DEI Fellows and the Weird Wish Lists of Literary Gatekeepers
Publishers and agents double down on giving preference to select groups at the expense of merit.
As big companies like Walmart shuffle their DEI initiatives out of view, others are holding fast and keeping them out front. Last week, Penguin Random House, one of the world’s biggest book publishers, posted a job listing for a “DEI Fellow.” The notice reads:
For a one-year role, the Penguin Random House DEI team seeks a Research and Partnerships Fellow. [sic] to work on our Latinx Voices project in collaboration with One World.
Relaunched in 2017, One World is home to award-winning and bestselling authors who are collectively leading the cultural conversation. Our authors include Ta-Nehisi Coates, Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, Trevor Noah, Cathy Park Hong, Bryan Stevenson, Nikole Hanna-Jones, and Victor LaValle.
Our ideal Fellow will be a passionate advocate for Latinx authors and readers, responsible for researching, and then building connections with, Latinx organizations, influencers, media, and audiences. You’ll report into the Associate Director, DEI and work closely with both the DEI and One World teams on the Latinx Voices project, an initiative focused on connecting the company, authors, and titles with Latinx audiences and better supporting the publication of Latinx authors. One World, relaunched in 2017, is home to award-winning and bestselling authors who are collectively leading the cultural conversation.
Among the essential requirements listed are a strong “knowledge of Latinx audiences and community” and “proficiency in Spanish.” That’s not a statement of racial preference in hiring, but it’s close enough. Worse still is the fact that resources will be committed toward only assisting authors who belong to a specific minority group. It is outright unfair to everyone else, and any author who benefits from this effort will never be able to state with confidence that they were elevated based on merit rather than group membership.
Penguin’s DEI Fellow job listing is just one example of how deep the DEI problem goes in the publishing industry.
Earlier this year, in collaboration with Penguin—and with funding from the Open Society Foundations—One World organized an anti-book banning event featuring Coates, Hannah-Jones, and Kendi called “Free Your Mind: A Night to Celebrate Our Stories and the Freedom to Tell Them.” Just because some libraries and schools in some parts of the country have decided books like Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist aren’t appropriate for middle schoolers doesn’t make them the objects of totalitarian censorship.
Books aren’t really being banned—not in the way that Joseph Stalin would ban them. See the Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, author of We, a dystopian precursor to 1984 and Brave New World, for what actually having your work banned looks like. In 1921, We became the very first book suppressed by the Soviet censorship board. It had to be smuggled to the West to be published in 1924 and would not be released in the Soviet Union until 1988. But by 1931, Zamyatin had been forced into exile after running afoul of the Communist Party’s critics and writers. He died heartbroken, destitute, and forgotten in Paris in 1937. Zamyatin was a banned artist who paid the price, unlike, say, Kendi, who, despite being “banned,” can still command tens of thousands of dollars in public speaking fees. It’s hard being a dissident today.
Publishers are just one part of the problem.
at recently documented the bizarre “manuscript wish lists” of literary agents, the gatekeepers of book publishing.These checklists are intended to help streamline the submission process by telling writers what the gatekeepers wish to see in their inboxes. Checking the right boxes increases the likelihood of your manuscript finding favor in their hands.
After reviewing several wish lists, Libes concluded that the profession “has gone a bit too far with their emphasis on certain themes and identities over objective literary merit.” That is quite an understatement. Here are just a few examples taken word-for-word from the pages of various literary agents:
“a YA book with the humor and high fantasy action and powerful queer energy of Thor: Ragnarok”
“Queer YA based on Gilgamesh”
“Two Spirit guidebooks”
“Queer!!!”
“Polyamorous relationships (PLEASE!!)”
“Space Opera, hard sci-fi, military SF, and anything set in space are typically a very hard sell for me. (Unless it’s a GIDEON THE NINTH situation where it’s a lot of lesbian necromancers and bone magic, and a little bit of space–I really need it to feel like fantasy.)”
“Books with fairies or elves of color”
“Politically-minded road trip narratives that address the ways in which marginalized people explore and experience unfamiliar places”
“Incarcerated queer voices”
Again, these are real items listed on the pages of real literary agents. These are the people who will determine whether what you’ve written is worthy of consideration for publication. And no matter how beautifully you write, how otherwise compelling your story might be, unless it features incarcerated queer elves of color, the golden gates of literaturedom will remain shut.
“It’s not that these people are silently prioritizing certain identity groups behind doors and pretending that everyone still has an equal shot at publishing—that might still be morally questionable,” writes Libes, “but at least that would create the illusion that everyone still has an equal shot at getting published based on individual merit.”
“No, they are literally telling us that they will prioritize certain minority groups over others and saying the quiet part out loud.”
I like Penguin. Its classic offerings are affordable and often well-dressed. I like Barnes & Noble, where you can find piles of “banned” books bravely displayed on tables in plain view. I even think gatekeepers serve a purpose. That said, people aren’t reading less and taking literature less seriously because they don’t feel represented. Or maybe that’s true, just not in the way publishers and agents think.
The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be much worth reading when much of what is printed today amounts to ham-fisted propaganda and ideologically programmatic omphaloskepsis—deep navel-gazing with shallow and predictable storytelling.
The average person does not see themselves represented in the fantasies and fixations of those who are completely obsessed with what seems to be an ever-expanding number of marginal identities. Identity is a fascinating question, but making it, and a very selective, political form of it, the end all be all of literature, is a recipe for continued decline.
The solution seems straightforward enough: drop DEI outreach initiatives and weird wish lists and open up the gates, and take a risk on new voices, new artists, new perspectives.
It somehow feels like we are living through the capitalist version of all the Russian communist horror stories I was raised on as a kid
I used to think the market place would take care of this problem. I was wrong…see Disney. Apparently this has to run its course to some degree. I’m not familiar with the publishing world but in the world of music independents are creating product. It isn’t easy and expectations can’t run amok, but it is certainly achievable.