The Dark Side of the YA Community

The world can be a cruel place. Last week, another sad story from the YA community made the rounds on the internet, Amélie Wen Zhao, would-be author of a new YA fantasy series, was bullied by overzealous social activists into pulling the first book of the series, Blood Heir, from publication just months before its release date. A large amount of aggressive tweets accused Zhao of racial insensitivity, even going as far as to say that she is an anti-black bigot. The general consensus of those who are level-headed is that Zhao is certainly not a racist. You can read more about this here.

Zhao’s struggle is just the latest in a trend in YA that’s been growing for years now. Authors have increasingly been attacked over perceived racial prejudices since the internet gave everyone an easy way to throw around accusations. The same thing happened to Veronica Roth when Carve the Mark was released (my thoughts on that here), and I know of more than one Author who has written a preemptive public apology before attempting to write their stories. If that wasn’t enough of a sign that something needs to change, maybe Zhao’s retreat will bring our community to its senses; a rising star being forced to walk away from a $500,000 3-book deal, a literal dream come true, because the people who claim to preach acceptance found that her fantasy world was unacceptably unrealistic.

I’m not saying that there are never stereotypes or tropes used in fiction that are insensitive, but from what I’ve seen, the social justice warriors seldom care if an author’s work is actually marginalizing a particular group of people or not. They flock to any novel that depicts a diverse cast of characters, and pick it apart for any opportunity to be offended. This, coupled with the enormous pressure to write diverse characters, is a recipe for a book burning that would make Ray Bradbury blush.

As a YA fiction writer who wishes to be published someday, this is a frightening situation. I wonder how many more authors will be burned before the unfair accusations end, and if I will have to defend my own stories against those who refuse to understand. The one certainty in all of this is that this censorship by the rabble is helping noone.

Despite my fears for my own work and for fiction writers at large, what I know to be true is this: That those of us who write speculative fiction have a responsibility to explore the hard topics. It is our duty to depict prejudice, inequality, systematic oppression, and other injustices so that we may confront them on the page. We must first present the wrongs that plague us today, and by pitting our characters against these in our fictional worlds, we will light the way to a better future in this one that is real. The mob mentality of the oversensitive will not deter us.

To Amélie Wen Zhao, and all of the other writers who have been wrongly accused of prejudice, I am truly saddened that this has happened to you. May we all learn from this, and confront the challenges ahead with a new determination.

-Salvatore A. Gulino