Glassworks
  • home
  • about
    • history
    • staff bios
    • community outreach
    • affiliations
    • contact
  • current issue
    • read Issue 26
    • letter from the editor
    • looking glass spring 2023
    • interview with Raina J. Leon
    • interview with Sarah Fawn Montgomery
  • submit
    • submission guidelines
  • looking glass
    • through the looking glass
  • editorial content
    • book reviews
    • opinion
    • interviews
  • flash glass
    • flash glass 2023
    • flash glass 2022
    • flash glass 2021
    • flash glass 2020
    • flash glass 2019
    • flash glass 2018
    • flash glass 2017
    • flash glass 2016
    • flash glass 2015
  • media
    • art
    • audio
    • video
  • archive
    • award nominees
    • read and order back issues
  • Master of Arts in Writing program
    • about Writing Arts at Rowan University
    • application and requirements
  • newsletter
  • home
  • about
    • history
    • staff bios
    • community outreach
    • affiliations
    • contact
  • current issue
    • read Issue 26
    • letter from the editor
    • looking glass spring 2023
    • interview with Raina J. Leon
    • interview with Sarah Fawn Montgomery
  • submit
    • submission guidelines
  • looking glass
    • through the looking glass
  • editorial content
    • book reviews
    • opinion
    • interviews
  • flash glass
    • flash glass 2023
    • flash glass 2022
    • flash glass 2021
    • flash glass 2020
    • flash glass 2019
    • flash glass 2018
    • flash glass 2017
    • flash glass 2016
    • flash glass 2015
  • media
    • art
    • audio
    • video
  • archive
    • award nominees
    • read and order back issues
  • Master of Arts in Writing program
    • about Writing Arts at Rowan University
    • application and requirements
  • newsletter
Glassworks

We Are Not a Genre: Reevaluating How We Talk about Black Literature

2/1/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
by Ariana Tucker

Go onto any major book-selling website and you’ll probably find a section dedicated to Black authors in the list of genres and subcategories. Amazon calls theirs “
Amplify Black Voices” and lists it among other popular keywords like “Award Winners” and “Celebrity Picks.” Barnes and Noble calls theirs “Black Voices” and lists it among other browsing options such as “Large Print Books” and “Trend Shop.” Click on either link and you’ll see popular books written by Black authors, most of which are the same books we’ve been talking about for the last five years. 
​

Barnes and Noble is the worst offender of this. On their featured page of “Fiction: Black Voices,” only four were published between 2020 and 2021 (Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle is their featured book from 2021). The rest are classics by Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison and books by authors like Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Sister Souljah, which were published in the 2000s and 2010s. Amazon at least offers a more up-to-date list of recently released books by month and recommendations from editors and Black icons like Billy Porter and Rick Ross. You can find almost any genre and any subject here, the only difference is that the authors are all BIPOC.

Picture
This classification seemed to become increasingly more visible following the murder of George Floyd. With the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement, big companies felt the pressure to “amplify” and acknowledge BIPOC writers outside of their usual February feature. Seeing this made me start to wonder if these companies were doing more harm than good. After all, there’s no section for white writers, and we only recently started seeing features for APPI and Latinx writers (although both are not considered “popular” by Amazon’s and Barnes and Noble’s standards). It seems to send an unintended message: that white writers still have a sort of ownership over the literary market; that Black writers are only amplified when others aren’t there to silence them.

​As a Black woman, I have a problem with this sort of marketing. While attempting to demarginalize underrepresented voices, they’ve only moved us from one margin to another. These companies push “Black literature” as a separate genre where the color of the author’s skin and character’s skin are the only selling points. The end product isn’t representation, but a sort of segregation in which BIPOC writers are only acknowledged when they stand alone.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for diversity. I’m an advocate for the importance of absolute inclusion. The National Education Association believes that good literature acts as a window and a mirror— a way for readers to see others and themselves in the text that they’re reading. Both are equally vital as a way to teach the all-important skill of empathy. The earlier people learn to be empathetic, the earlier we can combat the subtle biases that continue to breed racism. Outside of an educational setting, that representation is still important. A 2006 study by novelist and psychology professor, Keith Oatley found that people who read more fiction scored higher on empathy tests. The more diverse our books become, the wider our empathy expands.
However, while representation allows for some diversity, it’s also the bare minimum we can do to eliminate color lines. In fact, representation relies on those lines remaining in place. I certainly see why there may have been a time where such a classification as “Black Voices” was needed just for the sake of visibility, but shouldn’t we be past this by now? Past the point where we rely on exclusivity to create the illusion of inclusivity.?

Just “amplifying” Black voices allows us to ignore the underrunning problems of representation in publishing. A 2019 study completed by Lee & Low Books showed that seventy-six percent of people working in publishing were white. Black people only made up a dismal five percent of their pool of over 7,000 responses. This is compared to their 2015 study which found that seventy-nine percent of publishing staff were white. So, in four years, we haven’t really seen much of a shift in dynamic. And maybe this lack of diversity in publishing staff has a lot to do with the kinds of things that get published.

Black writers are faced with just as many constraints as before, but now they’re even subtler. We’re faced with publishers that claim they want to better represent and diversify the books they produce, but they seem to be more interested in books about racial injustice than books where the fact that the main character is Black isn’t a focal point. It seems to be the one thing that the press always wants to focus on whenever speaking to Black authors--questions Toni Morrison had to answer her entire career—but publishers only see the success. When they get to be part of the outpouring of racial justice charged novels, they get to pat themselves on the backs while continuing to exclude Black voices from spaces where they get to just be. 

Picture
Blackness shouldn’t be a selling point or a marketing strategy. It shouldn’t be the product we’re pushing. It’s damaging to see Blackness sold on shelves. It sends an unintentional message that we’re only wanted and desired in certain ways and for certain uses but excluded in others. During the 2020 quarantine period, Blackness became a trend and a buzzword. Books written by Black people became specimens to be examined and displayed instead of art to be felt and experienced. What happens when the trend dies off and the only places we exist is in the margins once again? 
​

Of course, there are Black writers and entertainers who don’t see the damage I see. They use their platforms to amplify their fellow Black and, more broadly, BIPOC writers. And maybe it’s good on some levels. Maybe it’s good that future Black writers will get to see people like them published in a world where we still seem to favor whiteness as the default. Maybe it’s good for Black creators to celebrate other Black creators. At least in this sense, we have some control over how we’re being represented. But let’s push further than representation. Let’s aim for inclusivity in publishing where representation is an afterthought. Because we won’t be reading Black Literature, just literature.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    December 2022
    September 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    October 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    March 2013
    February 2013


    Categories

    All
    Art
    Audio
    Bestseller
    Bibliotherapy
    Books
    Bookstores
    Career
    Cartoons
    Censorship
    Characters
    Cliche
    Code-switching
    Comedy
    Comics
    Controversy
    Culture
    Dyslexia
    Dystopian
    E-books
    Editorial
    Education
    Emoji
    Encyclopedia
    English
    Facebook
    Fandom
    Fanfiction
    Fantasy
    Fiction
    Film
    Future
    Gamebooks
    Gender
    Genre
    Google
    Grammar
    Habits
    Halloween
    Health
    Identity
    Journaling
    Kinesthetic Learning
    Language
    LGBTQ
    Library
    Literacy
    Literature
    Manga
    Marginalia
    Media
    Mental Health
    Multimodal
    Music
    New Media
    New York Times Best Seller List
    Nihilism
    Nonfiction
    Normalcy
    Nostalgia
    Obscenity
    Op Ed
    Opinion
    Pandemic
    Podcast
    Poetry
    Politics
    Process
    Pronouns
    Publishing
    Race
    Reading
    Rebuttal
    Research
    Rhetoric
    Rules
    Science Fiction
    Search
    Self-publishing
    Sequels
    Series
    Sexism
    Social Media
    Spoken Word
    Sports
    Standards
    Storytelling
    Student Writing
    Superheroes
    Teaching
    Technology
    Television
    The New York Times
    Trigger Warnings
    Trilogy
    Video Games
    Visual Novel
    War
    Wikipedia
    Workshop
    Writing
    Young Adult
    Zines


    RSS Feed


Picture

glassworks is a publication of
​Rowan University's Master of Arts in Writing
260 Victoria Street • Glassboro, New Jersey 08028 
glassworksmagazine@rowan.edu
​All Content on this Site (c) 2023 glassworks
Photos used under Creative Commons from RomitaGirl67, ** RCB **, George Fox Evangelical Seminary