YA Novel pulled over racism concerns

[chiqui]

This all blew up about a few days ago, starting in the Twitterverse, planet YA, among other YA authors.

"Blood Heir" and author accused of racism

The author of the book is an acquaintence of mine; we belong to the same online writers forum. I remember critting the first chapter of book while she was still writing it, and followed her delight when she found an agent and it got picked up for publication. I never dreamed this sort of thing would happen to her. It began when some ARC (advance reader copies, which are handed out by publishers to reviewers and influencers for publicity) were distributed. At this point, a work may still be revised, as it isn't in distribution yet -- it's like a test screening for a movie. The idea is, feedback is gathered and sent back to the publisher. In this case, two influential YA writers who'd read the book -- Ellen Oh and L. L. McKinney -- aired their opinions publicly, directly, on Twitter. Where it all blew up into a fiasco after being tweeted and re-tweeted.

I never thought professional publishing would devolve into such fanfic levels of sniping, tattle-taling, and public calling out. I feel terrible for my friend, who had all the best intentions (she is Chinese-Canadian) going by her content of the forum. YA really is a pit of vipers right now for those who want to play.

[Ginger]

I guess that's the double-edged sword of the online YA community. If they love something, they can make it a hit. If they don't, they can bury it.

I remember The Black Witch incident. That book did indeed sound ineptly racist. This one it's hard to tell.

I'm fascinated lately by the Kathleen Hale incident. She stalked a YA influencer and then wrote an essay about the experience, expecting people to sympathize with her, which for the most part they did not. What I dislike is that now every single author or random famous person who knows Kathleen Hale or thought her essay was interesting is a horrible human being who is cancelled forever. I was just reading it today on ONTD.

Maybe it's because these are still kids who don't live out in the real world, but human beings are imperfect and in real life you don't drop long-time friends every time they do something wrong or show bad judgment. It's so all or nothing with these kids [shakes cane].

[petitesuite]

I am not familiar with the YA online community other than that slate article and the Vulture article about this, but I think it's kind of appalling. I am perplexed by the apparent underlying assumption that slavery is a phenomenon unique to U.S. history (I mean, I wish it were, but...). So many people assuming that someone of east Asian descent would have nothing to say about slavery REALLY surprises me, because I thought the existence of human trafficking there was very well known. If anything I would have guessed that white Americans overestimate how prevalent it is.

[chiqui]

The YA community is... bizarre. It's overwhelmingly female and under 40, writers and readers both. Many writers were once readers and/or fanfic writers and readers. There's a lot of cross-pollination. The community really jumped on LGBTQ and ownvoices representations. The discussion and arguments often mirror those of fanfic communities, where specific points were debated for ages with feuds and cults. I find it exhausting to keep up with, but can't help myself.

I also think, cynically, a lot of the controversy is generated upon the need to make shares and likes for the other community members, who are writers themselves and thus get free publicity.