What do you know about The Nellie Massacre: the problems of striving for diversity in literary publications

Pop quiz for literary gatekeepers: Without looking, what are the major political parties in South Korea, and can you trace their recent evolution? What are the three main languages of Nigeria? What can you tell me about the Nellie Massacre?

I'd be beyond impressed if there were a political science major who could rattle off all three of these answers off the top of her head. But I'd be utterly shocked if an editor of a literary journal or the people in charge of selecting the winners of a literary prize could. I'm not criticizing literary editors for lack of global awareness here; it's just really hard to know about the issues every single part of the world faces with any real depth. I don't even pretend to understand half the world, and I tend to block large parts out so I can focus on the things I'm supposed to know about. But even the things I supposedly know a thing or two about are tough to keep up with. Even though I know a lot more about question #1 above than the average person, even I would struggle to answer it without hopping online to check up a few facts first.

Impossibility of editorial responsibility for the rest of the world

If you are a writer who submits often to literary journals, as I do, you're probably used to seeing language from magazines that goes something like this:

We welcome previously unpublished work from writers of all backgrounds and identities, particularly including people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, people with disabilities, members of religious minorities, people outside the United States, and all others whom traditional publishing has historically excluded. We believe your stories are valid stories, and we want to consider your work!  

This is a completely legitimate editorial mindset, and not just because of the justice aspect of it. It's also an important approach aesthetically just for the simple sake of providing the most enjoyable literature. While it's certainly possible to bring a fresh take on old subject matter, there's also a lot of joy for readers just getting access to worlds they've never encountered before. Even a bad story about a culture the reader knows nothing about can at least enlighten the same way a geography textbook can. As Roxane Gay said in her introduction to the 2018 Best American Short Stories, one of the things she looked for in a story was when it "teaches me something about the world, when a story shows me just how much I don't know and need to know about the lives of others." 

But there's an issue with editors picking "people outside the United States" as a focus of their literary affirmative action if the motivating factor is some kind of cultural balancing of the scales. It takes years of careful study to understand another country's political landscape enough to know whose voice there is being excluded and whose is not. Just because a voice has not been heard much in the United States yet or has not yet been heard by the editors of a particular highly exclusive journal does not mean that voice is really struggling to be heard. In reality, just the fact that this voice has reached a Western audience is a good indicator that the author might come from a group whose voice is being heard plenty. An Oromo herder getting kicked off his land for a government project in Ethiopia isn't likely to get the opportunity to write a heart-rending short story in English that will ever earn the attention of an elite American literary journal. But the Amhara child of a government official in Addis Ababa might. 

On the other hand, just because some exceptional Oromo herder managed to accomplish the impressive feat of making it to school somewhere abroad, learning English and also having the right temperament for literary fiction, does not necessarily mean the government's development project is wrong. It doesn't mean that writer's voice is a protest about something that really should be protested. Knowing which voices in Ethiopia are worthy of an audience in America is tricky, and even an Ethiopia expert would struggle with it. So isn't it somewhat irresponsible of a literary journal with no particular knowledge of Ethiopia at all to favor a story from one side or the other? 

If the point of publishing one of these stories is not merely to let American readers whet their whistles with another culture, learning a few words or foods or customs along the way, then having lay people pick which stories will represent the country outside America seems like a fairly questionable practice. It's one thing to pick art that the society itself loved, translate it, and present it to an American audience. That's letting the culture speak for itself to the greatest extent possible. When a writer from another culture who also has enough roots in ours to succeed at writing a story in English puts out fiction, that's not letting the culture speak for itself, it's appointing an ambassador from that culture to speak to an American audience, only the American audience itself is picking the ambassadors. 

It's a big responsibility to pick a story and thereby give readers the only information about, say, a Tamil kid those readers are likely to come in contact with for the next six months to a year. It's not a responsibility a guy whose expertise is in stories is maybe up to. Ideally, American audiences would form their art-based opinions about other parts of the world through a kind of triangulation between the art formed by the culture itself, art produced by that culture's diaspora, and art produced by outsiders who have learned about the culture (the sort of thing I write). But it's risky for a literary journal without any expertise in the culture it's choosing to represent in a story, because the landscape is bound to be incredibly tricky and even the editor's attempts to become grounded are likely to be the little learning that becomes a dangerous thing. 

I'm sure editors generally act in good faith. They do some research, maybe reach out to a friend who either is from that country or knows something about it, before picking a story. And I'd guess most editors would say that even a story with a voice from the dominant narrative in its country of origin is still a new and excluded voice here. Their job isn't to know which voices are right and wrong, only to know which ones move the reader and elicit empathy. They'd probably guess that just following their instincts about a good story is likely to guide them in the right direction more often than not. 

If American literary fiction produced hundreds of stories a year from Afghani-Americans, Afghan writers in translation, and Western travelers to Afghanistan, there would be no real concern with editors at a particular journal picking a story from any one of these groups. There'd be plenty of other narratives to balance whichever one they chose out. But that's not the case. Only a few stories from any of these groups get published. And it's the second group, stories from the diaspora, that tend to find the most reception. Of the three major short story anthologies from 2018, I count approximately eleven stories written with a setting in a foreign country or with characters who are first-generation immigrants in America. The best I can tell judging by the author biographical statements, all eleven were written by diaspora members from those cultures, all currently living in the West. So only the second type of stories are getting representation in the big anthologies. That's probably indicative of which types of stories are also the ones getting published in journals across the country. 

I've focused here on writing from "people outside the United States," which doesn't always mean "outside" the United States but more "from the perspective of someone whose worldview was shaped outside the United States." But you could apply these problems to the other areas of diversity editors look for. An editor may think she's promoting diverse voices if she picks a story about gay characters from an author who identifies as gay. But there are, of course, a plurality of voices within the gay community. Some of those voices are politically more advantaged than others. Does an editor have the sophistication to know where this particular voice lies on the spectrum? Or is it just a story that seemed nice and met the external criteria you've set?

The point I'm making here isn't that diversity is a stupid goal, or that editors aren't right to use it as a criteria of something they're looking for. The point is that there are problems in trying to select those kinds of stories. In all likelihood, the benefits from trying to pick these kinds of stories outweigh the problems, but only if we acknowledge the problems do exist. Choosing diversity as a goal doesn't immediately lead to paradise. In the short term, it probably causes more problems rather than less. For editors, that means expending resources to make sure stories really are providing a range of voices and not just a dominant voice most readers aren't aware is dominant because its dominance exists somewhere out of their view.