White Authors, Stop Writing Cultural Appropriation

Trigger Warning: Racism and cultural appropriation.

There is something that I need to address. Something I can't ignore. I've talked about it on Twitter, but I need to talk about it here, too. White authors need to stay the hell away from the stories of people of colour.

There has been another controversy in the YA world over the last few days, surrounding The Hand, the Eye and the Heart by Zoë Marriott. It's a retelling of Mulan, set in China, with a nonbinary main character. People have spoken up about this, about how this book is harmful and offensive. How a white author has taken a story belonging to people of colour for herself, again, when there are so few chances for people of colour to tell their own stories. There have been white tears and white fragility, and a fellow white author being outright racist. And it's absolutely disgusting.

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Don't Demand Authors Perform Their Outrage for You

There has been another recent YA controversy where a marginalised author wrote a book that was harmful to another marginalised group, and insensitive about a tragedy. But that's not what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about the people who demand authors from the marginalised group that has been harmed to speak out publicly about the controversy - like this.

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