Is there an infantilization issue when it comes to diverse literature?
A Ceiling of Glass and Paper:
Infantilizing Diverse Literature
A. Ahmed | 12/2/2019
The world of literature as a whole has come a long way in diversity in every facet, particularly in representation in both the works available and in the authors writing them. Now more than ever, authors are able to find themselves platforms that allow them to build names for themselves and get their works out to audiences that actively seek them out and to cater to them on a more precise scale as feedback and responses are almost immediate and at a more personal level. However, despite the successes of a much more diverse range of authors and the increasing introduction of characters that represent a much broader audience, there still appears to be a barrier that prevents diversity from flourishing fully, which is no new issue, but one that should no longer exist in today’s world.
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A long withstanding issue in literature has been the treatment of works featuring diversity or women, particularly the infantilization, dismissal, and gatekeeping of such works, an issue that has existed for more than three hundred years. The infantilization of “other” works
such as those by women, authors of color, LGBTQ+ authors and other marginalized groups, is notably seen through the works of the Brontë sisters, who after facing discrimination in getting their works published soon began publishing under male pseudonyms. For example, when Charlotte Brontë submitted her works of poetry to England’s poet laureate Robert Southey, her work was promptly rejected with the response: "Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life." In modern times this is seen in the particular slippery case of the Young Adult Genre where -while a woman dominated genre with the most strides in featuring works by and about minorities- many works are wedged into despite clearly not belonging, in gatekeeping in the community and the industry, and in the observed disparity and bias in publishing, and by extension marketing, itself.
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Infantilization will be defined as the refusal to acknowledge a work’s or author’s caliber, merit, or relevance in the industry by means of miscategorization or discrimination. In an industry where expertise or caliber is primarily attributed to older, Caucasian, often heterosexual men, the dismissal of diverse works or authors limits the progress of the field as a whole as authors of equal or better merit are reduced to categories and genres considered "lesser" by the same authorities whose works dominate the better respected areas of literature. Furthermore, the lack of regard for the content of novels on the basis of their authors or characters may result in works being inappropriately placed on the market, particularly in regards to explicit or high context works being advertised to a younger group that lacks maturity or understanding in order to appreciate such works as they are not intended audiences.
What is Infantilization and why is it an issue?
Methods of Infantilizing Diversity
The Slippery Slope of Young Adult
Since the introduction and recent success of the Young Adult genre (in this study we will include the Middle Grade and New Adult genres as part of Young Adult), which is woman dominated and well regarded for its strides in bringing a diverse range of voices into popular culture and media, the genre itself is considered to be a “venus flytrap” for diverse works as it is easier for these authors to find success in, but difficult to get out of. In many cases, authors that steer clear of this genre may still find themselves stuck with the label. While there is nothing wrong with the genre itself, the ambiguity in its definition and the inclusive nature of a genre only distinguished from others by the age of its readers rather than its content results in its becoming increasingly synonymous with Diverse Literature. According to Robert Lipsyte in his New York Times article: “The current surge in children’s literature has been fueled by talented young female novelists fresh from [MFA] programs who in earlier times would have been writing midlist adult fiction” (Lipsyte 2011). As a result, it is viewed as more profitable for publishing companies to cater towards larger audiences, in this case the teenage and young adult audiences.
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In many cases,the genre eventually became a tool to keep marginalized authors in a box that hinders their growth as authors, and prevents their work from reaching their intended audiences. Such cases of this include A.M. Homes’ book Jack (1989, Vintage Books) which was first published as Young Adult and only re-published as fiction in 2007 by Penguin Random House, R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War (2018, Harper Voyager), for which the author had received backlash for insisting that her book be put under fiction or fantasy rather than Young Adult for its content, C.L. Polk’s Witchmark (2018, Tor Books) which features a 32 year old Queer physician and intended for readers of similar ages to relate to yet relegated to Young Adult, and Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses series, which the publisher, Bloomsbury, presents as suitable for a teen audience and markets alongside her Young Adult series despite being far more sexually explicit and belonging in the Adult Fantasy genre -indicating that she also became a victim of the “venus flytrap” of Young Adult (Nunally, 2019). All of these novels are written by women, where Jack and Witchmark feature gay characters, The Poppy War and Witchmark feature characters of color and are written by women of color, and The Poppy War and Mass’ series feature strong female protagonists, and all focus on topics intedned for mature audiences yet are relegated to Young Adult.
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Additionally, the case of the reception and subsequent backlash against The Poppy War indicates that the issue at hand may be a communal or cultural one in addition to a marketing one. According to Kuang, her novel is written as grimdark fantasy, with extremely explicit depictions of the horrors of war and moral ambiguity, and unsuited to be marketed towards younger readers. However, due to the ambiguity in what makes a young adult novel, it can be argued that the age of its protagonist, in this case a teenage girl, is what allows for the categorization of the novel as YA. This argument, however, is likely invalid, as Steven King’s novels that feature young protagonists and George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series that features protagonists younger than the protagonist of The Poppy War (though due to the multiple narrators, whether there is a protagonist of the series is heavily debated) but are not marketed towards young audiences, not even New Adult, but are allowed to remain in their categories of horror and grimdark fantasy and high fantasy. Furthermore, Jay Kristoff’s Nevernight (2016), which features a young female protagonist, is published as adult fantasy with little conflict. Cases of other female authors of color, like Sarah Kuhn’s debated categorization of her adult fantasy Heroine Complex (2016) and the mislabeling of C.L. Polk’s Witchmark, among others, demonstrates that Kuang’s case is not isolated. The inverse of this case is also true, where arguably young adult novels written by [white] men, such as Pierce Brown’s Red Rising (2015) are marketed as Adult. This indicates that, along with the problematic nature of the genre due to its ambiguity, much of this miscategorization stems from the perceptions about the authors, where their target demographics are determined by stereotypes. That because the young adult genre features stories with women and minorities as their protagonists on a greater scale than other genres, authors that share similar identities to these protagonists must be solely writing these stories.
Gatekeeping in the Industry
The denial of entry for women’s and marginalized authors’ works into other genres is indicative of gatekeeping within the industry. As it is, genres such as Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror are overwhelmingly male dominated and communally regarded as “non-pc” compared to the more “politically correct” Young Adult genre. Science Fiction written by women, such as Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, are relegated to YA and subcategorized as “dystopia” instead Science Fiction. Even the works of Mary Shelley, who at the age of nineteen became the mother of Science Fiction, has her works, such as Frankenstein labeled simply as gothic romance. Fantasy, such as the novels mentioned above, have a similar fate, with categories like “romance” and “fairy tale.” Womens’ horror can only be “gothic” if not Young Adult or “dark fantasy.” Even well known older works, such as those by Jane Austen or Bronte Sisters, are barred from being considered classic literature or fiction in favor of categories such as Romance, Gothic, and Women’s Fiction, or colloquially, “chick lit”. Works by marginalized authors are also relegated into their own boxes if not Young Adult. This occurs particularly for LGBTQ+ authors who write about LGBTQ+ protagonists, where even if their identity is not the focus of the novel, they are put into their own box of LGBT Fiction, as works by or about the community are simultaneously infantilized and sexualized. This puts the works of the community in a Schrodinger’s Cat situation, where the theory that “the cat is dead” appears to win once the books are instead banned completely, as evidenced by the ALA Office for Intellectual Freedom in their lists of banned books which list Alex Gino’s George at the top and A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo by Jill Twiss right under it. In fact, of the eleven books mentioned as challenged most frequently in 2018, five of them were about LGBTQ+ characters and one of them simply featured a same sex couple in the background. Works by authors of color often face a similar fate if they are deemed “too political” such as Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, Khaled Hossani’s The Kite Runner, and Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give. These works are also simultaneously too “immature” for placement in the Fiction category and too “profane,” “violent,” and in the case of The Kite Runner too “promotional of Islam” for younger readers.
The Problem with Publishing
As aforementioned, the issue with the infantilization of diverse voices is a result of multiple issues, though one that stands out in particular is the role of publishing and marketing in all of this, as evidently how something is received is based on how it is sold. Discrimination and bias in publishing companies is nothing new, and historically there is evidence of writers finding ways around them. Oscar Wilde, who was tried for homosexuality, had many of his works published in England while his identity was hidden by a beard marriage to a woman. Jane Austen first submitted her works anonymously, changing her pen name to A Lady only when her works were well received. Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte published their works under the male pen names of Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell respectively.
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Many female authors today continue to use this strategy to avoid discrimination. “From the twentieth century onwards, women novelists’ use of pseudonyms seems to have acquired a more focused purpose: to avoid pre-judgement of women’s fiction as inferior.” (Smith 2016) In an interview, J.K. Rowling admitted: "It was the publisher's idea, they could have called me Enid Snodgrass. I just wanted it [the book] published." as her publisher believed that a female name would dissuade boys from reading her work. Later on, in order to publish her adult crime novels, Rowling used a pseudonym by the name of Robert Galberaith, stating that she “...certainly wanted to take [her] writing persona as far away as possible from [herself], so a male pseudonym seemed a good idea ... [her] editor David Shelley, who had read and enjoyed The Cuckoo’s Calling without realizing [she] wrote it, one of the first things he said was, ‘I never would have thought a woman wrote that.’” (Savill 2000) Other female authors are observed to use ambiguous pen names when writing more mature topics, such as Alice Mary Norton, who legally changed her name to Andre Alice Norton in order to publish The Scent of Magic (1988) and Victoria Schwab, who writes under Victoria Schwab for her Young Adult novels and V.E. Schwab for her Adult novels.
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Author Catherine Nichols had put this theory to the test, documented in her article Homme de Plume: What I Learned Sending My Novel Out Under a Male Name. When she submitted samples her manuscript to different publishing houses, fifty in her own name and fifty under the male pseudonym, George Leyer. Of the fifty samples submitted in her own name, Nichols only received two requests for the full manuscripts while the male pseudonym received seventeen requests out of the fifty sent. Nichols also noted that “One who sent me a form rejection as Catherine not only wanted to read George’s book, but instead of rejecting it asked if he could send it along to a more senior agent. Even George’s rejections were polite and warm… George’s work was ‘clever,’ it’s ‘well-constructed’ and ‘exciting.’ No one mentioned his sentences being lyrical or whether his main characters were feisty.” (Nichols 2015) The mixed treatment of Nichols’ samples reflects the existence of an underlying, likely unconscious, bias that bars authors’ works from being reviewed fairly. In the article, Nichols also acknowledged that she “ can only assume that changing other ethnic and class markers would have even more striking effects.” This bias can be observed in employment, where "Job applicants with white names needed to send about 10 resumes to get one callback; those with African-American names needed to send around 15 resumes to get one callback… discrimination levels are statistically uniform across all the occupation and industry categories covered in the experiment." according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, and can be applied to the context of the literary industry as well (Fancis, David R.).
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In order to monitor and reveal instances of discrimination, annually the all-volunteer literary organization, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts, focused on the treatment of established female -and later, minority as well- authors, provides statistics on the imbalances in publication. These studies confirm that literary magazines focus on reviewing books written by men and commission more writing by men than women, statistically evidencing the possibility of bias in the industry. The 2010 VIDA count showed that across publications, men dominated nearly 75% of book reviewers and authors reviewed on average. Author and professor Roxane Gay, in her collection of essays, Bad Feminist, discusses the way women are blindsided in the industry as “where Jonathan Franzen lost the Pulitzer rather than Jennifer Egan winning the award.” (Gay, 2014) After the release of the first VIDA counts in 2010, she brought to light the disparity among authors of color in addition to the gender disparity. By conducting a similar study on the reviews published by The New York Times, comparing authors based on race and then gender, Gay found that “...Of those 742 [books reviewed], 655 were written by Caucasian authors (1 transgender writer, 437 men, and 217 women). Thirty-one were written by Africans or African Americans (21 men, 10 women), 9 were written by Hispanic authors (8 men, 1 woman), 33 by Asian, Asian-American or South Asian writers (19 men, 14 women), 8 by Middle Eastern writers (5 men, 3 women) and 6 were books written by writers whose racial background we were simply unable to identify.... The numbers reflect the overall trend in publishing where the majority of books published are written by white writers.” (Gay, 2012) In 2014, VIDA released their first Women of Color VIDA count, putting forth a more encompassing analysis on the disparity in works reviewed across multiple publishing companies. The Count first compared genders, where men still dominated publications. The overall gender disparity data from ten of the fifteen publishers analyzed are shown below:
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The Count then looks into the women in detail to compare the racial disparity in publications. However, it does not look into the racial disparity among men as the organization focuses on women in literature. The overall race disparity among women data from the same ten publishers are shown below:
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The New York Times and The Times are presented separately as the wide disparity presented themselves as outliers, which would have otherwise skewed the data:
It is important to note the effect the disparity among works reviewed has on the issue. Much of how a book and its author is treated depends on how the book is marketed, with reviews being a major source of promotion for it. From a marketing standpoint, this proves problematic for the industry as “Women’s fiction is reviewed less often than men’s in major publications...even though women buy two thirds of all books.” (Smith 2015) Furthermore, from a social standpoint, the disparity in works reviewed illustrates the idea that certain works have more merit than others but in a carefully controlled manner that keeps works of equal merit by “other” authors from receiving acknowledgement, and by extension success. The disparity in reviewers, both in terms of gender and race, ensure that these groups are kept away from the spotlight by creating a controlled critical audience.
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Marketing plays a significant role in the infantilization of diverse literature. Alongside the impression given by published reviews that some books are more “worthy” than others, thus limiting their importance and visibility in the market, marketing plays a major role in trapping authors in the Young Adult genre. Publishing companies that do publish works by women and minorities tend to cater to a specific audience, which tend to be other women and minorities, under which the demographics the Young Adult genre targets. The popularity of the genre means that authors are able to get the popularity their works wouldn’t receive otherwise by putting their works into the young adult market. However, as mentioned before, the safe space of the young adult market is a “Venus flytrap” for most authors as they become unable to be more than just an author for a younger audience because of their publishers and the reputation created for them.
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UPDATE JUNE 2020:
In June 2020, authors on Twitter had taken to putting out their earnings, advanced payments, and contracts out for all to see under the trending tag #PublishingPaidMe in order to reveal the disparity in how much authors of marginalized communities made in contrast to their White or Cisgender counterparts. In their posts, authors listed their race, genders, and sexual orientations, as well as how much they were offered or how much they had made with their works, debut and following, regardless of how their books were received. This tag revealed not only the amount of small authors paid little to nothing, or sometimes even less, for their work compared to popular authors, but also indicated the disparity in pay among authors of equal merit but belonging to different races, genders, or sexual orientations, for example as seen when comparing the pay for the debut novels of authors Katy Rose Pool and Dhonielle Clayton (shown below). This shows two issues: one, that many publishers deny transparency in order to profit extensively off of authors' works, often leaving many authors with no reward for their work, and two, that bias in publishing exists in all aspects, from signing, to marketing, to pay. Data collected from the trending of this tag also evidence this pay gap and are listed below:
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Data collected by Twitter user @luzbianca417
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1aG859Tw34oWQ1M_qwbAxHJMniVEprOK2uw7h2ngxlaw/edit#gid=0
Data collected by Twitter user @brumiranda
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10ibYYyoe15Gs3pYxXieTGZ3hArP7GXIGx7jZOTHft4s/edit#gid=0
Data collected by Twitter user @fictograph
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Note: this information is still fairly new as publishing deals often come with nondisclosure agreements and authors are only now revealing how much they make for their works. The information presented here is incomplete, though significant enough to reach a conclusion, and will be updated should there be new information or a way to adequately and accurately present this information in a more cohesive and comprehensive format.
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To Conclude...
The infantilization of diversity in literature and the refusal to acknowledge the literary prowess of female and minority authors had been a long withstanding and complex issue. Much of it can be attributed to systemic discrimination on a cultural and industrial level. While in terms of community, this issue will exist so long as there is discrimination in the community and the culture that idolizes the talents of Caucasian, heterosexual men, and will only continue to reflect the views of the community. As long as people remain in a society with such ideals, the markets run by them will align with their views. In the past, discrimination existed on a definite and uninhibited level, where women and minorities were heavily subjugated, and therefore barred from the industry as much as they were from participating in society as a whole independent individual. In the modern era, this discrimination is no longer as outright, as we as a society have made strides in achieving equality- though with much room for growth remaining, the market reflecting this change in term. Despite this, efforts in limiting such voices, such as infantilization and gatekeeping, still exist today if on a more subtle level, becoming what we now call the Glass Ceiling. What happens from this point on not only depends on the writers putting out their works unabashedly, but also the audiences they depend on for giving them the recognition and acknowledgement of achievement they deserve.
