Wow. Just wow. Her own comment clenched it for me. She probably has no idea how ignorant she really is and therefore has no idea how much harm she can do. I won’t be reading this either. I can’t help but think if that if she just generally glosses over hardship (manifested in the many things you mentioned) that a book about frontier life couldn’t be very interesting.

hm. That’s interesting! I hadn’t read any of the discussions on this book, so that was news to me! I had it on the wish list, but unless the library got a copy I wasn’t in any hurry to read it!

@Kailana The book community on LJ/Dreamwidth seems pretty divorced from the book community as I see over here. I’m not sure why that is. I don’t want to make a lot of assumptions, but I’m guessing the book community as I know it is predominantly white and doesn’t like causing drama, whereas the other is filled with quite a few POC who put their feelings about racist/sexist/etc. authors out there when white authors show their ass.

I won’t read it nor buy it (so I say now because there’s no way for me to acquire it without purchase, it depends on my library in the future); note I didn’t say people shouldn’t read it, just that they shouldn’t buy it. I should have clarified to “buy new” because used is okay—the author doesn’t get any financial support from used copies and in a lot of these cases it’s hard to tell whether buying a book a see the trainwreck is any different than buying the book and explicitly supporting the author.

If you do get it from the library, I’d be interested in your thoughts. :/

@Laza Yes, her comment. The more I read the more I thought that it was another case of a white author being blind, but after I read that comment, I was like: “WHAT.” I couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

Sigh. The most worrisome thing is that whenever things like these happens, there are always lots of people who don’t see why it’s a problem. Especially in fantasy. You hear “but it’s only fantasy, it’s not the real world!” a lot.

That comment of hers is just…wow.

@Nymeth I have some Racism Bingo cards you could borrow. >.>

‘I think she had an idea she thought was cool, and she wanted to play with it, and it quite probably never even occurred to her that eliminating entire races in order to solve the “problems” that interfered with her achieving her goal was at all problematic.’

This pretty much sums up what I (hopefully) think happened, however the fact that she does not see the problem shows just how unaware of racial issues people are able to be in our society. I don’t think we should assume this was intentional racism (although the human habitation is a case of words chosen seriously unwisely) it seems more likely that it’s a case of super ignorance. This ignorance is in no way ok and now that the issue has been spotted it should be discussed and should be held up as an example to other authors. It also needs to lead to an expansion of the important discussion about literature and morality. The author can’t really be excused, but I’m not sure if there’s a case for demonising her – she’s clearly at a lower stage in her world-view education than others are. Perhaps comments on her book, as long as they are calmly and logically expressed will lead to her development and cause her to write more sensitive books that further the progression of racial portrayal in novels. We can but hope and shout loud, rational things.

@ Jodie: …yeah, that’s all well and good, but until I see her apologizing for offending a lot of readers I trust I’ll just continue not to read her books.

Also, I want to point that that suggesting that the people discussing her potential racism and offensive story premise are “demonizing” her is a risky line to walk; feel free to point me to a post that has attacked her character or who she is, because in my readings I have not found any, nor have I demonized her in this post. Your language is problematic and a tool I often see used to derail discussions of racism.

Yikes. I had seen the cool cover and was intrigued, but I didn’t know anything about the book. Thanks for this post–I’ll pass on this one.

Ok demonizing is so not the right word, you’re right, sorry. I think everyone would like to see her apologize but I think she needs to fully understand what she’s apologising for, for it to be of any benefit to those she’s offended and she clearly doesn’t.

This is something I’ve really struggled with because initially I was running a line of reasoning that her lack of understanding didn’t make her endeavour racist, I mean it didn’t seem like it was meant in an actively racist way, it seemed like a stupid, but honest mistake. But if you look back into history that’s exactly what many people that we would today call racist did – they may not have beaten slaves, or women, or homosexuals but they did ignore what was important to them. They did discount their histories and cultures, not because they were all evil people but because they genuinely believed these things did not matter, that their culture was the only ‘real’ one. If that makes sense at all… And if we would regard those kind of actions as racist we have to regard any modern, similar inability to understand, to comprehend how other races and genders feel and to consider that other people might need to be included when writing, as the same kind of ill-informed, racism. I don’t know, does that make sense? Not sure, it is quite late – perhaps I’m still missing the point?

@Jodie Your example does make sense, yes, but I wouldn’t call modern behavior “ill-informed” I would call it “ignorance” because there is no reason to be ill-informed about matters of race in modern society when there are such rich resources for learning about other people; for an author who researches her books this is particularly troubling. I think white people have a responsibility to self-analyze and criticize their behavior, examine their own privilege and learn when things like this happen. I think if a POC says, “Your work is offensive and here’s why.” it’s the authors responsibility to follow up on it and learn. The idea that “let’s make sure she knows what she’s apologizing for before we make her apologize.” is sticky, too. That often puts the responsibility of educating the clueless white person on the POC harmed by aforementioned clueless white person’s behavior. It often plays out like this, though, I’ve found.

A friend made a good point about racism when I got involved in another racism discussion:

I think it’s helpful here to remember that racism does not consist of individual acts of meanness. Racism is a system. When you commit racist acts, you participate in the system. When you use racist arguments or tactics, you participate in that system.

White authors and white people in general need to break out of the system by thinking. If they choose not to, that’s a benefit of their privilege. I can’t speak to whether or not Wrede will break out of that system or continue using and building it up. I hope the former.