I know Tumblr will probably hate me for saying this, but not reading books written by male authors purely because they’re male is sexist as fuck.
I never take this into account. I do read a lot of books by white male authors, but that’s not planned or anything; I just read the books that sound good to me. The author’s gender or ethnicity doesn’t really factor into my wanting of reading the book.
Exactly. I judge a book purely by its content.
No, you don’t. You operate within the same system as the rest of us, which is the one that packs the shelves with books by men, codes those books as being better when written by men, skews best books list to favor male writers, and disproportionately gives top writing awards and commercial success to white male writers. Female writers’ success is often restricted to YA or romance, both genres considered to be inferior to literary fiction, where male writers dominate. Female and minority writers are told their experience is not universal and will only be appreciated by other women and minorities, while men are considered the default experience and told everyone can appreciate their writing. All of that means you don’t judge a book solely by its content. You judge it through the same prism as the rest of us, and it’s a prism that happens to bring men into focus and blur out women and minorities.
Upholding a system that puts men above women is sexist. Choosing to opt out of that system is not.
^^^Amen to the above.
I do think things have improved and continue to do so. And I wouldn’t say to stop reading books by straight white men altogether.
But it’s important to realize that sometimes high quality books by women, LGBT+ and minorities are not being published by major publishers – but self published or by small presses. This means it’s harder to find them. They’re often not on bookstore shelves. The few exceptions tend to be really brilliant writers (C.J. Cherryh and Naomi Novik come to mind – Novik’s Uprooted may well be the best fantasy novel of the year). Note I’m biased towards SF/F because that’s what I read and what I write.
So, the answer is to branch out. By all means buy bestsellers, but also keep your eye open for books that don’t have Tor or Del Rey on the spine and which you might have to order from Amazon. Read review blogs, poke around on Goodreads, look for small press/indie books in the also boughts for the mainstream books you like.
Refusing to read books by men is prejudiced.
Only reading books by men is sexist.
Thinking all the good books are written by men is, well, lazy and not looking hard enough.
Think of it like stargazing during the day. You can’t do it because the brightness of the sun drowns out every other star in the galaxy, even though there are many stars that are thousands or millions of times brighter than the sun in absolute magnitude.
Choosing not to read white men for a time is like eclipsing the sun – it allows the other stars to be seen.
When J.K. Rowling released A Casual Vacancy, it was roundly mocked and critically savaged, with many indicating that it was evidence that she couldn’t write outside of young adult fiction. Meanwhile another book by Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo’s Calling, got very good reviews and a pretty sizable cult following.
Turned out Galbraith was Rowling.
That in a nutshell is why avoiding white male authors from time to time can be necessary.
Or, if you feel that’s too negative, you could also set yourself a challenge to read X books by women or minorities in a year, or to have X percent of the books you read be by women or minorities.
In other words, if you do feel sexist if you “give up” white male authors, there are other approaches which can help.
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