From Elle: Black Women Are Topping Bestseller Lists. What Took So Long? Support our news coverage by subscribing to our Kindle Nation Daily Digest. Joining is free!
When looking back on this summer of protest and racial reckoning, the question I’ll always struggle with is one dripping with skepticism that’s hard-earned, if not entirely productive. What made this uprising different for so many white people who sat up, took notice, donated money, shared resources, took to the streets, called out and in, and did some serious self-reflection, seemingly for the first time?
The question nags at me, but even as I realize there are responses that could possibly edify me, none could ever be classified as satisfying. Better to steep in the bittersweet reality in which we now find ourselves. Progress is progress, after all—the journey of a thousand miles and all that. Certainly for the first time in my life, larger-than-usual swaths of white people appear to be seeing their schools, neighborhoods, police forces, industries, and even their bookshelves with fresh eyes.
Just as they’d begun, in essence, cramming for a course more than halfway through the semester, snatching up Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist and Ijeoma Oluo’s So You Want to Talk About Race faster than booksellers could restock them, the inequities of publishing itself were laid bare. #PublishingPaidMe, started by Black authors L. L. McKinney and Tochi Onyebuchi, revealed just how vast the industry’s pay gap actually is. If advances are seen as investments in an author’s talent, then it’s clear publishers don’t often bet big on Black writers.
For white book lovers who’ve found these figures disheartening or perhaps even illogical, considering the sheer volume of accolades many of their favorite Black authors consistently rake in, I wonder if they’ve stopped to consider what becomes of Black stories that don’t make the must-read lists, what happens to Black stories that languish in drafts because the barriers between them and the world of publishing are simply too great?
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