Tag: diversity

Sorry I’ve been away for so long! I don’t know what happened to March, or the first part of April.  But life has been more hectic than normal, and my muse has buried her head through the snow to just below the screaming daffodils in my backyard.

But I was jarred when I read a comment under a social media post by a friend, who happens to be a writer.  The comment intimated that my friend had his ass handed to him on another post, a post that had to do with diversity in anthologies.  The person who commented was shocked at the lack of respect for my friend, and rightly so.

So I called my buddy to find out what happened.  And the conversation troubled me.

Now, it wasn’t the first post I had come across in recent weeks that had to do with diversity in anthologies, specifically horror.  Paul Doro asks about the prevalence of white men in Mainstream Horror: Where is the Diversity?

While Doro is speaking of film, there has been a lot of discussion about speculative fiction as well.  Should anthology editors require that submissions include the writer’s gender, race, and sexual preference?

I don’t think so.

This is not a new debate.  Many female speculative fiction writers, past and present, have used pseudonyms to hide their gender, and their identity.  BTW, I do the same.  In response to discrimination, women writers have created their own groups to support themselves.  Just look at Broad Universe.

But these recent posts are about race, gender, and sexuality.

So let me digress.

John Barthes  in his essay, “The Death of an Author” asserted that a reader must “separate a literary work from its creator in order to liberate the text from interpretive tyranny” (Wikipedia “The Death of An Author”).  The reader must regard the text as a singularity, and make his/her/their own interpretation of the text, therefore creating a relationship with it.  If a reader has that relationship, then the reader has a better chance of allowing the text to be evocative, and dare I say, memorable.  Maybe memorable enough to purchase the book.

It’s the reader that has the power to choose which texts should be published.  If a magazine, book, novella, script is not favorable to a large enough audience, then it dies on its own.  If it is beloved by a large audience, it does not matter how well-written the text is, or who wrote it.  Why else do we have Amazon and Goodreads reviews?

Popular opinion is powerful in the marketplace.

Now I am not saying that diversity shouldn’t be welcomed in the world of publishing.  Absolutely not.

But I’m not sure that affirmative action has a place in publishing.

Texts should speak for themselves, not for the writer who penned it.  Good texts are good texts.  They exist on their own, regardless of who penned them.  Can we ignore great art just because we don’t like the person?

I am saying that having flame wars between our brethren isn’t useful to any of us, except for those who wish to stoke the fires of discontent on social media.  Write on brothers and sisters! God knows the world needs more art.

Cheers!

JMonell