By Lilia Chahine | Staff Writer
Before last year, the idea that someone’s favorite book was deemed a “classic” completely bewildered me. Despite being an early reader, I was never an avid reader of classics. Well, that was until I stumbled upon a second-hand copy of To Kill a Mockingbird at one of my favorite vintage bookshops in Gemmayze. If I’m being honest, I did not at all enjoy the first couple of chapters. But as I kept reading, the story kept getting better and better. The book was crafted to perfection. It was sentimental and inspiring, but most importantly, it was a fight against racism. I understood why it was, and still is, a classic. I embarked on a new journey of discovering classics. After reading many of them, however, I realized that some of today’s most praised classics contained major racial stereotypes.
There’s no doubt that reading is a fundamental and universal right. Well, unless it is biased or, in other words, plain racist. In her cultural comment feature published in The New Yorker, titled “Reading Racist Literature”, Elif Batuman, a Turkish-American writer, addresses the stereotypes about Turkish people in European books. She reveals, “I thought you had to be an upper-class white guy from 1830. You had to be a privileged person because books always were written by and for privileged people.” (Bantuman, E., 2015).
She’s right. The narrative has always been controlled by those who hold power. In our world, power has always been a characteristic of the West. In a study conducted on Bestseller books, published in The New York Times, a whopping “95% of the books were written by white people” (Jean So, R., & Wezrek, G., 2020). Even the researchers, expecting the results to be unbalanced, were shocked by the percentage. The publishing industry has always been dominated by the West, and by white people to be specific. Some authors have taken advantage of their privilege and have created a single story for minorities; a single story of violence, poverty, misery, and hatred.
It is crucial that we, as educated individuals, thoroughly examine the stories presented to us. So that we are able to identify a single story when we come across one. Just like most of our world, literature has always been dominated by the West. Thus, the suffering and oppression of minorities have mostly been portrayed through the gaze of white characters. However, year after year, literature is gaining new perspectives from minorities. From works such as To Kill a Mockingbird, The Bluest Eye to The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, African-American authors have slowly been gaining ground in the publishing industry. But it is still not enough.
Native Americans, Middle Easterners, Africans, and African-Americans are just a few of the severely underrepresented minorities in publishing. Representation matters because it shapes how minorities are viewed by society. It matters because we all bring different perspectives formed by our experiences and identities to the table. We cannot ignore the powerful impact that representation has on society, for we must always push for more of it and make sure that we get it.