By Emily Pate Freelancer
Literature can be an escape from everyday life, a place to retreat from reality. And yet, for many, these retreats are not as accommodating- or as representative–as they should be.
In 2012, Roxane Gay, writing for the Rumpus, surveyed books reviewed by the New York Times in 2011. She discovered that 90 percent of these books were written by white authors.
“That is not even remotely reflective of the racial makeup of this country,” Gay said, “where 72 percent of the population, according to the 2010 census, is white.” In addition, nearly 67 percent of the books were written by men.
It’s not just in adult books that this lack of diversity is found. Also in 2012, the Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) did a survey of 3,600 books for children. Of all these books, only 7.5 percent were about non-white characters.
CCBC also reports that, over the last two decades, the percentage of children’s books written by or about people of color has remained near 10 percent, instead of the 37 percent that would more accurately reflect the population of the United States.
However, CCBC’s data indicates that the percentage of these books rose in 2014, up from 10 percent to 14 percent. It’s a small step, but still in the right direction.
There are improvements in other areas as well. According to Diversity in YA, at http://www.diversityinya.com, 47 LGBTQ+ books were published by mainstream publishers in 2014, a 59 percent increase from 2013, a number is still distressingly small considering the huge volume of books published every year.
And yet, like the percentages on racial diversity, the numbers are improving.
There are organizations that strive to take progress even farther. One such organization is the We Need Diverse Books Campaign, created in 2014 as a result of the lack of diversity in literature, especially in books directed towards young people.
On their website, http://weneeddiversebooks.org, the campaign defines itself as an organization that “advocates essential changes in the publishing industry to produce and promote literature that reflects and honors the lives of all young people.”
Representation is, as the We Need Diverse Books Campaign says, essential. Even aside from the desire to see oneself reflected in the pages of a book, diversity in literature, especially in books directed towards children and young adults, can teach empathy and self-confidence.
Better representations gives readers a broader, and more accurate, view of the world. Diversity is also something that anyone can contribute to. Through readers purchasing diverse books and encouraging better representation, the publishing industry can be directed towards literature that better represents all readers.
