As protests over police brutality have roiled the nation’s streets, the book world has been confronted by a much more subtle reckoning with race. The hashtag #PublishingPaidMe, which took off on Twitter early last week, prompted authors to share details about their advances, and led to a wave of statements from publishers promising to do better. By the time the New York Times released its weekly bestsellers list on Friday, Black writers and books about combating racism were featured overwhelmingly at the top, giving the impression that quiet revolution could be imminent in publishing. (The changes largely reflect, of course, a recent flood of articles with anti-racist reading recommendations.) But a dramatic confrontation at one of the most prominent literary organizations is proving how difficult change might be.
For the National Book Critics Circle, best known for its annual literary awards, an attempt to release a statement in support of Black Lives Matter late last week led to a rift on its board, and a series of resignations on both sides of the debate. About a week after she began leading a working group to draft a statement of support for Black Lives Matter, board member Hope Wabuke, a poet and professor at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln, posted a screenshot of an email from a fellow board member to Twitter on Thursday, focusing on a few incendiary passages.
In her tweets, Wabuke neither cited the organization nor named the email’s author, but in the replies, others asked if it was related to the NBCC. Board member Carlin Romano, a former critic with the Philadelphia Inquirer, later confirmed that he was the author of the original email.
Three hours after her original tweet, Wabuke announced that she had resigned from the board. “It is not possible to change these organizations from within, and the backlash will be too dangerous for me to remain,” she wrote in a tweet. But by the end of the day, the organization posted the statement in support of Black Lives Matter to their website, including lines about white gatekeeping that Romano had objected to in his email.
But the damage was done. Over the weekend, board president Laurie Hertzel tendered her own resignation, in a letter that was shared in the organization’s member newsletter, citing the damage Wabuke did to the organization by sharing the emails. Writers Victoria Chang, John McWhorter, Connie Ogle, and Katherine A. Powers left on similar grounds, according to Publisher’s Weekly. The outlet added that Hertzel’s decision came after she suggested that the board be dissolved entirely. On Monday, seven more board members announced their resignation, though some cited Romano’s letter and the inability of the organization to productively handle the situation for their decision to depart.