(no subject)

[shadowkat]

1. I was behind and scrolled through correspondence list. Apparently I should catch up on Doctor Who? I'm five episodes behind. Because apparently a lot happens, some of which is shocking?

To be fair, after falling through the Ao3 rabbit hole for the March Meta Challenge, I'm behind on all my television series. Or most of them. Trying to catch up. Bit by bit.

2. I went on Twitter and FB briefly at work, then jumped off.

The GH fanboard is bored -- they are discussing old soap episodes, discussing storylines, speculating, and posting weird memes. They aren't used to having their show on hiatus for more than two or three days. It's a soap, usually soaps are on five days a week. The impeachment hearings have alas preempted them. Why? Because the broadcast news channels want to make certain every human being in the US has access to them, whether they want it or not. I'm blatantly ignoring the hearings.

FB main board and on Twitter, they fighting over:

*. Kobe Bryant (who died tragically, but alas, apparently was also a rapist - which explains why he sounded familiar -- I honestly had no clue who he was when they were going on and on about him at the Grammy's last night (I know now).).

Poster#1: He was a rapist. You shouldn't post about him, be sensitive to his victims.
Poster #2: He didn't deserve to die. Nor did his daughter and the nine other people on the plane, come on!
Poster #1: I agree on the daughter - talk about her instead.

*. Bernie Saunders (you either love him or hate him -- there really is no in between. Kind of like the Doofus. I keep wishing he'll just go away. But I felt the same about the Doofus and look what happened. People? The President of the US is not going to make your financial issues go away. That's not how it works. Find another way.)

Poster #1: See this well-written and thorough critique of Saunders.
Poster #2: Those are lies! Lies! An attempt to discredit him by his enemies.
Poster #1: I thought it was well-phrased and objective. But mileage varies. What is important is we all remain on the same side come election time.


*. Georgette Heyer (who was apparently antisemitic? Honestly I found her writing style so annoying, unmemorable and impossible to digest, that I didn't pick up on it -- also a lot of white upwardly mobile WASPY writers in the early half of the 20th Century were antisemitic, sexist, and racist (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf, TS Eliot...Ezra Pound..) Are we going to censor everyone who offends us? I'd be careful about that. Then you have no way of knowing how they think. I'm also of the view that stories should be allowed to be told no matter how offensive they are. If you want to fight racism? Find a way to get idiotic publishers to publish more points of view, don't do it by censoring people.

I rather enjoyed one poster's response to the Heyer thing. "I'm Jewish, my parents are Holocaust survivors, and Heyer is long dead. This means I can enjoy what she wrote, without worrying about her getting any money off of it. If she were alive it would be a different issue."

* American Dirt -- this is the critically acclaimed Oprah's Book Club pick, which is also apparently highly controversial. I'm guessing a white woman researched the Mexican-American immigrant experience and decided to play Steinbeck, and it kind of backfired? I don't know, I read a synopsis of the book and it didn't appeal to me at all. So promptly forgot about it -- until they began fighting over it.

Gotta love, social media. Where were we without it?

3. Project Manager informs me that the Contractor thinks it is unfair that they have to provide time and material tickets supporting their cost, when they provided a cost proposal (which was far from complete) and should be permitted to negotiate that. My initial response was, "life is unfair. If it were fair, I'd be sitting on a beach in Hawaii sipping a Pina Colda and writing my novel, not dealing with your ugly mug." But I restrained myself and gave them the contract language instead.

Comments

[wpadmirer]

The author of the controversial American Dirt is from Spain. So she's not "Latin American" and the book is about a Mexican woman. Thus the controversy.

[shadowkat]

Ah. Odd. The discourse I read was about how she was privileged, and not a person of color who had gotten a huge publishing advance and how dare they. (By white women academics on FB - responding to a Mexican-American woman's review.)

So the controversy makes no sense to me. Mexicans and Americans write about Spanish all the time.

I've seen and read far worse. *cough*AmericanPsycho*cough*. And *cough*MeBeforeYou*cough*.

[wpadmirer]

I think it's the combination of she's not "brown" and she's privileged.

[shadowkat]

Yeah, I know. SMH.

[shadowkat]

Here's the article I was referencing.

Warning it's more an angry rant than a review.

[wpadmirer]

I like her rant, and I think she has a valid point!

[shadowkat]

Except she references John Steinbeck who basically did the exact same thing this woman did way back in the 1930s, but with no criticism. Actually, a lot of white guys do it, all the time. This was a Spanish woman writer who got attacked. And the journalist praises Steinbeck in the same breath. Ironic. Also she did it in a feminist magazine. And in a society currently ruled by white men. Kudos.

I say this -- fully aware that I had no interest in reading the book, found it off-putting and offensive before I read any of the reviews, and am sort of pleased to see it get blasted. The publishing industry is a pigsty of racist misogyny and always has been. I have no respect for it. People who know people get traditionally published, if you don't - you won't.

But, I think the writer would have been fine if she'd published this as just a work of fiction -- instead of going for the social justice angle. The marketing by the publisher and writer - backfired on them big time. Yes, evil marketing people rule the world.

[wpadmirer]

I think the difference is Steinbeck had been one of those poor desperate people he wrote about. He wasn't writing something he'd never experienced. During the Great Depression, he and his wife lived off fish he could catch from his boat and what they could grow, and admitted to occasionally stealing bacon when they didn't have enough.

[shadowkat]

Grapes of Wrath: a woman named Sanora Babb did a ton of fieldwork on the situation of the "Okies", and eventually got a contract to write a book about it. Her research was sent to her publishing house, and, unknown to her, shared with Steinbeck. Babb's own novel was canceled after Grapes of Wrath was such a hit. This comes from the LA Times.

She deserved to publish her book, but he got it because he was a white poor male writer with connections. Don't get me wrong, I loved Grapes of Wrath. But unlike the journalist in her rant, Sanora Babb didn't play the victim, she worked hard and did well in her own right.

From Wiki: "Sanora Babb was born in Otoe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otoe_people territory in what is now Oklahoma, though neither her mother nor father were of the Otoe group of native Americans.[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanora_Babb#cite_note-DirtyPlateTrail-1 Her father, Walter,[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanora_Babb#cite_note-HTC-3 a professional gambler, moved Sanora and her sister Dorothy to a one-room dugout on a broomcorn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorghum farm settled by her grandfather near Lamar, Colorado.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanora_Babb#cite_note-RockyMountians-4

[shadowkat]

Interview with the author of American Dirt...who doesn't come from a privileged background. She's a navy brat, who got in due to connections with the publishing industry.. People who get published are those with connections to the publishing. https://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm/author_number/3268/jeanine-cummins

[yourlibrarian]

I've seen Heyer often recommended and tried out one of her books. I found it tiresome going and not that interesting either.

[shadowkat]

Agreed. Her writing style put me off. Also I did not like the characters.

[rose_griffes]

My own condensed version of the reaction to American Dirt--people who have lived experiences like those of the protagonist in the book are upset that this character thinks and acts like a tourist in her own country. Her POV apparently feels what a USAmerican might think of life in Mexico, and of leaving Mexico under hardship.

I would guess that the audience isn't meant to be "actual" Latinos--it's for those of us who haven't had such experiences. Nonetheless, it's unreasonable to expect those same Latinos to not be offended when the novel feels like an inauthentic mess. Especially when the author got a 7 figure advance for it.

(Do you know much about the origins of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath? I'm amused at you mentioning it, given how he obtained the information that he used to write the novel.)

[shadowkat]

I should reference the article they are talking about -- it might make more sense.

Here it is: Pendja you ain't Steinbeck, My Bronca Fake Ass Social Justice Literature.

I learned about Dirt when an editor at a feminist magazine invited me to review it.

I accepted her offer, Dirt arrived in my mailbox, and I tossed it in my suitcase. At my tía’s house in Guadalajara, I opened the book.

Before giving me a chance to turn to chapter one, a publisher’s letter made me wince.

“The first time Jeanine and I ever talked on the phone,” the publisher gushed, “she said migrants at the Mexican border were being portrayed as a ‘faceless brown mass.’ She said she wanted to give these people a face.”

The phrase “these people” pissed me off so bad my blood became carbonated.

I looked up, at a mirror hanging on my tía’s wall.

It reflected my face.

In order to choke down Dirt, I developed a survival strategy. It required that I give myself over to the project of zealously hate-reading the book, filling its margins with phrases like “Pendeja, please.” That’s a Spanglish analogue for “Bitch, please.”

And yeah, I know how Steinbeck did it. He was a journalist and traveled among the people and interviewed them. Then wrote the book. I read Grapes of Wrath, saw the movie, and read all the background on it.

My view of writing is people should permitted to write and/or read whatever they please. How we interpret and what gets published and marketed is a completely different issue. And things can get interpreted in vastly different ways - no two people interpret it the same. There are Latino reviewers who loved American Dirt. And there are people who hate Steinbeck.
It's very subjective.

However, yes, prior to approximately 2010 or thereabouts, finding books written by POC was difficult. The publishers didn't do a good job of it. Actually I think it began to change dramatically around 2000. Now, in part due to the internet, POC are getting six figure advances and getting ahead.
Why? It's who you know. And what they are looking for. It's ALWAYS been about who you knew in the publishing industry. Now that the industry is becoming slowly more diversified and a new generation is coming up that requires increasingly diverse fiction that is changing.

Also we have social media -- so people like this journalist can blast a book and publishers for not doing their job.

I think they marketed the book wrong. Instead of marketing it as a fictional story, they decided to make a social justice statement with it that backfired big time.

But, I say all that fully aware that I haven't read American Dirt, have no intention of reading it, didn't have an intention of reading it prior to now, sort of found the whole concept to be off-putting and offensive (and I'm not even Latino), and was annoyed by the huge marketing push. Also, I don't like the publishing industry or the English Literature Canon - both are racist, misogynistic pig-styes best to be avoided at all costs. ;-)

[rose_griffes]

Grapes of Wrath: a woman named Sanora Babb did a ton of fieldwork on the situation of the "Okies", and eventually got a contract to write a book about it. Her research was sent to her publishing house, and, unknown to her, shared with Steinbeck. Babb's own novel was canceled after Grapes of Wrath was such a hit.

Steinbeck might not have known the origin and purpose of Babb's field notes. Plus, we do know he did his own share of research. It's just funny and a wee bit ironic, given the discussion here.

I think they marketed the book wrong. Instead of marketing it as a fictional story, they decided to make a social justice statement with it that backfired big time.

Yeah, no way to know for sure, but I would agree that marketing played a big role in the backfire. Also agreed that I had little interest in reading the book even before the brouhaha.

[shadowkat]

Ah, thank you for this. I did not know that. Yes, that is very ironic. And quite amusing. Also, the journalist is attacking a female Spanish writer while in the same breath praising a male white writer who had quite a bit of privilege and doing it in a feminist magazine no less.
LOL!