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A question I get asked a lot:
Why is it so important to boost and uplift and specifically support black authors, POC authors, and trans authors? If they wrote good books, won't they find their audiences naturally?
Why is it so important to boost and uplift and specifically support black authors, POC authors, and trans authors? If they wrote good books, won't they find their audiences naturally?
And to be fair, sometimes this question is asked in good faith. People genuinely don't understand. So I try to answer in good faith.
I am a white cis female author. And in genre, the odds were still stacked against me at the time of my debut (and to a lesser but definite degree now). People assume I'm writing erotica when I don't, because I'm a girl. People question my research while giving passes to my peers.
I have literally been on a panel with a famous male science fiction author who was asked about his research and said "I made it all up" to cheers and applause. The very next question was for me and was a VICIOUS criticism of my research for the Newsflesh books.
I have encountered, personally, not anecdotally, people saying they won't read my books because I'm a woman, or because I'm a pervert, or because they hadn't heard of me before they saw me at a con and they don't buy books by fat women (yes, seriously).
And this is as a white cis woman with a major publisher behind me. People refusing to read my books on basis of my identity.
...how much worse do you think it is for trans authors, or authors of color? SO MUCH WORSE.
...how much worse do you think it is for trans authors, or authors of color? SO MUCH WORSE.
We have to lift up their voices because there will always, ALWAYS be people who refuse to hear those voices solely due to who's speaking.
(And if you refuse to read books by black authors because "they don't speak to your experience," you're not being discerning, you're being racist. Period.)
(You can dislike specific books. I have disliked books by trans authors, by authors of color, by women. I've disliked way more books by straight white men, because even reading carefully, I've read WAY MORE books by straight white men.)
If ninety percent of the potluck contains cheese, you need to seek out and praise the ten percent that doesn't, unless you want a world where literally everything is smothered in Velveeta.
Marketing budgets are geared toward straight white men. And women, people of color, black people, trans people, anyone who overlaps those categories, all get criticized WAY more heavily for "excessive self-promotion."
All those factors make it harder for books to rise to the level of reader attention, and so do preconceptions about what those authors will write.
If you get mad when books by black authors aren't about racism and pain, why? If you need books by trans authors to be about transphobia and suffering, why? And if you need books by women to be erotica, why?
We need to lift up, read, recommend, and review books by black and trans authors especially, because if we don't, they might not get read. And they need to be. Our literature should span the gamut of human experience. We're all better when it does.
