can we please stop pretending that the young adult scene is not actual garbage right now??? can we stop kidding ourselves?? no i’m not fed up with young adult lit because the majority of the authors in the scene are women. i’m fed up with it because the scene is fucking catty, repetitive, exclusive, and, to reiterate, GARBAGE.
- yeah, okay, first off: cattiness. i recently saw a blurb for some release or other boasting that is “better than the hunger games” like what the fuck?? what kind of dirty tactics? “pitched as x classic thing meets x series” seriously?? competition is one thing but climbing all over another series just to get your shit promoted is catty, dirty, and immature. damn straight i’m side-eying a book with cross-clique blurbs because that shit is ridiculous.
- which brings me to the repetitiveness. your young adult book is the hunger games with x twist? why the fuck should i care? couldn’t you have uploaded that to ff.net and called it a day? i’m legit so tired of white authors spinning each other’s work and calling it a day, meanwhile a woc author has to turn the world inside out in order to get published, and it’s like, are you serious?
- WHICH BRINGS ME TO: exclusivity!! haha like please go to your local barnes and noble and look down the teen fiction aisle. note how many of those authors are white. note how many of the covers feature white teenagers. note how many of those white teenagers are straight, cis, able bodied, etc. and then tell me that that’s not something to be fucking fed up with. like i dare you, straight white author, to tell me, queer black mentally ill woman, to stop bagging on a genre that refuses to represent me or even acknowledge my existence as a human being. go ahead.
- so yeah, finally, the combined aspects make it all garbage to me. like, absolute trash.
i’m fucking fed up and no, it’s not on account of my ~internalized misogyny~. i’m not gonna be quiet about it because i spend my money on these books. i spend money and time going through the teen fiction section and am disappointed time after time. the whitewashing, the queerbaiting, the exoticism and racism adds up after a time and its fucking infuriating. this isn’t to say that i think every YA book on the shelf is fucking trash because that’s ridiculous. i have read some seriously amazing debuts—amazing, original, inclusive works by authors who seriously need more attention. as a whole, though? YA is trash and it’s gonna be at least a decade before i even consider redacting that statement
you know what a scary thought is
people shutting down bookstores because “no one buys books” anymore they just download them
and if thats not scary then i dont know what is
When trouble strikes, head to the library. You will either be able to solve the problem, or simply have something to read as the world crashes down around you.
Lemony Snicket (via ladymargaerytyrell)
I want to tell you an honest truth people, because of all the racism I have endured in my life (and even seeing the racism my own children have had to face) I cannot help but resent when caucasians write about Asian culture. Yes, I resent them. I absolutely do. Yet, at the same time, I appreciate them for at least trying to do it, when they do it right.
It is a complicated situation. There is no easy answer. We need diversity in literature. We need it desperately. Diversity is not only for the under-represented—the truth is, diversity is important for everyone. All people need to be exposed to other races and other cultures in positive ways. All people need to learn tolerance and acceptance of differences. When we promote only a homogeneous view of society in our literature and our media, and deem books or movies about minorities as unsuccessful, it harms everyone. And so it is important that all authors include diversity in their books.
But there is that part of me that wonders why is it that when I see a list about what Asian fantasy books are out there, the books are predominantly by caucasian authors. Are POC writers not writing them or are they being passed over for books written by non-POC authors instead? And why is it that books by or about POC don’t tend to sell as well as other “mainstream” books. What is the difference? Is it the difference in how they are marketed? Is it their cover art? Where they are placed in the bookstore or library? How they are pushed or not pushed by the booksellers, librarians, and teachers?
Ellen Oh – Why Being a POC Author Sucks Sometimes (via sumayyahdaud)
Book borrowing is the biggest form of true love it’s like, “Here’s a piece of my soul that I think you would enjoy.“
