A Love Letter to #Ownvoices

Hey guys!

This post is a little different- it's not a researched topic, nor is it a review or anything. This is an opinion piece, and it's one that's pretty dear to my heart. 

As a person & woman (although I'm not actually a woman yet- shhh) of colour, it's so important to me that we have not only diverse books in this industry, but that a lot of those diverse books come from ownvoices authors. For those who don't know, an ownvoices author is an author who writes main characters who share their marginalized identity- for example, a Southeast Asian author writing about a Southeast Asian main character.

So why is #ownvoices so important? Ownvoices is really important because in the book industry, not many marginalized authors get published. The industry is very much Eurocentrically dominated. This affects the marginalized readers, as we don't get to read about people who look like us, or that we can relate to. In fact, an issue in the industry today is that more white authors are having their books with diverse main characters bought by publishing houses as compared to ownvoices authors. This is an issue because, for starters, the person most equipped to write a character from that background is an ownvoices author. A white queer author will not have the same understanding of what it's like to navigate the world as a queer person of colour, but a queer person of colour will. Ownvoices is an incredibly important movement which allows for accurate, less problematic representation of minorities in literature. Ownvoices is also important because we are seeing a lot of white authors drawing on POC myths and legends to write their books- this can be considered cultural appropriation in novels. Like I said before, no one would better understand the cultural aspects needed in this case than an ownvoices author from these cultural backgrounds. Ownvoices is also for queer, fat/plus-sized and disabled people- it's incredibly hard to write an accurate representation that isn't harmful for an identity you are not part of. A lot of research is needed for this and it comes to a point where authors need to ask themselves: why do I want to write this novel? as well as why would an ownvoices author want to write this novel? Authors need to ask themselves how pivotal is it that their main characters belong to this minority and would they be able to accurately represent that marginalized identity? The answer unfortunately would most probably be no. Take My Brother's Name Jessica by John Boyne (I'm not even going to link this novel because I honestly believe it's horrible). This novel has resulted in outrage from the trans community, as there's prominent transphobia throughout the novel. These novels are not the types of novels minorities deserve to see themselves represented in, and the best way to ensure accurate representation for minorities is to increase the amount of ownvoices authors being published.

Not only do we need ownvoices authors, I believe ownvoices reviewers are incredibly important. Publishing houses need to reach out to book bloggers and reviewers who are ownvoices for the ARC/book they are sending out to be reviewed. Ownvoices reviewers are important because they actually are part of that minority in the novel. therefore they can accurately review the novel before publication. When I say accurately review, that's not to say that if we aren't ownvoices for the novel we're reviewing, our review is void. I mean that ownvoices reviewers will be able to pick out any flaws in representation that non-ownvoices reviewers won't be able to. I'm an Indonesian-Kiwi, and so if I read a novel about an African-American woman, I wouldn't be able to accurately tell whether the representation of AA women in the novel is accurate, good, or harmful, but an African-American woman would. Recent Twitter drama has highlighted this fact, as I have mentioned before, that ownvoices reviewers would be beneficial when ARCs are being distributed. This can be seen with the aforementioned My Brother's Name is Jessica. The novel may not have been published or may have had it's issues fixed if trans reviewers were included in the process of reviewing before publication (I am unsure of whether any trans reviewers were included but considering the backlash I very much doubt it). In actual fact, from what I've seen, ownvoices authors are some of the only people who understand how important it is to have ownvoices reviewers read and review their novels before publication. Unfortunately, authors are very rarely deeply involved in the distribution of ARCs- their publishing house and/or publicist is. I know of a few bloggers who try to encourage ownvoices reviewers when publishers contact them, by forwarding the details of an ownvoices blogger to the publisher. There's also the Asian Book Bloggers Directory run by the amazing Shealea, which she uses to help authors and publishers find ownvoices reviewers. This isn't to say that if you're not ownvoices for a novel you can't review an ARC of it- I'm simply saying that more of these ARCs should go to ownvoices reviewers.

The #ownvoices movement is especially important to me because there have only been two times I've related to the main character of a book profoundly, and there's been one time I related tot the culture in a book. One of the two books with MC's I related to wasn't even ownvoices (no hate, I absolutely adore CBTC and Kat Colmer), and neither of the two books were actually my specific identity, Can't Beat the Chemistry is about a Chinese-Norwegian girl and To All the Boys I've Loved Before is about a Korean-American girl. The one novel which I felt a cultural connection to was Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan- and even that wasn't proper representation for me as it was about Malay/Chinese people living in Singapore, and I'm Indonesian. The thing is, I recently went on a hunt for Indonesian/South East Asian ownvoices novels in YA litereature- and I found little to none. I found no Indonesian ownvoices- the only ones that were recommended to me weren't YA and they were translated from Indonesian into English. I found a few Malay, Filipina, and Vietnamese ownvoices authors, but altogether I had found about ten South East Asian authors. There''s a huge gap in the market here. We may not be in YA litereature but we do exist. I know there's no such thing as perfect representation but we can get darn close if we keep publishing ownvoices authors and searching for ownvoices reviewers before publication. There's this feeling I will never forget, which I felt for the very first time when I was reading CRA. It was this elation and joy at seeing my culture on the pages of a book. I would read a passage and think to myself, Hey, I know that! I understand that! I would read about food that I've eaten at home all my life. It's this wonderful feeling, and I don't know if it's just a me thing, or if it's something everyone who'd part of a marginalized identity feels, but it filled me up and showed me that there are other people out there who share my culture. Living in a Eurocentric country, I have never known anyone from my culture. And yet, there it was, right there on the pages of a book for not only me, but everyone in the world to read about. I want to get that feeling again. The one where I'm brimming with joy at seeing my culture on the pages of a book, or identifying with a main character. And that's why the #ownvoices movement is so incredibly important to me. I ant that feeling not only for myself, but for everyone out there who is part of a minority group.

This post isn't intended to bash anyone- it's here for me to express my opinion and love for the #ownvoices movement. I really do believe that this is an important movement in the book industry, as ownvoices will not only accurately display minorities, but also their daily struggles in a very Eurocentric, cis, straight dominated world. We need diverse books, but we also desperately need #ownvoices books.

Note: If you want to read up more on some of the controversies I mentioned, Google is your friend, as well as Twitter. I just don't have the time to pool sources for you guys, I'm sorry.

I have however found a link talking about diverse novels being written by POC as compared to white authors- I've linked it here.