Jewish Genre Reading Challenge discussion

Our monthly Book Chat thread is for discussing our current bookish doings. But something we noticed as we started reading more widely in Jewish genre books is that all kinds of thoughts and feelings and memories began to come up.

This Reading Jewishly thread is the place to talk about all things Jewish and book-related, beyond what you’re reading right now for the challenge itself. Memories of Jewish books read in childhood, musings on the past and present state of Jewish sci-fi, shifts in or interactions with your own sense of Jewish identity as you read - all are welcome here.

If you want to kvetch about the lack of Jewish representation in your preferred genre or subgenre, this is a great space to do it! You will surely find others who want to kvetch about it right along with you.

I track my reading stats and so far out of 16 books read in 2024, a little over half have had Jewish authors. Only about 40% have had Jewish main characters, though.

It's been so interesting doing a deep dive into books with Jewish MCs. Most books with Jewish characters were written by Jewish authors. But Jewish authors sometimes want to tell stories about characters who aren't Jewish - presumably either because of external pressures of the publishing world or because they just have a different story to tell. So you end up with this small subset - the stories Jewish authors decided to write with Jewish characters - and in many genres it doesn't lead to a ton of choices!

But then there are stories with non-Jewish authors that have Jewish characters and those are... well, let's just say I feel suspicious. There are some great examples of it being done well (in my opinion). But I've also been encountering some books where it's like the Jewish character (usually highly religious/observant) is a symbol for something, more than being an individual person, because that's why this non-Jewish author wanted to include a Jewish character in their story. And I don't always feel comfortable with that symbolism. I imagine other underrepresented groups feel the same way - why did that straight author with no connection to the queer world include a queer main character? Why did that white author choose to include a character of color, and what is that representation going to be like? I would say that it does seem like there are way fewer books with Jewish characters written by non-Jews than there are other examples of writers creating characters who are different from them in some significant way.

chysodema wrote: "I track my reading stats and so far out of 16 books read in 2024, a little over half have had Jewish authors. Only about 40% have had Jewish main characters, though.

It's been so interesting doin..."

I definitely hear what you're saying, and this isn't an excuse to do anything racist or homophobic, but I can imagine that some authors feel like it's damned if you do, damned if you don't. I feel like if a straight white author tries to "write what you know" and doesn't include many characters who identify as queer or who are POC, they would likely be criticized for lack of diversity in their book, but if they DO include a character who identifies with a marginalized community that the author is not part of, the author could be accused of tokenism or stereotyping. I guess the only solution is making sure to really do a lot of research and talk to people in that community and to employ sensitivity readers?