Suzanne Brockmann ’s RWA Lifetime Achievement Speech

Yes I know the terrible Forbes article about how libraries can be easily replaced by Amazon came out over the weekend. And yes we all know it is factually wrong and classist and just awful. But no I am not going to post about it here or link to it because I don’t want to give it extra clicks. However, if you want to search for it yourself, I will tell you that the comments are wonderful. People are defending libraries and showing outrage in the comments. This I like.

Instead I want to focus on something positive that happened over the weekend-- Suzanne Brockmann receiving the Life Time Achievement Award from RWA.  She used her acceptance speech to call out the racist and homophobic behavior in our world, but specifically in the romance community. She used her own story about wanting to give her gay son romance characters he could be proud of and having the editors erase them from books to make her overall point. It is a great speech filled with just about every emotion. Please read it here from Suzanne’s newsletter.

This is the perfect example of a white, bestselling author using her place of privilege to advocate for true inclusion. You see this issue is about more than “being diverse,” rather it is about inclusion-- everyone from all walks of life seeing their stories on the page. Yes, here it is specifically about the romance genre, but Brockmann’s message is for all books and all stories. Heck, it is for all people. If you consider yourself a decent, caring person and you do not agree with her speech, then you need to rethink what it means to be decent and caring.

What I loved about this speech is how it is a call to action, how she is making it clear that things are NOT acceptable they way “they have always been,” but she does it from a positive perspective.

If an author of color had made this speech, people would be mad, even though it would be more than appropriate and is a message that is long over due, that white people need to hear. Brockmann was getting a life time achievement honor, one she more than deserves [I have been hand selling her books since I started in libraries], she could have talked about anything.

What she decided to do was use her speech to argue for change, but for the right reasons-- because stories need to represent our actual world.

Please read the speech. She is so eloquent. In our world of negatively Brockmann is showing us all that we can fight for inclusion of all voices, for diversity everyday [not just token or for a certain month], for true representation, all of this because it is a reflection of our world. It is not a political statement. It is a reality, it is humanity, it is the truth.

And after reading this speech, I remind all of us-- especially the over 80% white women in this profession-- that we too need to all do better. Every single one of us. I don’t exclude myself here.

Inclusivity is our goal. Every display should have titles that represent the range of human experience. Every list of authors, titles, themed books should not be all white because our world is not all white. No excuses, no exceptions. I am done hearing all of your “but....but... but...” There is no but. Just do it.

If you need help getting started I will have slides up on Thursday for my Demystifying Genre presentation where I provide an inclusive list of authors for every genre, authors that best represent the genre right now. So now you really have no excuses.