A good laugh provided by traditional publishers…
I had a good laugh when I read “A Character-Driven Approach to Diversifying Fiction” in the NY Times a while ago (12/10/2023 “Sunday Business” section). ‘Twas a report on a meeting hosted by Electric Postcard Entertainment, and it provided some comic relief from all the bad news related to that “f&^%ing moron” (not my quote but ex-SecState Tillerson’s—Il Duce, he of the imperious scowl, would have fired him if he hadn’t resigned). Not to belittle Dhonielle Clayton’s creativity (she leads the afore-mentioned company), the article showed how out of touch with reality traditional publishers have become.
Yes, America is diverse. Yes, many readers want diverse characters in the prose they read. (In the TV shows and films they watch as well!) And the old far-right white boys running and ruining everything are still out of touch, so much so that Dhonielle’s little meeting made the front page of the NY Times’s “Sunday Business” section.
My characters are diverse. They’ve been diverse from the very beginning. In my very first novel, Full Medical (2006), one main character is Jayrashee Sandoval, a ‘zine reporter and daughter of an Indian and Latin immigrant. (No, she wasn’t modeled after Kamala Harris or Nikki Haley—I didn’t even learn about them until years later.) Another main character in the same novel is Kalidas Metropolis, a biogenetics expert and the daughter of Greek immigrants, but perhaps diversely more notable for being a lesbian!
When I decided to write a more conventional mystery-crime thriller, I wanted to avoid the stereotypical Irish cop, so I created NYPD detectives Rolando Castilblanco and Dao-Ming Chen, who first teamed up in The Midas Bomb. NYC is the most diverse city in the world. (Over 800 languages are spoken there.) So these Puerto Rican and Chinese-American cops only reflect a small part of that city’s diversity. Even in my latest British-style mysteries, there’s diversity. (That probably annoys the British royal family if their reaction to Meghan Markle is any indication, but who knows if these dolts read any fiction.)
There might be novels in my oeuvre that don’t feature diverse characters in the US and around the world, but none come to mind right now. There’s good reason for this: I grew up in California, probably the most diverse state in the union. (The state of New York can’t begin to compare with California outside of NYC; it’s more Trumpland, in fact.) In California, I experienced Armenian-, Chinese-, Japanese-, and Latin-Americans along with other ethnic groups as I grew up. That experience, together with living in Colombia for years and traveling in South America and Europe, helped me create and reliably portray many diverse characters. (Our two kids are both half-Colombian!) That background not only allows me to thumb my nose at those who scream “cultural appropriation”; it means that I can create diverse characters who seem authentic in my prose. Fiction must seem real, to paraphrase Tom Clancy, and our country and world are really diverse.
Of course, what the anti-cultural appropriation protesters really mean to say is that Latino authors should be the only ones to write about Latinos, Black authors the only ones to write about Blacks, etc., contrary to the title of the afore-mentioned article that characters drive the diversification of fiction. I’m not completely sure which side Ms. Clayton is on, but the characters must be the ones who exhibit the diversification. Otherwise, anti-cultural appropriation forces would go after any sci-fi writer who dares to write about ETs, which is completely absurd! Maybe someday traditional publishing and other entertainment sources won’t have to keep “rediscovering” diversity and worrying about “diversification”? I might never live to see that day, of course.
In these troubled times, there are persons who eschew diversity and never realize how strong it makes our country. I’m resigned to the fact that these morons will never read Ms. Clayton’s works nor my own. That’s their loss, but it also means that changing the minds of traditional publishers about what sells will be a long slog as their books ignore a huge audience of readers!
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Rembrandt’s Angel. Small presses can be traditional publishers who are exceptions to what’s analyzed above. They’re often more open to publishing novels with more diversity and subsequently originality. I have experimented with two: Black Opal Books and Penmore Press. While we’ve parted our ways, the reasons for doing so weren’t due to their lack of emphasizing diversity…in plots, characterizations, settings, etc.
The novel Rembrandt’s Angel is a great example. This first book in the “Esther Brookstone Art Detective” series is diverse in all these areas as Esther becomes obsessed with recovering a painting stolen by the Nazis during the war. (The title painting is real, by the way, and remains in some fascist’s private collection, I’m sure.) You will visit Europe, the US, and South America as an armchair-sleuth along with Esther as she battles neo-Nazis, a drug cartel, and ISIS terrorists, ably aided by her Interpol-agent paramour Bastiann van Coevorden. Available wherever fine books are sold in paper and ebook formats.
Around the world and to the stars! In libris liberta!
