The New York Times recently published its list of “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.” As is typical of the Times, the list quickly became a hot topic, and was widely discussed and praised on social media.
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However, 61 of the authors on the list are American. The two African books are Americana by Chimamanda Adichie, which has the word “American” in the title and focuses on the immigrant experience in the United States, and The Return by “American-born British-Libyan” author Hisham Matar. Despite the large presence of women authors and the fact that nearly 10% of the authors on the list are Black (American) authors, the list is overwhelmingly Western. Italian novelist Elena Ferrante accounts for three of the 13 translated books on the list. Twenty-three books are published by the same ten authors. More than half of the books on the list are published by the same five US publishers.
On social media, the “100 Best Books of the 21st Century” is splashed across bold, colorful graphics, but users don’t see it as “The New York Times’ Best.” The fact that the vote was limited to books published in the United States is written in small print and easily overlooked. The New York Times asked its US traders to only consider books published in the United States, which predictably resulted in a list that was extremely Western. But the Times asks us to take these books as “the most important and influential books of our time” as far as the global literary world is concerned, and not as the preferences of a small, statistically insignificant group of writers.
If this list is an attempt to tell the story of the past 25 years in English-language publishing, it is a story that misses the mark. It does not reflect the diversity and scale of global publishing. It misrepresents the 21st century, one of the most productive and diverse periods in literary history. It trivializes an era of interconnected and crowded markets and readerships into the tastes of a few American literary luminaries. The story of the American book as defining this century is also the beginning of what, if left unchallenged, could be a replay of the cultural ethnocentrism that plagued 20th-century publishing.
To me, as an African reader, literary scholar, and book culture curator, the omission of African authors from the list of the most influential books written in English in the past 25 years is an unforgivable oversight, despite the clear evidence. The rapid growth of African publishing has been one of the most remarkable events of the past 25 years. If you want to see how the 21st century has reinvented what it means to read, write, and publish, look no further than African literature.
What kind of prejudice did it take to think it was OK to write a 21st century history that misses out so much of the world?
The 20th century saw a gradual rise in the global influence of African authors, but the century ended in crisis due to widespread political instability and economic depression. The 21st century, however, has seen a dramatic reversal. The advent of digital technology and the culmination of a century of talent development have catapulted African authors onto the world stage. In terms of growth, the publishing market for African books has expanded more rapidly than other markets.
African authors have always brought their own innovations to the English language. They create rich world-building, layered cosmologies, and masterful storytelling. With a strong social media presence and a supportive literary culture that connects the diaspora with the home continent, African books are being read by a diverse global audience. Authors such as Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi, Akwaeke Emeji, Namwali Serpell, Yvonne Adhiambo Owulu, Yaa Gyasi, Bernardine Evaristo, Heron Habira, Chimeka Garrix, Aminatta Forna, NoViolet Bulawayo, Namina Forna, Nnedi Okorafor, Teju Cole, as well as Scholastic Mukasonga, Mohammed Mbuga Sarr, and Sharon Dodua Otoo, whose works have been translated into English, are at the forefront of this literary renaissance. They will be joined by other authors who have produced a number of works in the 21st century, including 2021 Nobel Prize winners Abdulrazak Gurna, Tsitsi Dangarembuga, Ben Okri and Zakes Muda.
Any account of the publishing history of the past 25 years must celebrate the achievements of the African continent. To ignore the continent’s contributions not only misses an important part of contemporary literature, but also fails to recognize the dynamic and evolving nature of the English-speaking literary world. The New York Times “Best of This Century” list is not a list, it is an act of cultural erasure. The world is not limited to the United States via New York City. The 21st century did not happen only in the United States. We cannot ignore the entire global literary culture that has made the past 25 years a powerful era for literature.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve thought hard about why The New York Times publishes such a list. What prejudices did its editors have to think it was OK to write a 21st-century history that was largely missing from the world? During one of our recent conversations, Bhakti Shringarpure, founder of the Radical Books Collective, reminded me that The New York Times is “committed to preserving the last vestiges of white culture in a world saturated with vastly diverse voices that they have no home in.” I agree.
Whatever list it creates is entirely up to the New York Times, but it shouldn’t be allowed to present subjective and false “statistics” as cultural truth.
The New York Times opened its books section in 1896. Since then, it has influenced what and how Americans read. Throughout the 20th century, it was one of the major spaces for the English-speaking reading public. Authors such as Amos Tutuola and Chinua Achebe, who were instrumental in bringing African writing to the English-speaking world, were reviewed in The New York Times, but this came at a cost. The consistently negative and condescending reviews of Achebe’s work in The Times are well documented in Charles Larson’s The Emergence of the African Novel.
But in the 21st century, the rise of digital culture and increasingly questionable politics have diminished the influence of The New York Times. In a world where the BookTok community has orders of magnitude more power than The New York Times and similar book media institutions in determining what the public reads, it’s easy to see why such a list seemed like a good idea. Traditional institutions like The New York Times suffer from the “great again” syndrome. Despite their wealth and institutional influence, they feel alienated and irrelevant, and in their desperation, they double down on the ethnocentrism that made them irrelevant in the first place. While the publishing industry is more diverse and crowded, The New York Times seems less and less able to make space for literature that isn’t Western or overtly white literature.
What list The New York Times makes is entirely its prerogative, but it should not be allowed to present subjective and erroneous “statistics” as cultural truth. The problem with this list has little to do with the dubious effort to compress 25 years of publishing into 100 books. Despite being very culturally evocative, this kind of list has a place. Lists are never perfect, nor do they need to be objective. In fact, they are quite silly and inherently flawed. But we love lists because they at least give us food for debate in expanding our reading lists. In fact, it is their incompleteness and imperfection that make lists and similar normative gestures such powerful historical documents. The problem with this list is not that it does not include everyone (no list ever does), but that it does not include anyone who has not already been read by the literary establishment endorsed by The New York Times.
Do we still need such grand era-focused lists? Probably not, given how fragmented and fragmented markets and readerships are. But if the answer is yes, then any list of the century must reflect the global literary market and the myriad readerships that support it. The voting process must be ambitious enough to take into account the diverse community of literary knowledge workers: authors not published by the Big Five, authors from other countries, critics from smaller presses, podcasters, booktalkers, bookstagrammers, and so on. The old formula of Western publishing being the global voice is clearly no longer justifiable.
We must condemn the ethnocentrism that allows The New York Times to publish a predominantly Western list as the best works of the century. Even in the most delusional circumstances, there is no world in which a list of 61 American titles could be considered the best books of the 21st century. The New York Times is leading people to celebrate a century in which only Americans have lived and read. In other words, it is leading people to celebrate a lie.