You truly cannot read a thing about sensitivity readers without the word censorship coming up, and in all of the op-eds I read there were four case studies that got name-checked over and over as evidence of this ‘slippery slope’ argument.
Last week, I talked about two of the books—A Birthday Cake for George Washington and When We Was Fierce—that were actually pulled from publication for being offensive: the first by the publisher, the latter by the author.
But two of the other most commonly cited books made their way to bookshelves and can be purchased today if anyone so chooses.
So why do those two books—American Heart and The Continent—keep coming up as examples of censorship?
Because people were mad about them.
Philosophically, it seems to me one has to tie themselves in a real pretzel to argue censorship while simultaneously wanting to silence the discussion around the thing in question.
One could make a separate case about the degradation of online discourse around books and everything else in the world, but that’s not the argument being made. Ryan Holiday accused sensitivity readers and authors who employ them of burning books. Burning books!
So, while I truly cannot see how these books represent a case for a slide toward censorship, I do think they make instructive cases and shine a light on some of the issues in publishing that I’ve been attempting to unpack these past few months.
Let’s take a look!
American Heart
First up is American Heart, which came out in January of 2018 from HarperTeen by bestselling author Laura Moriarty.
This YA novel is about a fifteen-year-old white girl from Missouri called Sarah-Mary who lives in a future America where Muslim-Americans are being held in detainment camps. Sarah-Mary supports the camps until she meets a Muslim woman named Sadaf who is a fugitive from one of the camps. Sarah-Mary helps Sadaf escape to Canada and the experience causes her to question her prejudices.
This is the first case I’ve discussed here in which the author actually did reportedly use two sensitivity readers pre-publication. What their feedback was and whether the author incorporated it, we’ll never know, but the book did receive some early hype including a starred review from Kirkus which was penned by a Muslim-American reviewer. (For the unfamiliar, Kirkus is a trade publication which uses a mostly freelance reviewing staff whose bylines do not appear with reviews. The publication reviews the majority of books published by large houses and many from small presses as well).
There was an immediate backlash to American Heart from readers, citing the ‘white savior” trope that the book relied on.
Here’s what author Celeste Pewter had to say about the book:
“ it’s impossible to the escape the conclusion that Sarah-Mary’s journey is anything but a bildungsroman that uses the genuine fears of the Muslim-American community as a mechanism for Sarah-Mary to grow. It’s Sarah-Mary’s journey first and foremost, with Sadaf and the actual Muslim-American community’s challenges and concerns, coming in a firm second.”
“Bottom line: this is an example of an author telling a story that they were ill-equipped to tell, both intellectually and narratively.”
If you can take your mind back to 2018—many, many Trumpian scandals ago—you’ll remember that our president was talking about creating a Muslim registry in this country, not to mention that we already have a very ugly history of detaining our own citizens in America. Needless to say, it isn’t as though the scenario that Moriarty uses is terribly far-fetched.
“During a time where Muslim-Americans (and Muslims worldwide) are suffering due to intense discrimination and Islamophobia, this book is not only completely insensitive but seems to be exploiting a “timely” topic while simultaneously silencing Muslim voices.” --Adiba Jaigirdar (Buzzfeed)
In response to the criticism, Kirkus pulled the star and amended the review with a statement from the Editor-in-Chief about the decision (which you can read in full here).
That action brought the conversation around the book to a fever pitch with people weighing in on both sides. Though the criticism of this book was fierce, the author had many defenders who compared Kirkus’ actions to—you guessed it—censorship. The author made things infinitely worse by publicly cheering these commenters on. As far as I can tell, Moriarty made no attempt to meaningfully address the concerns of her critics.
There’s a lot to be said about when and how an author should address blowback to a book but in my view, it’s never a good look to get defensive and jump into the fracas without a clear message.
So, what can we learn from this?
I think this exemplifies two of the solid arguments around the practice of sensitivity readers: that using them is in no way a free pass and the practice may be used to enable writers to tell a story they’re not equipped to tell because it feels ‘timely’.
Though the Kirkus response feels a bit muddled, they obviously were doing what they felt was in the best interest of their reputation and authority as a reviewing body. Again, not censorship.
The Continent
This debit novel from author Kiera Drake was originally scheduled for a 2017 release from Harlequin. The hype started early with this one, with Publisher’s Weekly reporting a ‘significant’ (which is code for between $250-500k) three-book deal for Drake.
The Continent is a sci-fi YA novel about a sixteen-year-old who goes on a helicopter tour of a place called The Continent where two “uncivilized” tribes are locked in perpetual war. Her helicopter crashes and she’s rescued by one of the inhabitants. She goes on to save his people from ruin.
Early readers were horrified by the depictions of the two “uncivilized” tribes which were coded as Native American and Asian respectively. The tribe called the “Topi” (one troubling letter off from Hopi) was described as having reddish-brown skin, smearing their faces with war paint, and savagely attacking people with arrows. The other tribe was described as having ninja-like skills and—god help us—almond-shaped eyes.
Kiera Drake—a mid-forties woman living in Salt Lake City— was reportedly unaware of the conversation around diversity and publishing and thus was completely caught off guard by the criticism. When she saw the early reviews, she was dismayed and asked her editor to delay publication while she rewrote the book.
In the meantime, the online debate continued apace with Drake’s husband jumping in for a Twitter rant in which he called YA author Justina Ireland—who’d written a Twitter blow-by-blow about the book—a “bigoted troll” (he and Drake are now separated, so make of that what you will.) It’s worth noting that while many people have called Ireland’s criticism “bullying”, she received rape threats, death threats, a flood of one-star reviews for her own books and even someone emailing her editor to urge him to drop her. All for writing tweets about a book she (and many others) felt relied on racist tropes and stereotypes.
Drake eventually revised the book and moved forward with its release. This version appears to have addressed minor issues such as calling the “savage” tribe the Xoe instead of Topi, removing their war paint, removing descriptions of “almond shaped eyes” and the like and making her protagonist slightly more ethnically ambiguous
Here’s what Laila Shapiro—who interviewed the major players in this drama for an excellent piece in Vulture—had to say about the effectiveness of those efforts:
Drake told me that she took heart from the fact that her sensitivity readers “loved” the revision and just suggested a few minor “tweaks.” But when I spoke to one of the two sensitivity readers Harlequin had hired, she recalled sending suggestions for an extensive rewrite to Wilson, who was reluctant to pass them along to Drake. According to the reader, Wilson said she felt that they’d already put Drake through the wringer, and that another page-one revision would be too onerous. Publishers often cite their hiring of sensitivity readers as proof that they’ve done due diligence, but they pay as little as $250 per read, and they’re always free to ignore the sensitivity reader’s suggestions. Once the reader sends in their notes, they have no control over whether or how that advice is put to use.
I wanted to give this author credit for trying to do the right thing, but it appears she threw in the towel halfway through.
My biggest conclusion here is that sensitivity readers only work if you listen to them, and an author who starts out being completely unaware of this conversation probably just doesn’t have the range for a story like this. If anyone could have salvaged this book’s storyline, it likely wouldn’t have been Drake, at least without a lot more work.
Taproot of Frustration
What’s more important to grasp than the details of any individual scandal here is that this outrage isn’t just about these books. Rather, it’s about an industry that continues to value white authors and racist books over own voices.
“YA Twitter Drama articles hinge on two foundational ideas: one, that the criticism isn’t valid, and two, that the criticism comes from Mean Girl-style antics instead of actual literary analysis.” – Justina Ireland (Medium)
These conversations can get heated, so I think it’s crucial to keep turning back to the data, which tells a consistent story of underrepresentation and marginalization for BIPOC authors and publishing professionals. The problem is real. The frustration is real. The specter of censorship? Not so much.
As I’ve noted, most of the scandals have taken place within the somewhat insular world of YA and Children’s Lit.
And thennnnn, American Dirt happened.
That’s coming up next week!
Read More:
American Heart, Huck Finn, and the Trap of White Supremacy / Medium
Books by Muslim Authors to Read Instead of American Heart / Buzzfeed
Can You Revise a Book to Make it More Woke / Vulture
Meet Justina Ireland / Vulture