I read books by only minority authors for a year. It showed me just how white our reading world is; Washington Post, 4/24/15

Sunili Govinnage, Washington Post; I read books by only minority authors for a year. It showed me just how white our reading world is:

"White authors reign in book reviews, bestseller lists, literary awards and Amazon.com recommendations. In a survey of New York Times articles published in 2011, author and cultural commentator Roxane Gay discovered that nearly 90 percent of the reviewed books were authored by white writers. Among Amazon editors’ top 20 picks of 2014, just three authors were minorities...

Research shows that my anecdotal difficulties result from a systemic problem in the literary and publishing world. From MFA programs to publishing houses to critics’ circles, the industry is suffering from a lack of diversity. The problem exists in children’s literature, too, where just 14 percent of books published in 2014 were by or about people of color, according to the Cooperative Children’s Book Center. Authors of color encounter agents who dismiss or don’t understand cultural references in their books. Publishing houses whitewash book covers and blame market demands; as author Christopher Myers has pointed out, publishers insist that young white readers won’t buy books with black characters on the covers, “despite millions of music albums that are sold in just that way.” Stores segregate books with nonwhite characters into “ethnic” sections. And the consequences are clear: One review found that just three out of the 124 authors who appeared on the New York Times bestsellers list in 2012 were people of color. On Amazon last week, just two of the top 20 bestsellers were written by minorities. Among bestsellers in literature and fiction, there was just one nonwhite author.

The most frustrating part of my year of reading diversely was not being able to access e-books for works published in other countries...

Reading more diverse literature has the power to convey the universality of human experience and show that we really have more in common with one another than expected."