Reading difference: How race and ethnicity function as tools for critical appraisal

Literary theorists and cultural sociologists alike acknowledge that there are no universal standards for appraising the value of a book. Yet, book critics regularly pronounce the literary merits and failures of novels in their reviews. Research on cultural criticism has shed considerable light on how reviewers are able to assess the meaning and value of novels in the absence of objective indicators of literary quality by relying on different …