Why is Everybody So White at British Literary Festivals? Talking Hay & Cardiff book festival.
It's that time of year again, the Hay Festival is underway; potentially Britain's most beloved literature festival. The fact Michael Gove is going to be there at a sold out 'political thinking' event makes my skin crawl. But, there's still hope the audience will come bearing eggs, or at least searing questions.
If you're sensing anger, you're spot on. I've spent a decade teaching English in British high schools. I've been browbeaten by students, of whom the majority don’t have a bookcase in their home (let alone bedroom). I have earned my right to be pessimistic about academia and the literary festivals they beget.
Why? Simple. My ominous distrust is triggered when the tone of conversations intentionally indulge academic discourse. As if certain topics are universally discussed at an intimate level. It angers me. Not because I can't hold my own. But, it's a cloying attempt to be conciliatory. ‘We’re all in this together’ is the message hammered home at talks about diversity and the role of novels in elevating conversations about tough topics. But, we are not all in it together. Not after the book signings end and not when it comes to payroll. In both worlds, the academic and publishing, there are inexcusable disparities.
Yes I Have Proof!
A major survey of the UK’s publishing workforce has found that “significant progress” still needs to be made on both the numbers of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic staff and improving regional diversity. The majority of those working in the industry come from London and the south east.
According to the survey, which the Publishers Association described as the most comprehensive ever conducted of the UK industry, 11.6% of respondents identified as BAME – lower than the UK population (14%), and significantly lower than London (40.2%). The results echo those of a 2017 online survey of 1,000 publishers that found 90% of the workforce was white. (See the full article that highlights other pernicious discriminatory issues in publishing, here.
The Gender Pay Gap at Cambridge University is 19.5%, whilst at Oxford it is even higher, at 24.5%. I don’t need to label the gender getting the worse deal.
Woah, Don't be a Debbie Downer!
Don’t dismiss me as a harpy just yet. It might be a case of doth I protest too much, but I love learning, I'm currently undertaking an MA in Travel and Nature Writing at Bath Spa University. I might even pursue a PHD. I can even admit I am concerned with existentialism, as much as the next person with enough privilege to have the time to be. But, in my mind, change needs to be frogmarched in, not applied intermittently so we (the white majority) can pat ourselves on the back.
Cardiff's Got the Right Idea...
Cardiff’s 2018 Book Festival was a success because it was self-aware. Noticeably contrasting to the Speakeasy tent at Latitude Festival, where fun was poked at the homogeneity of the identikit white, middle-class audience, but nothing could be done to challenge it in actuality. (British music festivals are exclusionary by nature because of their exorbitant expense.)
Cardiff Book Festival had acted: The price points; the range of topics; the availability of individual event tickets; the centrality of it, and the disabled access, all made it accessible to engage with. It is difficult to find 3 days’ worth of entertainment for £25 anywhere in the UK, even more unlikely that it will manage to not come off as an obviously amateur affair.
Yet, here was Sali Hughes discussing ‘Beauty Products That Changed the World’, an introduction to blogging, the chance to go to a masterclass on how to pitch to an agent, a one-man play by Cameroon born Eric Ngalle Charles, Sunday night closing with a discussion about how to ‘know your place’ described as addressing, “those of us whose families never quite felt like they belonged in a bookshop… examine class, homophobia, locality, race, Welsh working class identities.“
So, why all the middle-aged people? Was the hotel setting to blame? (It being called “Jury's” a foretelling of judgement?) Or, is it a wider issue, as consumers have we become stolid cynics? Are we avoiding events where we imagine ourselves stonewalled and out of place?
People seek genuine inclusion. Regardless of CBF earnestly providing a diverse set of events, the fact remains that the literary world isa clandestine one, with a male problem. A white, middle-class, heteronormative, male problem.
Let's Break it Down:
I don't believe it's accidental that there are fewer people from the working class being published. It doesn't seem plausible to me that it's accidental that there are fewer people of colour published. I simply cannot believe it's coincidental that when these authors do breakthrough they are often defined by exactly what makes them ‘other’.
It pisses me off that women, even with all their engagement in the academic field of literature, and being the majority consumer of books, are not published or read as much as men.
There is no acknowledgement that people from any group may have a story of equal consequence to tell. There’s an unsettling torpidity of beliefs: women are custodians for the domestic, men are curators of the universal, minorities within these two themes must always be a voice for their alien experience. Hay Festival, in all its splendour, even fell foul of the latter form of marginalisation.
What are you playing at Hay?
Their ‘Crime’ speakers consisted of a group of 35 people, 32 of them were white. The three POC were defined by their ethnic identities. Shruti Kapila, being a professor of Modern Indian History, Paul Caruana Galizia, advocating for greater awareness of human rights violations in Malta, after the murder of his mother, and Chibundu Onuzo having written a novel about Nigeria. This will undoubtedly be the choice of the writers. But it is still problematic. White guests, featured in the same category, both talked and wrote about things out of their own immediate point of cultural or ethnic reference.
Hear from Onuzo in her own words, here.
Onuzo didn’t have her own slot, she was part of a panel talking about corruption in ‘the world’s poorest countries’. Cossetted by Oliver Bullough and Matthew T. Page, both white men, neither from Nigeria, with Page having titled his book ‘Nigeria: What Everyone Needs to Know’. I cannot imagine the roles being reversed unless the Nigerian born writer had produced a comedic piece about Britain’s endearing eccentricities.
With such startling divisiveness, why bother engaging? Your very attendance must be painful. We go to these things in a prospective sense; eager to learn the ‘way in’ from industry experts and have our own agency in the process reaffirmed. If you knew, from the outset, the opposite would occur, would you still buy a ticket?
Need More Evidence?
At CBF, Richard Skinner, leader of ‘The Faber Academy Way’ course, was interviewed by Lleucu Siencyn, on the craft of writing a novel. Throughout the discussion, between 15 and 20 authors were mentioned, by my count, none female.
Sitting in the front row, interning Skinner’s advice onto the pages of my notebook, it hurt me. To feel positioned as invisible, an afterthought, or merely a mechanism for discussion that's fleeting, or a subplot because of what makes you other, is diminishing your identity.
Can you contemplate intentionally paying to be reminded you are rarely viewed as a whole? Or, in the way you want to be understood? Would you want to have it obliquely enforced that you don't have a place at the table? Would you be comfortable only occasionally being brought forth from the shadows? Unless you are a masochist it isn’t going to seem like a beneficial use of your time.
Skinner’s session was five-star. He was: congenial in approach, encouraging of audience participation, mindful not to talk too much and exuded that credible sort of charisma that somebody still smitten by their field, rather than the success it has afforded them, has.
My Time to Shine!
It would have been easy, natural even, to smile, applaud and contribute to comfortable questioning to reinforce the companionability of the tone. But the reverence with which him and Siencyn had cited so many male authors, at the exclusion of any females, triggered an inexplicable sense of visibility and rejection.
I asked, “from the academy’s split of published authors, who finds more success men or women?” Skinner responded, “far more women take the course every year. We have done lots of research into why, but I can only generalize that men don't think they need to learn the craft of writing”.
I couldn't resist, “it's just that you both mentioned a wide variety of talented writers and none of them were women.”
Unexpectedly, the audience behind me blurted “Jane Austen” in dissent. It felt like a thunderclap of damnation and I immediately realised my folly... Yes, Austen had been mentioned. An exceptional female, one hundred years dead.
It was alien to be at odds with the literary community. I have always frequented libraries, from childhood, always read ferociously, I buy books from indie shops, have magazine subscriptions and teach English. These are normally my people.
Skinner, to his credit, looked reflective but the host moved swiftly as if Austen's inclusion negated the issue. Did that make it a moot point that Faber Academy’s existence is owed to women’s purses but they forgot about the existence of women? I couldn't wrap my head around it. British publishers are kept afloat by women, who systematically buy more books than men, yet we are still treated as an afterthought. Should I not have dwelled on the fact Skinner would be paid from the ticket sales of a largely female audience? After all, Austen was included.
Not Cool!
Therein lies the issue, the reason literary events frequently have a homogeneous white middle-class audience; irrespective of themes and intentions the undercurrent remains the same. There’s insidious violence in the silencing and streamlining of voices within literature. If that violence feels targeted at you, maybe it’s better for your mental health to turn the other cheek.
Enough.
Further reading on an interesting way the literary community are trying to overcome barriers: https://www.thebookseller.com/futurebook/how-virtual-literary-festivals-are-breaking-down-diversity-barriers-595101
