I’ve written twice (here and here) about American Heart, an upcoming young adult (YA) novel by Laura Moriarty (out January 2018), and how Kirkus Reviews dealt with it unfairly. The book is about a hypothetical America in which Muslims are put into detention camps, like some Japanese-Americans (citizens!) were during World War II, and in which a white girl, initially in favor of such camps, changes her mind when she helps a young Muslim boy escape to Canada.
The book was initially given a favorable review by Kirkus, one of the three big pre-publication review sites that’s important in determining whether libraries order new books and whether people buy them. The review, written by an “observant Muslim woman of color”, was very favorable, and in fact Kirkus awarded the book a prized “star” for its quality. That’s a big boost in attention and sales. You can see the original review at the second link above.
Then a regressive Leftist group called “YA Twitter”, devoted to policing YA books, ginned up a social media campaign of outrage, all because the book was seen through the eyes of a white girl, and was supposedly a “white saviour” novel. (Moriarty says this is wrong.) It’s clear that many of those who complained to Kirkus hadn’t read the book, as it hadn’t been released: they were operating solely on the book’s summary on Kirkus and Amazon. Yet the book was very favorably reviewed, and given a star, by what would seem to be a reviewer who would be the most captious: a religious Muslim woman.
Well, Kirkus caved in the most cowardly way: the star was removed and the review changed, with these rather negative (and clearly anti-Trump) sentences added (see my comparison of both reviews at the second link above):
Sarah Mary’s ignorance is an effective worldbuilding device, but it is problematic that Sadaf is seen only through the white protagonist’s filter. Still, some will find value in the emotionally intense exploration of extremist “patriotic” ideology, the dangers of brainwashing and blind spots, and some of the components of our nation’s social fabric that threaten to destroy us, such as segregation, greed, mistrust, and mob mentalities.
A thought-provoking, chilling read with a controversial premise.
The book was suddenly “problematic” because it was, in effect, a case of cultural appropriation: the book apparently should have been told through a “Muslim filter”.
I was upset about this because it shows how the Regressive Left can effectively censor a book they don’t find ideologically congenial, thus molding the politics of young people to their liking. It’s thought policing. We should be just as upset about this as the Left was when the Right tried to censor Lesléa Newman’s pro-gay book Heather Has Two Mommies (1989).
Now, in a piece at Vulture, Claiborne Smith, the Editor-in-Chief of Kirkus, who had some ‘splaining to do, tries to ‘splain what happened. What ensues is cowardsplaining. The first piece of news is that this kind of alteration had never happened on Smith’s watch:
Yet while investigating criticisms may be business as usual, Smith admits this is the first time during his tenure that a review has been pulled and altered in this way.
The second piece of news is the Kirkus tried to get Moriarty to remove both reviews from her personal Facebook page (you can see them at the second link above), citing the “fair use” doctrine. But that applies to using Kirkus excerpts for publicity, while Moriarty was trying to show how Kirkus changed her review. I suppose Kirkus has a legalistic argument here, but it seems likely they were simpy embarrassed at having what they did made public:
On Tuesday, after Moriarty posted the text of both reviews in a comment thread on her personal Facebook page, the magazine [Kirkus] reportedly called her publisher repeatedly to demand that she take the comments down. (Smith describes this as a standard fair-use issue — authors and publishers are only permitted to excerpt 35 percent of a review for marketing purposes.)
More repugnant is this third piece of news. Kirkus changed the review by simply deciding themselves (after social media outcry) that it needed alteration and then “persuading” the Muslim woman who first wrote it to bend to their will. Does the folowing sound like the Muslim reviewer had much input into the changes and what was to be said?
. . . while the Muslim woman who wrote the original review was involved in the editing process — “the decision to retract the star was made in full collaboration with the reviewer,” [Smith] says — altering the review does not appear to have been her idea in the first place. According to Smith, Kirkus concluded internally that edits would be made before reaching out to the reviewer.
“We wanted her to consider if changing what we thought was sort of reductive word choice, and adding deeper context, is something she thought might be appropriate,” he says, though he emphasizes it was ultimately her call: “I did not dictate that to her. She made that decision on her own.” (The word choice in question likely refers to text in the original review that referred to Sadaf as “a disillusioned immigrant,” which some commenters took exception to.)
Smith is simply covering his tuchas here. Had Smith or the other editors not come down on her, and told her what changes needed to be made, and that the star had to be removed, the review would have stood as originally published. For what choice does a paid reviewer have if she doesn’t want to alienate her bosses? Again here’s how Smith responds to the “cynic’s” claim (which is also mine) that Kirkus told the reviewer what needed to be changed:
“We wanted her to consider if changing what we thought was sort of reductive word choice, and adding deeper context, is something she thought might be appropriate.”
Sorry, but I simply don’t believe that. I’m sure they told the reviewer what changes they wanted, and of course she had to assent. That’s surely what Kirkus means by saying “she made that decision on her own.” Some “decision”! It’s like saying a Saudi woman makes her own decision to cover up when she leaves the house. I share the cynical take described by Vulture:
Kirkus’s critics are skeptical of that claim; among the more cynical takes on the controversy is that Kirkus used the reviewer’s identity as a shield, only to then suppress her voice when it didn’t toe the line. Smith bristles at that: “It’s like no one believes that this reviewer has a mind and can change her opinion. Is that so difficult to believe?”
Yes it is—when the reviewer’s job is on the line. Sorry, but Smith is being a spin doctor here, and I don’t believe him. In the end, though, he admits he removed the star because of public pressure based on the book featuring a white point of view (my emphasis below):
The answer isn’t necessarily clear. Would Kirkus’s reviewer have changed her mind independently, even if the review hadn’t been pulled for evaluation? Or did she feel pressured to alter what had proven to be a deeply unpopular opinion when asked if she wanted to, even without explicit instructions to do so? What is clear, though, is that the choice to un-star American Heart reflects something noteworthy about Kirkus’s framework for critique — one in which a book’s value is determined not just by the quality of its storytelling, but also by its politics. The sentence added to the review indicates that writing the book from Sarah Mary’s point of view remains an admirable choice from a craft perspective (“an effective world-building device”), but wrong from a moral one (“it is problematic that Sadaf is seen only through the white protagonist’s filter”). And while Smith says the call-out of said problematic element is not meant to dissuade readers from reading the book — “If readers don’t care that this novel is only told about a Muslim character, from the perspective of a white teenager, that’s fine” — he acknowledges that Kirkus does care, and does judge books at least in part on whether they adhere to certain progressive ideals. When I ask if the book’s star was revoked explicitly and exclusively because it features a Muslim character seen from the perspective of a white teenager, Smith pauses for only a second: “Yes.”
That tells us something about Kirkus, and it’s not pleasant. Well, let us see if Kirkus removes stars (or downgrades books) in the many similar cases when one culture or sex is described by members of another. There go future Huckleberry Finns and To Kill a Mockingbirds, as well as Shindler’s Lists. I doubt they’d carry out this viewpoint policing as a matter of course, because it’s simply insane. Kirkus did it because a group of offended ideologues objected: it’s not policy but simply kneejerk reactivity.
Now we see that Kirkus judges books not on their quality, but on their adherence to certain tenets of “progressive ideals,” which apparently including not writing about one culture from the viewpoint of another. Is that a way to judge books? I don’t think so.
