To whom it may concern :
I’ve always been very fond of popping in to Waterstones to browse through the shelves – usually I’ll bypass the top 20 and the chick-lit and head straight for the heavyweights in the Fiction A-Z list. Not for me the Romance, Erotica, Crime and Science Fiction sections – clearly for inferior tastes, aren’t they ? That’s why they’re in their own sections and not in the main Fiction section.
So yesterday I walked into the Greenwich branch of Waterstones to find a new Special Interest section, ‘Black & Asian Writing’. Hm, interesting, let’s have a look at the selection of authors : lots of heavyweights – Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Maya Angelou, Yann Martel, Zadie Smith – and a bit of harmless fluff too (‘The Kite Flier’, anyone ?).
A quick check showed that none of those authors appeared in the main Fiction A-Z section. And herein lies the problem.
A charitable soul such as myself might note articles such as this one and think, ah, Jolly Good Show, Waterstones, you’re making an attempt to attract more Black & Asian Readers by creating a Black & Asian Writers section.
A less charitable soul (perhaps any of the writers I mentioned above ?) might take serious offence at being segregated in this manner, and cast down into the realms of the Dribbling Nymphos, Teenage Vampires, Spacefaring Nerds and Scandinavian Axe-Murderers.
I am often told I am Black & Asian (well, of Indian extraction, rather than Chinese, Malay, Japanese or indeed Outer Mongolian) but I am a Reader first and foremost, and I choose what to read based on how good I think the book is, rather than on the skin colour or continental origin of the writer. If there are Black & Asian Readers out there who only want to read stuff by Black & Asian Writers, they’re blithering idiots, and Waterstones shouldn’t descend to their level.
Except you have, dear Waterstones, you have. So this is one Black & Asian Reader who won’t be darkening your doors again.
Well, until Rushdie’s back in the main Fiction A-Z section anyway. And someone officially calls Bullshit on Khaled Hossaini.
Yours Sincerely,
Ashraf Nehru
PS: Yann Martel looks kind of White to me…
