British/Pakistani writer Kamila Shamsie, who wrote her first novel “in Northampton in a studio ’round the corner from Joe’s pizza,” has lately stirred up certain quarters of the literary world with a provocation: She’s called for 2018 to be a year in which publishers only present the work of women writers.
She’s not shy about it. In a recent interview, I asked Shamsie, who’s landed on several short lists for prestigious prizes and authored novels including A God In Every Stone and Burnt Shadows, what needs to happen to address gender disparity in publishing. She said, “Of course, what needs to happen is the end of patriarchy in the world — all else would follow from there. But given that we may need to start smaller, I think we primarily need to draw attention to the different places in which that disparity exists, and ask people to start questioning their habits and assumptions and default positions.”
It won’t perhaps, be lost on you, o reader, that a man is writing this story. By some measures, I’m exactly the wrong person to write about this. And, I’ll reluctantly admit, I’m a guy who has, despite successes as a writer of fiction and poetry, remained bookless. That primes a certain measure of ambivalence. Still, I support Shamsie’s call — I’m also father to a six-year-old girl who will, I hope, enter a world in which her gender does not narrow her opportunities.
Shamsie has a practical answer for unpublished men who might feel reluctant to support her call. “I’m asking for 12 months to be blocked off, that’s all,” she says. “I’ve been in situations where, for one reason or other of scheduling a book, I’ve signed up with a publisher [and the book] isn’t published for 12 or 18 months after the contract is signed.
“I also think we need to ask larger questions. Men daily live with the privileges of a patriarchal system, but they also daily live with the misfortune of living in a world of gender injustice — ultimately more justice is better for everyone.”
Gender is, of course, the tip of the iceberg in talking about the lines that separate the published from the non-published. What of, for instance, class? It’s often who you know that determines access to closed and rarefied worlds like that of literary success, and certain segments of society are far better placed to reach them. Beyond gender, there are plenty more under-represented groups. But for Shamsie, gender presents a singular issue in the world of publishing.
“What makes gender a particularly interesting area of exclusion in publishing is that there are so many women in positions of influence in publishing — more than almost any other industry I know of,” Shamsie says. “And yet the structural issues are so deep that you continue to see the strong pull of patriarchy when you get to the top levels of power and influence.”
According to 2012 Bureau of Labor Statistics, 52.7 percent of periodical, book, and directory publishers in the U.S. are women.
In her piece (which appeared June 5 in The Guardian and Bookseller) calling for a year of publishing women, Shamsie says, “That I’ve failed to mention race until now doesn’t mean I don’t recognise it as an even more lopsided and neglected matter than gender within publishing. And that’s by no means the only other area of exclusion.”
At first blush, it would seem that there’s a major problem here. If you determine who gets published by their gender, skin color, class, or any other characteristic, what of the writing itself? Will an editor who wants to more accurately reflect gender balance risk doing so at the expense of literary quality?
Shamsie says, “The idea that editors have to ‘drop standards’ to find women writers doesn’t even enter the conversation. Where women writers are losing out is in being reviewed, in being submitted for prizes, in being read by men. Studies consistently show that women read men and women, while most men read only men. But I think it is true that in other areas — such as race, ethnicity, et cetera — editors need to look at their own assumptions about what makes good literature. So they need to broaden rather than drop their standards.”
In the Valley, such issues are often front and center. Just take a look at Florence-based Perugia Press. Since it began in 1997, Perugia has published only women poets. I ran some of the same questions I asked Shamsie by Susan Kan, Perugia’s founder and director.
Kan points out that what makes gender worth more consideration than other physical characteristics is history. “It’s not simply a physical characteristic that’s at issue here,” she says. “It’s not like there’s discrimination against people over six feet tall, or people who can’t run a mile, or people over 50 years old. Gender and race are far more historically complex, obviously. And besides, I haven’t heard anyone say anything about lowering standards.”
At Perugia’s website, Kan offers a breakdown of major awards according to gender disparity. You can’t read it and come away thinking there’s no problem. The Pulitzer Prize for poetry? 73 percent male winners, 27 percent female winners. The Nobel Prize in Literature: 89 percent male, 11 percent female. The National Book Critics Circle Award comes in at 65 percent male, 35 percent female, and 75 percent of the poets laureate of the United States have been men.
“These numbers are a couple years old,” Kan says, “but the last time I updated them, things had gotten worse.”
It’s something Kan observes at times from an interesting perspective. “Sometimes I go to book fairs and set up a table with our books,” she says. “When people stop by, men included, I tell them what Perugia Press is about. Men will often kind of step back like they’ve stupidly walked into a women’s bathroom. I try to lure them back by saying, ‘We publish women, but anyone can read the books,’ and I’ve yet to meet a man who feels enticed by that.”
On the other hand, recent years have seen major changes in the publishing industry. As the largest publishers have engaged in such a frenzy of consolidation that there are only a few companies who own many imprints, small DIY publishers have sprouted like kudzu. Almost anyone who wants to be a publisher can be one, particularly as e-book sales increase. That has, inevitably, levelled the playing field some. “I think there are more small press publishers that are run by people who are thoughtful about gender and racial parity,” Kan says. “Small presses also have no illusion about making money — most are nonprofits. For now, that gives us an odd sort of freedom to publish more daringly.”
Kan also articulates well the logical end-point of addressing these issues: “If agents, editors, screeners, and publishers look for stories, poems, creative writing that has integrity, adeptness with language, emotional depth and complexity, compelling narrative, startlingly original imagery, imaginative description, and they also look for variety from one project to the next, then authors from a much wider range and diversity of life will get published.
“What if they read blind to the author’s background and identity, and just looked for quality? I think we’d have new statistics.”
Shamsie is picking her fight in the upper echelons of the industry, which means she has the best chance of creating change that might be reflected in better statistics. Can she really make a difference?
“I agree with Kamila Shamsie that we’ll know for sure in 2019, the year after the challenge,” Kan says. “When we are newly mindful of choices we previously made without thought, then we learn something new about how we make those choices. I’m so excited to find out.”
Though her call will likely cause an ongoing dust-up in the more removed and rarefied realm of the literati, Shamsie points out the everyday result that she’s after, one that’s as enticing as it is straightfoward: “What are we as a culture missing by having disproportionate representation in published voices?” she asks. “The world is smaller when your stories don’t come from all directions. Who wants that?”•
James Heflin can be reached at jheflin@valleyadvocate.com
