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Tag: twitter feud
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Little, Brown and Company shared a quarantine house tweet Monday morning to its almost half a million followers, but it was quickly met with criticism after sharing six houses with all white authors. After most of the responders asked the publisher to delete the offensive tweet, the publisher later did just that and apologized for its oversight. But this incident added fire to the continuous discussion on diversity and inclusion in the publishing industry.
The quarantine house tweet trend has taken over the social media network with users grouping well-known people in a particular industry in so-called houses and asking their followers to pick a number, a house they would want to be quarantined in. The trend is supposed to be a viral uplifter amid the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic where most people are staying home in quarantine. But the fun feel of this tweet backfired.
A few authors and other tweeters quickly noticed that none of the houses featured authors of color. The publisher responded that it purposely highlighted its roster of authors, which isn’t diverse.
Some responders mentioned that the Hachette Book Group imprint is associated with authors of color such as: Attica Locke, who is currently a writer on the Hulu series Little Fires Everywhere promoting her recent book Heaven, My Home; Walter Mosley, who won the Los Angeles Times Robert Kirsch Award Monday; Malcolm Gladwell, the well-known intellectual with a recent book called Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don’t Know; and Marie Kondo, whose new book Joy at Work: Organizing Your Professional Life came out last week. Walter and Marie later were promoted on the publisher’s timeline along with press articles about their work.
Dawnn Karen, the author of Dress Your Best Life: How to Use Fashion Psychology to Take Your Look—and Your Life—to the Next Level, and Leslie Gray Streeter, the author of Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like “Journey” in the Title, are two black women authors with upcoming books within the imprint. A promotional tweet for Leslie’s book was shared by Little, Brown and Co. and another one was retweeted, so the social media promotion for authors of color ramped up after the quarantine house tweet was taken down.
Little, Brown and Co.’s admission that its author roster was not diverse should force the publisher to take diversity more seriously like Flatiron Books promised to do after the backlash around Jeanine Cummins’ best-selling novel American Dirt. The diversity issue in publishing also coincides with #DVpit Twitter pitch party for marginalized authors looking for literary agent representation next week on April 22 and April 23.
Over the last week of the year, news spread of novelist Courtney Milan getting punished by Romance Writers of America for making claims that fellow romance novelists had written racial stereotypes into their works. Knocking diversity down a peg at the 9,000-member writers’ trade group, the news also showed how these groups are still struggling with supporting members of color and maintaining a diverse board.
Now a former RWA board member, Courtney, who identifies as Chinese-American, said on Twitter that fellow member Kathryn Lynn Davis had used stereotypes of Asian women in a book, according to media reports. Kathryn and Suzan Tisdale, who work together at an imprint, filed complaints with the RWA over Courtney’s comments, according to the organization’s statement.
This led to the RWA ethics panel suspending Courtney’s membership for one year and banning her permanently from leadership positions. When this news surfaced online two days before Christmas, RWA changed course to avoid “the spreading of false information, threats, and personal information” and rescinded the sanctions. Several board members resigned over issues connected to the situation while RWA members and other writers continue to express their opinions on social media.
For writers in any genre, RWA is considered one of the most valuable resources in the industry. From experience, I’ve been to one local event where I paid $10 and learned several book marketing techniques from a successful indie author. Around 50 people came to the event, crammed into a school classroom. I had never been to a regular literary group meeting that garnered such high attendance and audience engagement.
When I joined a local board of the Women’s National Book Association and attended the national meeting, other members warmly welcomed me. It was due to the attempt to diversify the board and the association as a whole. This is slowly becoming a priority at these long-standing writers’ organizations yet there are still a lot of missteps. For example, WNBA had a local board with a black president and vice president and the chapter fell apart due to the lack of financial resources the national organization wasn’t willing to contribute.
Like Courtney tweets below, these organizations depend on extra money from their members, who many haven’t yet been published and/or don’t have disposable cash to get the help the organization promises.
https://twitter.com/courtneymilan/status/1212844250137858049
I’ve also been a part of writing critique groups where I would be one of the only people of color in the room. I have expressed to writers when I believe a scene or the use of a character can come off as offensive. Once, I told a writer her story revolving around the police shooting death of her main character’s unarmed black male friend and it turning out to be all about the main character, who was a white female, could be seen as racist and/or insensitive. I added that the reader doesn’t see the black friend’s family or community who would be more devastated; just the white woman and her community. Writers may want to add diversity to their books but how it’s done can make a difference in whether they’ll receive backlash later down the road.
In RWA’s statement, it says Kathryn Lynn Davis lost a three-book contract because of Courtney’s tweets. The New York Times reports Suzan Tisdale has lost potential authors on her imprint over the controversy.
Personally, I’ve found solace and support in the growing number of black women’s writing and reading communities such as Mocha Girls Read, The Free Black Women’s Library, and Well-Read Black Girl. There’s been exponential growth in people of color establishing their own organizations due to not feeling comfortable within industry-respected organizations like RWA.
I started she lit as a literary lifestyle blog for all women because of the thick racial divide between white women and nonwhite women, millennial women and middle-aged women. Ageism also plays a role, where you put all these women from different backgrounds in one room and expect reading and writing to connect us all. But the range of time periods we’ve lived in perpetuates the racism or the general misunderstanding of each other.
The RWA story also touches on the lack of diverse beta readers writers may use. Writers tend to rely on their communities to go over their polished manuscripts, but those communities may not be that diverse, e.g. all women, all white women, all straight women, etc. A diverse panel of beta readers can help detect offensive descriptions that won’t receive such criticism and hurt an author’s career. A literary agent and a publisher may not see those issues because there is a diversity problem in the industry with most agents being white.
This is the second social media blow-up in the last two months involving well-known women writers oversharing a private conversation or matter on Twitter that turned into racial backlash caught by the eye of mainstream media.
This past week, young adult author Sarah Dessen tweeted a quote from a college article by a woman who campaigned against her books in a campus reading program years ago. Many authors including Roxane Gay and Siobhan Vivian came to Sarah’s defense—until fans clapped back when the woman was being called derogatory names by top women authors. The authors backpedaled with some Twitter users accusing Sarah of white female victimhood and the authors of attacking readers with opinions on their works.
As of the weekend, the discriminatory tweets have disappeared from top authors’ Twitter feeds, including Siobhan Vivian, author of YA book We Are the Wildcats, who tweeted “Fuck that fucking bitch” about the quoted woman with Sarah saying “I love you” back.
Dhonielle Clayton, author of multicultural fantasy YA novel The Belles and co-founder of We Need Diverse Books, called the quoted woman a “raggedy ass fucking bitch.” Tiffany Jackson, author of YA novels Allegedly and Monday’s Not Coming, agreed. Siobhan’s Twitter account doesn’t exist anymore and her professional website has been made private, and Dhonielle’s account, which was very active with thousands of followers and tweets, now only has tweets from Nov. 14. 
The Nov. 12 article in question came from The Aberdeen News on Northern State University’s Common Read program. Brooke Nelson, now a master’s degree student, says in the article:
“She’s fine for teen girls. But definitely not up to the level of Common Read. So I became involved simply so I could stop them from ever choosing Sarah Dessen.”
Brooke, according to the article, helped with the 2017 selection, which became Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, a memoir by a civil rights lawyer in pursuit of justice which will be a movie starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx. Sarah’s 2016 novel Saint Anything was in the running, a Vulture article reported. After Sarah mentioned the criticism in the infamous now-deleted tweet, the university issued an apology on Twitter in support of Sarah and against the free speech of an alum. Even the reporter apologized for adding the quote.
https://twitter.com/kgrandstrandAAN/status/1194307799385300998?s=20
The Washington Post was one of the first news outlets to see the Twitter feud unfold. The reporter interviewed Brooke, who said the quote was taken out of context with her emphasizing she didn’t think Sarah’s book was appropriate as a top book for her college crowd, and asked for her input:
Nelson, for her part, said she hopes the controversy draws more people to read books that will encourage them to think critically about pressing social issues.
“If anything comes out of this larger conversation,” Nelson told The Post, “I hope it is that others will make it a point to read books like [‘Just Mercy’] that push them beyond their usual perspective and challenge their assumptions of society.”
https://twitter.com/sarahdessen/status/1195431073892749315
https://twitter.com/rgay/status/1195405484905250817
https://twitter.com/pronounced_ing/status/1195742500369162240
https://twitter.com/jodipicoult/status/1195744857047928840
https://twitter.com/jenniferweiner/status/1195470675034685441
https://twitter.com/nkjemisin/status/1195745641768652800
Not everybody is going to like your book. And sometimes like in Sarah’s case, your book may be heavily scrutinized in some scenarios, even in a small-town news story about a small-town university’s book program. This comes with the territory.
Also, this story shows even as outspoken writers you have to be careful about what you decide to share publicly. Social media is an important asset to connecting with fans and readers, and now some of the authors involved have chosen to start over or take a break while most just deleted the first tweet in support of Sarah and tweeted an apology instead.
Ignore the haters if you don’t have anything nice to say; if it’s threatening in any way, then report the tweet and block the user, but just breathe when you see something constructive that you don’t like. Let it go, and if someone asks about the criticism, don’t respond or say something diplomatic because at the end of the day not everyone is going to like your work and they have the right to say so.
The unfortunate Twitter saga has some followers promoting a boycott, so we’ll keep a watch on how the authors involved will be impacted. Earlier this year, Netflix announced making three of Sarah’s novels into films.