Loganberry Books, an independent bookstore in Cleveland, US, is making a powerful statement about the gender gap in fiction.
The staff wanted to do something a bit different to celebrate Women’s History Month, which falls in March, so they decided to turn the books written by men inwards, showing only the pages and left the colorful spines of the books written by women facing out towards the public… the result? A sea of white.
A sign in front of the display explained the project, “Illustrating the fiction gender gap… We’ve silenced male authors, leaving works of women in view.”
Harriet Logan, who works at the Loganberry books, told Metro that she “wondered what that disparity would look like if we could glance at our bookshelves (30 columns, 9,000 books) and actually see it. We chose to turn the books backward as the least disruptive and most visually alluring method.”
The annual VIDA Count, which examines the gender disparity in major literary publications and reviews, consistently finds that women are underrepresented. The latest figures (for 2015) revealed The New York Review of Books featured 185 women compared to 702 men, The Times Literary Supplement featured 917 women compared to 2,221 men, and The New Yorker featured 323 women compared to 551 men.
A Facebook post shared by the bookstore, along with images of the reshuffled shelves, read “Thanks to staff & volunteers for assisting in our performance art project to demonstrate the lopsided ratio of male to female authors,” read.
So, here’s to more statements like this and more women being represented in the future.
Image Source: Facebook
