Hello, I’m Norma Chan, Tak-Lam, S.B.S., J.P., Chief Executive, Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA). I have a publishing business worth 47.1m USD for you to handle with me. I need you to assist me in executing this project from Hong Kong to your county.

After hearing from you I shall provide you with detailed information regarding this business. Now, I can only say: it involves your stories on millions of Korean iPhone screens. It involves micropayment and popular culture that you must learn about to believe. Imagine your wildest dream are just simple math for making reasonable investment overseas.

Can I also say that you can find me very actracive. I video chat you at AWP and we made smoothy in the big hotel. I understand you. You are potential for my country, for all of Hong Kong writers and lovers.

If you must know, I heard about you because of your IM lifestyle, which by now has spread worldwide. We talked for hours about MFA. I have MFA from American midwest. I lived for poetry, like you.

You are like the founder of a new social media in my heart. We are together online. It will be so profitable, you and I in Hong Kong, forever so in love.

Please respond by making a poetry Tumblr and send it to me.

This business is very important to the people of Hong Kong.

Honorably,

Norma Chan

PS I am using Nigerian IP because I am there on business please do not be alarmed we are quite safe in this lifetime, you and I.

Pulp. Fibrous, cellulose pulp. Grass-paper, rag-paper, rag-and-bone, paperweight: in the second century Cai Lun developed a paper process. Tiny little papermills of the mind. Cogs and wheels of papermaking, pulping, rod-and-doweling. And then a lunatic of the senses, the world becomes that, is that, mired in that. Words. Cultural disease, newsprint, papyrus bundles. In the chemical pulping, all our senses. In the mechanical pulping, all trees like a billion Christmases. A cooking process. Waste fortifies chalk and china clay. Watermarks destroy the day and deckle its edges.

We’re all of an age that recycling is second nature. We use the backs of receipts for listmaking—if we use paper at all—before we toss paper into the recycle bin. We read on screen. We mostly do paperless banking, paperless billing, paperless letter writing. We practice efficiency. We download 572 books onto our little reading devices and plow through them candily.

But I’ll tell you what. I got the proof copy of my book in the mail yesterday, and there is nothing in the world like seeing your book in all its pulpy flesh. It is a real object, a hallelujah of paper and ink. It’s a book, which is a thing. I can slip it into my purse and feel it there. It’s the synecdoche of language-as-artifact, a receptacle for artfulness. I wouldn’t be nearly as happy to have a book published in the ether. Look! Here’s my book in the air! No way. I want to see it, feel it, bruise it, lick its spine.

The book industry could stand to cut down its waste, as all industries could. We’re wasteful motherfuckers with our overstocks and our throw aways—even the zoos breed more animals than they can use and sell them to more wasteful idiots who think having exotic pets is fun. Have you seen how much meat your big box grocer throws away weekly? The machine is unwieldy and alive all around us.

But trim the fat. Trim the fat. Don’t throw away the whole goddamn bird.

I love the Urban Dictionary because they seem to have a definition for everything. I spend a lot of time looking up dirty words and phrases. I learned what a snowball was via Urban Dictionary. It has nothing to do with the snow, that’s for sure. I love the phrase “Bitches be trippin’.” I don’t know why. On a whim, I decided to look up the phrase on Urban Dictionary. Sure enough, there was a definition. According to them, the phrase is “used primarily by heterosexual males to justify the irrational behaviors of women.” For example, when women bring attention to certain pervasive and longstanding disparities, one might say, “I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Bitches be trippin’.”

I wasn’t going to write about this at length but then Matthew Simmons e-mailed asking if I was going to write about this. I guess I am. There has been a lot of talk over the past week about VIDA’s new set of statistics revealing some insight into the status of women in publishing. Go take a look, if this sort of thing interests you. The numbers are startling and yet they aren’t. With very few exceptions, women are published far less than men at some of the most influential publications in the country, both large and small. Of course, statistics never tell the whole story and it is easy to whip up some numbers to tell any story you want. Last year Charles Seife wrote a book called Proofiness about statistical manipulation and in the book, he writes, “In skillful hands, phony data, bogus statistics, and bad mathematics can make the most fanciful idea, the most outrageous falsehood seem true. They can be used to bludgeon enemies, to destroy critics, and to squelch debate.” Throughout history people have always used numbers to their advantage hoping that the gravity of statistical proof would help them sway a debate in one direction or another. I understand why people might look at the numbers VIDA has presented and regard them with some skepticism and want more information.

In this day and age, we are inundated with statistical information, often incomplete, and one more set of numbers isn’t necessarily enough to make us believe the matter of gender and publishing is as dire as the numbers would have us believe. We are also talking about a really complex topic. There are many historical, socio-economic and institutional factors that have contributed to gender inequities and statistical information cannot adjust for those factors. I also think more could have done with the presentation of the data. The VIDA post is just a long list of pie charts without a lot of context or discussion. Then again, is it VIDA’s responsibility to do that work above and beyond the exhaustive data compilation they already conducted?

Whenever this conversation, this tiresome talk of women and men and fairness and parity, comes up, everyone immediately becomes defensive and morphs into statistical experts, trying to find ways to discredit the numbers or to manifest parity when clearly there is little or none. People belittle the issue, make jokes, dismiss the problem, offer pithy commentary, and otherwise avoid engaging the issue in any sort of meaningful way. I get it. That approach is easier. People also like to say publishing is run by women, citing the many women working at publishing houses, working as agents, etc. as if that somehow brings more balance to a reality where men out publish women, often at a rate of three to one. There is no correlation between those things.  The gender breakdown of who is submitting might help to get a clearer picture of the disparities we continue to talk about year after year after year but we cannot lay the “blame” for the lack of gender parity in publishing at the feet of the submission queue. We cannot dismiss this issue by catering to the notion that men are simply more willing to put their work out there because that’s what men do. I had an entire rant planned but then I realized I’d either be preaching to the choir or preaching to those who could never be converted.

This conversation is stalled. We keep trying to find ways to “prove” there is a problem. Many people want to understand why this disparity exists instead of working to address the disparity itself.  I’m not going to do that anymore. There is a problem. I am comfortable with that making me a bitch who be trippin’.  There is work to be done—let’s get to it.

Until today, I had not checked PANK’s numbers for gender parity across issues because I was confident we were pretty even in the number of men and women we publish. In PANK 5, there were 44 women (or writers who identify as women) and 33 men. In PANK 4, there were 32 women and 37 men. In PANK 3, there were 31 women and 35 men. In PANK 2, there were 13 women and 17 men. In our first print issue, there were 11 women and 14 men. We have too many online issues to tally them all but in the January issue there were 8 women and 11 men and in the December issue there were 14 women and 7 men. I don’t have the time to run the numbers on submissions but in general, we receive about 70% of our submissions from men and 30% from women. Lest you think because I’m a woman I am more open to women writers, my co-editor ran PANK alone for the first two issues and the gender ratio was still close to 50/50 and he is a man. We have never considered gender when trying to assemble an issue or accept a given submission. These numbers have happened naturally. If I look at an upcoming issue and see a strange imbalance, I will move things around across future issues but that kind of work never happens during the editorial process itself. What do these numbers mean? I’m not sure but I think we’re doing pretty well with trying to represent men and women equally despite the character of the submission queue. Why? I’d guess it’s because we’re open to all kinds of writing and we make it clear we’re open to all kinds of writing.

Sometimes, people need to be explicitly told they are welcome. Last October at PANK, we had Tim Jones-Yelvington guest-edit a Queer Issue. Since then, we’ve received many submissions from queer writers who explicitly stated, in their cover letters, that they were submitting because of the queer issue, because they felt welcome, because they had a sense that queer writing was welcome in PANK. Until we started receiving these submissions I would have never guessed that some writers needed to be told, in no uncertain terms, that their writing was welcome. I know now and can make sure we continue to create an open atmosphere for writers from all walks of life.

Some of the solutions are going to be as complex as the problem itself. We have to think about how women are socialized and educated and how we can ensure that both women and men are encouraged to be ambitious, to write, to be creative, to experiment, to be the best. I assumed this to be the case because I have always been encouraged in these ways but since these new numbers were released, I’ve read so many accounts of women who have not had that experience, and I wonder how we can change that for women. And of course, there are the people who will say, “Well I put myself out there and I was never encouraged,” and that’s great but that doesn’t address the needs of those who work differently.

Editors have a great deal of responsibility here.  Until we can address some of the more systemic issues embedded in this problem, editors have the most responsibility because they are on the proverbial front lines. If publications aren’t receiving enough submissions by women, perhaps it is time they start aggressively seeking more women out. It certainly troubles me to think about assembling a magazine using a checklist of some kind to ensure diversity among contributors. Where does the tallying stop? It feels antithetical to editorial vision and common sense to take a Noah’s Ark approach to publishing a magazine where we ensure there is one of every kind of person but the more I think about this problem, the more I see parallels to segregation and how schools had to be desegregated by force, with police and military protection because people were so unwilling to educate their children with children of different races and ethnicities. Schools had to be desegregated by force because it was the right thing to do. It was the only thing to do. It is 2011. We don’t need guns. Instead, we need editors who take a stand, editors who say, this is the only thing to do, who say, “I will not publish a new issue until I have an equal or close to equal number of women and men represented.” Maybe that sounds a little radical, but radical measures often lead to radical and important change.

A while ago, an editor e-mailed me saying something to the effect of that he was not going to publish another issue featuring a white man until he found the right story by a woman or someone from a different demographic. Then he told me not to tell anyone as if there was something wrong with taking that kind of stand. There isn’t. I didn’t know how to respond at the time but the more I thought about that e-mail, the more I believed that editor was doing something great. Taking a stand is important. If we take these stands now, we won’t have to have this same conversation in ten years because gender equity will have become something we take for granted. Perhaps I am reaching for a perfect world but I am ambitious and I believe more editors need to take a stand instead of trying to dispute statistics or justify longstanding disparities.

This is not to say editors should compromise on quality or editorial vision. It drives me crazy when people imply that “the best work” can only come from men or that to try to achieve gender parity would somehow mean compromising editorial standards. That can only happen if you allow it to happen. Beat down the doors of women writers until you find what you’re looking for. Editors might not be able to always have gender parity in their publications but it would be great to see more editors trying and putting in genuine, concerted effort to make it so we can talk about the words rather than the writers. I’d rather talk about the writing than gender, race, sexuality, and such. We all would. We’re not there yet even though sometimes we convince ourselves we are.

We also have to look at the editors themselves. Is there gender parity on the editorial staffs of the publications VIDA analyzed? Women have to be included in  cultivating a magazine’s aesthetic and the decision making processes. This is not to say women are going to be naturally inclined to accept the work of other women but I believe editorial diversity will translate well into contributor diversity.

How do we create more parity between men and women being published and in whose books are being reviewed by major publications? That’s the question we need to be dealing with because until we find reasonable answers, bitches are going to continue to trip and rightly so.

P.S.

Here’s a roundup of people currently talking about the VIDA numbers and the gender disparity in publishing:

Hairpin
The New York Times
Bitch
Double X
Beyond the Margins
The Missouri Review
The Southern Review
We Who Are About to Die
The Bark

It is difficult to talk about race and stressful and awkward and exhausting. To my mind, one of the reasons these conversations are so difficult, particularly between white people and people of color, is because, so often, white people question concerns raised as if the question is not “how do we solve this problem,” but rather, “does this problem exist.”  This is not a debate about whether there are racial and class (and gender and sexuality) disparities in publishing. These disparities exist whether you (choose to) see them or not. Instead these kinds of discussions are intended to function like a magnifying glass on a problem so big it should not require a magnifying glass.

And yet, the magnifying glass is clearly needed.

You want proof. You want evidence that publishing is biased where race is concerned. The world is biased so it should not be surprising, then, that the the publishing industry is biased. Are things better than they were 50 years ago? Of course. Are things okay? No. This problem neither begins nor ends with publishing. The problem neither begins nor ends with Best American Short Stories which draws its work from literary magazines which draw their work from the writers who submit and there are a whole lot of factors contributing to who is writing, where they are sending that work, whether that work is getting published before we can even talk about what’s being included in the “Best of” anthologies. This is a problem, that, as commenters noted in my previous post, is also an issue of class and the educational system that is failing so many people. It is an issue of who has the luxury of the time to write and send their work out. That doesn’t mean the absence of diversity in an anthology like BASS is inconsequential. That collection represents the “best” and most prestigious literary magazines in the country and so if there is little diversity in BASS, there is little diversity in the most influential literary magazines where most of us hope to someday be published.

Issues of race, racism, diversity and equality are issues we’ve been dealing with for more than 200 years. As long as there is difference, there will be disparity. You want statistics and to feel like this is an issue you should care about because sometimes, you just don’t. That’s fine. There are lots of important things I don’t care about either. Honestly, I don’t care if you care or not. Whether or not you care has no impact on the existence and severity of the problem.

The discussion in my previous post has been really interesting and multi-faceted. As these discussions tend to go, people got heated. I got heated. I used my favorite word (fuck) a few times. I will get heated again. This issue matters to me. That this issue matters, however, doesn’t mean this is strictly an emotional issue and to suggest that demeans the discussion. Emotions are involved but there is far more at stake. One of the points raised was that this issue wasn’t as serious as some of the global concerns people around the world are facing. No one is asserting that. At the same time, there’s little point in playing Oppression Olympics, or in saying, well, at least we’re not enslaved, working in conflict diamond mines in Africa. You simply cannot make such comparisons. It’s absurd. Everyone has some kind of privilege and acknowledging that things are still fucked up doesn’t deny those privileges. Saying disparities exist for writers of color does not negate that publishing, in general, is difficult for all writers, particularly given the current climate in publishing.

Discussing these issues is not complaining. When I say, “God, I’ve had a submission out at The Eternity Review for 434 days,” I am complaining. When I say, “I feel a profound sense of absence,” while reading Best American Short Stories, I am using my magnifying glass. Raising these issues doesn’t mean I feel particularly oppressed but it is, nonetheless, an acknowledgment that there are barriers writers of color face that white writers never will. As a writer of color, you have to worry about whether or not there is a readership for your work because many people believe that white people simply aren’t interested in reading about people of color. If you write about people of color, some editors want you to write about people of color in very specific and stereotypical ways because they’re simply not interested in those stories that diverge from the cultural narratives most publishers are comfortable with. Oftentimes, editors aren’t interested in stories where people of color are doing the same things white people are doing in their stories–dealing with life, love, sex, marriage, death, ennui, whatever. They prefer the tragic pornographic narratives and so sometimes, some of us play that game because that’s just the way it is. Anytime you achieve even a little bit of success there’s going to be someone who suggests you earned that success because you’re a person of color (or a woman, or both). Even though you might know you achieved your success because you’re awesome, because you worked hard for years, because you beat down doors until one fell down, you are stuck with the niggling doubt that they’re right. You worry that everyone thinks that way so you can never really enjoy your success, you always push yourself to do better, to do more, to be the best, to be so good they have to stop saying it’s just because you’re a person of color. It is exhausting. Some of the comments in the previous thread certainly bear this out. Anyway, I don’t say this to paint a tragic portrait of the writer of color. We’re fine. And people from other groups certainly have their litany of struggles. Life is hard. Life is hard for all of us. For some, though, some of the factors contributing to that hardness are so deeply embedded within certain institutions as to feel insurmountable.

I wish there were statistics on the number of books being published by writers of color, the advances writers of color are being paid, how those books sell, etc. Maybe someday, someone will do for people of color what VIDA is doing for women. Maybe this organization exists and I simply don’t know about it. I wish there were a way to truly prove what I know to be true, but there isn’t and I don’t have the time to compile that information, nor should I have to. If you really care, do the work to learn about what the publishing industry is like for people of color. Stop feeling defensive. Unless you work for a major publisher or one of the magazines represented by BASS, this isn’t about you, and even then, this is still not really about you. This is bigger than that.

In some ways, this is a matter of faith. You have to accept that these imbalances exist and that when people like me raise the issue, it’s not to make anyone feel guilty or uncomfortable or to say, “woe is me” or to deny your realities. It’s to say, this issue is on my mind and this issue is one I deal with or that people who look like me deal with to one extent or another.

Still, for those of you who want proof that race is a real problem in publishing, here are a few examples gathered from a very cursory Google search I did between classes today using the search terms racism + publishing + statistics.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison has compiled some statistics about the number of books by and about people of color. In 2009, 1.6% of children’s books were written by people of color. That’s pretty horrifying.

In 2010, 41 (or 1.4% ) of the YA Books published, out of the approx. 3000 published, were written by black authors. The situation is even more ridiculous for Latino authors, with only 16 (.5%) YA titles published in 2010. Twenty-two percent of all children in the US are Latino. Imbalance? Yes.

Most of 2009, the science fiction/fantasy community was embroiled in a contentious debate about race that was so extensive and ongoing that it even got its own name and wiki: RaceFail, but hey, at least the SF/F community is talking about these issues which cannot be said for other writing communities.

Sometimes, people write books where the protagonist is black and white person is put on the cover anyway because hey, that will sell more books. They call this white washing and publishers actually think this is an acceptable practice.

I could list links about the many, many ways racism pervades publishing all day but students are actually stopping by for office hours. This isn’t incontrovertible scientific evidence but it should be enough for you to get the gist.

Ultimately, people who don’t want to be convinced that this matters won’t be convinced that this matters, but evidence is all around us and either you choose to see it or you don’t. I don’t have answers. I wish I did but I would like to think we can try to reach for answers and solutions. In the future, I’ll definitely post about some ideas I have about making things better. If you have ideas and want to do a post on this topic, just get in touch. Finally, I hope we can continue to talk about race, gender, and class alongside all the other interesting things we talk about here (books, submission fees, Barry Hannah, DFW, rejection, hip hop, massive people, JIMMY CHEN), even if we disagree. I leave you with Louis C.K. on The Tonight Show. All three clips are worth watching.

P.S. Here are some nice resources about reading and writing diversity.

Mooney for scale.