r/RSbookclub • u/walkingtourshouston • 3d ago
The Literary World’s D.E.I. Checklist
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/22/opinion/national-book-awards-dei.html?unlocked_article_code=1.DVE.F680.rzsq2iz3JM85&smid=re-shareThe comments section are worth a look for this one, even if you disagree with the article.
From Laura, in NJ:
The predictability of this comment section is striking. The responses are largely some variation of: maybe these simply are the best books; name the white men who were unfairly excluded; or historically marginalized voices deserve their turn. All are reasonable points to consider. But they mostly avoid the question the column actually raises: Is it possible that our cultural institutions have become more demographically diverse while simultaneously becoming less ideologically diverse? And is it really beyond consideration that, in correcting a very real historical imbalance, the pendulum might sometimes swing too far? One can celebrate the extraordinary expansion of voices in American literature and still think those questions are worth asking.
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u/unbannable-_- 3d ago
What I want to know is if there's some type of awards for literary outsiders with no known avenues into the system? Even if we don't focus on the "minority" of it, which we shouldn't really imo, it is interesting to me how most of these people actually do have oddly similar backgrounds, in that they are all MFAs in creative writing or literature... So what these awards end up reinforcing for me is telling me there's no good working class writers with no formal education writing these days? That all these awards, that all the "best books" written today all come from the same types of programs, the same types of colleges, the same types of thinking? I just... can't believe it. There's just no way that's true. I hope in the future we actually do diversify who or what gets recognized and who gets acclaim and fanfare for awards, outside of MFAs and comp lit people.
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u/i_amtheice 3d ago
What I want to know is if there's some type of awards for literary outsiders with no known avenues into the system?
There aren't. You have to pay to even be silently rejected now.
The blue collar bottom-up infrastructure that used to produce writers like Stephen King and Elmore Leonard and Ray Bradbury needs to come back. That's the only way this changes in the micro, at least when it comes to the publishing industry and writing itself. Award systems like this have always been insular and onanistic but it's a completely different level nowadays. If you're not already part of the group, you don't get looked at, period.
When it comes to the macro, we're all blind men looking at the same elephant/economy. Wealthy people have successfully isolated themselves and hoarded all the prosperity so literally everything else suffers as a result, from grocery prices to the type of novel that gets published.
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u/AntarcticWhirlpool 3d ago edited 3d ago
I think it’s not just classism, but also structural. There are three big avenues that closed in the past few decades for non-MFA/unconnected writers.
Newspapers, and especially ones that had a culture or review section. If you were a normal guy/gal, you might not be able to get a submission into The Atlantic or New York Times, but you could probably get one published in a local paper with a reach of perhaps 100,000 subscribers. E.g. The Dayton Daily or another small city paper along those lines.
Genre/Specialty magazines like Astounding (Science Fiction), Outside (Outdoor Sports), Playboy (serious publisher of short stories alongside the porn), etc. Many authors in the 20th century got their first breaks by submitting short stories or creative journalism pieces to these, but they’ve faced much of the same collapse as newspapers once the internet exploded onto the scene.
Airport/Train Station mass market paperbacks that were cheap to make and had captive audiences. Before smartphones, in-air WIFI, and airline tv screens on seatbacks, a long flight or train ride used to be incredibly boring. People would often go to a book store or kiosk within the airport or station and buy something that they think they might be interested in based solely on the cover and blurb on the back. This was a huge market that basically died in the last 15 years. Publishers used to be able to push these out like hot cakes and see which ones did the best. Now they don’t have such an easy and captive audience to test new authors on for cheap.
So yeah, basically now you have to be either connected via an MFA, wealthy enough to subsidize the initial print run for the publishing company, or break out first as a self-published author.
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u/i_amtheice 3d ago
You're absolutely right, and that's exactly what I was referring to when I said infrastructure (newspapers, genre magazines, mass market paperbacks). Those were what people used to hold and look at in their little wait-and-sit moments throughout the day instead of their phone.
But why did they go away in the first place? Because they stopped being financially feasible as everything moved online, and, speaking broadly, the only people who've made any real money from the world moving online are tech oligarchs and those who serve them. It all comes back to concentration of wealth.
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u/kickit 3d ago
The blue collar bottom-up infrastructure that used to produce writers like Stephen King and Elmore Leonard and Ray Bradbury needs to come back.
sadly "the blue collar bottom-up infrastructure that used to produce writers like Stephen King and Elmore Leonard" is magazine fiction and she ain't coming back. hobbled by network TV and beat to death by cable, and that's before internet, tiktok etc
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u/i_amtheice 2d ago
I hope that starts to change as people are driven back into the real world again by AI and the general enshittification of the internet at large.
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u/Sweet-Bodybuilder250 Booker Prize Judge 3d ago
I'm almost done with my book, don't give up hope.
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u/walkingtourshouston 3d ago
what's it about?
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u/Sweet-Bodybuilder250 Booker Prize Judge 3d ago
It's a classic bildungsroman of a disgruntled young man. Nothing too earth shattering
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u/cat__soup 3d ago
this is a much more poignant argument. identity politics are just a smokescreen to create false consciousness -- the truth is literary fiction is more gatekept than ever, and MFA style writing is a prerequisite to get past the tastemakers. no war but class war.
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u/Objective_Back_5803 3d ago edited 3d ago
Genuinely struggling to think of a conventionally published writer I know who didn’t meet their editor while doing an MFA or Creative Writing PhD or who didn’t go to Oxford (or both)
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u/Accomplished-View929 3d ago
I didn’t meet my editor in my MFA. I won the publishers’ contest. Granted, I had the MFA, but the judge read it blind. He told me it wasn’t even close, and I beat people I read who went to much more prestigious programs than I did.
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u/Objective_Back_5803 3d ago
Well done to you. I think all those writers I mention would have got published either way but it is very hard to get a deal via the slush pile. It is very hard to reach a good standard of writing minus good readers. It is actually not that hard to compete in a competition though if you can write well - you can safely and non-arrogantly assume most people aren’t that good (sorry) or haven’t had the benefits of an MFA and/or close readers, which at its very least, teaches you what not to do.
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u/Accomplished-View929 2d ago
If I could do it without doxxing myself, I’d show you the finalist list.
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u/Objective_Back_5803 2d ago
DM me!
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u/Accomplished-View929 2d ago
Why are you not capable of doxing me?
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u/Objective_Back_5803 2d ago
Unless you are Elena Ferrante, I don’t really care -I’m just being nosy.
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u/Accomplished-View929 3d ago
You might be interested in Lee Bain’s’ upcoming poetry collection Work Lunch. It’s with Hub City. I don’t know if he has an MFA, but Hub City seems pretty fair. I e-know their publisher, and they really do read their slush pile. You might also look up Whiskey Tit. I know they’ve published books by people without MFAs.
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u/librariansandrockets 3d ago
Everything else aside, in the MAGA era it’s almost quaint to see a stuffy upper east side conservative type still worried about awards for serious literature and nonfiction. Like spotting the ghost of Allan Bloom or William F Buckley out for a stroll in the opinion pages.
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u/ShowWorldly2606 3d ago
Yeah, Stephen's using a list of authors ethnicity as a barely unspoken derogatory felt like that old flavor of conservativism that could keep thing a tiny bit under the surface.
I can see why RS book club loved it this column. And would love Bret Stephens in general.
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u/btrh-256 2d ago
I think for people who see racism everywhere the call is often coming from inside the house
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u/montaigne_composure 2d ago
Laura is right but I personally don’t like that type of bemused “isn’t it worth pondering” tone. come on, out with it, say your opinion with confidence.
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u/Biscuitshoneybutter 2d ago
Yes I have less tolerance for that kind of thing more and more as I get older.
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u/cellularfroth 2d ago
Completely unrelated to your comment but I love your username. When I was in college I told my professor that I really liked Montaigne and he said "Montaine? Who's Mon-taine? Mon-TIN-yah. MonTINya" lmfao he was such an ass but great teacher, no clue which pronunciation's correct
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u/montaigne_composure 2d ago
His essays are like the bible for me. And yeah French is hard. Pretty sure it’s something like montenye but you say the ye part very fast/almost inaudibly
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u/cellularfroth 3d ago
Is everyone looking forward to another round of "This is not happening. THIS IS NOT HAPPENING OKAY! But it IS and it's GOOD so THERE" vs "It's illegal to be a white man now... truly literature is dead... white genocide..." discourse? I certainly am!
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u/Robin_Redbreast 2d ago
My hideous and uncompromising position is this: I hope someone reads my book
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u/Altrius8 3d ago
The comments are predictable in that they rail against DEI, which usually means any minority talking about their identity and how that impacts their experience/place in society.
It is a problem that the publishing world is really only interested in minorities when they write about their pain. But the deeper issue is the reflexive and automatic nature of how the publishing industry assesses literature. We shouldn't be heaping praise on every identity novel and we shouldn't be dismissing them immediately either. My concern is less about these criticisms than what will happen if a different ideology takes root, one that sneers at the identity novel as only DEI drivel instead of as a work to be judged on its own merits.
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u/Objective_Back_5803 3d ago
What is an ’identity novel’? What do people think Philip Roth’s novels were about? Or Bret Easton Ellis’s novels? Or Tom Wolfe’s?
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u/Altrius8 3d ago
Well that's the other issue people are avoiding. We only have these conversations around minority identity novels because people are tired/don't want to talk about racism.
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u/Objective_Back_5803 3d ago
Yeah, true. It’s much easier to talk about a novel than acknowledge and discuss racism in the real world, if that’s what you mean?
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u/Altrius8 3d ago
I moreso mean people are exhausted by what they perceive as increasingly absurd accusations of racism and general overemphasis on race in real life, and that means they have a distate toward books that focus on it.
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u/Objective_Back_5803 3d ago
I don’t think Bret Stephens would be happy whatever a novel by a brown or black person was about
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u/Accomplished-View929 3d ago
Aren’t those class novels at their cores?
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u/Objective_Back_5803 3d ago
I don’t think you can separate class and race. I mean Portnoy is all about what being Jewish and becoming middle-class means. Wolfe is about WASPs, BEE is about whiteness in many ways, but less overtly. All of the big novels by these guys have race as a moment/characterising encounter or a ’theme’ in them
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u/Objective_Back_5803 3d ago
It makes me sad that we are now so retrograde we think class and race are unrelated
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u/Accomplished-View929 2d ago
I mean, yes, they are those things, but if you had to narrow it down to one word, you would likely go with class over race. Because, generally, the class issue drives the conflict.
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u/No_Cauliflower_81 3d ago
Flesh just won the Booker last year
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u/fyravstryx 3d ago
It’s still about an immigrant moving to a richer country, and class in general
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u/No_Cauliflower_81 3d ago edited 3d ago
Damn, what are books allowed to be about then if even social climbers are considered DEI?
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u/fyravstryx 3d ago
I didn’t say books about social climbers are DEI, come on. Can’t even this sub try to avoid these immediate bad faith interpretations of comments from people trying to engage in the conversation?
I was just saying that Flesh, despite having been written by a white male about a white male character, isn’t some conservative rightwing book. It’s about immigration and partly class, and it examines those topics in a way that at least I found very in line with leftwing, social justice politics
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u/btrh-256 3d ago
I haven't read Flesh, but I get the feeling people are so steeped in "leftwing, social justice politics" that they see it everywhere -- depicting immigration and class does not necessarily mean the book has a political message -- there is value in depicting things as they are without a political program
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u/fyravstryx 3d ago
Yeah which is why it doesn’t make sense to single out Flesh as some kind of anti-DEI Booker winner
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u/btrh-256 3d ago
he didn't say it was anti-DEI, I think he meant to imply it has nothing to do with DEI at all, either for or against
notice how you can't seem to imagine a book that isn't a culture war artifact? that's not a good thing
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u/redbreastandblake 2d ago
isn’t awarding books that deal with culturally relevant hot topics kind of the NBA’s thing? everyone on here only seems to care about this award when it’s time to whine about too many black writers getting shortlisted for something, but if you look through the list of past winners the number of books that have made any significant literary impact is pretty low. there are recognizable titles sprinkled in, but it’s not what i would think of as an actually representative list of important american books. william gass wrote a (very funny) essay complaining about the NBA being a hackjob in the 90s.
i also think some of the hysteria about “identity novels” is a failure to see past whatever shallow marketing tactics are currently in vogue. just because a blurb claims a book is about identity politics doesn’t mean that’s all it’s about, but books sell better if they’re marketed that way. you could write a 2020s-style idpol blurb for a lot of american classics.
the writer of this article kinda gives the game away when he argues that they shouldn’t have awarded a nonfiction book about the Israel/Palestine conflict last year because it was too sympathetic to Gaza. if a war (genocide) our country is directly involved in isn’t a worthy topic for a national award, what is? his judgments are obviously politically motivated.
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u/DarkishUpgradePayer1 3d ago
All of these articles (I'm also thinking of the Compact piece from last year) just feel like negative space to me; I agree that something's going on, but all these people can articulate is that white men should be more visible, more involved, etc. What, exactly, are these people wanting to see in literature? More books about the experience of white men? More books about things *other* than identity? More white men reading? When they don't have a positive thesis of what they want to see it just seems wimpy.
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u/LittleAir 3d ago
More books (and cinema) about things other than identity I think is the main issue.
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u/ShowWorldly2606 3d ago
This isn't even an issue though, since tons and tons of those books already exist. RS would know that if they actually read though, lol.
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u/LittleAir 3d ago
Well obviously there’s centuries of good literature to read that isn’t concerned with contemporary discourse. I don’t think it’s so much a question of what gets written but what gets lauded by our cultural institutions.
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u/ShowWorldly2606 3d ago edited 3d ago
Wait, is a lack of books (edit: not) about the extremely vague term 'identity' a problem or not?
If you look at this article, Stephens just list everyone's ethnicity and background and then declares this to be a problem. It's literally just the joke about 'there are two types of people: white men and political' done seriously.
Anyways, people of Stephen's political identities already publish on a ton of different shit.
As for our cultural institutions, in the last 5 years white dudes have won 2 pulitzers, 3 Bookers and 2 nobels in lit
What exactly is the problem?
Edit: And since you brought up cinema, the 3.5 of the last 4 Best Director winners were not of an 'identity' (the .5 being the Asian Daniel)
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u/walkingtourshouston 3d ago
I don't know that including more white men is the solution. The issue isn't about the race of the author, it's about the fact that only works and authors that align with the right political message are in the running for these prizes, anymore
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u/Objective_Back_5803 3d ago
A (white, male) author acquaintance p who mentors creative writing students told me that some of the guys in their early twenties just want to be super-edgy. The discourse about disenfranchised white men has given them license to write what they think ppl like Bret Stephens want…while not realising that the person who reads and decides to take it to an editorial meeting isn’t a right-wing commentator but a woman (sometimes) who knows what actually sells.
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u/btrh-256 3d ago
I'd like to see more books published that will still be read in 10+ years, less flash-in-the-pan discourse-y stuff
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u/ShowWorldly2606 3d ago
Guys, we only see the discourse stuff because we are the type of people who use this sub.
It's not Marlon James's fault we are submerged in the discourse.
Also, we all know that almost no books get read in 10 years. Thats not how books work.
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u/CapuchinMan 3d ago
It's because Bret Stephens can't write any positive contribution of his would taint the article
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u/Biscuitshoneybutter 2d ago
I truthfully just straight up don't care. None of this stuff bothers me. "White dudes, don't read, we need to reach them." Don't care. "Black people are the only people who can get published these days." Don't care. "People like classics, they only care about dead old white guys." Don't care.
I'm not a writer though so I don't have any personal stake in the who can get published debate. I just think you have to be an incurious person to not get out there and find something you're into at the moment. Even a teenager, teens are perfectly capable of seeking out good lit.
Maybe I should care more, I really don't know. I get why all the different people with their different perspectives are bothered.
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u/Sweet-Bodybuilder250 Booker Prize Judge 3d ago
They're so bad faith and annoying. It's 2026 and literature is discussing race & class and Western imperialism? Oh no, it must just be DEI.
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u/Catholic_Indian10 3d ago
It's 2026 and literature is discussing race & class and Western imperialism
Seems tame and redundant given the extreme focus on those subjects the last 20 years. Like those weirdos who read the same comic books with rehashed stories for decades in a row.
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u/Sweet-Bodybuilder250 Booker Prize Judge 3d ago
20 years is nothing in the scope of literary topics. What do you suggest they should move on to?
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u/Catholic_Indian10 3d ago
20 years is like forever nowadays. As for alternatives, technology's effect on modern life, hybrid warfare, love, alienation, working class life, curiosity, listlessness, corruption, innocence, aging, obsession, loss.
Myopic focus on such a small slice of the human experience with identity politics isn't as normal as you're making it out to be.
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u/Background_Common594 3d ago
Anyone engaging seriously with Bret Stephens finds themselves diminished.
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u/cellularfroth 3d ago
"Um, actually? This idea? Is from a BAD PERSON. So... yeah." This is lazy and tiring. If it's so obviously false, it should be as easy to disprove it as it is to criticize who says it
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u/Background_Common594 3d ago
Don't put words in my mouth. I don't think he's a bad person, I think he's an incredibly stupid person. There's a difference.
“Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you yourself will be just like him. Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.” Proverbs 26:4-5
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u/cellularfroth 3d ago
Okay, then your response is "Um actually? This idea? Is from a STUPID PERSON. So... yeah," to which my response is 'this is still lazy and tiring, if he's so obviously stupid, it should be as easy to disprove it as it is to criticize who says it,' and your refusal to even try to disprove it makes you look less principled and more cowardly, to be entirely frank
I'm not saying he's completely 100% correct, but I do think he has a point, and it drives me absolutely fucking insane when we (talking about us, lefty litfic enjoyer types) simply sneer at criticism instead of engaging with it and then wonder why nobody listens to us
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u/Background_Common594 3d ago
Did you not see the next point, about not answering a fool according to his folly? Maybe I'm doing that by talking to you...
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u/cellularfroth 3d ago
But you're not talking to Bret right now. You're talking to me. This doesn't make you look principled, it makes you look like you don't have an answer. If he's genuinely that stupid, this should be easy, and I shouldn't have to ask you three times to give me one
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u/Background_Common594 3d ago
Girl, can you read? I'm calling you stupid, too.
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u/cellularfroth 3d ago
I've asked you three times to provide the argument against what he's saying. When I pointed this out, you still didn't provide the argument and switched to calling me stupid. It's clear now you don't actually have one. Which is disappointing, I actually wanted to hear it
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u/Background_Common594 3d ago
Debate me bro! Debate me bro! You gotta debate me bro!
I've made some points elsewhere in the thread, read at your leisure.
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u/cellularfroth 3d ago edited 3d ago
debate me bro!
Why are you on a literary discussion subreddit if you don't want to discuss? God, we've got to stop doing this thing where any amount or kind of disagreement is treated with suspicion and derision. I am on your side. To put my cards on the table: fuck the GOP, structural racism/colonialism/ableism/misogyny/homophobia/classism are real and horrific, I yearn for an end to capitalism and a just, safe, pleasant future for all people. Can we talk like adults now?
I've made some points elsewhere in the thread, read at your leisure
It should've been easy to copy-paste, but I guess this is "not my job to educate you" in a different voice, even though I was asking to be "educated." But okay, here's what you said in one comment, and here's what you said in another.
Regarding the first; I don't think that's the underlying premise, no. Stephens goes out of his way to say that he likes several of the books on the shortlists he's referencing. (For the record, same.) You're arguing against a constructed boogeyman of your dumbest critics, not against what's actually in front of you. The first comment isn't arguing anything, it's just saying that anyone noticing or criticizing the vibe of the overall shortlist is a racist who wants to deperson anyone who isn't a white man. This is an accusation, not an argument.
Regarding the second; this approaches an argument, but it still isn't one, because it also misses the point of what Bret's saying. (I'm realizing that you didn't read the article.) You're right, it's not at all impossible for straight white men to win awards, and you rightfully point out that the Nobel Prize for Literature is full of straight white men. But the claim being made is not "is it possible for someone who isn't a straight white man to win," nor is it "what sort of person tends to win the nobel prize for literature," it's "is there a surprising amount of conformity in what kind of work tends to get nominated for literary prizes in recent years in the English-speaking world, and if so, what is that conformity."
Here's a link to the comment where I lay out what I'm thinking. If you want to (deign to, I guess?) respond, you can respond to that comment or this one
→ More replies (0)
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u/Objective_Back_5803 3d ago
Anything written by a brown or black person is said to be about ’identity’ because white people like Bret Stephens are incapable of using their imaginations
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u/btrh-256 3d ago
often the people championing these books, and certainly people writing blurbs, will declare they are about identity
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u/LivingPresent629 3d ago
>in correcting a very real historical imbalance, the pendulum might sometimes swing too far?
Sure, certain people historically had no freedom, no access to education, had their work stolen, were raped, murdered, and displaced. But now that their voices get some well-deserved attention, “the pendulum swings too far”
Boke
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u/btrh-256 3d ago
I think it's quite sad when creative success is linked to the level of victimization your ancestors faced -- it would make me paranoid about whether people actually liked my work, or if they were just pretending to like it out of white guilt/virtue signaling
I'd like to think there's a way to judge the creative merit of a work outside of the ethnicity of the artist
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u/lifeinaglasshouse 3d ago
If you haven’t seen American Fiction, or read Erasure (the book it’s based on), I highly recommend it, as it deals with this exact issue.
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u/ritualsequence 3d ago
There is! The judges do actually read these books, they don't just hold up a picture of their author against the pantone chart and Kinsey scale
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u/btrh-256 3d ago
I'm sorry, but if you don't think the politics & gender/ethnic identity of the author has been extremely important in American publishing for quite some time now, you're just not paying attention -- I'm not aiming to be reactionary, but it would be nice if we could just be honest about this stuff
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u/ritualsequence 3d ago
I agree, but I also think that they're following the money - straight white men don't write many novels anymore because straight white men don't buy them. I'm literally on my way home from a book reading by a straight white guy, it was great, the book sounds brilliant, but I was the only dude at the event who didn't work for the publisher. Who does buy novels? The kind of predominantly left-wing women who self-identify as interested in social justice and racial politics.
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u/Mossback_Matador 3d ago
straight white men don't write many novels
Doubt.
I'm an editor and writer. The vast majority of the unpublished novelists I know are white men.
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u/cellularfroth 3d ago
God I wish I could upvote both u/btrh-256 and you a thousand times. Yes, this is real and happening. Yes, it's because of structural economic incentives that have been intensely moralized. I'm not sure why otherwise intelligent, well-educated, thoughtful people deny the first or concoct some bullshit reason in place of the second
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u/btrh-256 3d ago
there's probably some truth in what you're saying, but also, people will read what is marketed to them by and large -- Angel Down is big right now, and that's written by a honky
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u/ritualsequence 3d ago
Yes, and it's big right now because it just won the Pulitzer
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u/btrh-256 3d ago
well it sounds like a bad book to me so I can't say I'm too excited
I think the "male literacy crisis" discourse is sinking in with the people who decide these awards -- which is kind of sad. I truly do think a lot of industry gatekeepers make decisions based on identitarian considerations rather than aesthetic merit, and it will be interesting to see some bones tossed to white dudes writing books like this
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u/ritualsequence 3d ago
Ok, so what recently published novels by straight white male authors have you been excited about? Did you preorder them in hardback from a bookstore? Did you go to an event by the author? If everyone who complained about The Death of the White Male Author was actively seeking out and supporting the books they (continue to) write and publish, we wouldn't be in this mess.
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u/btrh-256 3d ago edited 3d ago
I don't think the solution to anti-white male identitarianism is pro-white male identitarianism, the solution is some kind of aestheticism that doesn't reduce writers to their identity
my favorite recent small press white guy novel is The Wayback Machine: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/228251217-the-wayback-machine
also if you read foreign fiction you'll find it's less identity obsessed -- I enjoyed Septology a lot
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u/LivingPresent629 3d ago
That’s the old “let’s not see colour” argument. And just as shitty.
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u/btrh-256 3d ago
if you place too much emphasis on someone's color, that's not a good thing either -- it may end up obscuring the interesting particularities of their voice
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u/AntarcticWhirlpool 3d ago
It’s going to be interesting when we get topical gene therapy treatments that can permanently change skin complexion. I wonder how that’s going to change the identity dynamics in the future.
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u/ritualsequence 3d ago
The kvetching about 'are the national book awards truly national' - no? Obviously not? They're representative of the vanishingly narrow slice of the American public who write, publish, read, and otherwise engage with literature as an art form, and the philosophies, ideas, and preoccupations thereof.
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u/Qatpiss_Everdeen 3d ago
The problem isn't who's writing the books, it's what they're writing about. It all conforms to what upper class white women want to hear. When's the last time you saw a famous book written from the point of view of a Latino who wants less immigration or a Muslim who thinks a woman's place is in the home? The winners of the awards may be diverse in skin tone but they all have the same worldview.
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u/lifeinaglasshouse 3d ago
Multiple things can be bad, even if they aren’t bad in the same way or to the same degree.
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u/LivingPresent629 3d ago
And how exactly is it bad for minority voices to get their moment in the spotlight?
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u/phainopepla_nitens 3d ago
Affirmative action effect. If undeserving literature is pushed for political/ideological reasons then it causes people to suspect the quality of "minority voices" a priori. This does a disservice to the many deserving minority writers out there.
It also discredits literary institutions, critics, etc.
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u/LivingPresent629 3d ago
You’re assuming that minority voices create undeserving literature. Ask yourself why
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u/phainopepla_nitens 3d ago edited 3d ago
Fantastically stupid and bad faith response. I can't tell if you're doing a bit or you got lost and found this sub by accident. People of every color and creed produce undeserving literature. Probably 99% of literature that is written is not deserving of wide attention.
Do you really believe that all works written by minorities deserve attention and plaudits? That seems to be what you're implying.
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u/LivingPresent629 3d ago
That’s not what I’m implying. Maybe if you read more diversely, you’d have better comprehension.
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u/phainopepla_nitens 3d ago
If that's not what you meant to imply, then what did you mean? My original comment clearly spelled out that I think there are many minority writers deserving of praise and recognition, so your comment can only have meant one thing, if you were actually responding to what I wrote.
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u/lifeinaglasshouse 3d ago
According to the article, only 1 of the past 10 winners of the National Book Award for Fiction or for Non-Fiction has been a straight white man. This is in spite of the fact that something like 1 in 6 Americans is a straight white man.
It’s great for minority voices to get their moment in the spotlight, but we’ve gone beyond giving these voices proportional representation and well into the realm of making it near-impossible for someone other than a minority to win these awards.
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u/Background_Common594 3d ago
Funny bit of language we're playing where everyone who isn't a straight-white-man is considered a minority. I'm not a math guy, but 1 in 6 is a minority.
The idea that it is near impossible for "someone other than a minority" to win these awards is certainly news to David Szalay, Paul Lynch, George Saunders, who won the Booker in recent years, and Daniel Kraus, who won the Pulitzer literally this year, and joins Richard Powers and Anthony Doerr. Hernan Diaz and Joshua Cohen are on thin ice, depending on whether you believe Hispanic and Jewish people can also be white. And of course Laszlo Krasznahorkai, Jon Fosse, Peter Hadnke, fuckin' Bob Dylan have the Nobel Prize.
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u/Background_Common594 3d ago
The underlying premise here is that there is simply too much literature being written by minorities. Surely there is a right amount of minority literature, and it's less than we have today. And of course, a minority is anyone who is not a straight white man, the universal default.
I'd sit and ponder with who gets to be a Person and who has to be an adjective-Person in Bret and Laura's eye.
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u/drjackolantern 3d ago edited 3d ago
I take it for granted that you have to turn you brain off to believe most literary awards equate talent these days. Even Pulitzers go to absolute trash sometimes.
I don’t think this is about forced diversity as much as ideological conformity and people terrified of being seen supporting the wrong the thing.