On judging everything we read "equally"
Jul. 11th, 2013 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catherineldfThere are sundry posts going about, including this one about from various publishing folks which emphasize to one degree or another, that they or their colleagues or their particular sfnal institution isn't biased against Group X, it's that they just don't get enough submissions. And as long as those submissions are of a "uniform quality" or "do not compromise on quality," they "read everyone equally."
So I'm a middle-aged cisgendered, lower middle-class woman of Northern European extraction with a university education (B.A./B.A., MA), born on the East Coast of the United States, now living in the Midwest after stints of living around the country, particularly in the South. I can read in one language besides English (Spanish). In general, the breadth of my high school and early college reading in what are regarded as English-language fictional "classics" is enough to make Harold Bloom weep for joy: Plato, Dante, Aquinas, Virgil, Euripides, Graves, Melville, Dickens, Thackery, Maugham, Foster, Austen, the Brontes, Shakespeare, large chunks of The Bible in various translations, Milton, Twain, Alcott, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Bulgakov, to name a few. And in Spanish or in translation into English: Allende, Marquez, Borges, Mistral, Belli, Cortazar, Galeano, Argueta, Lorca.
Do I or could I read all of them "equally"? No. That would be ridiculous and meaningless. I have favorites, I have things I read for class assignments, I have things I read because I was doing research. I have things I have read for editing, reviews or blurbing.
It''s clear that my reading has been pretty concentrated. There are no African authors or even African American authors listed above, or Asian authors, and very few women. The only L, G, B, T or Q authors noted are Lorca and Foster. I was in my junior year of college before I really started to work on diversifying my reading choices. Why? Because I thought i was missing out. Because I thought it would help me dismantle my own internalized racism, sexism and homophobia. Because I realized that it was something I had to make an effort to do and that it wasn't magic and I couldn't just wait for someone to "assign" something to me.
I read Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, Pearl Cleage, Samuel Delany, Joanna Russ, Melissa Scott, Connie Willis, Rudolfo Anaya, Elizabeth Lynn, Tony Morrison, Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, Cherry Muhanji and countless other authors since graduate school, primarily in sf/f, mysteries, romance and historical fiction. I still have favorites. I still have comfort reading. I still have works that challenge me too much and that I don't want to read right now. Or ever. I have put down work that were written in a style that I couldn't relate to. I weigh my reading preferences toward books written from a female perspective because I have taken the time to learn to appreciate this done well. I weigh my reading preferences toward books written from a queer perspective because I have taken the time to learn to appreciate this done well. I still find myself reading more white women, so I know that I have to spend more time to learn to appreciate fiction written other cultural and gender perspectives. Because that is a way we can learn to diversify our reading. "I read everyone equally" is magical thinking. It's "I say it, and that makes it so." It's "I'll read you as long as you're writing in my comfort zone."
No, I don't read everyone equally. But I try to read meaningfully in a way that broadens my perspectives. I try to distinguish between books that I don't enjoy because they are poorly written versus books that I have been taught to regard as not worthwhile, or not "marketable" because of how they are written or who they are written by. That to me is a much more meaningful exercise.
So I'm a middle-aged cisgendered, lower middle-class woman of Northern European extraction with a university education (B.A./B.A., MA), born on the East Coast of the United States, now living in the Midwest after stints of living around the country, particularly in the South. I can read in one language besides English (Spanish). In general, the breadth of my high school and early college reading in what are regarded as English-language fictional "classics" is enough to make Harold Bloom weep for joy: Plato, Dante, Aquinas, Virgil, Euripides, Graves, Melville, Dickens, Thackery, Maugham, Foster, Austen, the Brontes, Shakespeare, large chunks of The Bible in various translations, Milton, Twain, Alcott, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Bulgakov, to name a few. And in Spanish or in translation into English: Allende, Marquez, Borges, Mistral, Belli, Cortazar, Galeano, Argueta, Lorca.
Do I or could I read all of them "equally"? No. That would be ridiculous and meaningless. I have favorites, I have things I read for class assignments, I have things I read because I was doing research. I have things I have read for editing, reviews or blurbing.
It''s clear that my reading has been pretty concentrated. There are no African authors or even African American authors listed above, or Asian authors, and very few women. The only L, G, B, T or Q authors noted are Lorca and Foster. I was in my junior year of college before I really started to work on diversifying my reading choices. Why? Because I thought i was missing out. Because I thought it would help me dismantle my own internalized racism, sexism and homophobia. Because I realized that it was something I had to make an effort to do and that it wasn't magic and I couldn't just wait for someone to "assign" something to me.
I read Maxine Hong Kingston, Amy Tan, Alice Walker, Pearl Cleage, Samuel Delany, Joanna Russ, Melissa Scott, Connie Willis, Rudolfo Anaya, Elizabeth Lynn, Tony Morrison, Octavia Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, Cherry Muhanji and countless other authors since graduate school, primarily in sf/f, mysteries, romance and historical fiction. I still have favorites. I still have comfort reading. I still have works that challenge me too much and that I don't want to read right now. Or ever. I have put down work that were written in a style that I couldn't relate to. I weigh my reading preferences toward books written from a female perspective because I have taken the time to learn to appreciate this done well. I weigh my reading preferences toward books written from a queer perspective because I have taken the time to learn to appreciate this done well. I still find myself reading more white women, so I know that I have to spend more time to learn to appreciate fiction written other cultural and gender perspectives. Because that is a way we can learn to diversify our reading. "I read everyone equally" is magical thinking. It's "I say it, and that makes it so." It's "I'll read you as long as you're writing in my comfort zone."
No, I don't read everyone equally. But I try to read meaningfully in a way that broadens my perspectives. I try to distinguish between books that I don't enjoy because they are poorly written versus books that I have been taught to regard as not worthwhile, or not "marketable" because of how they are written or who they are written by. That to me is a much more meaningful exercise.