The first day of Litquake, San Francisco’s annual literary binge, had some serious competition: on Saturday afternoon, the SF Giants were in the playoffs; Hardly Strictly Bluegrass drew  hundreds of thousands to Golden Gate Park; the America’s Cup occupied the waterfront with 1%-ers; and it was Fleet Week, that quaint local tradition in which the Blue Angels tear back and forth above our city in a bizarrely irony-free celebration of America’s militarized cultural identity.

In a dimly lit room at the California Institute of Integral Studies, the thoughtful mood punctuated by the sonic rumbles of the Blue Angels, four writers of color gathered to talk about Rewriting America: Race and Re-imaginings in Post-9/11 America. This certainly wasn’t the Banjo Stage; things got serious, and political, and quickly.

“I am the new enemy,” said Francisco X. Alarcón, who identifies as Mexticoand is involved in the fight against SB 1070, the Arizona state bill outlawing cultural studies (and, effectively, literature by non-white writers). “Now that there are no Commies, they’re coming for people who look like me.”

Elmaz Abinader, a multi-genre writer who founded VONA: Voices of Our Nation Arts Foundation, the prestigious writing workshop for writers of color, began her reading of poems about Palestine with the observation that “America is the only country in the world where people run outsidewhen fighter planes fly over.”

Panel moderator Pireeni Sundaralingam read several selections fromIndivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry, which she coedited with Neelanjana Banarjee and Summi Kaipa.Sundaralingam spoke of the difficulty in getting the book greenlighted in the face of publishing industry types who couldn’t comprehend that "South Asian American” writers are, in fact, Americans.

And Cave Canem Prize winner Ronaldo V. Wilson performed a chilling sound poem mashup: his own recorded voice recalling New York on the day the towers fell vs. his live reading of freewheeling poems touching on race, sexual identity, and class conflict.

Each writer discussed the complexities involved in existing outside of the mainstream in a country where people who look a certain way or practice a certain religion are now required to spend the bulk of their energy reassuring others that, as Sundaralingam put it, “We’re not terrorists.”

To end the afternoon, the panelists each doled out some quick tips for young writers of color — and for all writers.

On navigating the “establishment,” whether in academia or the publishing process:

“Go hard and strong on what you believe and don’t get pushed.”

—Abinader

“When they tell you no, you have to say yes. Don’t be so concerned with mainstream America; the gatekeepers will always be gatekeepers.”

—Alarcón

“Forget it — I’m just gonna make art … and let everyone else figure it out. [When I wrote my first book] I had an audience in mind: all the unusuals, all the freaks.” —Wilson

On creating a space for writers of colors within the larger literary scene:

“When you see other writers [of color] taking risks, support them — critique, publish, review their work, serve as their editors.” —Sundaralingam

“Everything you write creates a community around it. Go out and find it.” —Abinader

On the death of literary magazines, and the rapid disappearing act of arts funding in general:

“Think long term, invest in yourself. The institutions won’t survive.”

—Alarcón

“Defeat Romney. Keep arts consciousness alive. We can’t let this die.”

—Abinader

Great way to take stock of issues of race in the lit industry before what promises to be a week of copious — and often overwhelmingly white — literary scene-making in San Francisco. Now if only those damn planes would shut up, we'd be getting somewhere.

Images: Blue Angels photo via Paul Chinn, The Chronicle / SF ; Litquake logo via Litquake's Tumblr.

The statistics are in! Thanks to the VIDA Count, there's fresh proof that we live in a world of crappy exclusion in the books department. While I was happy to come across an article in the Irish Times about a retired High Court judge urging lawyers and judges to read great works of literature, I was made profoundly less happy by recent reports on gender and racial bias in publishing. And then I figured it all out: what the judge and the reports suggest to me is a need for empathy, and a need for more people to desire an experience of empathy.

The judge, Bryan McMahon, said that "[l]awyers should be acquainted with great literature and should learn from it. It deals with envy, jealousy, greed, love, mercy, power politics, justice, social order, punishment ... Judging also involves the soft side of the brain, dealing with compassion, understanding, imagining the extent of one’s decision.” Literature has the capacity to peel us away from the world we think we know and take us into an entirely new experience with a changed perspective. This is useful not just as an escape or to serve as some kind of refreshment; books complicate and deepen our understanding of the human experience.

So what happens when almost all of the books that are promoted and discussed in major outlets derive from a largely homogenous pool? Does this limit our access to the great variety of human experience? Could this mean—because of stuff like profitability and basic self-interest—that publishers and reviewers mostly promote the human experience that reflects theirs?

I don’t wish to come off as a big poopy diaper, but in light of the statistics showing that high-visibility literature is mostly male and most definitely white, I think it’s valuable to note that publishing is often a gross machine and often doesn’t reflect very good taste or wise choices. But as much as the nasty, naughty publishing machine is a total idiot with no gumption or integrity, I’d also like to suggest that there could be a fair amount of readers (yeah, the white ones with the money) that don’t much like that which is unfamiliar to them. Readers can just as guiltily say that they want to read a book “they can relate to.” Somehow fifteen dollars has become too precious an amount to spend on something so unnecessary as literature, but 99 cents to download some "guaranteed" blockbuster is a great modern thing.

Think of how the majority of book buyers find books these days. Amazon tells you what other people liked based on what you like. How could this possibly lead to a diverse reading experience?

To top it off, the attachment to indulgence and self-interest is rampant to the point of perversion in this country. I don’t have all my statistics in on this, but I’m fairly certain. And when the self is held as the utmost importance, how could anything of quality be read at all? Does no one want to take a risk or try something new? Maybe readers would enjoy different books if publishers and reviewers spent a little more time pushing different good books and not just the guaranteed sellers for an already established (and at this point, hopefully bored) audience.  

image: vidaweb.org