalid, not worth telling, wrong somehow. You blame them for writing their stories, rather than someone else’s stories. I know the response I’d give to that is telling you to die in a fire, while internally having my confidence in my own writing shaken.
You want a wider range of stories? Have a go at the people who decide what stories get to be seen, not at the people whose stories just happen to the ones that get let through.
Argh.
As the OP, allow me to respond to this point by point:
1. “ See, the diversity advocates piss me off because they often seem to go after published writers, and I’m convinced that’s both the wrong target and highly counter-productive. ”
Straight away, this is a problem, because you’re setting up a false and deeply inaccurate dichotomy between “diversity advocate” and “published writer”, as though there’s no meaningful overlap between the two groups. Not only are some of the biggest online diversity advocates also published writers - like N. K. Jemisin, John Scalzi, Malinda Lo, Kate Elliott, Aliette de Bodard and Tamora Pierce, to name but a few - but so am I. Granted, I’m small beer compared to the names I’ve just listed, but nonetheless: I’m a published author AND an advocate for diversity, the same as most other authors and writers I know. Like them, I talk about diversity within my profession because it matters, and because belonging to and loving a community doesn’t mean you should exempt either it, or yourself, from criticism.
2. “I know what I write is a product of my own background, experiences and neuroses. Given I’m a straight woman from an entirely white culture fucked up by religion, its history and poverty, it’s not surprising that I’ll write about that sort of thing. I suspect this is true of a lot of writers.”
People write from their own experience, yes - and that’s just fine. I’ve never claimed otherwise. But writing natively from one’s own perspective, no matter how privileged you are, isn’t the same as actively lobbying against the creation of more diverse narratives or suggesting that their presence isn’t necessary, which is the specific thing my original post was objecting to.
3. “I also believe that writers happen pretty much everywhere - that in any culture, there will be people with the talent to write, given the chance.”
Again, I’ve never claimed otherwise. This is obviously true.
4. “Somewhere there will be people from mixing pots who want to write stories about people from all over the place. Everywhere there will be people who want to tell stories about their place and culture.”
A point of clarification: people from “mixing pots” aren’t the only ones who want to write about cultures other than their own. There is, however, an entrenched Western stereotype that writers from other cultures (read: non-white backgrounds) will only ever write about their cultures. So while I agree that yes, lots of people worldwide want to write about their particular heritage and experiences - and that this is an awesome thing! - there are also people who want to tell other stories; stories which might well be informed by the writer’s background without being about their background - or which might be about something else entirely.
5. “Why don’t we see them more? Maybe they never get the chance to write. Maybe the gate-keepers of attention, publishers, reject them for all the bigoted reasons you suggest.”
Again, I agree: there’s definitely a gatekeeper problem. Publishers and editors decide what gets printed, how much press it gets, and under what auspices - and where their gatekeeping intersects with problems of oppression, homogeneity, bigotry and bias, there’s enormous scope for the suppression of diverse voices. Which is why so many writers are increasingly vocal about the problems they perceive in the industry, using what power they have to lobby for change and inclusivity. Writers have opposed the whitewashing of their book covers, fought the whitewashing of their characters in film adaptations, encouraged diversity in awards nominations, helped to promote and crowdsource the creation of diverse fiction anthologies, encouraged editors to actively seek out diverse works rather than merely waiting for them to show up, and initiated endless conversations about race, gender, privilege and representation, which activity can and does extent to criticising other authors, sometimes on specific counts, and sometimes only in the general sense of exhorting better portrayals all round.
6. “(Also maybe they do write and get published, just not in English. Most of the world doesn’t speak English as a first language and books can have pretty small circulation. The other night I discovered that a number of my favourite childhood books, which were set in Ireland, were only ever sold in Ireland. Just because something isn’t in the US doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.)”
Again, you’re rebutting a point I never made. But while we’re on the subject, two things: firstly, I’m not American, and secondly, while I agree that it would be awesome if more diverse fiction in LOTE were readily available in translation, the lack of same isn’t a counterargument to the suggestion that there should be more diversity in English-language fiction, and especially not when the problem I’m actually addressing is the tendency of white Westerners to situate their own experiences as being so universally recognisable that arguing for more diverse representations is both meaningless and unnecessary.
7. “None of this is the fault of the writers who are published. All you achieve by having a go at them about diversity is telling them that their stories are invalid, not worth telling, wrong somehow. You blame them for writing their stories, rather than someone else’s stories. I know the response I’d give to that is telling you to die in a fire, while internally having my confidence in my own writing shaken.”
Never mind the fact that my original post is explicitly a take-down of the idea that diverse stories are unnecessary because stories about straight white cismen speak for everyone, rather than, as you seem to think it is, an attack on the freedom of white people to write about themselves: arguing for diversity doesn’t mean that white people don’t get to write about their own experiences. Hell, I’m a white author, and I draw from my own experiences all the time, so I’d be pretty hypocritically screwed, if that were my argument. Arguing for diversity in fiction just means encouraging realistic depictions of the actual world, which is a pretty diverse place. Even if you live in a privileged white bubble on White Bread Street in Whiteman Grove, Whitelandia, your life is still inevitably going to intersect with the lives of people of colour in a meaningful way: the real denial of experience - and of reality - is to pretend that it never does, or has, or will.
Privileged people writing about their own experiences doesn’t preclude their ever mentioning unprivileged people, and it certainly doesn’t mean their stories are wrong; but just as importantly, not every story has to be based on personal experience. If you can find it within yourself to write about dragons and unicorns, then why the hell can’t the characters riding them be brown-skinned and queer? Especially in the fantasy business, but elsewhere within fiction, too, personal experience isn’t the be-all, end-all of narrative; if it was, we’d all just be writing biographies. The point of arguing for diversity isn’t to tell people never to write what they know if all or most of what they know is whiteness and maleness and privilege; it’s to suggest that, when they do venture outside the wheelhouse of their personal experience - as the vast majority of stories will invariably require them to do - they consider the possibility that the narratives of people not like them are a valid, even important, narrative option.
But when privileged writers lean on racial stereotypes - when they turn minorities into parodies and caricatures, and tell story after story about evil Muslim terrorists, comic Indian telemarketers and black gangsta thugs? Then yes, I’m going to blame them, not for having written that particular story, whatever it is, but for having written it badly. Because in the immortal words of Kwame Dawes, writing racist stereotypes is a craft failure. It’s a cliche. It’s been done before. You can’t defend the unending perpetuation of racist, sexist, homophobic narratives on the basis that they’re reflective of the writer’s experience of being a racist, sexist homophobe who can’t distinguish between stereotypes and actual human beings.
So, no: it’s not the fault of published writers that the biases of editors and publishing houses prevent the success of diverse stories and voices that ought rightly to be heard. But it sure as hell is the fault of published writers if and when our stories continue to contain harmful, offensive stereotypes, or to focus (for instance) on successive all-white portrayals of cities that are, in fact, hugely racially diverse, as happens all too often on TV.
8. “You want a wider range of stories? Have a go at the people who decide what stories get to be seen, not at the people whose stories just happen to the ones that get let through."
Or, alternatively: why not do both? The problem has to be countered on multiple fronts. Saying problematic stories "just happen” to get let through, as though there’s no context involved - as though such stories were written by helpful gnomes, in a vacuum, without any conscious input from the people submitting them - lets authors off the hook for their own prejudices. If more people were writing diverse stories, that would signal to publishers that there was a bigger market for them. If more people were writing diverse stories, there’d be less problematic stuff left to publish. If more successful, big-name creators put their clout behind diverse projects, their momentum would help get the ball rolling for others to follow after; much like how the popularity of Laverne Cox’s character on Orange is the New Black has lead to the recent greenlighting of other shows about trans characters. It’s an ecosystem, is what I’m saying, and effectively telling me to die in a fire for daring to try and hold authors like me accountable for their biases is the exact polar opposite of helpful.
tl;dr: Arguing for diversity in narrative =/= telling privileged people they can’t write about their own experiences. It just means asking them to acknowledge that the experience of living in this world - or in any other fantastic, futuristic or parallel equivalent - doesn’t have to be wholly white, straight, cisgendered and male. You guys, THIS IS NOT DIFFICULT.
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