Tuesday, October 17, 2017

After being attacked by a mob no less …

… Kirkus withdraws starred review after criticism. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)

…  American Heartwon’t be published until January, but it has already attracted the ire of the fierce group of online YA readers that journalist Kat Rosenfield has referred to as “culture cops.” To them, it was an irredeemable problem that Moriarty’s novel, which was inspired in part by Huckleberry Finn, centers on a white teenager who gradually—too gradually—comes to terms with the racism around her. On Goodreads, the book’s top “community review,” posted in September, begins, “fuck your white savior narratives”; other early commenters on Goodreads accused Moriarty of “profiting off people’s pain” and said “a white writer should not have tackled this story, and neither should a white character be the center of it.”
What exactly does "white" have to do with any of this. Tens of millions of Muslims are Caucasian. The character Sadaf is from Iran. Ancient Persians referred to themselves as Aryans. The ones complaining sound like the racists. 


1 comment:

  1. Laura Moriarity posted the original Kirkus review here.

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