When the New York Times released its list of the best 25 American novels of the last 25 years, the list that contained only two women, one of whom was the only writer of color on the list, we felt angry. The demographic make-up of the list (and of the judges who voted) did not represent what we knew about the literary scene –- that tons of writers of color and many women were writing literary fiction of the highest quality.

We felt that the Times’ list was a product of a publicity machine that canonizes white male writers. The influence of the Canon lurked behind the Times’ list, and we wondered what would happen if there was a different collection of writing lurking in the background -- our hand-constructed list full of gay writers, women writers, and writers of color.

We decided to try out our theory – seventy-two of you voted. Here are the results (PDF).

Stats on the List

Of our top 27 books:

• 10 were authored by writers of color
• 16 were authored by women, 11 by men
• 5 were published in the last five years
• 3 books also appeared on the NYT list

Of our entire list of 93 books:

• 22 (about 24%) were authored by writers of color
• 49 were authored by women, 43 by men, 1 by an unknowable author (Toadex Hobogrammathon)
• 30 were published in the last five years
• 4 books also appeared on the NYT list

We asked you why you chose the books you chose. Read the comments here.

About the List

Our list includes all of the books that people voted for, provided that they met our baseline criteria of (a) an original publication date of 1982 or later, (b) novelistic form and (c) written by an American author, that is, someone who was born in or has spent a significant amount of time in America.

The latter criteria was difficult to judge, and we decided to leave Zadie Smith on the list because we erroneously included her in our Pool, and felt it was unfair to gut her given the number of votes she had. After some thought, we extended that loaded term “American” to include Canadian and Mexican authors who received votes.

Got questions about this feature? Send ‘em to fringeeditors@gmail.com

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