{"id":125072,"date":"2015-11-29T15:43:52","date_gmt":"2015-11-29T15:43:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/11\/29\/jenniferrpovey-baeddelshinsgirl\/"},"modified":"2015-11-29T15:43:52","modified_gmt":"2015-11-29T15:43:52","slug":"jenniferrpovey-baeddelshinsgirl","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2015\/11\/29\/jenniferrpovey-baeddelshinsgirl\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

jenniferrpovey<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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baeddelshinsgirl<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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jenniferrpovey<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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bookphile<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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parentheticalaside<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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thedragonsbookhoard<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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marionreadsbooks<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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thedragonsbookhoard<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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I know Tumblr will probably hate me for saying this, but not reading books written by male authors purely because they\u2019re male is sexist as fuck.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I never take this into account. I do read a lot of books by white male authors, but that\u2019s not planned or anything; I just read the books that sound good to me. The author\u2019s gender or ethnicity doesn\u2019t really factor into my wanting of reading the book.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Exactly. I judge a book purely by its content.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

No, you don\u2019t. 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\u2019 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\u2019t judge a book solely by its content. You judge it through the same prism as the rest of us, and it\u2019s a prism that happens to bring men into focus and blur out women and minorities. <\/p>\n

Upholding a system that puts men above women is sexist. Choosing to opt out of that system is not.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

^^^Amen to the above.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I do think things have improved and continue to do so. And I wouldn\u2019t say to stop reading books by straight white men altogether.<\/p>\n

But<\/b>\u00a0it\u2019s 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\u2019s harder to find them. They\u2019re often not on bookstore shelves. The few exceptions tend to be really brilliant writers (C.J. Cherryh and Naomi Novik come to mind – Novik\u2019s Uprooted may well be the best fantasy novel of the year). Note I\u2019m biased towards SF\/F because that\u2019s what I read and what I write.<\/p>\n

So, the answer is to branch out. By all means buy bestsellers, but also<\/b>\u00a0keep your eye open for books that don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Refusing to read books by men is prejudiced.<\/p>\n

Only<\/b>\u00a0reading books by men is sexist.<\/p>\n

Thinking<\/b>\u00a0all the good books are written by men is, well, lazy and not looking hard enough.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Think of it like stargazing during the day. You can\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

Choosing not to read white men for a time is like eclipsing the sun – it allows the other stars to be seen.<\/p>\n

When J.K. Rowling released A Casual Vacancy, <\/i>it was roundly mocked and critically savaged, with many indicating that it was evidence that she couldn\u2019t write<\/i>\u00a0outside of young adult fiction. Meanwhile another book by Robert Galbraith, The Cuckoo\u2019s Calling<\/i>, got very good reviews and a pretty sizable cult following.<\/p>\n

Turned out Galbraith was<\/i>\u00a0Rowling.<\/p>\n

That in a nutshell is why avoiding white male authors from time to time can be necessary.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Or, if you feel that\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

In other words, if you do<\/b>\u00a0feel sexist if you\u00a0\u201cgive up\u201d white male authors, there are other approaches which can help.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

jenniferrpovey: baeddelshinsgirl: jenniferrpovey: bookphile: parentheticalaside: thedragonsbookhoard: marionreadsbooks: thedragonsbookhoard: I know Tumblr will probably hate me for saying this, but not reading books written by male authors purely because they\u2019re male is sexist as fuck. I never take this into account. I do read a lot of books by white male authors, but that\u2019s not planned … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[652,4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125072"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125072\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}