This is really the heart of the problem. As long it is up to white gatekeepers selling to other white gatekeepers to determine what is “authentic” for marginalized stories, books like American Dirt will continue to be published and pushed as the anointed narrative

You cannot envision non-white audiences for a book, and reach them, without non-white people on your publishing team. Full stop. This apparatus is entrenched and wide-reaching and the industry will not change until the machine is dismantled from the inside

But it’s a free market, and it won’t change without outside pressure from creatives—if having your story published with poc readers in mind matters to you, you need to be asking every time: “Who are the people of color on your team, and how will they be involved in my book?”

This is a question many if not most publishing teams are still completely unequipped to answer, and it will tell you so much about how your book is going to be published. Even with good intentions, primarily white teams cannot change primarily white systems

anyway if you’re curious just how ingrained the publishing feedback loop for blockbuster commercial fiction is, I wrote about the brass tacks of a book like American Dirt for @WeAreMel last year: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/nothing-could-stop-american-dirt-from-succeeding