What I mean when I ask for diversity…
So my birthday was on Saturday, and I went downtown with hubby and my sister-in-law to check out a Feltrinelli bookstore that had been closed for renovations since January and just opened at the start of April. This has been a bad year for my book hunting habits, as the Mondadori that had a whole floor of English book closed down for good. The remaining stores only have a single shelf dedicated to English books, and their organization is aggravating, with porn stacked in right next to kids books because it’s all listed by author with no categories.
Feltrinelli at least had more than one shelf, but their English books selection had been kind of slim before they closed, so I was happy to see they’d expanded to a full wall of books, with the classics moved to their own shelf on the opposite wall.
Or I was happy until hubby pulled me over to the other side of the store and I saw this:
It’s an LGBT shelf. It should thrill me, but I still suck at reading Italian. All those books on that shelf were not to be found in the English language offerings. If I wanted any of them (and I did), I would have to find the books on Amazon. (And I did, and I bought one as soon as I was home.)
To be clear, it does make me happy that the store has begun to offer readers a whole shelf of LGBT books. This was not available before their renovations, and I am happy that they’ve made an effort to be more inclusive. But it also sucks because I can see what they’re offering to everyone else, and then I can go back to the English wall, and it’s almost all white straight people.
As I was heading home, I started thinking how that one shelf is what I really want when I talk about wanting diverse books. Because it’s not impossible to find diverse books, just hard. To find books about gay romance or lesbian romance, or romance featuring characters other than white people, I have to actively search for them. I want horror books with a gay character, mystery novels with a transsexual detective, fantasy novels with a hero who isn’t white. It shouldn’t bee so much to ask for, but when I go to the store, I will never find any of these options. Despite the wide range of readers in the market, there’s still only one group being serviced by your average mainstream bookstore.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not opposed to reading about white straight people. I do it all the time. But what I’d love is to be able to go into a bookstore and have the same chances of discovering some new story with gay characters, or with people of color. I’d like to be able to go to the store and just browse for those books. That’s why I still go to bookstores even in the post-Amazon age of shopping, for the joys of discovering a new story that Amazon couldn’t bring to my attention. But if I want to read about anything besides more straight white people, I have to get online and hunt for new books. Going to the store means accepting that I will be coming home with books about straight white people.
This is something I feel is missing from the discussion about how “we need more diversity.” What we’re really saying is “we need to see that diversity in the mainstream bookstore.” Because without a doubt, there IS more diversity out there. But it’s not possible to find that diversity by casual browsing in a bookstore. And that’s what lots of people want. They want to be able to go to the bookstore knowing there are characters like them that they can not only relate to, but also identify with. They want to find characters that make them go, “Hey, that could be me.”
The thing about my trips to the bookstore that annoys me is that as a result of 50 Shades of Grey being such a bestseller, there is now a half a wall dedicated to bondage books in English. But there’s no LGBT bookshelf for me. There’s no black or Hispanic authors shelf. But there is a section for straight white people interested in a niche fetish.
If I’m willing to give up on bookstores, I can find what I’m looking for online. But this puts me in a bit of a bind. I want local bookstores to stay open. I hate that the best bookstore in town closed, and I’ve lost the option of browsing a floor of books all categorized properly. I want to support the local economy in every way I can so that I won’t lose any other stores, even if their selections are nowhere near as good. So I go to the bookstores as often as I can afford, and I try to find things to read. Most of the time, I can find a story that interest me. But almost 90% of the time, I can be sure the story will be heteronormative and white centric. Because I also shop online, I know that there’s a whole lot of other options, and it frustrates me that I can’t just browse for a new book with a diverse cast. I have to hunt them down. I have to always be watching other readers online to find these books.
So when folks say we need more diversity in books, it’s not a complete statement, in my opinion. What we need is for booksellers to stock more books with other perspectives. We want to find books that speak to us in the bookstores instead of having to search for them online. Because really, if the local bookstore can find 100 books on bondage, why can’t they offer a shelf for anyone besides straight white people?
You would think this wouldn’t be such a controversial topic, either, but there’s a lot of folks who are deeply offended by this idea. They say things like “Why do your lousy books have to take over the bookstore I shop at? Or, “Why do you have to ruin my fun?” Which is kind of ridiculous. It’s not like stores have to flip the ratio of books on offer to please me. The rest of the store can stay the way it is, and I’ll still buy those books too. But all I’m asking for is a few shelves not dedicated to straight white people.
How is that a bad thing? How is offering other readers an option to find books about people like them going to affect your mainstream reading habits? If the books are on their own dedicated shelves, you can pass them by without even slowing down, like I do when I see the religious studies and self-help shelves. And how is the existence of options for other people ruining your enjoyment of the books you read. Do you suddenly stop in the middle of a good book and think “Oh, this story would be so much better if only those other books didn’t exist”?
And I don’t buy into this idea that bookstores are only catering to their community because most chain stores don’t even have control of what they get. A distribution center bulk orders the books and send them out to their chains without observing local trends. In this way, the real problem lies with those ordering agents who service only one segment of the market and never bother being inclusive to anyone else. Maybe it’s not a prejudice, and they’re simply ignorant of the existence of other markets. Certainly, you can find the same problems with major chain stores having skimpy horror and fantasy sections, while mystery and thriller readers get a huge section of the stores to browse through. But what that means to me is that there needs to be agents hired on whose job is to cover the areas not handled by the mainstream agent. Either that, or the ordering agents ought to be made aware of their blind spots and make more effort to service all of their readers instead of just covering the subjects they know.
Maybe that won’t happen, and I’ll just keep hunting for diversity online. But if I had the option to browse for diverse books in the shops, I know Amazon wouldn’t get nearly as much of my money. I know I’d happily pay a little extra for print editions and support the stores that offered me something else to read beside the usual straight white people. And yes, I’d still read about straight white people because a good story is still good regardless of who the main characters are. All I’m saying is, give me some options, and I’d reward the store that embraced diversity.
