Assimilation into the Literary Mainstream? The Classification of Ethnic Minority Authors in Newspaper Reviews in the United States, the Netherlands and Germany

Abstract

This article addresses to what extent literary critics in the United States, the Netherlands and Germany have drawn ethnic boundaries in their reviews of ethnic minority writers between 1983 and 2009 and to what extent these boundaries have changed in the course of ethnic minority writers' careers and across time? By analyzing newspaper reviews, we find that American reviewers less often mention the ethnic background of Mexican American authors than their Dutch and German colleagues refer to the background of Moroccan and Turkish minority writers. But while these relatively strong ethnic boundaries become weaker over time in the Netherlands (boundary shifting), Turkish German authors encounter particularly strong boundaries in subsequent book publications (ethnicization). In the U.S. the reverse is true: ethnic boundaries weaken after the debut has been reviewed (boundary crossing). The findings are related to (nationally different) chronic accessibility (U.S. and Germany) and specific field dynamics (Netherlands).

Enter Culture, Exit Arts?

“…e.g. Peterson, 2005;Schmutz et al, 2010;Janssen et al, 2011;Berkers, Janssen and Verboord, 2014). It has been noted that, in quality newspapers' culture departments, the typical division between classical music and popular music 'is supported by a relatively clear division of work between classical music journalists and reviewers, on one hand, and popular, world music, folk music etc.…”

Depoliticising literature, politicising diversity: ethno-racial boundaries in Dutch literary professionals’ aesthetic repertoires

“…It aimed to enhance cultural diversity in the arts, by which a broader conception of artistic quality was pleaded for (Delhaye 2008(Delhaye 1306. As a result, the Dutch Foundation for Literature implemented an intercultural sub-policy, after which the percentage of ethno-racial minority panellists (granters) increased from 0% (1995) to 5.1% (2000), and the share of grantees with a migrant background rose slowly and temporarily (Berkers 2009). Yet, the specific implementation of this intercultural policy worked in an ambiguous way: by relegating diversity into a separated funding circuit, it left the established structure of the field untouched (Delhaye 2008), maintaining the whiteness of the Dutch literary world itself (Ahmed 2012).…”

“…In Pierre Bourdieu's study of the publishing field, exclusionary mechanisms are mainly explained in terms of class, as he believes racial discrimination is roughly reducible to class discrimination (1996,227). Berkers (2009) work, quite on the contrary, shows the significance of studying ethnicity and race as independent categories. He finds that in American, Dutch and German national literary histories and newspaper criticism minority authors' ethnic difference is often emphasised.…”

“…This study takes a similar institutional approach: despite a growing number of studies, there still exists, as DiMaggio andFernández-Kelly (2015: 1237) put it, 'a notable gap in research [concerning] the ways in which the arts are organised -both at the level of the host society and within immigrant communities'. Indeed, although there has been a growing body of literature in The Netherlands that focuses on gatekeepers and literary institutions since the 1980s (De Glas 1998;Laan 2010;Franssen 2015; among others) little research has been conducted on cultural diversity and the position of ethno-racial minorities in the literary field (notable exceptions are Berkers 2009;Kuitert 1999). Admittedly, there has been an increasing number of studies by literary scholars on literature by writers with a migrant background.…”

“…Weber 2000), Berkers (2009) focuses on ethno-racial boundaries. In relation to literary policy, criticism and history, he investigates how intermediaries construct and reproduce differences between 'us' and 'them'.…”