A conversation with Fazeela Jiwa from Fernwood Publishing about sensitivity readers — what that term means, the shortcomings of using them, Fernwood’s approach, and what the future might have in store for sensitivity reading.
(Scroll down for a transcript of the conversation.)
Want to make sure you never miss an episode of the podcast? You can subscribe for free on iTunes, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, TuneIn, or SoundCloud.
Further reading/listening
Transcript
Ainsley Sparkes: Hello, welcome to this month’s podcast episode, I’m Ainsley Sparkes, the marketing manager at BookNet Canada. This month I spoke with Fazeela Jiwa from Fernwood Publishing about sensitivity readers — what that term means, the shortcomings of using them, Fernwood’s approach, and what the future might have in store for sensitivity reading.
Fazeela Jiwa: I'm Fazeela Jiwa, and I am an acquisitions and development editor with Fernwood Publishing.
Ainsley: So, my first question is a really basic question. What are sensitivity readers, and is that your preferred term at Fernwood?
Fazeela: Okay. So, I don't think that's a basic question, and I'm not going to give you a basic answer.
Ainsley: Great.
Fazeela: I think sensitivity readers, it... So, there's a growing awareness in publishing that some representations are, and have been harmful. And, you know, to kind of give you a foregrounding of my own understanding and my own thinking around this, I understand publishing as an industry with a history, a long history of oppression in Canada. And the reason why so much of this industry is funded through government grants is because arts and culture was given a big boost through the Massey Commission. And this is a project that is explicitly a nation-building, like, nation-building through arts and culture. So, it's a nation-building project. And in Canada, it's really important to remember that this means a white settler-colonial nation. That's the nation that they were building. So, building what is Canadian culture, it involves erasing what is not considered to be Canadian, which is specifically indigenous stories, or those, you know, that come from anyone who is, what I would say, non-dominant. And by non-dominant, I mean anyone who is not a white, cis man.
So, much of what has been published in the name of building nation, contains harmful representations of non-dominant people. And that is the landscape of Canadian publishing. So, that includes, I think, the trend of publishing multicultural authors, you know, that...this is a huge trend that started in the '90s in Canada. And these authors were often asked to tell their stories, but then they were pigeonholed into only telling their stories, which, you know, this is an essentialising move, which is also harmful in so many ways. Because, you know, some ways, in which is harmful, it tasks this non-dominant author with a representation of their culture. And it often assumes that racialized authors are writing from an autobiographical perspective. It essentialises. So, there's a lot written about this, and I'm not going to go into it a lot. But I think that because of that criticism, publishing is changing. And so all that to say, you know, this is a background of what I think sensitivity reading, you know, it has recently become more popular, especially mainstream publishing in Canada because of this growing awareness of harmful representation in Canadian literature.
And in a nutshell, to finally answer your question, sensitivity reading refers to an author or a publisher, hiring a reader that has particular lived experience, that can read to ensure the manuscript is accurate, and not harmful in its representation of that experience. So, that can be related to race or ethnicity, or it can be related to certain experiences, like migration, or citizenship, disability, you know, particular kinds of work, particular kinds of families, etc. It's basically anything that is outside of the experience, of the lived experience of the author who is writing. In terms of, you know, the preferred term, I was reading a blog post by Crystal Shelley, who's a really great editor, and she's got a lot of good public resources on what she calls conscious editing. And she calls it authenticity reading, which I think is a really great term because it's a little bit more...it's more accurate because you're not just trying to be sensitive, you are trying to ensure, or, I guess, strive toward more authenticity. So, she has a two-part description of what she calls authenticity reading on the CIEP blog, which I thought was really helpful. But at Fernwood, we don't really refer to it in those terms. We just call it a review.
Ainsley: So, though, there are lots of problems with, you know, sensitivity readers, authenticity readers, do you use them at Fernwood occasionally or often?
Fazeela: Yeah, definitely. I mean, although we don't consider it...we don't use those terms... I mean, Fernwood is explicitly radical in our anti-authoritarian critique. So, we have always published narratives that are, you know, less popular. And so we don't really call it a sensitivity reading because it's simply part of our process. We make a point to publish less represented authors and perspectives. And if we're not sure about the way that an author is representing someone, or a community, or a topic, then we have a network of people that we use that we trust, and they're usually happy to provide their opinion or freelance for us in terms of editing. So, we often, often ask for reviews from people who would have experience with the book's content. Or, if we're freelancing, then the editors that we work with are asked to take on particular projects because of their lived experience, or their proximity to the material in the book.
Yeah, I guess, in general, I think sensitivity reading, you know, I consider it to be a good stopgap measure for publishers to use. But I want to talk about what my colleague, Tanya Andrusieczko says. You know, it doesn't replace the work, I think, that is crucial for publishers of relationship building. I'm just going to quote her because I think she says it the best. She says, "It means being in meaningful relationship with people who have rich and varied experiences, and solid analyses, who can call out bullshit, and trust that their insights and knowledge will be taken seriously by editors, who understand that there are long histories of racism in publishing." I guess that kind of introduces another aspect into sensitivity reading, which is...it's important, but it doesn't replace relationship building.
Ainsley: Yeah, and it doesn't replace getting different types of work from various authors and creators. And back to your point about pigeonholing, authors from certain communities are expected to write their pain, and don't get to write the mystery stories or the sci-fi in the same way.
Fazeela: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I think I often go by... There's a lot of people who've written about this, but one really concise poem, I think, that describes this succinctly is by Vivek Shraya. It's called, "A dog named Lavender." And it just poses a whole bunch of different questions that a racialised writer or a non-dominant writer would be thinking about in their writing and in their communications. And then at the end, it says, "What would I be thinking about if I didn't have to think about this? Would I be thinking about a dog named Lavender?" And I just think it's so concise because it's exactly...you know, it's the burden of writing about what is perceived as your difference when people who are perceived as the norm don't have to do that, they can write about anything.
Ainsley: So, you talked a little bit about how you choose projects for which to hire a reviewer. Do you typically use them on fiction or non-fiction? Are there different considerations for different types of genres?
Fazeela: Almost all of our projects, either fiction or non-fiction are reviewed in some way. I guess unless we know the author has the support of the community that they're writing about, or it's a biography, there's that kind of proximity that the author has to their content.
Ainsley: So, what is your role as an editor in the process? So, if you are getting a freelancer to review a work, who decides on which changes to adopt? Does the author get involved at any stage in terms of the feedback and the review on their work?
Fazeela: Oh, yes. Well, okay, sometimes I would explicitly ask for peer review, by looking for people who are experts in the field. That usually happens with non-fiction. With fiction, if the author is writing about something that isn't directly in their experience, then we'll ask an editor with that lived experience to either read or edit that book. And as an editor, for me, I think it means a lot about being aware of political and social context of books, and cold calling, and meeting people, and, again, you know, coming back to relationship building, which is like a huge part of my job. But in terms of the way that the feedback is taken up, I think...and editing, there's a lot to it, it depends on context.
You know, if it's a book where a white woman is writing about a particular indigenous nation, and we have a reader from that nation, then yes, I would say that the feedback should absolutely be taken into account. But if the context is different, if it's non-fiction written by, say, like, an Indo-Caribbean woman in Canada, and a reader is an Indo-African woman in Canada, then it's possible that they may have different analyses of a similar experience that's not exactly the same. And in that case, you know, there could be disagreement. And I think it's important to note that in my experience, so far, the disagreement happens through respectful conversation, and through connections, and, you know, further research either on my part, or the author's part. And in the end, unless the content is really problematic, and we decide not to publish for that reason, is the author's book. And as an editor, I don't think that I need to agree with everything that's written in the book, as long as, you know, we've had a conversation about it, and the feedback has been considered.
Ainsley: So, there's a lot of criticism about, like, you know, white people trying to write more diverse characters into their books. So, they write from different backgrounds. And a lot of the bad faith arguments, I think, about that is that, like, well, can white people only ever write white characters? Can people from dominant identities only ever write dominant characters? And I think, in my understanding, sensitivity reading was kind of brought in to try and help diversify books from dominant groups in ways that were, yeah, more authentic, and more sensitive. Do you have thoughts to that poorly framed...?
Fazeela: I don't think that's poorly framed, but I think, really, that gets to the crux of, you know, the way that sensitivity reading is important, and also can be problematic. I mean, it's important because... And I think, absolutely, authors and publishers should be engaging sensitivity readers. But it's really important to know, as you've said before, it's not going to be perfect because you're just asking one person to give you their opinion of the text based on their lived experience. And their experience might be different from someone else's, even if they're from the same community, or they have similar experiences in their lives. So, you can't expect one sensitivity reader to represent the perspectives of a whole community of people, just like you can't expect one author to represent a whole community of people.
So, you're right, it brings up the more foundational, and somewhat controversial set of questions about whether authors should be writing about experiences that are not their own. And for me, you know, as someone who works in publishing, like, why is it that the question is not about giving the opportunity to people from those communities to speak for themselves, rather than having someone else write about them?
And I don't have a set...I have lots of thoughts, but not a set answer on this because I think that the answers always depend on the specific context. But this is...it's definitely related to the conversation around sensitivity reading because it's...I hope that more room can be made in publishing for non-dominant writers to write about their own experiences, or whatever else they want to write about. Their perspectives matter, regardless of what they're writing about. And I am heartened to see, you know, there's a seeming increase in diversity in publishing, but I'm also worried that it's a trend that it won't continue, and it won't continue because of the overwhelming white-hetero ableism of this industry.
I'm not sure what's going to happen. And for right now, I think that sensitivity reading is an important service to seek and to provide. But it's important to go back to the fact that this is because publishing in Canada has been overly representative of power. And it's only just begun to seek non-dominant perspectives, and to listen, and to be able to treat them with the kind of thoughtful respect that they deserve. And I understand sensitivity readings as, you know, one way to make sure that the books that are being published are done in a responsible way. But it's not the end. It's not the end of the process having one sensitivity reader read one book.
Ainsley: I mean, ideally, at some point in the future, we get to a place where coming from a non-dominant group doesn't stand in the way of a book deal, you know, and a wide breadth of options, and forms, and genres, and all that is available. And people from dominant groups can write empathetically about other characters.
Fazeela: Well, what you just said makes me think about some of the stuff I've seen from Salt & Sage Books, where, you know, empathy, I think is really important to, as I understand it, what they talk about in terms of sensitivity reading, where they say, you know, "It's not your fault if you don't know about something, but you should reach out to someone who does if you want to write about it." So, again, we're coming back to relationship building, right? Like, it's about making sure that you are representing in a humble enough way that you will be able to take feedback, whether it is through the writing process, through readers, or afterwards, you know, books will garner criticism, and that's part of the process. And I think it's an important part of why we publish, to start those conversations.
Ainsley: So, what would you say to publishers who are considering incorporating a review process like Fernwood does into their workflow?
Fazeela: I would say, do incorporate review. I feel like as many people get to read...they get to read the book in its process, the better because the more perspectives you have on the content, the richer the content will be. I would say, do continue to take risks and publish lesser-known authors with perspectives that maybe you haven't heard before, you haven't heard before. I would say, you know, as a publisher, it's important to expand your pool of relationships, and importantly, to be part of the community in which you're geographically based. You know, Fernwood is, for example, based in many parts of Canada. So, my colleagues are based in different parts of Canada, and we're all pretty active in our community. So, that really helps with establishing, you know, a pool of trusted people that we can ask.
And then the other thing is, I would say, it's really important for publishers to prioritize spending money, you know, paying readers a good wage for their work, because you're relying on their lived experience for the creation of this book. And some of that lived experience could, no doubt, you know, be hard-won. So, that part is really important too. Many people who do sensitivity reading or editing are freelancers, that can be really precarious labour. So, I think it's important to compensate fairly for that work. That's so important. And then I guess I would say, above all, as we've talked about, you know, through this conversation, I think publishers shouldn't consider...it's important the publishers don't consider sensitivity reading at the end of the process. And, you know, it doesn't mean that the book, if you get a sensitivity reading, is not going to garner criticism. And it doesn't mean that if it garners criticism, that this is bad. It's an essential part of the process. And in my opinion, one of the essential reasons for publishing literature in the first place.
Ainsley: Well, thank you for talking to me. This was a really interesting conversation.
Fazeela: Yes, thank you for reaching out. I really appreciate it.
Ainsley: Thank you to Fazeela Jiwa for taking the time to speak with me about this topic.
Before I go, I’d like to take a moment to acknowledge that BookNet Canada staff, board, partners, and our makeshift podcast studio, operate upon the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, Wendat, and Huron indigenous peoples, the original nations of this land. We endorse the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and support an ongoing shift from gatekeeping to space-making in the book industry. And we hope that our work, including this podcast, helps to create an environment that supports that shift. We'd also like to acknowledge the Government of Canada for their financial support through the Canada Book Fund. And of course, thanks to you for listening.
A deep dive into book prices in Canada from our upcoming Canadian Book Consumer Study 2023.