For many years I kept careful track of the race of the authors that I read. I wanted to be intentional about reading all kinds of viewpoints. It opened up all kinds of new authors to me once I started looking. I found that I might give a book a second glance if the author was a person of color. If I was borderline on whether or not I was going to read it, that factor may edge it over to the yes. It would still need to be really good to get me to keep reading but just thinking about it for a even a second opened up my reading.
In the past few years I backed off from tracking that as closely. It can be a little creepy. If the author doesn’t come out and say their background then you are making assumptions based on their picture, where they live, and their name. That can get problematic really quickly.
I took a look at the authors I read this year. I counted each author once no matter how many books I read of theirs.
Like always my fiction authors are overwhelmingly white and female. I was surprised by having only one South Asian writer. I’ve had years where I’ve read a lot of Indian authors. I feel like I need to remedy that. To be fair I think I read 13 of her books but still, a bit of variety might be in order.
I don’t read a lot of male fiction authors but again they are primarily white.
In nonfiction my sex ratio tends to be reversed if I don’t count cookbook authors. I did for this graphic, so women are in the majority again.
I’ve included trans authors in the sex that they identify with. I also read one author who identifies as nonbinary. I had three authors who don’t state a sex. They don’t use pictures, don’t use gendered names, and don’t use pronouns in their author bios.
I think I need to try to push that proportion of female fiction writers a bit away from being vastly white.
Whoops I just submitted the same comment twice. Please dismiss. Sorry.
When I was a teen librarian I decided to decorate the library in February with books by Black authors. Unfortunately I realized I didn’t know many Black authors besides the obvious ones, Toni Morrison, etc. So I went to the internet and looked up “Black Authors”. I got a nice long list and ws please to see I many of their books in the library. But then I started feeling odd/bad. I realized I would never even think to look up “White authors” in a search of the internet. Then I read the book “Hell of a Book”. In the plot the black author is asked to stand up against this and that related to racism. He just wanted to be treated like an author, not a black author. It has really given me a moment to pause and think about race in a new way.
When I was a teen librarian I had this weird epiphany one February for Black History month. I decided I wanted to display books by black authors and I suddenly realized I had no idea who were the black authors beyond the obvious ones by Toni Morrison and Alice Walker. So I went to the the internet and typed in “black authors”. I got a nice long list to work from. But the process felt racist. Why? Because I would never, ever have thought to go to the internet and type in “while authors.” I wanted to better myself and improve my library collection but the process itself let to some very uncomfortable thoughts.
Let’s discuss ranking books
What’s nice is that once you get past that first hurdle and find a few people you like, you can let recommendation engines do their thing. I’ve found a lot of new authors that way on Goodreads and Amazon.
I agree that it’s really hard to track author race without making assumptions. I’m impressed that you managed this well!
A few years ago, I tried to track the race of authors I was reading, but it turned out to involve too much time and guesswork, so I gave up quickly. You’re much more persistent than me!
I find most of my reading is by women authors and I am working to read more non-white authors (reading books set in other countries helps with this). I am also doing the Decolonize your Reading journey this year.