It was Sunday morning. I’d been waiting for this Sunday morning since I first submitted my piece to the literary magazine more than six months ago; today was the day that I was going to receive a decision.
It’s taken me several months of writing and editing to produce my piece. I’d written it about my experiences growing up as an Asian-American, the obstacles I faced, and the dialogue I was trying to reinvent in relation to stereotypes I’d often felt pressured to conform to. My story was so often marginalized by typical stories of “white privilege:” white fathers bouncing little children on their knees, white girls exemplifying American “girlhood” by being cheerleaders dating football quarterbacks, white siblings opening presents in an atypical white home on Christmas Day.
I’d grown up with these stories and had been heavily influenced by them all throughout my life. At the same time, I had come to acknowledge that these weren’t my stories. My father was always too consumed by work–the epitome of the American Dream–to spare even a second of a day for less important matters. My “girlhood” was me studying Biology in the library. My Christmas Day was waking up and playing the piano because that was how I’d “get ahead” while everyone else was on their holiday break. I knew of white privilege, but I’d never had–have–the opportunity to experience it.
“My story was so often marginalized by typical stories of “white privilege”
The kind of originality I believed I had achieved was why I was so excited to receive my decision. In a way, I guess I could say that I was expecting an acceptance. Sure, there would always be works better than my piece. But my story was unique, it was uniquely me in a way most fiction pieces weren’t. And so, when the email came, I eagerly clicked on it.
“Dear Valorie,” the letter began. I frowned. They’d spelled my name wrong. “Unfortunately, we are unable to consider your piece either for our website or our print magazine. We are planning on entering our magazine into many prestigious competitions, and do not believe your narrative was compelling enough for publication, as we only accept pieces that we believe will guarantee a win. Thank you for your time.”
It was curt, blunt, and worst of all, impersonal. And while I was used to impersonal literary rejection and had experienced it more than a fifteen-year-old girl should, this seemed like a deliberate attack on my identity. Nowhere else had a literary magazine spelled my name wrong–in a rejection, no less. Nowhere else had my work been described as not “guaranteeing a win.” Worse, the phrasing seemed to imply that my piece wasn’t even worthy of being entered into competitions. Suspecting that the rejection may have had something to do with my ethnicity, I clicked on the link to the magazine online and viewed the “Staff” section. The majority of the staff members–including the Prose Readers and Literary Editors–were white.
I admit- I started doubting myself. Maybe it was because I hadn’t written about chopsticks and chow mien. Maybe it was because I didn’t talk about Lunar New Year or pandas–the Asian-American work they’d published on their website all seemed to reflect those stereotypes, much like Alison Gold’s “Chinese Food.” Maybe I should start conforming to these standards, these outward perceptions of what Asian-Americans were like. It took many months (and acceptances) before I was able to realize that the magazine didn’t understand my work, and I didn’t understand theirs.
This rejection may have been the most painful rejection I’d ever faced, but it was only the first instance of minority bias within the publishing industry that I’d come across. A few months ago, I read an open letter by Yasmin Belkyhr, the Editor-in-Chief of Winter Tangerine Review, a prominent literary magazine. Addressed to Columbia Journal, the letter was an account of an incident in which racial privilege was blatantly obvious in the interactions between Belkyhr and the social media manager. Concerning a posting for a writing contest offered by Columbia Journal, Belkyhr had questioned why two of the three judges for the contest were white men. In response, the affiliate of Columbia Journal replied by stating that each judge was “chosen for their qualifications for the position, not their minority status,” indirectly implying that minorities were defined specifically by their minority status and not their merit. She then further elaborated on her point with a Mean Girls gif: “Oh my god, Karen, you can’t just ask people why they’re white.”
This is a world where writers of color are damned if they do and damned if they don’t–we often find ourselves either being asked to ’emphasize’our identities or pretend our difference doesn’t exist, to pretend our trauma doesn’t exist, to pretend that the audience we’re looking back at isn’t 90 percent made of white men.”
Incidents like these are only evidence of the minority bias prevalent within literary communities today. Ms. Belkyhr’s response to the incident resonated with me because of its relevance. Why are distinguished literary journals–journals that have the power to effect change–simply remaining within their societal standard of privilege? A study by the Diversity Baseline Survey in Publisher’s Weekly showed that 82% of those in editorial positions nationwide are white/Caucasian. Within the whole industry, 79% are white. African-Americans represent just 2% of the top executive positions. Grouping Asian-Americans, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders together, these racial groups make up only 7.2% of publishing staff–a percentage not unlike an Ivy League’s admission rate.
There is a stunning lack of equity in publishing. Mira Jacobs, a Buzzfeed contributor, tackles this problem in her essay “I Gave a Speech about Race to the Publishing Industry and No One Heard Me.” Throughout her speech, she states, “half the room turned away and started talking…no one ever comes right out and says, ‘we don’t want you.’ They say, ‘We’re not sure you’re relatable’ and ‘You don’t want to exclude anyone with your work.'”
Morgan Parker of PEN America says, “‘We just published the best writing we could find'”is a terrifying excuse for not publishing diversely. This is a world where writers of color are damned if they do and damned if they don’t–we often find ourselves either being asked to ’emphasize’ (read: exoticize) our identities or pretend our difference doesn’t exist, to pretend our trauma doesn’t exist, to pretend that the audience we’re looking back at isn’t 90 percent made of white men.”
We need diverse perspectives when considering creative work, and that comes with diversity in the publishing industry. To this day, I’ll never know if that piece was rejected because it simply wasn’t good enough, or because of my ethnicity, because I didn’t “write about race” the way someone not of color would have wanted to read it. I can understand the first, but all indication points to the latter. I’ve learned to look not back, but forward: as a writer of color, my voice matters. The sooner we start renovating our hiring procedures in editing/publishing, the sooner we start including minorities in magazines and journals, the sooner we start the movement to publish writing that doesn’t categorize and limit identities, the sooner we can involve the rest of the world in our story. And that story is a story of color.
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