For that matter, why is their a Women's Literature section??? Because white males like it that way. The Dominant Paradigm gets nervous whenever an artist (literary or otherwise) comes along whose work they like but whose physical appearance, or maybe sexual orientation, is threatening.

Studies in the UK have shown that children as young as 7 now pay attention to the name of an author. They like books by "Bill" or "John" and not so much books by "Barbara" or "Johannah", hence J.K. Rowling.

But then prejudice and favoritism isn't really news in the literary world, is it Paul?

Well, as a gay male, I kind of like having a gay and lesbian section in my local Barnes and Noble, because it makes it easy for me to find titles (fiction and nonfiction) in which I might have a special interest--particularly since the (mostly straight) employees might not follow LGBT authors and issues. I would think that African American readers might have a similar experience with the (mostly white) staff.

The existence of a G&L section does not stop me from browsing other sections, and most of the books I buy are not, strictly speaking, on G&L topics and themes. I still find the designated section to be a convenience.

@1 No pinhead, these separate "victim" sections exist because people like you insist on separating the human race into categories of oppressors (white males) and the oppressed (everyone else). If you tried to end these "diversity/victim" categories it would be the left wetting themselves with rage. No one else.

I class this alongside things like Black History Month and Women's History Month and Gay Pride Week. Because parts of our culture are disproportionately dominated by straight white men it's necessary to carve out niches to celebrate the contributions of alternative demographics.
I'm perfectly fine with sections for things like Judaica and Ebonica and Homoica so long as they reflect the content and themes present in the books rather than just being a statement about the author's identity. Roots: The Story of an American Family is African-American Literature, but Giovanni's Room isn't. The latter would count as LGBTQ Literature, but Weaveworld wouldn't.

("Homoica" is totally made-up-on-the-spot and will probably not be found in any dictionary any time in the next hundred years.)

Relegating authors like Jeanette Winterson to the GLBT section does do them a disservice. Thankfully Elliott Bay only has a GLBT display and not a whole section.

Publishers use those genre codes because they feel that their books will sell more copies if they are located in that section.

Agree with @2. I've always been a fan of (and struggled to explain the genre when talking about) what I clumsily refer to as "ghetto fiction." Donald Goines, Iceberg Slim, etc... Gritty and depressing tales of pimps, drug addicts & ex-cons, usually based in Detroit and very few happy endings. They're generally housed in the AA fiction section and I've definitely stumbled into some other interesting reads as a result of browsing through it. Barlow's probably right that it's weird, but there's some functionality there too I think.

@7 wait, you mean that a merchant arranges goods in his store to get more sales, not according to some secret manifesto intend to keep the masses down? It seems very unlikely to me.

I vote to make "homoica" a real word. If we all use it, it becomes a real word. Please use it.

On the one hand, I think the criteria for those kinds of sections are often lacking. It reminds me of Broadway Video where the titles are organized by actor, and I once found Frida under the Edward Norton section. He's barely in that movie.

That said, I'd be interested to know if the authors themselves actually have a problem with this or if they think it helps their work stand out to readers who are interested in it.

I work in a bookstore which has no separate AfAm or LGBT fiction sections, they are simply all in Fiction together by author. I've been asked probably five times in the last year where our "Urban Fiction" section is. Every single time it has been an African-American woman. So this isn't just a concept that's gained traction because white men wish it to be so.

I worked at a used/remaindered bookstore at a time when the store initiated a black fiction section. Us employees - most of whom were, yes, educated white liberals - were really resistant to the idea, for the same basic reasons that the linked article and this blog post sketch out: we didn't want to create a hierarchy, where lesser-known white authors get to rub spines with Hemingway and Kafka, but black authors have to stick to their own little corner.

The thing is, we only created the section because black customers kept specifically suggesting it, wondering why we didn't have one already. What I realized is that a lot of novels are geared towards a relatively privileged audience, and precious little fiction is written to reflect the contemporary realities of black life in America. So, the point of the black fiction section was to have a place where almost every book was written with this particular perspective in mind; if that's what a customer wants to read about, it makes it easier to find such stuff without having to wade through shelfs of books about Victorian ladies or mid-century Connecticut suburbanites or anglophile literature professors, or whatever.

To be clear, we used the section as a place for a particular genre - for lack of a better term, what you might call 'urban fiction' - not just as a place to stick any old novel by authors who happen to be black (Toni Morrison still went in the general fiction section, Samuel Delany still went in the sci-fi section, etc. etc.). I think there is a genuine problem here, but it's not the existence of black fiction sections - it's the cultural divisions between white and black Americans that make those sections viable in the first place.

Barnes & Noble does not have an African-American fiction section. In fact, I do not remember there ever being such a thing, though 10? years ago, they would have special displays of African-American fiction on a special table or bay. There has always been an African-American section in Cultural Studies, but it is not fiction authors.

I wonder how Elliott Bay handles this.

@3 if you and the rest of the Klan stopped doing what you do...

Here's another newsflash from the conservative south: The presence of African American and LGBTQ sections serve another function: they let the customers (of all races and orientations) know that the stores stock books on those subjects/topics/themes.

If I walk into a bookstore without an LGBTQ section, it could mean that the store is progressive enough to have moved past the "ghetto" stage, or it could mean that, in a nod to the primarily conservative customers, the bookstore does not stock LGBTQ titles at all.

So in my local independently owned bookstore, the black fiction section really does seem to be its own genre. It's full of mostly black romance novels or stories about black women in business, so it seems to fill a specific need as being a couple of shelves making it easy for black women to find romance and dime-store material about black women.

Let's put it this way, if a black owned bookstore specializing in books about the black experience where on the verge of closing down in Bellevue, I think the Stranger would be saying what a tragedy it was and how the black community was losing something important...so it doesn't seem fair to criticize the existence of black fiction sections whole hog and pretend like can't exist without ghettoizing prominent black writers.

When ghettoization happens we should just call it out for the unique evil it is, not go all about against something inherently customer friendly and probably supported by authorize who write black dime-store books on the grounds that it makes their products easier to find and buy--and puts there books in front of customers who want that materials even though two different authorizes might be far apart in the alphabet.

Re: LGBT sections in bookstores. I certainly know from experience in San Francisco that when Different Light closed down, people regarded the lost of "the last gay bookstore" in SF as a sad thing. And clearly gay et al are not about to give up having sections of their own.

@16. Just from memory, I don't think EBBC has a separate African American Lit section. If it does, it supports the author's point that those sections are relegated to some back part of the store with low foot traffic.

I don't have a problem with separate sections, in theory. It seems like lesser-known authors would sell more and receive more attention through a curated display than by being put on shelves in a general section. Some bookstores solve the problem, maybe by accident, by cross-listing and including the same book in multiple sections. At Walden Pond Bookstore in Oakland, I recently found three copies of Two Years Before the Mast in three different sections of the store.

Authorizes for authors* Nice. That's what I call "Adderall Typing"!

I'm looking forward to the day when we just have fiction books. Not Black Literature or LGBT or whatever, just books. I prefer to read Colson Whitehead and Clive Barker because they're good writers and I enjoy their novels -- not because Whitehead is black or Barker is gay. Had their work been ghettoized or marginalized to those specific sections years ago I might never have read them.

@5: Don't be so sure.

"Homoica" (sigh).

I suppose an author's book could be placed in several sections.

@25
The most interesting books can be found in more than one section of store or library