There are so few ethnic minority voices in publishing and the media that when one criticises another it has come to be regarded as a form of strike-breaking. Knowing the obstacles we face (some obvious, others less so), I’ve always been reluctant to cross swords with those facing similar dilemmas – particularly when they’re as brilliant as this year’s Booker prizewinner Marlon James. The Jamaican novelist appeared at a Guardian event and shared some of his thoughts about being a black author.

His contention was that black writers are pressured into a style that the major publishers think appeals to white women in the suburbs because they’re the ones who read most novels. The trouble is, the evidence suggests that the truth is nearly the opposite.

We can pass over the fact that James comes perilously close to blaming women for reading more books than men, although why that should be so is an interesting question in itself. We’ll also pass over the rather surprising notion that white women (whether in the suburbs or not) are all alike and have similar tastes in fiction. Women from Virginia Water or Basildon may live very different lives, and it’s also possible they’re reading both genre fiction and Marlon James at the same time.

But the valid question that James raises is whether or not minority authors are pigeonholed or channelled in certain directions.

If you look at the books by black or ethnic minority writers that have garnered attention and awards over the years, while they’re all very different, they have something in common. Whether it’s Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, Andrea Levy’s Small Island – or indeed Marlon James’s A Brief History of Seven Killings – none of them are set on the mean streets of Reigate, and white characters tend to be a little thin on the ground. Subjects such as identity, migration and racism are prominent; hot suburban issues, or pandering to what James calls “the archetype of the white woman … the older mother or wife thinking about her horrible life”, not so much.

Indeed, it’s when you look at other fiction genres that black authors tend to thin out. I’ve been to events in the crime-writing world where I’ve been the only black woman among hundreds of attendees. So if publishers are trying to force authors of colour to get in touch with their inner twinset, they’re not doing a very good job.

It is true that black authors are expected to write what they know – and apparently, in our case, that is ghettos and racism. You want to write romance, crime, blockbusters or sci-fi? Sorry, people, that’s not your thing. I met one young black writer who was chided by an editor for not having any black characters in her story.

And I’ve heard about a writing project where a plot line involving a black suspect pulled over by the police was changed by a white writer into an incident of racial harassment by the cops. If these are the stories black authors want to write, that’s fine. But if the same authors want to write stories about the course of true love not running smooth, that should be fine too.

Even James’s phrase “writers of colour” can be problematic. I’m a writer and I’m a person of colour. But I’m also a woman, a Londoner and a factory worker’s daughter, and I went to school in the East End with girls from many different cultures and ethnic backgrounds. As for any writer, all these things feed into what I write and what I want to write about. British society has made being black an issue for me and those like me, and it’s an important part of who I am. But it’s not the only thing.

I found the lives of the white women, Asian families and Jewish OAPs who lived on my estate as interesting as those of the Caribbean family I belonged to, in their differences as well as their similarities. It’s clear from James’s writing that he’s not just a “writer of colour” either – no black author is.

If he wants to insist on the right of authors of any background to tell the stories they want to tell, in the way they want to tell them, he is unlikely to get an argument from anyone. But it’s important to get the context straight. As things currently stand, black writers are under pressure to be urban rather than suburban. Perhaps Marlon James could help everyone out by using his status to question why that is and what everyone involved in publishing can do about it.