On the state of #Ownvoices in queer SFF: A look at popularity, library recs and awards
Most of us would agree that diversity and inclusion are good things. Perhaps especially in science fiction and fantasy (SFF), a white, cisgender, heterosexual male perspective has dominated the genre since the days of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and largely neglected fully-formed portrayals of women, people of color, and LGBTs, among other marginalized groups. Cultural marginalization creates political marginalization, and vice versa, so when all we see and read in SFF are worlds with white, male heroes, often populated solely by white people, it reinforces the belief that the dominant culture is superior, and the only norm; the rest of us are the “others.”
That tradition has changed somewhat through the success of celebrated female authors like Ursula LeGuin and Margaret Atwood and authors of color like Octavia Butler and Samuel Delaney. Recently, N.K. Jemisin became the first black, female author to win the Hugo award for a novel, and three of the five titles that were shortlisted in 2016 were written by women. The annual output of SFF has become more diverse in terms of gender, ethnicity, sexuality and other characteristics, but surveys show we still have a long way to go to bring representations of people of color, women, and LGBTs out of the margins.
It’s hard to find data outside of the YA world, where, for good reason, a lot of the attention to diversity has been placed. The YA data I did find may or may not reflect the state of diversity in SFF as a whole.
For example, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center tracks a rising number of SFF books about people of color over the past few years, though in the last recorded year (2015), those books represented a little less than fifteen percent of all SFF releases. Regarding LGBT diversity, Malinda Lo’s most recent (2014) LGBT YA by the Numbers also showed a growing, yet still disappointing number of SFF releases about LGBTs: a total of seventeen in 2014.
CCBC also tracks how many SFF books are written by people of color, and that share is even smaller at ten percent. That gap in authorship is one of the reasons behind the #OwnVoices hashtag.
Started by YA author Corinne Duyvis in 2015, #OwnVoices was created to uplift books about marginalized groups that are written by authors who are members of that marginalized group. In addition to concerns about depth of characterization and accuracy, Duyvis says her interest in #OwnVoices grew out a collective concern that many minority authors who write about their own communities experience marginalization within the publishing industry, in the form of less recognition, lower advances, and less promotion than their privileged peers who garner kudos for writing diverse characters.
#Ownvoices supporter Ellen Oh tweeted home the point with the example: “Everyone knows Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden but not Geisha of Gion by Mineko Iwasaki.” In terms of queer SFF, you might say: everyone knows the gay wizard Dumbledore, created by J.K. Rowling, but not the gay wizard Jessex, created by Jim Grimsley (that observation is especially depressing since Rowling didn’t even write the character as gay, but she was lauded for promoting LGBT diversity just by saying she had envisioned him as gay).
Duyvis makes the important distinction that #Ownvoices refers to titles, not the authors themselves, since not all minority authors write about their own communities. It’s also not a campaign against authors outside of minority groups writing about minorities, who are often allies, but rather a campaign for uplifting #Ownvoices titles.
That point is important to me as I segueway into my analysis of #Ownvoices in queer SFF. A good number of authors writing about gay SFF characters, for example, are women, and as I’ve gotten involved in the queer SFF community, I have tremendous gratitude and respect for the many female authors who are my colleagues and my friends and my Twitter and Facebook “buddies.” They are a source of inspiration and have opened up opportunities for me as an author. Maybe it should go without saying, but repeating the point from the paragraph above, my interest in #Ownvoices in queer SFF is not to criticize female authors (or non-gay male authors) who write gay SFF or to suggest that they should not be doing it. I’ve read, and on occasion, participated in online discussions about appropriation and objectification, and I do think those are important conversations for authors and readers to have. The data I compiled, however, does not and is not meant to speak to those issues.
My purpose is to delve deeper into the state of queer diversity in SFF. Good and plentiful portrayals of queer characters are one dimension of progress, and one that many of us would argue could stand for some improvement. But authorship is important to consider as well. Queer authors have historically faced censorship and discrimination in the publishing industry (and beyond) when writing about queer experiences. Authorship is an aspect of diversifying literature that hasn’t been well-explored in a quantifiable way. If efforts to diversify literature seek to promote cultural fairness, I would argue, as #Ownvoices does, then they should acknowledge the differential experiences of privileged and disadvantaged authors who are writing diverse books, and seek to remedy the disparities that exist.
All segments of the queer spectrum need to be considered. I chose gay male SFF as an appropriate starting point because I know that genre most intimately as an author and as a reader, and I also have lived experience as gay man. By compiling some data on how gay SFF #Ownvoices titles fare in the publishing world, my hope is to begin to examine diversity from the perspective of authorship.
It would have been useful to count the number of gay SFF titles published each year by the big houses (Tor, Gollancz, Ace Books) and determine how many were authored by gay men, as a measure of disparity and “status.” Those big house titles have access to trade reviews, wide distribution, marketing, libraries, and awards programs to a far greater extent than small press and self-published titles. Unfortunately, I struggled to find data on the annual output of gay SFF books, and the prospect of researching the many hundreds of releases listed on the publishers’ websites was just too overwhelming; though I’m happy to cheer on anyone who endeavors to do that. 
