It is with a heavy heart that I must announce that YA Twitter is at it again:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/...ya-author-pulls-debut-accusations-racism.html
The story as I understand it:
-Amélie Wen Zhao gets an unprecedented $500,000 for the rights to a trilogy of YA novels. It seems like pretty bog standard YA stuff (young girl has super powers, uses them to fight back against an oppressive regime. I assume at some point she has to make a romantic choice between two partners with vastly different personalities.
-Early copies of the book get out, and the response is pretty good from most people (4.5 stars on Goodreads, but to be fair scores on that site tend to trend on the high side in my experience).
-Some people take issue with parts of the book they see as "problematic," specifically regarding racial stereotypes and its depiction of slavery. People begin riding Zhao about it on Twitter, eventually it gets to the point that she can't take it any more and she withdraws the book (it was due out in June). Whether or not it will ever be published (perhaps after a bunch of rewrites), remains to be seen.
_____________________
I'm having a hard time tracking down actual in text examples of what parts of the book are so objectionable, so I can't really weigh in one way or the other whether or not I think the content in the book was vile enough to justify what happened. I do know that YA readers, especially the adult ones, are INSANELY reactionary, so I'm not particularly willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here.
The only reason I know about this, is because it sparked this response from another YA author on Twitter (click for full thread):
Which seems insane to me. I think some of the most significant works of fiction in ANY medium are rife with problematic material. I think conflating writing about something with endorsing something is indicative of an incredibly simplistic and shallow world view, and I don't think it's much of a coincidence that it's a perspective that seems to be majorly held by people who primarily interface with literature through the YA genre.
What do you guys think?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/31/...ya-author-pulls-debut-accusations-racism.html
After Delacorte sent out advance reader copies, many of the early reviews were positive — the book has a four and a half star rating on Goodreads. But a backlash began brewing this January, when some readers posted blistering critiques on social media. Some readers criticized what they viewed as racial stereotypes and careless borrowing from other cultural traditions: the novel features a diverse cast — including "a tawny-skinned minority of a Russian-esque princess; a disowned and dishonored Asian-esque assassin; an islander/Caribbean-esque child warrior; a Middle-Eastern-esque soldier," according to Ms. Zhao's description of the novel on her website.
Others objected to the way in which Ms. Zhao used slavery as a plot device.
"How is nobody mentioning the anti-blackness and blatant bigotry in this book?" one reader wrote on Goodreads. "This book is about slavery, a false oppression narrative that equates having legitimately dangerous magical powers that kill people with being an oppressed minority, like a person of color. This whole story is absolutely repulsive."
With what seemed like lightning speed in the publishing world, where publicity and marketing plans are crafted months in advance, Ms. Zhao apologized and said she would withdraw the book, which was due out in early June.
In a note to readers, she said she intended to write the novel from her "immediate cultural perspective" and to address the "epidemic of indentured and human trafficking prevalent in many industries across Asia, including in my own home country. The narrative and history of slavery in the United States is not something I can, would or intended to write, but I recognize that I am not writing in merely my own cultural context. I am so sorry for the pain this has caused."
The story as I understand it:
-Amélie Wen Zhao gets an unprecedented $500,000 for the rights to a trilogy of YA novels. It seems like pretty bog standard YA stuff (young girl has super powers, uses them to fight back against an oppressive regime. I assume at some point she has to make a romantic choice between two partners with vastly different personalities.
-Early copies of the book get out, and the response is pretty good from most people (4.5 stars on Goodreads, but to be fair scores on that site tend to trend on the high side in my experience).
-Some people take issue with parts of the book they see as "problematic," specifically regarding racial stereotypes and its depiction of slavery. People begin riding Zhao about it on Twitter, eventually it gets to the point that she can't take it any more and she withdraws the book (it was due out in June). Whether or not it will ever be published (perhaps after a bunch of rewrites), remains to be seen.
_____________________
I'm having a hard time tracking down actual in text examples of what parts of the book are so objectionable, so I can't really weigh in one way or the other whether or not I think the content in the book was vile enough to justify what happened. I do know that YA readers, especially the adult ones, are INSANELY reactionary, so I'm not particularly willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here.
The only reason I know about this, is because it sparked this response from another YA author on Twitter (click for full thread):
Which seems insane to me. I think some of the most significant works of fiction in ANY medium are rife with problematic material. I think conflating writing about something with endorsing something is indicative of an incredibly simplistic and shallow world view, and I don't think it's much of a coincidence that it's a perspective that seems to be majorly held by people who primarily interface with literature through the YA genre.
What do you guys think?