- Too often, Chen says, publishing companies say they would publish more diverse books, but the market just isn’t there for them. Chen doesn’t buy that.
“Your ability to imagine that there is a market has to do with your ability to imagine that those people exist,” he says. “And if [you] can’t imagine that people of color actually exist and can buy books, then you can’t imagine selling books to them. That’s not just about a company corporate diversity policy, it’s about actually knowing what’s going on in communities of color.”
Bushra Rehman’s debut novel, Corona, is rooted in the neighborhoods of Queens, where South Asian immigrants live and shop. Rehman’s novel about a rebellious Pakistani Muslim girl from Queens took her five years to finish and another five to get published. The big publishing companies turned her down, saying the book wouldn’t sell.
“That was the one comment that I remember, that there is not an audience for this work,” she says. “That always stayed with me, but then that always pushed me to say, ‘Well, no, there is — so I’m going to keep on pursuing this.’ “
That whole passage reminded me of Ridley Scott's dismissive comments when confronted about the lack of diversity in his movie Exodus: Gods and Kings. His imagination couldn't stretch to envisioning studios giving him financing for his movie with "Muhammad so-and-so from such-and-such" as the lead. This obviously due again to him not being able to imagine audiences flocking to see a movie that didn't have a well known white face in the lead role. The funny thing with imagination is it rarely tallies with real life. In real life his great white hope of a movie lead my the great Christian Bale and featuring giants of cinema like Sigourney Weaver and Ben Kingsley was a bit of a flop. In fact it made less in the box office in the US as well as worldwide than both Life of Pi and Slumdog Millionaire, two movies lead by unknown brown faces from one of the dark regions of our little planet. It's almost as if second guessing the audience and their reactions based entirely on your own hubris and personal biases isn't a great idea after all. If the book, movie or music is good enough people will flock to it.