Tips from Trolled Writers from Writer Unboxed
RIP Joan Didion
Her memory will only continue to be luminous. She was one of the first to understand the breakdown of communication in America, in her Slouching Towards Bethlehem, written in ’68 about the hippie culture in LA’s Haight-Asbury. It’s even more relevant today. Books, films, a play, the heart-wrenching The Year of Magical Thinking about her author husband John Gregory Dunne and her daughter’s passing will be part of the American literary landscape.
Quoting her from a New Yorker article (Nathan Heller, January 3, 2022), she said: “We know how to write when we begin. What we learn from it is what writing was for.“
RIP Joan.
So Many Good Books about Black Lives–A Couple Recommendations
The publishing world has become–dare I use the word–woke. From Who Fears Death, You Should See Me in a Crown, and Brown Girl Dreaming to So You Want to Talk about Race and The Hate You Give, we have a chance to see the world through BIPOC eyes. These writers –including those for teens–are shaping the literary landscape and, hopefully, our lives.
Here are a couple of other favorites:
The Shadow King, Maaza Mengiste. Booker Price winner’s story of a women’s fight in 1935 Ethiopia against the invading Italian fascists. “Lyrically lifting history toward myth,” said Salman Rushdie.
Mosquito, Gayle Jones. Mosquito is an independent Black female trucker who becomes involved in the rescue of immigrants via the underground railroad, in this 1999 riffing jazz-like narrative.
The Easy Rawlins private eye books by Edgar award winner Walter Mosley, a deep and vibrant dive into the Black experience in the LA of the 50-60s.
Found in a bookstore in West Chester, PA
What I think I’m doing during shelter-in-home….
What I’m really doing…
American Dirt Hits the Dirt
“You can’t be Twitter woke and Walmart ambitious,” says an assistant editor quoted in Slate’s article about the controversial novel American Dirt: Will the American Dirt Fiasco Change American Publishing?
The book is number three on Amazon at the moment, and has its supporters who resist the overly PC of a granddaughter of a Puerto Rican not being sufficiently Hispanicx to write about the immigrant experience. Others decry the author’s “tone deaf” characterization of and lack of understanding of marginalized people of color. The publisher canceled bookstore tours as a result of security worries.
Rather than a promoting the book as a depiction of the immigrant experience that will “wake” a white readership, Slate’s Laura Miller points out that positioning the book as a romantic novel would have shifted it to a more general category. For example, thrillers about drug cartels that rely on stereotypes are rarely negatively Twitter-critted.
This is not the first kerfuffle about author legitimacy in writing about serious topics, even those that are fictionalized. Hopefully publishers, still mostly white and often Ivy League educated, will edit with a more educated eye to understanding the experiences of people of color as depicted in fiction.
Still, the bottom line may be the bottom line: who is buying the book.
Doggie Philosophy
Keep writing! (and remember Charles Schultz in your hearts)
Anxiety Disorder in Kids
There’s anxiety—tomorrow’s math test, will I be invited to the popular girl’s birthday party—and then there are anxiety disorders. And the later is increasing by 20% or more, reports Atlantic editor Scott Stossel, who is himself a long-time sufferer of anxiety disorders. (Generalized anxiety is only one.) A new book by graphic novelist Raina Telgemeier, Guts, tells the story of a ten-year-old with the disorder. “No other book I have read—and to say I have read a lot of them is an understatement— has captured with such brilliant economy and psychological acuity what a severe phobia or panic attack is like,” writes Stossel in the New York Times Book Review, October 6.
He points out that Guts is dedicated to “anyone who feels afraid.”
Whatever world/plot/characters YA authors conjure for their books, showing the young reader that she/he is not alone is one of the foundations of writing for children.
YA books have been withdrawn before publication as a result of social media critiques, particularly in the areas of sexual identity and racial identity.
Take a look at both sides of the page in this article from The New Yorker by Katy Waldman:
Photo by luizclas on Pexels.com
Just another day at the computer
chriskellywriter
The Why of YA 