Article: fantasy fiction offensive?

A few things to keep in mind. (imo)

Those who criticized Zhao's book didn't demand it be cancelled. They pointed out elements they felt were problematic. Just as they and others have criticized other books with (possibly) problematic elements. In many cases, other authors & publishers have simply published and be damned. Zhao felt it was important to address the criticism. She did, and her book is coming out later this year. Her career isn't destroyed, and those who criticized her are thanking her for taking the time to address their points.

The people to called out Zhao are not "powerful people". They are POC readers and authors.

A whole lot of white authors have had their books criticized. Some have taken the critiques to heart. Others have not. This is not a new thing. It's only more noticeable these days because more POC readers and authors are speaking out.

No one is telling white authors they can't write about anything other than white European Christian characters. If that's what you want to do, that's great! We all write what matters most to us. But if an author does decide to write outside their ethnic/religious/etc background, they should do the ***** research. It's a matter of craft, not of bowing down to the so-called politically correct.

I've published two books with protagonists who are queer black women. I'm queer, but white. I tried to do my research. If I make mistakes, I want to be called out.

Roxxsmom said:

One apparently heartfelt criticism I read of this book was that the author presents magic users as a class of people who are marginalized and enslaved because of the dangers posed by their magic. The argument made in this review was that restricting a group because of a risk they pose to others is not the same thing as restricting a group because of their culture, or race or heritage, and doing so could be hurtful to people who have been marginalized for unjustified reasons in real life.

This is true, and if the author was truly attempting to create an analogy between enslavement of magic users in such a society and the enslavement of real-world groups, then it might be an example of something clumsily done or of a failed analogy and should be critiqued as such.

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Have you ever noticed, though, that people who restrict a group based on culture, race or heritage do use the danger argument? "They" are always portrayed as a threat. In fact, I don't think anyone is ever oppressed (for reasons of race, culture or heritage--or, for that matter, religion or sexuality) without being portrayed as a threat and a danger. It's the classic form of self-justification.

"They" will corrupt our purity. "They" will infiltrate us with their immorality. "They" will behave in criminal ways, destroy law and order, lure our children, defile our women, and destroy our values and our society if we don't keep "them" under control. "They" are evil. We must fear "them." Whether a threat is real or perceived, it gets exactly the same reaction: fear, hate, oppression.

I don't think, from reading the NYT article, that she did intend an analogy, but if she had, I'd say it was pretty spot-on.

Ari Meermans said:

I don't think that's it. It's important, I think, to recognize that those leading the charge in these controversies are overwhelmingly American. As a culture we're insular and poorly informed, as well as being poorly read, about the rest of the world, particularly about cultural histories not our own. As a result, too many of us view the world through the small, distorted lens of our own limited understanding. (I think this Slate article encapsulates my own thinking on what went down. The statement by Zhao would seem to support my conclusion. YMMV)

As a reader, it is my earnest desire that mindful writers not capitulate. If you believe the criticism was justified, then work to improve. If not, then don't excuse, explain, or apologize. Stand behind your work. If you don't, we will find ourselves in a literary wasteland. It's also important to note that much of the pile-on in these controversies is by people who have not read the book in question. These people are joiners and followers, not leaders; don't let them lead you into abandoning the stories you worked so diligently to write well and mindfully.

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I agree very much.

Zhao wrote about slavery from her own perspective as an Asian based on slavery in Asia. It was never intended to be a representation of African-American slavery and the character in question isn't black. It does look like Americans interpreting a book through ignorance of any history besides American history.

Regarding other criticisms... The oppression of people considered dangerous because of the perception that they can do magic has been part of European history for centuries: the persecution of pre-Christian European peoples and execution of "witches" at various times. And oppression of one people by another when they both have the same colour skin is is something that has been happening all over the world since forever. It's not American-style racism with colour removed. Oppression and persecution is about power and control/theft of land and resources - and fear of the people being oppressed. Skin colour is one way that people doing the oppression can distinguish themselves from the people they're oppressing but it's not the only way.

I'm currently watching the BBC series Merlin - it's a modern retelling of the Arthurian legends set when Merlin and Arthur were very young men, and magic is real and there are dragons and griffins and stuff. King Uther (Arthur's father) has banned magic and is actively persecuting magical people, e.g. the Druids, who are executed when caught. Merlin has to keep his magical abilities secret as he's employed as Prince Arthur's manservant and also an assistant to the court physician. Interestingly, this entire series could've taken place in the Harry Potter universe, seeing as Merlin is an often-named historical character in the Harry Potter books, and in the history of the Harry Potter universe, muggles persecuted witches and wizards during this time period. This is a common interpretation of European history. Pagans and people perceived to be witches were persecuted so in a fantasy story where magic is real it's not a big leap to have actual magical people being persecuted by non-magical people. It's not an analogy for racism. It's a fantasy interpretation of historical persecution.

Anyway, the interpretation by some Americans that these kinds of things in fantasy stories are somehow representations of American history is something that won't even occur to non-Americans in the first place. We'll be interpreting them from our own cultural and historical perspectives. And the Americans doing this need to learn that other peoples have their own history and their stories aren't about America.

***having said all that though, people still should be calling out racism and badly handled depictions of other people's cultures. Those things are still wrong, and the "PC gone mad!" brigade are always waiting in the wings ready to yell "PC gone mad!" and use rare examples where people were wrongly accused of racism or cultural appropriation as an excuse to not listen to those (the vast majority) who are calling out actual examples of racism and cultural appropriation and should be listened to.***

In a world where the princess is the monster, oppression is blind to skin colour, and good and evil exist in shades of grey… comes a dark Anastasia retelling

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All the trouble and kerfluffle started with this blurb by the publisher. The underlined part seems a barb aimed directly at American POCs. So of course the book was read and problematic parts found to prop up that first negative impression. If the ARC had been released with the underlined part excised, nothing would have happened. The publisher should have been on its toes, not the writer.

Writing has always been somewhat like wandering through a minefield; you only have to take a gander at the history of banned/challenged books—going only as far as the 1800s*—to see that. IMHO, the developing trend is for writers to shy away from challenges and controversy. That's perfectly okay for a writer who only wants to tell their stories and doesn't want to deal with the hoopla and I completely understand that. Thing is, though, we'd never have had many of the great books, the classics, if those authors had bowed to the pressure.

What has changed is social media and the ability for anyone at any time to now review books. Book reviews are no longer the purview of book critics in places like The New York Times Book Review.

*Criticism and warnings about the impending destruction of culture go even further back, you know, to the philosophers like Plato, Socrates, Epicurus, and others.

indianroads said:

You're certainly right about the mine field - but with prevalence of social media, where many people get their news and are told what their opinions should be, it seems as if there are more mines in the field.

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And it's a sad state of affairs when so many succumb to having their opinions formed for them, innit?

indianroads said:

In our writing, how do we avoid not knowing the things we don't know?

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You follow the correct people on social media, of course.

We live in an information-based economy now. If social media influencers and the traditional newspapers they're replacing (which are hemorrhaging money and hiding everything behind paywalls) can get you to think there's something going on that you're not aware of, it's effectively stealth marketing for the information they're offering. Whether their information "product" is true or not is irrelevant, in an economic sense.

eqb said:

A few things to keep in mind. (imo)

Those who criticized Zhao's book didn't demand it be cancelled. They pointed out elements they felt were problematic. Just as they and others have criticized other books with (possibly) problematic elements. In many cases, other authors & publishers have simply published and be damned. Zhao felt it was important to address the criticism. She did, and her book is coming out later this year. Her career isn't destroyed, and those who criticized her are thanking her for taking the time to address their points.

The people to called out Zhao are not "powerful people". They are POC readers and authors.

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I wanted to emphasize this. The author is the one who made a choice to put the book on hold, not the publisher. No one was taken down by a social media mob.

indianroads said:

In our writing, how do we avoid not knowing the things we don't know?

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The same way as always: research and beta readers.

How can you hope to "tell the truth" if you don't investigate what the truth is?

indianroads said:

Writing shouldn't be like wandering through a mine field, but it is becoming so.

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It took me 20 seconds on google to prove that's not true. This article about the 13 most controversial books of all time just happened to be the first link. A lot of great novels are practically synonymous with controversy, there's nothing new about it.

It's free advertising. Tabloids and even main stream news exploit this all the time. (Gillette and Nike both used outrage to their advantage recently.) Sites put out a contentious article (That they may not even believe) because they know some people will believe it and others will be outraged, and while they're fighting it out, the site rakes in a lot of money from all the eyeballs. If a controversy, that was so subjective, broke out over one of my books, I would be delighted. I wouldn't delete my twitter account, or apologize, or change it, I would just keep quiet and I would probably end up getting far more supporters and sales than I ever would have gotten without the help of the small but vocal outrage mob.

Ari Meermans said:

As a reader, it is my earnest desire that mindful writers ​

not

capitulate. If you believe the criticism was justified, then work to improve. If not, then don't excuse, explain, or apologize. Stand behind your work.​

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This, times a thousand.

Cobalt Jade said:

All the trouble and kerfluffle started with this blurb by the publisher.

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Yikes, I hadn't seen that.

Wish I was surprised that a big publisher could be so ham-fisted, but I'm not.

Ya'll do realize that the reason why this is happening is that before, ALL poc just had to deal with it? And now that there is an easy way for poc to let the writer know something in there rep is not ok, they will? It's quite unfair to demonize them. I heard about each of the controversies listed in the article. If the transgender example in the article is the one I'm thinking of, the main controversy I saw was that the author was confronted that the book had an identical concept to a pioneering book by a queer (trans? I can't remember) author. And because the author was unfamiliar with that book, people were like--wait, you don't know that book, but you're going to add to the cannon?

Also, the poc authors involved pulled their own books. I'm assuming because they understand the harm persistent narratives can cause since, you know, they write for children. For the others, I don't know about all of them but I know Drake's publisher pulled hers. And since Zhao said she'd publish it now after revision, many of her critics (as stated before) have said, "thanks, that's literally what we wanted," yet they DEFINITELY still receive hate and "WOW YOURE SO AMERICANCENTRIC AND IGNORANT" as if all Black and slave descendant are american. Please excuse me while I cackle into the sky.

As for the american-centric take, I think its patronizing and untrue considering I'm quite familiar with the fact that slavery did not only happen in the US. But is the book not from a US publisher? I didnt read it, either, but from the articles I read, the scene described would DO HARM to any Black/slave-descendant students I had that were aware of how cattle slavery worked and how their ancestors were auctioned off. It's a pervasive, common narrative--not a new thing. But once again, poc can say "DO NOT. THANKS." Its similar to how I did not watch 13 reasons why, but when I read about that specific scene, I was upfront with my student about how it could be effective for some people going through a tough time.

It seems Blood Heir is being published substantially unchanged, after all (presumably with a rewritten blurb). No doubt it's going to sell better than it would have originally. So it's questionable to me how much these Twitter shitstorms really matter in the long run.

Layla Nahar said:

whuuu? I remember reading her work on SYW. I'm really sad to hear this happened.

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Good news: book is going to be released in June now. Not sure what changes she made. (I see Albedo beat me to that news.)

One of the critics had his own work attacked. I'll hunt down the link.

My issue is more one of a side matter. When did these "key opinion setters" become a thing?

Albedo said:

So it's questionable to me how much these Twitter shitstorms really matter in the long run.

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Twitter has a much smaller influence in the real world than most people hope (or fear) it does.

There have been a few situations (not in YA) where I'd have loved to see Twitter anger turned into substantive change, but it hasn't happened.

The initial concerns I saw about the book weren't calling for it to be banned. A black reader (I'm avoiding names, as people got enough death threats over this already) noted the issues with a character who was coded as black. This reader had read the book. A specific thing raised, which will become relevant later, is that the scene was like one in The Hunger Games featuring Rue, a black character. Early commenters were accused of being UScentric, that there were no similarities or they were coincidence, that it clearly wasn't about enslaved black people, and all the rest. This caused things to escalate.

The main early article being passed around was written by someone who is a known bigot, which should have raised red flags, but didn't. He presented the side that would allow him to go after readers who were non-white/people of colour and had actually read the book. The white people who'd never read the book were talked about in general and didn't get named, but were used as an excuse to go after the non-white readers who had read the book. No surprises there.

What didn't make it into articles is the author had used a picture of Amandla Stenberg as Rue in The Hunger Games to represent the book and compared the issues in the book to those in the USA. In that context, it suddenly becomes clear why early readers made that connection. The author had made that connection for them.

I can think of another book where people criticised reviewers as racist for assuming a book by a South Asian author would be like a Bollywood movie. What they didn't mention is the publisher's marketing material had compared the book to Bollywood, so reviewers had been commenting on that. It's very easy to present the "Twitter Mob" as pulling things from the sky, because it requires sifting through a lot of search history to find the details. It doesn't mean it was really pulled from the sky.

In this case, given that the author now thinks it was all wrong, I doubt anything has really changed in the final book. This is business as usual based on the previous books where this has happened. The publisher delays, the author swaps a few words, and it's published with changes that are superficial at best. The concern that authors are being made to do massive rewrites isn't based on what's gone down. In at least one case, the publisher did technically hire sensitivity readers, but didn't pass those notes on to the author, so no changes were made on that basis.

As far as writing about marginalised characters goes, I don't like being shouted at, but I can't say that's my biggest concern with my own work. It's hurting someone that I'm concerned about, not whether they shout at me about it. But so far, it hasn't come to that. People with concerns raised them. I didn't shout. They didn't shout. So it didn't escalate. I take things on board and try to do better next time. Which is all most people raising these issues are asking authors to do. Not to be perfect, but to listen and improve.

If you didn't read all that, the point to take away is that if you came into this late and all your information comes from popular articles, it's very likely that some things about the context have been concealed from you. It's easy to make people sound unreasonable when you remove all the context for why they reacted that way.

S. Eli said:

I didnt read it, either, but from the articles I read, the scene described would DO HARM to any Black/slave-descendant students I had that were aware of how cattle slavery worked and how their ancestors were auctioned off. It's a pervasive, common narrative--not a new thing. But once again, poc can say "DO NOT. THANKS."

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The problem with the "it's not what you think, it's what PoC would think" argument is...what about the PoC who disagree with the controversy over the book? What about PoC who didn't think the book was "problematic"/racist?

I've seen complaints about gay characters that I've disagreed entirely with. To frame the backlash against something as "think of the [x] people it's hurting" ignores and invalidates every person in that group who is aware of the situation and doesn't think it's wrong or hurtful to them.

lilyWhite said:

The problem with the "it's not what you think, it's what PoC would think" argument is...what about the PoC who disagree with the controversy over the book? What about PoC who didn't think the book was "problematic"/racist?

I've seen complaints about gay characters that I've disagreed entirely with. To frame the backlash against something as "think of the [x] people it's hurting" ignores and invalidates every person in that group who is aware of the situation and doesn't think it's wrong or hurtful to them.

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If they don't care they don't matter. It's one of the reasons I didn't really talk about this whole controversy before. I don't care if the book gets published either way. I don't read fiction books about slavery (which is funny because I beta'd the first few chapters of that book and I don't think I ever even knew it was about that). I'm only really talking about the right that POC have to speak (or not speak) and have their voices heard. For example, many Asian authors and readers supported Zhao (which contributed to the problem a little, tbh)

Think of it this way: you work at an autistic support school, everyone needs substantial assistance. Of those students, you have a section with physical disabilities. Of those students, you have a handful that use wheelchairs. Getting a ramp at the school will not help ALL students, but not getting a ramp will hurt SOME. Those students/their families have a right to say get a f-ing ramp. Other parents can support and say yeah, get a ramp even though it doesn't affect me, or they can not say anything because they don't matter in this situation.

S. Eli said:

If they don't care they don't matter. It's one of the reasons I didn't really talk about this whole controversy before. I don't care if the book gets published either way. I don't read fiction books about slavery (which is funny because I beta'd the first few chapters of that book and I don't think I ever even knew it was about that). I'm only really talking about the right that POC have to speak (or not speak) and have their voices heard. For example, many Asian authors and readers supported Zhao (which contributed to the problem a little, tbh)

Think of it this way: you work at an autistic support school, everyone needs substantial assistance. Of those students, you have a section with physical disabilities. Of those students, you have a handful that use wheelchairs. Getting a ramp at the school will not help ALL students, but not getting a ramp will hurt SOME. Those students/their families have a right to say get a f-ing ramp. Other parents can support and say yeah, get a ramp even though it doesn't affect me, or they can not say anything because they don't matter in this situation.

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Yeah, no. That's twice now you've mischaracterized something another poster wrote. LilyWhite did not write that other POC didn't care, but that they had disagreed.

And, yes, all viewpoints matter. Assessing and interrogating other viewpoints, beliefs, and theories against your own is the only damned way to refine and grow.

Ari Meermans said:

Yeah, no. That's twice now you've mischaracterized something another poster wrote. LilyWhite did not write that other POC didn't care, but that they had disagreed.

And, yes, all viewpoints matter. Assessing and interrogating other viewpoints, beliefs, and theories against your own is the only damned way to refine and grow.

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sorry i misquoted/misread, but I don't think I'm really disagreeing with anyone. I'm not talking about the controversy at all really, just that we shouldn't paint the twitter people as villains (which the original article did, and many articles have) when it's just a result of twitter letting them make their points directly. If the person disagrees, they can voice their disagreement. Point stays the same.

S. Eli said:

If the person disagrees, they can voice their disagreement. Point stays the same.

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This is true.

But there is a piling-on thing that happens, and I think that's the point of the article. Is that healthy? Unhealthy? Fair, whatever that word means? Easy to say it depends on what's being piled on, but that's a bit eye of the beholder.

I don't know any of the people involved in this particular controversy. I will say I'm sensitive to the piling-on thing. I had an experience - not over racism - around my first book that was much smaller in scale and consequence (and not, as far as I knew at least, played out on Twitter), but from my perspective it was incredibly upsetting (and I guess it still is). I felt misunderstood and misrepresented, and there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.

I wince every time I see one of these controversies flare up. Sometimes I research the book being discussed and I think "Ah. I see." Sometimes I think people are reaching. I keep quiet because I'm not part of the demographic being misrepresented, so to an extent it's really none of my business.

For things that are my business? Folks sometimes circulate quotes that show just awful female representation, misunderstandings of anatomy, weird sexual analogies, etc. They're often funny. And sometimes the comments on them really make me wince. Yeah, the author should've done some basic homework. Yeah, in a lot of cases the books retain their critical acclaim and still sell well. But still: yikes.

S. Eli said:

Think of it this way: you work at an autistic support school, everyone needs substantial assistance. Of those students, you have a section with physical disabilities. Of those students, you have a handful that use wheelchairs. Getting a ramp at the school will not help ALL students, but not getting a ramp will hurt SOME. Those students/their families have a right to say get a f-ing ramp. Other parents can support and say yeah, get a ramp even though it doesn't affect me, or they can not say anything because they don't matter in this situation.

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I would say it's more like a handful of wheelchair students saying that they are offended that the rest of the school participates in athletics, because it's a painful reminder of their disability, and makes them feel excluded, and the other half saying that they couldn't care less. The ramp is an objective hindrance, athletics is subjective. yes, their feelings are real and raw, but should the rest of the world have to walk on egg shells because of it?