Introduction: ‘In an Era of Fear and Division, Fiction Plays a Vital Role in Dramatising Difference and Encouraging Empathy’
Abstract Ramdarshan Bold offers a much-needed summary of the relationship between the media and representations of marginalised groups, focusing on UKYA books, publishing, and authors. The introduction outlines the rationale and justifcation for this book and situates this study in relation to other critical and academic examinations of ‘race’ and racism in the media. Focusing on the backlash against multiculturalism, and the anti-immigrant sentiment that arose after Brexit and the 2016 USA Presidential elections, Ramdarshan Bold provides a comprehensive argument to why counter-narratives are as important now as they were during the Civil Rights Movements (in the USA). Drawing upon Rudine Sims Bishop’s seminal work, and the We Need Diverse Books social media movement, Ramdarshan Bold highlights how representation in cultural output for children and teenagers is particularly important since this lack of inclusivity infuences how ‘diverse’, young readers see themselves and how readers, from a more dominant culture, see and understand ‘diversity’. This chapter also details the mixed-method approach undertaken to complete this original study. There is little literature available covering these issues, so the original material (obtained through the interviews) will build an overview and address this balance. While this study is grounded in established theoretical frameworks, new modes of enquiry are required to respond to these emerging, and complex, issues and discussions.
© The Author(s) 2019
M. Ramdarshan Bold, Inclusive Young Adult Fiction, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10522-8_1
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Keywords Multiculturalism · Race and racism · Media · Racism in the media · Cultural industries · Cultural production · We Need Diverse
Books · Representation · Counter-narratives · Diversity · Inclusivity · UKYA
Cultural production in the modern world cannot be adequately understood without taking account of race and ethnicity, and their relation to oppression. Cultural production often seeks to disseminate, incorporate, and commodify vital forms of culture from the margins of societies. Combined with racialized understandings of talent and authenticity, this can have powerful effects on cultural production. For this and other reasons, theories of cultural production need to make the intertwined oppressions associated with race and ethnicity far more central than they have been until now—and these oppressions need somehow to be theorized in relation to power dynamics related to class, gender, and other factors. (Hesmondhalgh and Saha 2013, p. 180)
Culture—whether words, images, or audio—plays an important role in how meaning and identities are formed, challenged, and contended (Hall and Du Gay 1997). As Hesmondhalgh and Saha (2013) argue, in the above quote, cultural production is central in establishing hegemony through discursive practices. This book focuses on cultural hegemony in the UK and will explore how literary culture aimed at young adults (YA) continues the ‘power dynamics’, described by Hesmondhalgh and Saha (2013, p. 180). The UK is considered a multicultural society and is home to a number of ethnic and religious groups. Modern British society has been shaped (and reshaped) by past and present immigration and is comprised of many diaspora communities. Government fgures show that 87% of the UK population is white and 13% belong to Black, Asian, Mixed, or Other ethnic groups (Gov 2017). The number of Black, Asian, Mixed, or Other ethnic groups in the UK is predicted to rise in the future (Tran 2010). Additionally, the median age of ethnic minorities in the UK is lower than that of the white population (Kershen 2017). This all underlines that we live in a racialised society where cultural hierarchies and structural inequality prevail: only 3% of the UK’s most powerful and infuential political, fnancial, judicial, cultural, and
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security people are from Black, Asian, and minority ethnic (BAME)1 groups (Colour of Power 2018); only 6% of management jobs in the UK are held by BAME people; BAME workers are more likely to be unemployed and underemployed than their white counterparts (Allen 2016), and BAME people are more likely to live in poverty (EHRC 2016). In general, the 2016 report by Equality and Human Rights Commission found that a number of inequalities for BAME groups existed in employment, education, crime, living standards, and health and care (EHRC 2016); additionally, racial or religiously aggravated hate crimes rose by a third in 2016–2017, particularly around the time of the Brexit referendum (Dearden 2017). The latter was partly fuelled by anti-immigrant rhetoric published in right-wing, mainstream media (Walgrave and Swert 2004; Boomgaarden and Vliegenthart 2007, 2009; Vliegenthart and Boomgaarden 2010; Githens-Mazer and Lambert 2010; Vliegenthart et al. 2012; van Klingeren et al. 2015; Sheets et al. 2016; Deacon 2016; Murphy and Devine 2018). There has been a backlash against multiculturalism in recent years, again incited by the media (Vertovec and Wessendorf 2010). Racial politics are very much in existence in Anglo-American culture, from Anti-Muslim rhetoric, after the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks, to the vilifcation of African American youths (particularly in response to the #BlackLivesMatters movement): this has disrupted discourses of culture and reintroduced the ‘embattled and embalmed narrative of civilisational clash’ (Bhabha 2003, p. 27).2 The cultural industries3 are fundamental in shaping how we perceive difference, particularly notions of ‘race’ and ethnicity, because
1 The term BME/BAME is widely used, particularly for administrative purposes. As will be explained in more depth later, this research will use the term ‘of colour’ to describe, and unify, groups of people who have been racialised. However, the term BAME/BME will be used if that was the original term in the study or report.
2 Racialised violence is often directed at young adults: recently Michael Brown (18), Trayvon Martin (17), and Tamir Rice (12) were shot and killed in the USA.
3 The core cultural industries are: broadcasting (television and radio); flm; publishing (books, magazines, newspapers, etc.); video and computer games; advertising, marketing and public relations; and web design (Hesmondhalgh 2013). The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DMCS) included the following in its description of the creative industries: advertising and marketing; architecture; crafts; product design, graphic design, and fashion design; Film, TV, video, radio, and photography; IT, software, video games, and computer services; publishing and translation; museums, galleries and libraries; music, performing arts, visual arts, and cultural education (DCMS 2017).
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they help produce social meaning and shape the public-sphere where ideological values are disseminated and challenged (Habermas 1989). Hesmondhalgh (2013) has argued that these industries are ‘agents of economic, social and cultural change’ which infuence ‘our understanding and knowledge of the world’ and ‘shape our sense of how we might live together in modern societies’ (pp. 4–5). It is also true that the media is a place where misrepresentations of ‘race’ can be challenged: ‘In an era of fear and division, fction plays a vital role in dramatising difference and encouraging empathy’ (Michalopoulou 2016).
However, many scholars have explored how the mainstream media, in different countries, are a deep-rooted part of the problem of racism (Hartmann and Husband 1974; van Dijk 1987, 1991, 2000; Bonnafous 1991; Campbell 1995; Gray 1995; Drew 2011; Bhatia et al. 2018). This is because ‘the media can impose their own logic on assembled materials in a number of ways, including emphasizing behaviors and people and stereotyping’ (Shoemaker and Reese 1991, p. 33). Conservative and popular media, in particular, reproduce and perpetuate racial stereotypes and prejudices. In the case of recent events, such as the 2016 Brexit referendum in the UK and the Presidential elections in the USA: animosity towards immigrants was infamed and legitimised (AlJazeera 2016; England 2016; McLaughlin 2016; Versi 2016; Virdee and McGeever 2017). Hesmondhalgh and Saha contend, ‘The effects of racism and of the racialization of ethnicity permeate institutions of cultural production, and, because such production signifcantly shapes the knowledge, values and beliefs that are circulated in society, the continuing infuence of racism in cultural production is likely to have effects on societies’ (2013, p. 183). It is clear that mainstream culture is colonised by whiteness and that the media are involved in racialising discourses. Dyer stated, ‘power in contemporary society habitually passes itself off as embodied in the normal as opposed to the superior’ (1988, p. 45): accordingly, normalising whiteness actualises and perpetuates the power of whiteness. This is troublesome since many people only encounter otherness through the media, even those who live in cosmopolitan, multicultural cities (Saha 2018).
As outlined above, there is an under-representation of creative works that refect the changing nature of British identity and society, and which challenge the notion of a fxed and singular British identity; what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls the ‘single story’ (Adichie 2009). There is also an under-representation of authors of colour in Anglo-American
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publishing. At this juncture, it is important to note that while there are differences in the history of racism, ‘race’, and ethnogenesis in the USA and UK, British culture, particularly YA publishing (as noted below), is infuenced by, and infused with, American culture. While this book will focus on British authors of colour, the issues will be contextualised within Anglo-American discourse, since British and American authors dominate the YA market (Hansen 2015; Ramdarshan Bold 2018). Commentators have long speculated that English language YA ‘disproportionately take place in the US and UK’ (Hansen 2015). In the British YA market, Anglo-American authors dominated the YA market during this time period: out of all of the individual authors 43% were American and 47% were British (Ramdarshan Bold 2018). Downing and Husband observed, in 2005, that relatively little research looking at racism, ethnicity, and the media had been undertaken. This book will look at how the book publishing industry is reproducing and perpetuating cultural hierarchies (in the case of this research ‘racial’ and ethnic ones) and will examine the experiences of ‘own voice’ cultural producers that create a counter-narrative. The concept of the counter-narrative is introduced in critical race theory (Delgado 1989, 1999). Counter-narratives do not replace the dominant narrative; instead they offer a voice, and a space, for marginalised groups to be heard and understood (Delgado 1989, 1999; Ladson-Billings 2009). Counter-narratives are particularly useful for challenging essentialist identities created through ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson 1983; Bhabha 1990). Consequently, counter-narratives challenge hegemonic perspectives and stereotypes, and thus empower marginalised authors and readers (Etter-Lewis 1997; Pollard 2006; Harper et al. 2009). After a survey of related research, Hesmondhalgh and Saha (2013) found that there is ‘still an urgent need for research that complements studies of media content, and of media audiences, by analyzing and evaluating the production processes in terms of race and ethnicity’ and that research in this area was marginal (p. 182). Additionally, as Saha points out, many scholarly discussions surrounding postcolonial representation centre on highbrow culture, such as literary fction, while ignoring the more mainstream genres (Saha 2018). Ergo, it is important to examine these issues through a variety of lenses.
In particular, as will be explored later in this book, the media is important for identity formation, especially for a younger generation, because books for young people are a ‘celebration, reaffrmation, and
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dominant blueprint of shared cultural values, meanings and expectations’ and exclusion from this world can result in a ‘symbolic annihilation’ (McCabe et al. 2011, p. 199; Gerber and Gross 1976, p. 182). For example, Fanon explored the racial pathologies in children’s comics and stories to show how stereotypes were constructed and recreated, which in turn perpetuated systemic racism. Fanon argued that alternative representations are crucial because damaging misrepresentations can lead to children from marginalised groups becoming alienated and/or rejecting their heritage (Fanon 2008). Verna Wilkins, author and founder of Tamarind Books, said, of the lack of characters of colour in children’s books, ‘the acceptance of white skin is associated with all that is important enough to be in books and pictures and so school learning tends to be an unconscious rejection of the child’s own colour’ (Wilkins, quoted in Thomas and King, p. 6). However, bell hooks argued that youth, and in the case of this research, youth audiences, ‘desire cultural spaces where boundaries can be transgressed, where new and alternative relations can be formed’ (1992, p. 36). Therefore, the children’s and YA book market has the potential to be at the forefront of educating and informing young people, about important social issues, including representation. While YA author Daniel José Older contends that ‘literature’s job is not to protect young people from the ugly world; it is to arm them with a language to describe diffcult truths they already know’ (Older 2015), Cart, optimistically, champions YA:
By acquainting readers with the glorious varieties of the human experience, young adult literature invests young hearts and minds with tolerance, understanding, empathy, acceptance, compassion, kindness, and more. It civilizes them, in short, and for that reason I believe no other genre or literary form is as important. (Cart quoted in Nilsen and Donelson 2009, p. 5)
YA lies between children’s and adult fction and although many of its readers fall outwith this age range, it is generally thought of as literature that young people choose to read rather than literature they are required to read (Cole 2009). However, the majority of YA books, particularly best-sellers, feature white, able-bodied, cisgender, and heterosexual protagonists (Ramdarshan Bold 2018). This lack of intersectional representation has led to the establishment of several grass-roots organisations and campaigns such as We Need Diverse Books, Disability in Kidlit,
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Rich in Color, Diversify YA, and Gay YA. YA is therefore a critical market to study, despite being dismissed for its lack of quality (see Chapter 2). In particular, the We Need Diverse Books campaign, which quickly developed into a global phenomenon with the help of social media, has engendered a worldwide conversation about the lack of ‘diversity’ in literary output and has galvanised authors and publishers alike to tackle this issue (Gupta 2014; Kirch 2014). While there have been some initiatives, in the 2006–2016 period, to increase the ‘diversity’ in YA books—e.g. literary agents have seen a rise of submissions from racially minoritised authors and discussions at the 2016 Frankfurt Book Fair pledged that ‘diversity and multiculturalism’ in YA fction would be an area of focus for acquisitions—many authors, readers, and commentators believe the publishing industry has fallen short in representing its readers in recent years (Abrahams 2014; Strickland 2014; Thomas 2014; Roback 2016; Harwell 2016; Ho 2016; Low 2016; Morrison 2016; Thomas 2016).4
Tom Weldon, the CEO of Penguin Random House, warned that publishers risk ‘becoming irrelevant’ if they fail to represent contemporary society (Guardian 2016).5 In her seminal article, Rudine Sims Bishop (1990) wrote:
Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and refects it back to us, and in that refection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of the larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affrmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books. (p. ix)
Consequently, representation in cultural output for children and teenagers is particularly important since this lack of inclusivity infuences how ‘diverse’, young readers see themselves and how readers, from dominant groups, see and understand ‘diversity’ (Bishop 1990; Lowrey and Sabis-Burns 2007; Kokesh and Sternadori 2015; Thomas 2014, 2016). Thomas (2014) describes this as ‘the imagination gap’. Furthermore, research by Baxley and Boston, supported by the research undertaken for
4 The problematic nature of ‘diversity’ initiatives will be discussed further in Chapter 3.
5 In this book, the term publisher will generally refer to mainstream publishers.
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this book, found that ‘YA literature refecting the experiences, culture, and history of people of color continues to be represented in limited facets of the publishing arena’ (Baxley and Boston 2014, p. 4).
In 2016, Janet Smyth, Director of the Edinburgh Book Festival’s Children’s programme, described YA as ‘the major publishing creation of the last decade’ with sales rising rapidly since 2006 (Flood 2016). As such, this time period warrants investigation. This book will investigate the output and experiences of British authors of colour published in the UK during the period 2006–2016. Diversity is described by the We Need Diverse Books project as ‘all diverse experiences, including (but not limited to) LGBTQIA, Native, people of color, gender diversity, people with disabilities, and ethnic, cultural, and religious minorities’ (We Need Diverse Books 2016). However, this research will focus on only one of the categories: people of colour. This study does not intend to constrict the discussion about diversity by excluding some of the other marginalised groups detailed above and will therefore consider issues relating to gender identity, religion, LGBTQIA+, and socio-economic status as relevant to the interview participants. The word ‘diversity’ has gained prominence in the last ffty years and is used liberally when describing the lack of representation of people of colour in creative production and cultural output. However, diversity is now a buzzword, a political talking point, which can risk overlooking the more complex subject matter. The concept of diversity itself is problematic because it perpetuates the notion of ‘otherness’, which is viewed from a dominant white lens (Saha 2018). While Anglo-American societies are becoming more heterogeneous, people of colour are already the global majority. Therefore, this book will refer to multi-ethnic, multicultural, and/or inclusive (also bearing in mind the complexities of these terms) instead of ‘diverse’ whenever possible when talking about people of colour. However, diversity will still be used when talking about ‘all diverse experiences’ (based on the We Need Diverse Books defnition).
For the purpose of this book, the term ‘of colour’ is used to refer to all individuals from ‘racial’ and ethnic minority groups wherever possible.6 It is used in the political sense to emphasise the common experiences of systemic racism experienced by non-whites. As such, this term encompasses an array of ethnic communities, disenfranchised or
6 At present, all of the terminology used to classify ethnicity is problematic (see Newland et al. 2014).
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marginalised people, highlighting the social relationship between these groups. Additionally, this term allows for a more complex understanding of culture and identity, which is inclusive and encompasses blurred boundaries of multiple origins (Vidal-Ortiz 2008). The term people ‘of colour’ is problematic in itself, because it assumes whiteness as the norm: ‘in the realm of categories, black is always marked as a colour (as the term “coloured” egregiously acknowledges), and is always particularizing; whereas white is not anything really, not an identity, not a particularizing quality, because it is everything…White people “colonise the defnition of normal”’ (Dyer 1988, p. 45). Additionally, it does not consider colourism, which Alice Walker describes as ‘prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their color’ (Walker 1983, p. 291). However, the term will be used, in this research, as a solidarity defnition, alongside racialised and/or minoritised authors. This book will refer to ethnicity, for the most part, rather than the empirical term ‘race’; however, it does refect Stuart Hall’s understanding that ‘race’ should be seen as a discursive category rather than based on erroneous ideas of biological differences (Hall 1992). At this juncture, it is important to note that (UK) industry discussions about ‘diversity’ usually use the British term BAME so this term will be used in that context; however, the majority of participants in this study, in addition to many other people of colour this project was discussed with and other cultural commentators, disliked the term BAME (Aspinall 2002; Ford 2015; Okolosie et al. 2015; Sandhu 2018).
This book is part of a larger project looking at the representation of authors of colour in the British YA market. The project employed a mixed methods approach, by adopting a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods: (1) quantitative analysis of a large dataset and (2) semi-structured interviews (qualitative analysis of data). In order to better understand what books by YA authors of colour are available in the UK, a corpus of relevant titles was identifed and collected on the basis of the British Library’s British National Bibliography (BNB) database. The metadata team at the British Library provided a database of all books tagged with the phrase ‘Young adult fction’, published between January 2006 and December 2016.7 After cleaning the data, the database
7 Thanks to the metadata team at the British Library for all their help and support.
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contained 8593 titles (new and different editions).8 The metadata did not include information such as author sex/gender identity, ethnicity, and nationality, or the type of publisher (i.e. conglomerate, independent, or self-published). This additional information was identifed through digital and printed paratextual, mostly epitextual, information (e.g. publisher and author websites, author interviews in print and online media, author information on book covers, etc.). Authors were segmented by their sex/gender identity, ethnicity, and nationality. The data was then coded and analysed. This provided statistical information about what percentage of publishing output, in this sector, could be considered as ‘diverse’. Most of the results from the database analysis are presented in a complementary article and are referenced as such; however, some additional data is interspersed in this book (Ramdarshan Bold 2018).
This book draws, predominantly, upon semi-structured interviews with a sample of fourteen, British authors of colour whose work was published in the UK (see Table 1.1). Interviewees were identifed from the database of YA published in the UK between 2006 and 2016 (Ramdarshan Bold 2018). The sample of interviewees was purposeful— based on ethnic and cultural background and nationality, i.e. British authors of colour. Forty British-born authors of colour, or authors of colour who moved to the UK as a child/adolescent, were identifed from the database: only 1.5% of all authors, and of all titles, published during this period were by British authors of colour (Ramdarshan Bold 2018). The majority (32) of the authors were contacted and a convenience and snowball sample of fourteen authors were interviewed: over a third (35%) of all of the British YA authors of colour published between 2006 and 2016.9 Each interview comprised of core questions, which were then expanded upon with associated questions. Subsequent questions were tailored to the individual authors and their responses.10 The interviews were transcribed and coded, with several key themes and patterns emerging. All of the interviews contained anecdotal experiences,
8 The database originally had 13,505 records: this was reduced after the names of editors, illustrators, authors that were dead at the time of [frst] publication (during the 2006–2016 time period), and comic book and graphic novel authors were removed.
9 Email addresses were available for 32 of the authors—either through author websites, contacts at The BookTrust, or interviewees making introductions to their YA peers. Thanks to Emily Drabble, at the BookTrust, for her introductions to relevant authors.
10 All interviews were recorded and transcribed.
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Table 1.1 Interviewed authors
Name Background
Sita Brahmachari
Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups:
Number of books published (2006–2016)
Asian/Asian British (Indian) and White (English) heritage 3
Sarwat Chadda Asian British: Pakistani heritage 2
Catherine Johnson
Peter Kalu
Ola Laniyan-Amoako
Patrice Lawrence
Taran Matharu
Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups: Black/African/Caribbean/ Black British (Jamaican) and White (Welsh) heritage 7
Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups: Black/African/Caribbean/ Black British (Nigerian) and White (Danish) heritage 3
Black/African/Caribbean/ Black British: Nigerian heritage 2
Black/African/Caribbean/ Black British: Caribbean/ Trinidad (mixed) heritage 1
Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups: Asian/Asian British (Indian) and Brazilian heritage 3
Tariq Mehmood Asian British: Pakistani heritage 1
Natasha Ngan
Anna Perera
Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups: Asian/Asian British (Malaysian) and White (English) heritage 2
Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups: Asian/Asian British (Sri Lankan) and White (Irish) 1
Bali Rai Asian British: Indian heritage 23
Leila Rasheed
Na’ima bint Robert
Alex Wheatle
Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups: Asian/Asian British (Bangladeshi) and White (English) heritage 2
Mixed/Multiple ethnic groups: Black/African/Caribbean/ Black British (South African) and White (Scottish) heritage 5
Black/African/Caribbean/ Black British: Jamaican heritage 2
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many of which could be uncomfortable reading for some people; however, it is diffcult to dismiss these individual narratives because, taken together, they form patterns, which show they are not isolated experiences. Additionally, they are further strengthened by the quantitative data (Ramdarshan Bold 2018). Qualitative interviews are particularly useful to investigate new felds of study, or to theorise prominent issues (Creswell 2012). Since this is an emerging research area, and no similar study has been undertaken before, these results can form the basis of future studies.
Although the sample was a mixture of snowball (since some participants were recruited through the BookTrust, and through author relationships), convenience (since contact details were only available for 32 of the authors), and purposeful (since this sample looks at British YA authors of colour), the interviewees do represent authors from different (ethnic and social) backgrounds, stages in their careers, ages, and experience with publishers. Eight female and six male authors, from a variety of backgrounds, were interviewed. Male authors are better represented in the interviewee sample (six men: 43% of the interviewees) than in the sample of all British authors of colour, in the database (ten men: 25%), the sample of all authors of colour, in the database (45 men: 21%), and the sample of all YA authors published in the UK, in the database (900 men: 33%) (Ramdarshan Bold 2018). Most (10: 71%) of the interviewees were from lower-middle, middle, and upper-middle-class backgrounds; although we cannot compare this to all of the authors, published in the 2006–2016 time period, since this information was not easily available, it is important, at this juncture, to note that people from working-class backgrounds are not well represented in the cultural industries (Ellis-Petersen 2015; BBC 2017; de Waal 2018; Brook et al. 2018). This will be touched upon in this study when social class intersects with ethnicity; however, the barriers that white working-class authors face will not be explored in depth in this book. Although the experiences of people from working-class backgrounds and people of colour can overlap in some spaces, people of colour still experience racism and prejudice when they have class privilege.11 Over half of the
11 The marginalization of white, working-class people in the publishing industry is an important topic that warrants further investigation and discussion. It has been explored, to some extent, in the ‘Panic! Social Class, Taste and Inequalities in the Creative Industries’ (Brook et al. 2018). However, including the discussion here would derail the conversation about inequality based on skin colour.
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interviewees (eight: 57%) were from mixed/multiple ethnic groups: half of the interviewees had a white British or Irish parent. The remaining interviewees were Asian or Black British: overall, 57% of all the interviewees had Asian heritage while 43% had African or Caribbean heritage. This mix of ethnicities raised some interesting questions about what it means to be British today. Another point is that the majority of the interviewees (11: 79%) were over 40 (half were over 50): this book will speculate why this might be. The majority (11: 79%) of interviewees had published less than three books in this time period. The most prolifc authors were Bali Rai (23 books); Catherine Johnson (7 books); and Na’ima bint Robert (5 books). Throughout this book, the authors will be referred to by their surnames. If no name is attributed then the author/s wished to remain anonymous. In particular, many of the authors requested anonymity when discussing their publishing experiences.
One thing to emphasise here is that many of the authors explicitly said, during their interviews, that they would not have been so open and honest about issues of ‘race’ and racism with a white researcher. They had, in the past, diluted their experiences when talking to white friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. This is because, as Saha found in his 2016 study of British South Asian authors in the publishing industry, of the ‘the defensiveness of the British publishing industry in relation to its treatment of writers of color—based upon an anxiety around race and ethnicity’ (Saha 2016). Furthermore, many of the authors refrained from discussing these issues in the public sphere as well. This is unsurprising since people of colour often face vitriol when discussing issues of ‘race’ and racism (Yancy 2018). For example, Malorie Blackman received racist abuse and harassment after she appealed for more representative children’s fction (Flood 2014).12 This type of negative or uncomfortable reaction, from the public or white publishing professionals, can deter for authors of colour from sharing their experiences. Even the most well intentioned white person can be unprepared for honest conversations
12 It is important to note here that Blackman received this abuse after Sky News misquoted her and created an inaccurate and leading headline. The headline, which originally read ‘Children’s books have ‘too many white faces’’, was changed to ‘Call For More Ethnic Diversity In Kids’ Books’, after Blackman complained (Flood 2014). This is a clear indication of how powerfully the media can misrepresent minoritised people, and the negative consequences of doing so.
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about ‘race’ (Yancy 2018; DiAngelo 2018). As will be discussed later, this can impact the relationships with publishing professionals—namely editors and marketing staff—and authors of colour, and may account for some of the disconnect between the publishing industry and authors of colour. However, it also highlights a problem in academia: What are we missing when looking at the histories of people of colour?
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