In today’s hair-trigger, hyperreactive social media landscape, where a tweet can set off a cascade of outrage and prompt calls for a book’s cancellation, children’s book authors and publishers are taking precautions to identify potential pitfalls in a novel’s premise or execution. Many are turning to sensitivity readers, who provide feedback on issues like race, religion, gender, sexuality, chronic illness and physical disabilities....ADDED: The "sensitivity" problem described in the article arises out of the demand for "diversity." One alternative is a return to the old advice: Write what you know.
Some see a downside to publishers’ growing reliance on sensitivity readers, and warn that it could lead to sanitized books that tiptoe around difficult topics. Skeptics say the heightened scrutiny discourages authors from writing about cultures other than their own, resulting in more homogenized literature. “Can we no longer read ‘Othello’ because Shakespeare wasn’t black?” the novelist Francine Prose wrote recently in an essay about sensitivity readers and censorship in The New York Review of Books....
And this year, Laura Moriarty’s planned dystopian novel, “American Heart,” was savaged, nine months before its release, by critics who faulted what they viewed as a “white savior narrative.”... “I do wonder, in this environment, what books aren’t being released,” she said. “There was no sensitivity reader in the world that was going to make this O.K.”
२४ डिसेंबर, २०१७
"In an Era of Online Outrage, Do Sensitivity Readers Result in Better Books, or Censorship?"
Asks Alexandra Alter (at the NYT).
याची सदस्यत्व घ्या:
टिप्पणी पोस्ट करा (Atom)
पोस्ट्स
९१ टिप्पण्या:
There are thousands of good books to read.
I can't get interested in what left wingers want to read.
They should read Sowell's "Basic Economics."
You know the answer to that, Althouse.
BTW, is rap music immune from these 'sensitivity readers'?
"In an Era of Online Outrage, Do Sensitivity Readers Result in Better Books, or Censorship?"
Censorship in the short-run, self-censorship in the long-run.
Self-censorship is worse because it happens at the creative level.
Soon we will put ruffles around piano limbs.
Go with the Twitter first responders, as Iowahawk called them.
There is a change in our people. I see it every day in young 20 somethings who believe they have a basic right to not be made uncomfortable by anything another person does. Even fair criticism of how they do a job you are paying them for is believed to be extralegal or should be.
If the sensitivity all goes one way, it is censorship gussied up.
The left is traditionally good at several things: censorship, universal poverty, starvation, mass murder, and slavery. That they are censoring what the traditional publishers put out is no surprise. The self published world is doing much better.
Left-wing censorship labeled as being "Sensitive".
You can eliminate any patriotic or conservative book just by labeling it "sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic" etc.
I know my local library has been "Purging" well written histories of the USA and Europe for over 2-3 years now. The old good books disappear and are either replaced by badly written dumbed down ones or not replaced at all. You see this most clearly in the WW 2 section, where the books about the actual fighting and diplomacy have been cut in half and *Partly* replaced by books about the Japanese Interment, women WASP pilots, racism during WW2, Why did we bomb Hiroshima, Hispancis during WW2, etc.
We might as well admit the attempt to create an "American Culture" to rival that of Britain, France or the UK has been a complete failure.
Americans have never been much for Literature or the Arts. They're primarily interested in $$$, TV shows and sports. As a result, what culture we do have has been taken over by Left-wing goofballs. It hasn't taken long to go from T.S Eliot to Bob Dylan or from Hemingway to George Rape Rape Martin.
This is nothing new. Several years ago my daughter worked as an editor for a major textbook publisher. One of her responsibilities was to insure that the illustrations contained the proscribed mix of races and genders.
No more Dick and Jane, unless one was black and they had a Muslim and American Indian friend.
Atrocious! Art does not hew to passing notions of propriety, and, in fact, should not fear to violate passing notions of propriety.
Thomas Bowdler has already done the work of processing Shakespeare to be inoffensive, so nobody today has to. The Bible could be similarly improved.
Rcocean reports: I know my local library has been "Purging" well written histories of the USA and Europe for over 2-3 years now. The old good books disappear and are either replaced by badly written dumbed down ones or not replaced at all. You see this most clearly in the WW 2 section, where the books about the actual fighting and diplomacy have been cut in half and *Partly* replaced by books about the Japanese Interment, women WASP pilots, racism during WW2, Why did we bomb Hiroshima, Hispancis during WW2, etc.
I have seen this, too. This is what Communists do. They purge everything that doesn't toe the Party line. Then you have generations who have no clue about real history and are merely tools of the State. Sad.
The Bible could be similarly improved.
Thomas Jefferson did just that.
"to insure that the illustrations contained the proscribed mix of races and genders"
And when I see those illustrations the first thing I notice is the artificiality, the manipulation and propaganda is obvious, at least to this old fart. Youngsters may miss it, they have been raised with this crap and likely think it is real, at least until they get older.
Mockturtle,
There are no Communists at work in American libraries or in government or other public institutions.
Any "writer" who would hire a "sensitivity reader" has no faith in his own voice or in his readers. He is no artist and has nothing to say.
"And when I see those illustrations the first thing I notice is the artificiality, the manipulation and propaganda is obvious, at least to this old fart. Youngsters may miss it, they have been raised with this crap and likely think it is real, at least until they get older."
But then, in the real world there is a mix of race and genders in most areas of life. What is not real, what is artificial, is the exclusivity of white males in public activity and world events.
That said, I do not like the idea of an artist being told what to represent in his or her books or drawings.
A commercial artist or writer must pay some attention to current public tastes simply to be successful, but an artist more concerned with his or her own particular world and vision should do as he or she pleases, and let the rest follow on its own.
There are no Communists at work in American libraries or in government or other public institutions.
There are only the state-fellators hoping for the "fully blown" version hiding out in private industry (in other countries).
"There are no Communists at work"
Maybe not officially, but the "new left" was of Communist descent. The red diaper babies may not have belonged to the CPUSA, but they had the philosophical underpinnings and seldom gave them up. I would certainly include Ayers, Sanders, and other prominent lefties in that group. There were once indigenous US socialists, but that strain died out in the 1940's.
RobertCook youleft off your /sarc tag.
"Maybe not officially, but the "new left" was of Communist descent. The red diaper babies may not have belonged to the CPUSA, but they had the philosophical underpinnings and seldom gave them up. I would certainly include Ayers, Sanders, and other prominent lefties in that group. There were once indigenous US socialists, but that strain died out in the 1940's."
The people you're referring to are geriatrics now. The 60s kids are mostly retired now, or dead.
@chikelit,
Your comment is incoherent and the link has to do with a 20-year old British employee of a media company. Not pertinent here.
"The people you're referring to are geriatrics now."
True, but they were the teachers and gate keepers of the current generation. The current movement didn't come out of nowhere, it had parents.
There are no Communists at work in American libraries or in government or other public institutions.
Cookie, I was merely making a comparison. You would have to admit that the totalitarian cultural agenda of Progressives is similar to that of the Chinese Cultural Revolution or the Soviet purge of 'unacceptable' books and music. I didn't say our current librarians are Communists, just that they are acting as Communists did.
Communists, Leftists, Marxists, Socialists.
Same Cultural outlook. Just different labels.
You don't need a formal membership in CPUSA to be motivated by communist ideals and objectives.
But the Left is always good at playing the shell game.
But..but... there are no communists.
LOL. Every college campus is full of "Marxist" professors.
Gamergate was the canary in the coal mine. But there was never any need to learn what it was about.
Beowulf to be banned, quickly followed by The Odyssey, Huckleberry Finn was a white savior, so was Abe Lincoln, for that matter.
What is not real, what is artificial, is the exclusivity of white males in public activity and world events.
You are right about that, because I don’t see that “exclusivity” existing anywhere anymore. It’s made up propaganda to give the lumpenproles agita.
Are Theresa May and Angela Merkel “excluded” from world events? Didn’t Hillary Clinton manage to ratchet up the civil war in Syria, and to initiate a war in Libya? Was Barack Obama never president?
What color is the sky in your world? Are there birds there? Flowers? Is it like Star Trek with large spray-painted styrofoam rocks everywhere?
“The people you're referring to are geriatrics now. The 60s kids are mostly retired now, or dead.”
Apparently you haven’t met their children, Cookie. Who, never having read a challenging book in their lives, are in many ways far worse than their parents. The ease with which their ignorance is exploited via social media is an amazing thing to witness.
Libraries have always been special for me. As the child of an avid reader, I accompanied my mother to the library every week or so. Taking home a stack of books filled me with delight and promise! Like my mother, I took my children to the library regularly. It breaks my heart that the only books available to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be those acceptable to the outraged class. We should all invest in the old books we can find before they are all burned.
How do I become a sensitivity reader? Right off, and up front, I'd only be in it for the money.
Just finished Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn while watching the Hillsdale College online course on Twain. Huck Finn is an even more anti-slavery book than I had remembered (plus lots more). So natch, many want to ban it.
Hillsdale does a great job, by the way, including addressing the "bad word" issue (too much in my opinion).
"LOL. Every college campus is full of "Marxist" professors."
Have you ever been on a college campus? Your comment suggests that you haven't."
I was in college in the mid-70s, at a time when the hippies were still around (in shrinking numbers) and the war protestors were only recently made redundant with the end of the Vietnam War. If there was an era where Marxist professors would have been apparent on college campuses, that would have been it. Yet, none of the professors I ever had were, to any appearance or judging by any statements they ever made in class, Marxists.
I'm sure there are Marxist professors somewhere, particularly in Liberal Arts College and a few Economics departments, but the notion that colleges in general are indoctrination camps for Communist ideology is silly and childish.
(BTW, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with a Marxist professor teaching in a college.)
@Tank:
Huckleberry Finn has always been in the crosshairs of the oversensitive of all stripes.
There are no Communists at work in American libraries or in government or other public institutions.
The ALA has a long record of kowtowing to the Castro regime. That is despicable, regardless of whether or not Communists did the kowtowing.
From Nat Henthoff: Endless shame of the spineless American Library Association.
NEW YORK, January 13, 2011 (Nat Hentoff/Galesburg Register-Mail) - In April 2003, the security police of Fidel Castro arrested and imprisoned 75 journalists, members of opposition parties, and owners of independent libraries. The charge: "crimes against national sovereignty." The librarians had been making available to Cubans books that were banned in the state's libraries for containing "terrorist" material. Among them were a biography of Martin Luther King Jr....
During the one-day trial, Castro's judges ordered that all printed volumes confiscated during the raids of the libraries be burned. I obtained copies of those incendiary court rulings that then, and now, characterize the Cuban "revolution...."
At first, I had expected immediate protests about the caged independent librarians from the American Library Association. The core credo of this largest national library association in the world has been "the freedom to read" -- for everyone everywhere.
Why should you care? Because banning books and imprisoning librarians mean banning literature, ideas -- thought -- and critically wounding freedoms that should be as essential as oxygen to citizens and a society.
In the many columns I've written since about the abandoned Cuban librarians, I've cited the ALA's refusal to demand the release of these librarians. In June 2003, for one of many examples, Michael Dowling, then director of the ALA's International Relations Office, said: "There has been no definitive evidence that books are banned and librarians harassed." There had been international press on the raids.
As my documented stories on these and future imprisonments went on, I was targeted by the director of Cuba's National Library Eliades Acosta: "What does Mr. Hentoff know of the real Cuba?" My public reply: "I know that if I were a Cuban, I'd be in prison...."
But, in yet another appeal to the ALA on March 11 last year, the American-based Friends of Cuban libraries sent a letter to then-president of the ALA Camila Alire, "asking for your urgent and compassionate aid in saving the life of a fellow library worker, Guillermo Fariñas (director of the Dr. Roberto Avalos library).
"Mr. Fariñas has refused to consume food or fluids since he began a hunger strike" at his home in Santa Clara for the release of 26 Cuban prisoners in poor health, including "Ricardo Gonzalez, the director of the Jorge Manach Library, and Ariel Sigler Amaya, who was condemned to a long prison term for, among other alleged crimes, gathering books for a library collection." Both have been named prisoners of conscience by Amnesty International....
This plea for the life of Guillermo Fariñas was ignored by the American Library Association....
I have known two librarians who left Cuba after Castro came to power. They were not particularly pleased with the ALA kowtowing to the Castro brothers.
It would not be difficult to find librarians who strongly dislike Trump and also praise the Castro brothers. Granted, praising Communists and strongly disliking Trump doesn't necessarily indicate one is a Communist, but, at least to me, it is not particularly an admirable stance.
I
"The "sensitivity" problem described in the article arises out of the demand for "diversity.""
It's an odd sort of "diversity" that tells you what you can't write about.
It's sort of like the "diversity" that tells you what you can't wear, or can't celebrate, or cook, or watch, or read.
One alternative is a return to the old advice: Write what you know.
A better alternative is to tell these people to piss off. Publishers need to grow a pair. I doubt a significant percentage of the reading public is interested in having their fare vetted by "sensitivity readers", even (or especially) for their children's books.
Fortunately I don't have to give a damn about what modern censors think children should read, when buying books for grandchildren. Not that these goons wouldn't burn every copy of the "classics", if they could.
rcocean "LOL. Every college campus is full of "Marxist" professors."
Robert Cook in reply: Have you ever been on a college campus? Your comment suggests that you haven't."I was in college in the mid-70s... If there was an era where Marxist professors would have been apparent on college campuses, that would have been it.
Professors moved left since 1990s, rest of country did not.
You are going to inform me that this leftward shift in the professoriate has not been accompanied by an increase in Marxists? Note also that there are quotes around "Marxist," which would indicate neo-Marxist tendencies such as critical studies, which are not classical Marxist. Certainly critical studies people- neo Marxists- are easy to find on college campuses.
So much for Robert Cook's sneering comment, "Have you ever been on a college campus? Your comment suggests that you haven't."
Robert Cook: But then, in the real world there is a mix of race and genders in most areas of life. What is not real, what is artificial, is the exclusivity of white males in public activity and world events.
If this is real, how can it be artificial?
But no need to figure out the paradox, because it's not real in the first place. The billions of human beings on the planet who aren't white (the vast majority of human beings) would be surprised to be told that all the people in public life in their own countries, and on the world stage representing their countries, are "white males".
P.S. There's nothing "artificial" about their being a preponderance of white males in public life, in countries where the majority of the population is white, and where whites are an even larger majority in the age demographic from which most prominent public figures are drawn. (Just as there was nothing "artificial" about white men being predominant in world events, when European countries were the top global powers. You can say that that was a horrible, bad, terrible, state of affairs, but what it wasn't, was "artificial".) What country do you live in, where all the young up-and-comers in public life are white males?
I wait for the day when "sensitivity readers" will be criticizing books published today. These readers will have studied with real sensitivity how the Christian festival of Christmas was "culturally appropriated" by secularists who then insisted that Christmas must be celebrated as a secularist would wish, that is, without any reference to its meaning and without any use any of its traditions as built up by Christians all over the world. The secularists felt good about appropriating, then destroying the traditions of Christians, even though the secularists had no viable replacements and even though the secularists particularly condemned disregarding and destroying the traditions of others. Yes, my friends, they could see no wrong at all in renaming Christmas, "Winter Festival." They saw no wrong in ordering Christians to use such terms as "Happy Holidays."
Studying such bizarre phenomena will be the staple of Secularism 101. It will seem easy for all non-Christians to see the wrong being done whereas now it is almost impossible. In fact these days, Christians have to look on at insufferable smugness about self-applauding hypocrisy. But we do have Christmas still even if we can't talk about it while they have Walmart stampedes, drunkenness, and boring, self-centered reflections on silly self-centered selves. And maybe we gain from the silencing. Maybe being silent about the night makes it more peaceful and Christian.
"Sensitivity readers" is a racist concept with the goal being censorship of white authors primarily. That it spills over occasionally to minority authors is just collateral damage.
"In an Era of Online Outrage, Do Sensitivity Readers Result in Better Books, or Censorship?"j Oh, this is definitely likely to result in better books.
Censorship MAKES better books.
The Left TELLS me so!
Look, Ann, stuff "Write what you know." Just do. If we all wrote what we knew, and (as an instant corollary) read what we knew, there'd be no interaction among the various bubbles at all.
For starters, we'd have no science fiction or fantasy, because no one "knows" either. My favorite retort to "Write what you know" remains Ursula LeGuin's: "But who knows more about my own imaginary countries than I do?"
Write what you don't know. Learn as you write. Think as you learn.
Then you can be Margaret Atwood, or George Orwell, or Cormac McCarthy, or Stephen King, or Philip Dick, or whatever, despite not being a member of a far-right dystopian society, or a far-left dystopian society, or almost alone in a world without people, or in an apocalyptic battle between an old black woman in Nebraska and a cowboy-boot-wearing demon in Vegas, or ... well, I can't choose one for Philip Dick, honestly. Too many options
You can also write dozens of mystery novels, without being yourself a serial killer. See how easy it is?
"Write what you know." Pfeh, say I.
I wonder what the interview process is like when hiring a Sensitivity Reader? Flash cards? Are they hooked up to a monitoring machine that measures their reactions? Otherwise, how do we know the MOST sensitive Sensitivity Readers are chosen?
The best Sensitivity Readers probably work from home, sitting in a warm nutrient bath, for obvious reasons. The interview probably has to be in their home as well - you can't expect them to brave the real world and travel across town to an office, do you?
What is not real, what is artificial, is the exclusivity of white males in public activity and world events.
Whatever you do, don't expose Cookie to the "Bell Curve."
As white males are slowly excluded from "public activity" we will see a decline in intelligence and a loss of creativity, unless of course, you consider Te Nehisi Coates creative.
Michelle Dulak Thomson: To be fair, Philip K Dick did have some vibrant hallucinations and other experiences he called "visions" so that's one author on the list that could have 'written what they know'.
Robert Cook,
There are very few communists left here of the the old schools, as I knew them abroad, true. I had constant contact with these people "in the field" and in universities back in the day. These were of both Moscow and Maoist flavors. And, besides, it was my dads profession as a machinery dealer to travel in Eastern Europe so we knew a great number of Russian, Bulgarian, Polish, Romanian and Yugoslavian functionaries.
Compared to their modern American versions they were, though dreadfully wrong (or pretending to be), very impressive intellectually. They were not inclined to avoid the study of uncomfortable history.
The modern American flavor is quite different. They are children of Marcuse and Fanon, not Lenin and Mao. And of the strange p, ongoing American perversion of intellect. Lenin and Mao would have held this lot in contempt.
The solution for situations like this is to abandon these institutions. Self publishing is one, small online publishers is another.
One very controversial but interesting one is Castalia House, Vox Days venture. Besides outright politics its got a quirky and unique catalog, as it is the current publisher, or reprinter, of much of the work of such as Pournelle and Martin van Creveld. Its got the only annotated commentary on the works of Gene Wolfe, of the literary roots of Dungeons&Dragons (yes, this has been culturally very important), and much of the recent work of John C Wright, the best SF writer active today.
Like or hate Vox Day, he has published a lot of good stuff. Check out Castalia.
ALP,
True enough about PKD. I think I was thinking of The Man in the High Castle, really, though any number of short stories would have done as well. A lot of them are cruel and/or creepy (with exceptions, like the Doc Madrigal stories and my favorite, "Human Is"), but unlike the novels, I don't think there's much psychedelia involved.
Lenin and Mao would have held this lot in contempt.
Yes, they are the children of Antonio Gramsci, who concluded that the Bourgeois culture must be destroyed for communism to triumph.
Capitalism, Gramsci suggested, maintained control not just through violence and political and economic coercion, but also through ideology. The bourgeoisie developed a hegemonic culture, which propagated its own values and norms so that they became the "common sense" values of all. People in the working-class (and other classes) identified their own good with the good of the bourgeoisie, and helped to maintain the status quo rather than revolting.
The war on common sense, as we see every day.
As per the above comment, re the prevalence of "white males".
Hang out in Asia for a while and you will find that the guys in charge aren't "white".
The "white" thing is yet another of those idiotic American parochialisms.
Sensitivity readers are a new concept to me, a vile one. I would self publish before I let one of the "sensitivity readers" featured in that article read something of mine and influence a publisher based on her (they seem to be all hers, no?) sensitivity radar. The very idea is preposterous and the fact that publishers pay such people is outrageous.
Fuck off with your pitiful sensitivity.
Oh, and stop pretending for one fucking second that Maya Angelou is a good poet. And quit jamming Toni Morrison down the throats of our high school students who have not yet read Dickens or Hemingway or Wharton or any of the thousands of other writers who are so very much better.
Yeah, I am writing a novel with the certain knowledge that even in the unlikely event that it were any good, it couldn’t get published for political reasons. I figured I was putting out so many words here, I could just as well write something coherent. OK, first I am writing 200 pages of whatever it takes to get me writing a given day, regardless of where it leads, continuity, or whatever, on the theory that it will form up to something by then. I always dislike novels where the novelist finds their voice after three or four chapters, and doesn’t go back and rewrite the early chapters, an obvious example was “The Shipping News.”
We have become a nation of sad mediocrity. Not that mediocrity is ever happy but it can be all too content. :-(
Sarah Hoyt had a great blog post about publishers trying to play gatekeeper in order to enforce political correctness, which means cutting their own throats in this age of self published ebooks. I’ll try to find the link.
(Sarah’s excellent sci fi and urban fantasy novels can be purchased via the Althouse Amazon portal.)
MDT @ 1:48pm,
Thanks for saying what I would have said, if I were as articulate as you!
Although my rejoinder was even more libertarian than yours, I guess: "Write what you want to."
And I'll second buwaya's recommendation of Castalia House. They are, e.g., reissuing all of the There Shall Be Wars series, which Pournelle edited--so can get these classics in e-versions.
Sarah Hoyt's publisher is Baen, which is very unlikely to start with such foolishness.
Baen is an SF/Fantasy specialized publisher.
An excellent selection of new and old stuff there.
“One alternative is a return to the old advice: Write what you know.”
Isn’t this tantamount to the saying: “Don’t use your imagination?”
Well, it is true that unimaginative and boring increasingly seems like the threshold quality for literature in this hypersensitive age.
Castalia also picked up this wonderful book, originally self-published (and which I played a tiny, volunteer role in helping to edit. This might be the novel in its longer, originally screenplay-format version.)
They also picked up the author's second novel, a filling in of a remote part of the backstory.
My point is that the was a demand for diversity— different races and religions, etc. Then, when writers of kids’ books supplied what was demanded, they got criticized for doing it wrong.
I read a ton of books, especially via Kindle Unlimited. If something starts going down super Leftist routes, or I don't like, I just stop reading and return it, and move on. I won't even leave a comment.
@buwaya, these days Sarah publishes via Baen, but judging from this blog post I would say that she worked with other publishers early in her career.
@Althouse, one of the things Sarah Hoyt points out is that the people hired by the publishers often don't know what the author knows. For instance "correcting" Michel to Michelle because they don't know that Michael is spelled without the 'a' in French.
Big Mike: I read Hoyt's "Darkship Thieves" - she created one of the finest, most unapologetic female leads I've ever run across. It appears to be a PC requirement when creating female characters to have them neurotic and full of self doubt about every damn thing they do (also for the non-fiction mainstream press). I think this is so female readers will not feel so bad about themselves. The lead in Hoyt's book, Athena, just does what needs to be done and moves on. Great lead character.
It is a logical impossibility that such censorship will produce better books, unless you think that the (sensitivity reader/)censor has a better idea of what the author wants to say than does the author him/herself, and is better at expressing it. Which is ludicrous.
If the sensitivity reader has anything useful to say, he or she should write a book.
So, the principle of diversity:
black colored people write about black colored people. color diversity.
feminine women write about feminine women. sex diversity.
feminine men write about feminine men. gender diversity.
because of the "wise Latina" and science (i.e. accuracy through proximity). racial diversity.
babies write about babies. age diversity.
abortionists write about abortionists. wicked diversity.
George writes about George. name diversity.
George the "white Hispanic" writes about George and "white Hispanics". label diversity.
Oh, and dentists should write about dentists. occupation diversity.
Individual diversity is an archaic and anachronistic concept.
@ALP, Hoyt has a five book Darkship series: "Darkship Thieves," "Through Fire," "A Few Good Men," "Darkship Renegades," and "Darkship Revenge." I also like her "Magical Shakespeare" series and her murder mysteries set in the time and with the characters of Dumas' "Three Musketeers."
I'm married to a very strong woman and much enjoy strong women characters. Not simpering self-doubters, but women who take their circumstances by the throat and make things work. (Warning: not all of Sarah's novels have a female lead.)
I don’t know if the science fiction genre uses sensitivity readers. This article was the first time I’d heard of such readers. The issue seems to be a fear of a backlash that will ruin a book’s market. Where does that happen and why? I suspect we’re talking about books that a written to appeal to a demand to show diversity.
I am not attempting to discuss fantasy writing when I refer to the old advice write what you know, only pointing at the problem of portraying other races and religions.
I was just reading an interview with Ken Kesey about Cuckoo’s Nest, which is told from the point of view of a mentally ill Native American. Kesey admits he just invented how the character viewed things. K had zero familiarity with Native Americans. Today, I think a writer would be reviled for appropriating another culture solely for his own narrative.
@Althouse, they don’t — or at least they didn’t — but if you read what Sarah wrote, the publishers seem to have had layers of people hankering to “improve” the manuscripts. In my book a sensitivity reader is the same impulse, dressed up as political correctness.
Maya Angelou doesn't speak for all black women. And Native American A may not speak for Native American B. To assume that kind of cultural homogeneity is, well...racist.
How do you write historical fiction within these restrictions?
I wrote a (unpublished) novel about the black orphaned son of Theodorus, a 19th century Abyssinian emperor. I wrote it almost 20 years ago, before cultural appropriation was a mainstream bugaboo. Nevertheless I must have sensed the problem. Of the multiple narrators, the dominant one was a 20th century descendant of the orphaned son who was now a member of white society, his black ancestors having interbred with whites to produce a man in all appearence white.
My current work is about 19th century American slaves from South Carolina.
If I am lucky, this will not be published either. I would be burned at the stake.
The fear of a backlash is real enough, if the target market is one that tends to such hysterical reactions.
I.e., if you are writing for the intersectionally aggrieved then you are likely to be hit from any side for anything, should your book get any buzz.
Or so it seems.
Its interesting that such rules would have killed "Uncle Toms Cabin" or "The Good Earth". Or a large chunk of Joseph Conrad or V.S. Naipaul - Someone here (or maybe elsewhere) noted that "A Bend in the River" would get plastered today, in spite of it being more or less Naipauls eyewitness account. Or a very great deal else; think about it.
But the intersectionally aggrieved aren't likely to be interested in good books anyway, so who cares, from a market point of view, if you are attempting something that would appeal to persons of taste and judgement. The publishers as over-sensitive gatekeepers are the real problem.
David,
Your character sounds like the historical Peter the Greats negro page, the ancestor of the poet Pushkin.
"The publishers as over-sensitive gatekeepers are the real problem."
This is why self publishing has become almost a standard except for a few authors that keep writing the same novel with different characters,. You see the books on supermarket checkout lines.
Today, I think a writer would be reviled for appropriating another culture solely for his own narrative.
Probably true. You sound like you would agree. I don't. You cannot appropriate a culture.
"My point is that the was a demand for diversity— different races and religions, etc. Then, when writers of kids’ books supplied what was demanded, they got criticized for doing it wrong."
Which means the demand was for something other than "diversity", at least as understood. So what was the demand really for?
Diversity of color, sex, etc. It's a contemporary form of racism, sexism, etc., that normalizes/promotes/celebrates judging a person by the "color of their skin", rather than the "content of their character". It's a branch of political congruence, which is a branch of Pro-Choice.
Doesn't really matter. It's not like there's a shortage of relevant books written decades ago. Writers who fall for this nonsense are going to be remembered (if at all) like Soviet-era artists who spent so much energy trying to get around the censors their art was stunted.
Should diversity be within every book, or should publishers publish a diversity of books?
Good grief, well it serves moriarty right, she thought she could be this generations Margaret attwood, how delude she was.
Ooh ooh, Mr. Kotter, Mr. Kotter, I have the answer!
You write what you want.
And I'll write what I want.
Self publishing will, thankfully, wipe out these tedious gatekeepers.
Democracy dies in diversity....
Paco,
"So what was the demand really for?"
Conformity.
Duh.
The death of literature. Would Molly Bloom see the light of day? Ask Nat Turner.
"I don’t know if the science fiction genre uses sensitivity readers."
And I don't know how you could. Much of science fiction is about exploring cultures and societies that are, well, fantastic. Most are neither utopias nor dystopias, just very, very different. And it's hard to imagine that a world that's very, very different is not going to outrage pretty much everyone who insists that the social justice values of today are the only such values that could ever be considered true and just and good.
What "sensitivity readers" produce is Disney. Sometimes Disney productions are good, often they are less than good, but always, always, they are oh-so-careful to be exquisitely PC, and thus inoffensive to anyone who's allowed to be offended.
Then again, sci-fi movies have always been about spectacle, whereas written science fiction tends to be more cerebral. And while there's been plenty of big-screen spectacle produced lately, it's become remarkable difficult to find much in written science fiction other than ancient tropes that have already been thoroughly worked over.
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