"I have no interest in litigating the specific reviews I’ve gotten or the capable writers who wrote them. My interest lies more in how segregated reviews and..."

"... by extension, a prescriptive vision about race in art, has placed an obstructive framing across the face of work by minority writers.... Is an Asian American, for example, seen as fit to review another Asian American’s book with the full assumption that those very important 'lived experiences' match up in some meaningful way?... [T]he rules of review segregation rarely ask any questions beyond 'What box did you check on the census?'... One of the first lessons a writer is taught is that the specific is the universal. We may not fully understand the filial dynamics of the 19th-century Russian households depicted in 'The Brothers Karamazov,' but we do know something about bad fathers, irredeemably broken men and undying crises of faith.... Some of the most illuminating conversations I’ve had have been with Black, South Asian, Latino and Jewish readers who take [my] book for what it is and then forcefully argue their own reads... A more sincere commitment to diversity requires a breadth of intellect not only from the editors of the review pages but also from readers in the public. Right now, the book landscape seems to have migrated into dozens of caravans plodding along on separate identity tracks. There’s a question that’s rarely asked: Where are we going?"

From "The Reductive Practice of Assigning Book Reviews by Identity" by Jay Caspian Kang.