Authors and agents say more support is needed at all levels of publishing to ensure speculative fiction books by Latinx authors get the attention they deserve.
A 2019 report on the racial diversity of the publishing industry showed 76 percent of the staff are White, primarily cisgender, heterosexual women. Only 6 percent of the publishing industry is Latinx, despite representing 19 percent of the U.S. population.
This author is ravenous about diversity. It’s unsettling. If there was… Just an article about what cool trans or Latin sci-fi I could read, I’d buy a book. Right now.
What these meta diversity journalists forget is that I buy books and read to relax. When I find out a world is written in a closed-minded (ie. White guy who’s never dealt with any bullshit in life) lens, it puts me out of my comfort zone.
The point of reading a book written by someone like me actually isn’t about politics. It’s actually about getting back to that comfort. The fantasies they can spin up are realistic to how I see the world. I can sit back, relax, and be immersed.
As is the norm, there’s no mention at all of, or effort to even attempt to investigate, the demographics of the applicant pool/people who wish to pursue the field as a career.
You can’t even have a cursory analysis of whether discrimination exists without it.
This author is ravenous about diversity. It’s unsettling. If there was… Just an article about what cool trans or Latin sci-fi I could read, I’d buy a book. Right now.
Found it: I had to scroll down so far, but they ask some cool people what books to read: https://19thnews.org/2023/09/hispanic-heritage-months-books-reading-list/
What these meta diversity journalists forget is that I buy books and read to relax. When I find out a world is written in a closed-minded (ie. White guy who’s never dealt with any bullshit in life) lens, it puts me out of my comfort zone.
The point of reading a book written by someone like me actually isn’t about politics. It’s actually about getting back to that comfort. The fantasies they can spin up are realistic to how I see the world. I can sit back, relax, and be immersed.
As is the norm, there’s no mention at all of, or effort to even attempt to investigate, the demographics of the applicant pool/people who wish to pursue the field as a career.
You can’t even have a cursory analysis of whether discrimination exists without it.