I recently gave a talk at Community Change called “On Being a White Novelist” (the writing of which took up some brain I otherwise might have used to blog). One thing I discussed was how I feel about novels with only white people in them. (Hint: They make me nuts.) On that topic, Pia Glenn observes:

Not unlike Iggy Azalea or Bethenny Frankel, Nicholas Sparks’ work has every right to be as annoying and mediocre and white yet popular as it wants to be. But when it is rewarded with contracts and six-figure deals, that becomes what success looks like. The erasure of anyone but the same white archetypes within the work itself is compounded by our resulting erasure in the industry itself and they perpetuate each other in a vicious cycle.

Read more of her incisive essay, “Is Nicholas Sparks Racist?” at Valid.