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Given the current political climate, the Winter Institute that just ended in Minneapolis was like none other. With demonstrations going on simultaneously at cities around the country, booksellers felt a sense of urgency, not witnessed in previous years, about their role in changing times.

Below is the full text of her talk. When I received the invitation to speak at Winter Institute, I knew, even before I got the details, that I would be asked to talk about diversity in some form or fashion. This is the state of most industries, and particularly contemporary publishing.

People of color are not asked about our areas of expertise as if the only thing we are allowed to be experts on is our marginalization. We are asked about how white people can do better and feel better about diversity or the lack thereof. The word diversity has as of late become so overused as to be meaningless.

The word diversity is, in its most imprecise uses, a placeholder for issues of inclusion, recruitment, retention and representation. Diversity is a problem, seemingly without solutions. We talk about it and talk about it and talk about it and nothing much ever seems to change.

And here we are today, talking about diversity yet again. Publishing has a diversity problem. This problem extends to absolutely every area of the industry. I mean, look at this room, where I can literally count the number of people of color among some booksellers.

There are not enough writers of color being published. When our books are published, we fight, even more than white writers, for publicity and reviews. People of color are underrepresented editorially, in book marketing, publicity, and as literary agents. People of color are underrepresented in bookselling.

On and on it goes. This inability for publishing to find people of color is bad feminist roxane gay publisher of the great unsolved mysteries of our time, I suppose. Instead of problem-solving, we count as a means of highlighting just how underrepresented people of color are, in all area of publishing, and how very little changes.

People of color offer testimony about their experiences in publishing and are dismissed, more often than not. Or, the few of us who do manage to break through are touted as examples of progress while we are still the exceptions and not the rule. When our stories are heard, they are generally forgotten until of course, there is a hand-wringing article to be written or there is a panel to be convened or there is a conference to be gathered.

Then, people of color, myself included, are invited to talk to and teach white people about things that are, largely pretty easy to figure out. We are asked for solutions to problems we had no hand in creating. Though we are writers, we are asked to become experts on diversity which is, in fact, a specialized field of its own.

More often than not, we are asked to provide this labor without compensation.

The Full Text of 'Bad Feminist' Author Roxane Gay’s WI12 Speech

We are asked to provide this labor while neglecting our own creative work for some ephemeral greater white good. Last year, I decided I was done sitting on panels about diversity. I am done having the same conversations over and over while very little changes. Instead, most people seem to want to feel better about themselves by making a few symbolic gestures and letting those symbolic gestures be enough because hey, at least they tried—a panel discussion here, a fellowship there, change, nowhere to be found.