Questions and Answers
Why WOC Book Club?
We founded the WOC Book Club with the intention of nurturing an online literary space and community for WOC and gender non-conforming POC. Because our stories have been historically excluded from publishing, education curriculums, etc., many POC who want to read literature that captures our experiences simply don’t know where to start. We are here to change that.
We center, promote, and circulate books written by WOC and gender non-conforming people of color. We created this communal space to uplift, empower, and provide opportunities for POC to engage in literature that inspires and heals us—sharing the transformative and liberatory powers of reading literature that deeply reflects who we are.
Why a book box centering WOC and gender non-conforming POC authors?
It’s no secret that publishing is overwhelmingly white. According to the 2019 Diversity Baseline Survey by Lee & Low Books, editorial is 85% white (editorial is making the decisions on what books to publish), sales is 81% white (sales sells books to retailers—their involvement is key to a book’s success), and marketing & publicity is 74% white (they are running the socials, advertisements, pitching to media).
If sales are overwhelmingly middle-aged cis-hetero white women, it’s impossible to ensure that “diverse” books are reaching their full potential audiences. The same energy that is being invested with white authors should be put in POC authors— especially literary debuts.
Here are some amazing organizations that have long been doing the work to see more POC in publishing:
People of Color in Publishing: People of Color in Publishing is a grassroots organization created by book publishing professionals dedicated to supporting, empowering, and uplifting racially and ethnically marginalized members throughout the industry, we seek to create a safe and inclusive space celebrating and promoting diversity.
Representation Matters Mentor Program: Connecting people who self-identify as Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) who are interested in publishing and literature with publishing professionals who can help their mentees learn about, and get a foothold in, the industry.
Inkluded: Inkluded champions diversity in publishing by actively working to train and place young people from excluded groups into their first publishing jobs.
Who is behind the WOC Book Club?
We are a WOC team with expertise in (and love for) literature, poetry, film; critical theory (critical race studies, postcolonial studies, women/gender/sexuality studies, literary studies and criticism, and cultural studies); and student organizing/activism. We are recent graduates working in publishing, communications, teaching, and/or studying in grad-school and law school!
How did we form the WOC Book Club?
This project is inspired by the close friendships and coalitions sprouted from a university’s literature department. We are forever indebted to Professor Lily Wong, Associate Professor at American University’s Literature Department and Critical Race Gender and Culture Studies Department.
We are friends who found each other in our transcultural studies literature classes during college--a program that valued a decolonized literary training. We collectively studied multi-ethnic literature and film, world literature and film, comparative race and racialization, racial capitalism, queer theory, world movements and solidarities, and WOC literature and activism. With time and with care, we formed intimacies with each other that blossomed into our own women of color coalitions. The texts that we collectively studied have been the backbone of our intimacies, coalitions, and radical thought. These literary and theoretical texts have been truly liberating, validating, and inspiring because they allow us to make sense of our own realities and lived experiences. They allow us to attach ourselves to longer histories and genealogies of WOC coalition politics.
We are inspired by—and committed to—nurturing radical WOC solidarities. We believe in futures that center womxn of color—our joy and our trauma—to create kinships of care, belonging, and radical compassion. We draw strength and value from and with one another. We nurture each other. We build new worlds together.