African American Review

Richard Jean So’s Redlining Culture: A Data History of Racial Inequality and Postwar Fiction is one of the most important books yet written in literary digital humanities (DH). As arguably the first major monograph to combine DH, substantial literary analysis, and a specific focus on race, it may—and with any luck, will— give rise to significant future work. So tells a compelling and efficient story about [End Page 136] persistent racial inequality in the literary field of the postwar United States, and the data he has gathered will be invaluable for instructors and researchers whether or not they work in DH. Yet scholars who are less familiar with DH or race and ethnicity theory should approach the book cautiously. Its subject matter requires both boldness and care, and at times Redlining Culture lets the former overwhelm the latter. It will be up to the reader to make up the difference, moving more slowly down the trail So has blazed.

This may prove difficult, because So has produced a genuinely captivating read. The book fits in with a recent, highly generative focus on literary institutions in the post-45 literary field, as evident in Mark McGurl’s recent work on Amazon publishing, or, within DH, Laura McGrath’s work on literary agents and Dan Sinykin’s on corporate conglomeration. Taking his focus a bit further back in time, So examines racial inequality in the literary industry from 1950 to 2000. Specifically, he devotes one chapter apiece to publishing, reviews, prizes, and literary critical attention, effectively tracing the life cycle of novels from production to posterity. The structure works well, providing just enough narrative scaffolding for So’s energetic style—somehow, in spite of its complex methodology and dense material, this book is a page-turner.

It is also enjoyable because of So’s skill as an archival researcher, which may come as a surprise to readers expecting purely digital methods. A section on Toni Morrison’s correspondence in chapter one is a highlight of the book. Closer looks at two underappreciated writers, poet Henry Dumas and novelist Brent Wade, are similarly valuable; Redlining Culture is worth reading for these portions alone.

The major contribution of the book, however, is So’s innovative and painstakingly assembled metadata about the demographics of the literature industry. He summarizes his findings from that data as “97 percent, 90 percent, 98 percent, and 91 percent” (5), representing the percentage of white authors among those published at Random House, those appearing in book reviews, those on bestseller lists, and those who won major awards, respectively. So combed WorldCat for the first datapoint, culled a massive Gale database for the second, used Publishers Weekly for the third, and assembled his own bespoke list of award winners for the last. In each case, he used a careful, labor-intensive process to record author demographics. This kind of information is difficult to come by; as So notes, the publishers themselves often lack data about what they have sold, and they tend to omit the demographics of the authors. Such information cannot be compiled much less analyzed without dedication and inventiveness; So’s work should thus prove an invaluable contribution to future research.

It takes a unique intellectual élan to collect and analyze such capacious data, and I think it is fair to say that So is well known in DH circles for his surprising ability to get many things done. The balance between production and precision is always vexing, and it is all the more so when large datasets keep pointing the way to new questions. Researchers can reach yet another level of vexation when the subject matter is sociopolitically urgent. At times, the work in Redlining Culture appears to lean a little too heavily toward an emphasis on new inquiry. Given the importance of the subject matter, and the high probability that this book will be used in classrooms and by nonspecialists, it...