Redlining Culture

A Data History of Racial Inequality and Postwar Fiction

Redlining Culture
Richard Jean So
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NZ$ 79.00
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Paperback
h235 x 156mm - 240pg
15 Dec 2020 US
International import eta 10-30 days
9780231197731
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The canon of postwar American fiction has changed over the past few decades to include far more writers of color. It would appear that we are making progress? recovering marginalized voices and including those who were for far too long ignored. However, is this celebratory narrative borne out in the data? Richard Jean So draws on big data, literary history, and close readings to offer an unprecedented analysis of racial inequality in American publishing that reveals the persistence of an extreme bias toward white authors. In fact, a defining feature of the publishing industry is its vast whiteness, which has denied nonwhite authors, especially black writers, the coveted resources of publishing, reviews, prizes, and sales, with profound effects on the language, form, and content of the postwar novel. Rather than seeing the postwar period as the era of multiculturalism, So argues that we should understand it as the invention of a new form of racial inequality? one that continues to shape the arts and literature today. Interweaving data analysis of large-scale patterns with a consideration of Toni Morrison' s career as an editor at Random House and readings of individual works by Octavia Butler, Henry Dumas, Amy Tan, and others, So develops a form of criticism that brings together qualitative and quantitative approaches to the study of literature. A vital and provocative work for American literary studies, critical race studies, and the digital humanities, Redlining Culture shows the importance of data and computational methods for understanding and challenging racial inequality.
It' s easy to say that American publishing has taken steps to reduce racial inequality, indicated by the expanding list of published novels by nonwhite authors since World War II. So refutes that statement with this data-driven account that brings literary and historical methods together. A breakthrough in book history, this pathbreaking study about publishing, authorship, race, and recognition is essential reading. -- Maryemma Graham, founding director of the Project on the History of Black Writing, University of Kansas With clarity and conviction, Richard Jean So makes the case for why quantitative methods matter for the study of literary culture. But more than that, he shows what these methods can do: reveal patterns of inequality, identify examples of resistance, and enrich our understanding of the structural forces that shape what we read and why. -- Lauren Klein, coeditor of Debates in the Digital Humanities So conducts groundbreaking data analysis of modern and contemporary American literary production, making visible, at scale, the denial of opportunity, attention, and distinction to writers of color. An ambitious work in cultural analytics, Redlining Culture will be a model for future work in the field. -- Kinohi Nishikawa, author of Street Players: Black Pulp Fiction and the Making of a Literary Underground Redlining Culture is a book of landmark significance, both for digital humanities and for literary studies at large. So demonstrates that scholars have underestimated the persistence of inequality in postwar fiction. In supporting that thesis, he also shows that quantitative models can help us understand every stage in the production of literary value-from authorial and editorial decisions, to book reviews, to the distribution of prizes and academic consecration. At once ambitious and startlingly clear, the book provides a blueprint for a new kind of literary history. -- Ted Underwood, author of Distant Horizons: Digital Evidence and Literary Change
Richard Jean So is assistant professor of English and cultural analytics at McGill University. He is the author of Transpacific Community: America, China, and the Rise and Fall of a Cultural Network (Columbia, 2016).
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9780231197731
Published: 15 Dec 2020
Published In: United States
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Format: Paperback
Height: 235mm
Width: 156mm
Pages: 240

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