The Problem With Diversity in Publishing

On January 21, it seemed all that anyone talked about in the publishing industry was American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. It was in the New York Times; Publishers Weekly; and every author, editor, and reader’s Twitter feeds. It boiled down to one question: why can publishing not get it right when it comes to diversity?

The novel, acquired for seven figures by Flatiron Books, built hype as its release date neared. But from a small library in Texas near the U.S.-Mexico border, people expressed concern. Kate Horan, the director of the McAllen Public Library, received an early copy of the novel for a partnership with Oprah’s Book Club, according to The New York Times article “‘American Dirt’ Is Proof the Publishing Industry Is Broken.” Upon reading the novel, Horan claimed that since the author is not Mexican and has never visited Mexico, migrant culture is not the story she should be telling. In a rare move, Horan sent the book back, saying she wouldn’t be partaking in the program this year.

Following its release, more and more people flagged the novel as phony, capitalizing on a culture that wasn’t Cummins’s to talk about. Flatiron then canceled the book tour and apologized for its false advertising. They used a false markup cover in its promo, but worse than that described her husband as an immigrant to add integrity to the story without mentioning that he immigrated from Ireland, not Mexico.

Then the questions began cropping up: how did such a mishap ever get a green light in the first place? Who allowed for such tone-deaf writing to be put out, marketed as the opposite?

Just weeks later, the conversation still circling the internet, publishers put out new covers on classics, with Barnes & Noble featuring black characters on the front, despite the written characters clearly being white and—many times—racist.

This series of tone-deaf missteps participating in false advertising and race-baiting leads to a larger issue within the publishing industry. In a self-report survey done by Lee & Low Books about diversity within publishing, the statistics came back pretty predictably: 76 percent of the industry is white and 81 percent is straight. Furthermore, transgender people make up less than 1 percent of the industry.

When each manuscript must be chosen, edited, and produced by publishers—who are essentially gatekeepers in the process—there becomes an obvious problem with which steps the industry makes in terms of diversity. If the people who decide which stories live and die are all straight, white, and cisgender, they are unlikely to catch cultural misrepresentations or fairly select and edit manuscripts.

Now, the solution to this is not simple. To hire more diverse people is to assume that once they get those jobs, the environment and the system exists in such a way that they feel compelled to stay. Discrimination is systemic, and often, even if publishers were to hire people of color or queer people, the system works against them in ways that make it uncomfortable or miserable to stay.

I asked Emerson’s Undergraduate Students for Publishing’s spring 2020 authors, Andi Smith, and Ximena Delgado, about this issue.

Smith, who is publishing a historical fiction book entitled A Biography of An Unknown Soldier, argues that the entire problem is “a real catch-22.” For marginalized identities to “become literary, they must be presented as literature, but they won’t, because people don’t see them as that yet,” she says.

Delgado, who authentically represents her Mexican identity in her novel Para Curarte, talks about the misrepresentation of Mexican identity: “We don’t wear ponchos and Mariachi hats every day, we don’t travel through the states on a donkey’s back, we don’t celebrate Cinco de Mayo,” she says. “We are also not the rapists, murders, drug mules that a lot of Americans associate us with [...] yes, there is violence, same like in many other countries, but there is also so much beauty.”

However, Delgado’s specific call to action does not just involve publishers and authors. Publishing is a business, and Delgado says, “If readers were to demand more diversity and inclusion, then publishers would be forced to publish all these different types of stories...”

The problem with diversity in publishing cannot be fixed overnight; entire systems are not dismantled in a day. Thus, as the industry changes slowly, it is even more important for readers to step into their role, which is somewhat simple: demand diversity and buy diverse books.