As I was reading up on sensitivity readers, there were four books that came up again and again. So today I’m getting busy serving up some extremely cold several-years-old scandal. The fact that these books were still being name-checked in op-eds from this year should tell you something about the frequency of the “censorship” that’s been wrought by the “tyranny” of sensitivity reading, but I digress.
These books were held up by the group of detractors making the “censorship” case as examples of wokeness run amok. Because most of this conversation happened in the YA blogosphere and Twitterverse where I don’t spend much time, they mostly escaped my notice when they happened. So, when these same four titles kept coming up, I wanted to dig them up for a little post-mortem to see if there were any useful takeaways.
For most authors (other than Lionel Shriver, who seems to live for it) getting called out for being unintentionally racist, homophobic, etc. is a nightmare scenario, so, though the schadenfreude around these cases can get intense, I think it can also help us illuminate our own blind-spots and also teach us something about where publishing is falling short when it comes to race and representation. Which it is. By a lot.
As with everything on this topic, the more I dug into these four cases studies, the more there was to unpack, so I’m splitting this into two posts. First, I’m going to cover the only two books used as examples that I could find that were actually pulled or cancelled (literally cancelled, not ‘cancelled’, a term I recently learned originated from this hilarious Joanne the Scammer skit—don’t you think it would delight her to know how much sleep Tucker Carlson has lost over it? I do.)
I’m summarizing the controversies here, but have included links below which I highly recommend.
Okay, in we go!
A Birthday Cake for George Washington
The first title that came up consistently was A Birthday Cake for George Washington, released by Scholastic Press on January 1, 2016. This children’s picture book depicts George Washington’s chef Hercules and his daughter—both slaves owned by Washington—baking a cake for their master. The book is cheerful and depicts them as happy and taking a lot of pride in their work.
This book came out hot on the heels of A Fine Dessert a children’s book with similar themes that was produced by an all-white team. Interestingly, the author of A Birthday Cake for George Washington, Ramin Ganeshram, as well as the illustrator and editor on this book were all women of color.
The negative reaction to the book was swift, with readers concerned that depicting images of happy, contented slaves could mislead children about the horrors of slavery
Both the author and editor wrote impassioned defenses of the book (which have been since deleted by I found quoted here) saying that their intention had been to uplift the work of a man who was considered the first celebrity chef in America and that, essentially, there was nuance to the status that some slaves held in relation to others. However, even in the author’s note, Ganeshram mentions that Hercules eventually escaped and left his daughter behind, which belies the idea that he was happy there.
Scholastic ended up pulling the book and, in a statement, said that they respected "integrity and scholarship of the author, illustrator, and editor" but without more context on the "evils of slavery," the book may leave kids with "a false impression of the reality of the lives of slaves."
Given the stellar reputations of those involved with this book (the editor x won a Coretta Scott King Award), it’s hard to doubt the sincerity of the creators’ intentions here. But intention never counts for as much as impact. As authors, we all have to live with the fact that we don’t get to accompany our books into the world to explain what we meant. So, while I can sympathize with the creators, the criticism seems well-founded, and I certainly can’t imagine buying a book featuring happy slaves for my daughter.
When We Was Fierce
Next up, we’ve When We Was Fierce was slated to come out in fall of 2016 from Candlewick Press. This YA novel from bestselling Mexican-American author e. E. Charlton-Trujillo chronicled the struggles of a group of young black men in was she described as a “hyper realist” America. The novel was written in verse in a made-up dialect that resembles African American Vernacular English (or Ebonics). The author had this to say about the prose:
“Right from the jump, I could hear the music of T’s world that hadn’t existed in YA before. Slang can become dated quick, so I had a unique opportunity to incorporate some slang along with a new vernacular.””
Hype always leads to increased scrutiny and this book got loads of it, including raves from Teenreads, Kirkus, Booklist, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal—which are pretty much all the trade reviews you can get advance reviews from. Publishers Weekly called the book a “heartbreaking and powerful modern American story,” and Kirkus said it was “...a compassionate, forceful look at the heartbreak and choices these black boys and men face.”
(It will not shock you to know that book review departments have their own issues with race, but that’s a topic for another day. )
Anyhow, the trouble started when early readers and bloggers got ahold of the book and began summarily ripping it to shreds.
Unsurprisingly, the imagined AAVE was a major sticking point and while much of the book has been scrubbed, reviews of the book remain including this one from Jennifer Baker (author, activist, and creator and host of the excellent Minorities in Publishing podcast). Here are a few of the examples she includes of what this prose actually sounded like:
o I was midspeak when I got an interrupt.
o My think go to racing
o So, you aren’t worried about Catch in speak with Nacho?
If you can make heads or tails of what Charlton-Trujillo was trying to do here, God speed.
As many reviewers pointed out, AAVE is very much a real linguistic form with a rich history and rules like any other language (if you’re interested in a great deep dive on AAVE and the Ebonics controversy, I highly recommend listening to You’re Wrong About’s episode on it).
Edi Campbell, a reference librarian, literacy activist and blogger, had this to say about the imagined AAVE:
“Typically, when I read black vernacular, I can hear it in my head as spoken by someone in my life and it resonates as a home to me. It is a language with a pattern in how nouns and verbs relate, tense is express and how verbs are conjugated.”
Readers’ issues didn’t end with the prose however, as they felt the book was also full of harmful stereotypes: a pregnant teen, a fragile hard-working single mom, an abusive dad, etc. Again Campbell:
“What adds to the perception of the characters in this story being marionettes is the quick and not at all insightful references to Black Lives Matter and those lost. Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, and Freddie Gray”
Ultimately, Candlewick announced that the author had pulled the book ‘to work on it further’ but since the book has not materialized in the four years since, I think we can presume it DOA.
This Coffee is Cancelled
So, these books were ultimately pulled but were they censored?
Nope.
The publishers could have made the decision to stand by the books (as publishers do all the time with offensive or controversial books) but likely decided the damage control wasn’t worthwhile. Or perhaps, in the case of Candlewick, they wanted to proceed by the author decided it wasn’t worth the hit to her reputation and/ or had genuine regrets. It’s hard to speculate, but ultimately, book publishing is a business and readers are the consumers, and everyone here acted accordingly.
Read More:
Publishers Pulling Offensive Books is Just Good Business – Book Riot
Confessions of a Sensitivity Reader – Tablet Mag
Publisher delays YA novel amid row over invented black 'street dialect' – The Guardian
Review: When We Was Fierce - Edi Campbell