The odds are stacked against Achilles - by Harini Nagendra

I’m seeing more diversity offered in reading these days and am reading a lot more diverse protagonists and subjects. I feel as if it’s opening up my world. What trends have you noticed in the last year, for better or worse?

The world of fiction publishing is a relatively new one for me. I can speak to two other worlds of writing and reading - academia, specifically publishing research papers in academic peer-reviewed journals; and the world of non-fiction writing, of popular science books. While publishing has gone a long long way forward in terms of diversity in both these fields, I can tell you we still have much farther to go - we've moved inches, but need to traverse miles. I'm now on the editorial board of many journals where there are other editors like me, based in institutions outside north America and Europe. We hold active conversations about diversity and inclusion in publishing, hold training workshops for young scholars, ensure our boards have a reasonable representation of young and senior scholars, add women into the mix, and systematically encourage submissions from underrepresented countries. And yet, most of the papers we publish come from the same countries, universities and people that they used to.

That's because of structural biases, baked into the system. We've nudged the needle, and that is hugely important. But we can't achieve systemic transformation on our own. Scholars from what they now call 'global South' countries (used to be 'developing countries' but I freely confess, I hate that term - what are they, worms trying to 'develop' into butterflies?)  lack access to books, software, training, research money, money to fly to conferences. In many countries, even the lack of access to the right language (usually English) can be a barrier to publication. I can't tell you how many journals have insisted that my PhD students pay from their own pocket for language editing, because they didn't have a 'native language speaker' in the author list. Their language was fine - the assumptions the editors made were getting in the way of their reading. This is not an isolated example - academics have pointed this out for decades. And yet, we've really only nudged the needle.

As one scathing paper in Nature puts it, "While the Global North is perceived as pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge through general theories, the Global South is often perceived as fulfilling the role of empirically testing theories, providing data, or offering fieldwork expertise." 

Another paper in the same journal, talking about the bias against African research on public health, says "Many journal editors in the global north still carry the bias that although African labs might know about ‘African’ disease, they have less to offer when it comes to ‘developed-world’ disease." In other words, the writers go on to say - African researchers should stick to working on problems like malaria and HIV, and stay away from studying 'global' issues like diabetes. So you see, the bias is so deep that it also dictates what you choose to write on. 

It's the same challenge when we look at the world of non-fiction book publishing, especially books on climate change, ecology, sustainability. A very recent experience - I was thrilled when my latest book on cities and water, Shades of Blue: Connecting the Drops in India's Cities, was featured on Bloomberg Cities' 2023 roundup, 'Here Are 15 Books About Cities We Read in 2023'. The books in that list are truly excellent - and diverse, featuring issues of race, gentrification and other important topics - but they're all focused on the US. Except for one book, ours. 

And so we come to the world of fiction writing, specifically crime fiction writing. I love the people I've met from this world so much. They are generous, supportive, and absolutely aware of the problems that writers with a 'difference' face in the publishing industry. Indeed this year has been a very welcome one, and so have the years before, in introducing a very diverse set of authors into the mix. As a card-carrying member of Crime Writers of Color, it's been an absolute joy to see fellow South Asian authors like Sujata Massey, Gigi Pandian, Abir Mukherjee and Vaseem Khan grow from strength to strength. In the last year, I devoured Sujata's latest, The Mistress of Bhatia House, and am eagerly waiting for Gigi's latest, A Midnight Puzzle, to get to Bangalore's bookstores.

But the structural problems that plague much of academic publishing do exist, and can't be wished away. As the philosopher Zeno said, Achilles will always be slightly behind the tortoise, despite running faster - because the tortoise got a head start. 

Yet, as my fellow writers Jim Ziskin, Dietrich Kalteis, Terry Shames and Brenda Chapman write about in this week's series, things have gotten much better - and they will continue to do so, with all of us pushing for change. The odds are stacked against hard-working Achilles - yet dare we hope that the winds of change are blowing?