The advent of the politically incorrect
Americans installed the most politically incorrect president in living memory in the White House. This president succeeded the most politically correct president in living memory. Here is proof that democracies tend to self-balance spontaneously like living organisms, but, unfortunately, also to get sick and perish.
Peter Thiel, the technologist and visionary entrepreneur from Silicon Valley, in disheartening solitude in the valley, decided to support Donald Trump, right from the start, precisely because he was disgusted by the unbearable cloying and hypocrisy of political correctness. This rhetoric, practiced like a religion, lowered something like a thick bank of fog between the ruling class and many sectors of civil society, inhibiting the understanding of social evolution, stiffening innovation and stimulating conformity and homologation. In a recent speech Thiel compared the rhetoric of political correctness to the practice of indulgences whose abuse led to the Protestant Reformation 500 years ago, a definitive act of repudiation of political correctness. Is Trump a new Luther?
When the wrong enriches
It will be as it will be, but Trump is a boon to the media industry and God knows how badly it needs it. Since Trump's presence, the "New York Times" has almost doubled its subscribers, the "Washington Post" has climbed the Mariana trench to begin the ascent of K2, CNN has emerged from its catatonic state and is now singing like a cricket .
The same book publishers, who blame all their woes on Amazon, now look in disbelief at Amazon's sales figures. Fire and fury by Michael Wolff who in just a few weeks sold six figures across all media: 250 copies in ebooks, 100 in audiobooks; the 150 hardcover copies sold out in the blink of an eye. It was the hated Amazon that made the most sales. According to the author, to date, the book has already surpassed one million copies.
That books sell better than the iPhone? If there is the Trump effect, yes. With a politically incorrect act, Trump lashed out like a fury against Fire and fury going so far as to distrust the publisher (a trademark of Macmillan, one of the big five) from distributing it. It is the first time that a president has carried out such an act, an undoubtedly incorrect act such as the posting of the 95 theses on the door of Wittenberg cathedral in 1517.
Paradoxically, the massive injection of politically incorrect doses into the body of American civil society is provoking an equal and opposite reaction, a veritable mobilization of a part of civil society that America has not seen since Vietnam. There are many who think that a movement like #MeToo could never have occurred under a presidency like that of Hillary Clinton who would have continued, albeit in an attenuated way, Obama's politically correct policy. With Trump's politically incorrect there has been a civil awakening and also a rediscovery of the "value" of politics and "engagement" that will have lasting consequences and lead to a major revamp of all political discourse in the US and around the world western.
One of the most singular manifestations of this state of affairs, if observed from the other side of the Atlantic, is what Alexandra Alter, the literary critic of the "New York Times" tells us in the New York newspaper in an article entitled In an Era of Online Outrage, Until Sensitivity Readers result in Better Books, or Censorship?. We have translated this article. We do not make any spoilers to leave the reader the pleasure of discovery.
Be careful what you write!
In late 2015 writer Keira Drake announced the distribution of many essay copies of her latest young adult novel The Continent, a fantasy set in a world where two nations fight to the death. "It's raining for books" the writer had posted on her Facebook page.
His enthusiasm, however, deflated almost immediately. The reviews of the book that "were pouring in" online were brutal. Readers railed at what they deemed racially biased language, and the book was labeled "racist trash," "retrograde," and "offensive." The writer and her publisher, Harlequin Teen, have apologized and delayed the book's release.
One year later, The Continent it's another thing. Harlequin hired two sensitivity readers (that is, expert readers of the sensitive topics covered in the text) who identified the unsuitable stereotypes and proposed corrective measures. Drake spent the next six months rewriting the text by eliminating some dangerous characterizations such as the one that described a tribe made up of people with reddish-brown skin and painted faces. The release of the new version is expected in March 2018.
In today's hyper-responsive social media landscape, where a tweet can unleash an avalanche of outrage and trigger book deletion requests, children's book authors and publishers are taking the necessary precautions to proactively identify potential pitfalls in the structure and in the content of a novel. Many are turning to sensitivity readers who can provide feedback on issues such as race, religion, gender, sexuality, chronic disease and physical disability. The role these readers play in shaping the content of a children's book has become a crucial point in the sensitive debate about diversity, cultural appropriation and minority representation. Some think that relying on this type of readership is equivalent to censorship.
Pros and cons i sensitivity reader
Behind the scenes these readers have a profound impact particularly on children's literature, redefining stories in a macro and micro way before they can reach an easily influenced young audience. Like editors and fact-checkers, "sensitive readers" can ensure preventive control of the content to avoid embarrassing mistakes, but their competence also expresses itself in a more problematic and subjective territory, namely that of avoiding potentially offensive representations of minorities in the content of a picture book, science fiction or fantasy novel.
There is a newfound interest in children's publishing in serving the public something authentic and correct. When an author ventures out of his own direct experience, we want to make sure he's done his homework. Says David Levithan, vice president of Scholastic Press, which regularly addresses sensitivity readers.
Many see this growing reliance of publishers on sensitivity readers as a setback and warn that this trend could produce sugarcoated books that revolve around difficult topics instead of tackling them. Skeptics say this increased scrutiny discourages authors from writing about cultures other than their own, resulting in homogenized literature. “We will no longer be able to read Othello because Shakespeare was not a Moor” Francine Prose recently wrote in an essay on The New York Review of Books on reader sensitivity and censorship.
Others have echoed Prose, arguing that sensitivity readers could have twisted masterpieces like The confessions of Nat Turner by William Styron (published in Italy by Mondadori) o The dark beyond the hedge by Harper Lee or The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. After he has dealt with the subject Slate, an author on the “National Review” she wondered if “by giving sensitivity readers the freedom to hijack the authors' vision, we end up losing masterpieces that otherwise would have reached us in their original conception”.
Defenders of that practice claim that sensitivity readers do not prevent authors from dealing with thorny subjects or writing about culturally transversal topics, but help them to focus on the correct way to represent them. Says Dhonielle Clayton, a former librarian and writer who rated over 30 children's books as sensitivity readers in one year:
It is a work of improvement, censorship has nothing to do with it” . “There are a lot of authors who write about different cultures and many do it badly, causing damage.
Children's literature
Sensitivity readers are not a new thing and publishers have always relied on experts such as historians, psychologists, lawyers, magistrates, police officers to ensure the verisimilitude of the narratives. More than XNUMX years ago, Scholastic asked a child psychologist to evaluate the plot and dialogue of her hit series The baby club babysitter (published in Italy by Mondadori) because the books touched on delicate aspects such as eating disorders and divorce. In any case, the use of sensitivity readers has become more frequent in recent years due to an avalanche of controversies over books that some readers have deemed racist, homophobic or culturally out of tune.
Scholastic pulled its picture book from bookstores last year A birthday Cake for George Washington for the criticism that the book indirectly absolved slavery by failing to detail the appalling living conditions of a black baker, who eventually emancipates himself. Candlewick Press has postponed the release of When we was fierce by E. Charlton-Trujillo after some readers complained that the book reinforced negative stereotypes of slum youth. The black witch by Laurie Forest, a fantasy novel about a teenager who grew up in a xenophobic society, drew scathing reviews from readers who branded it as racist, sexist and homophobic. It has received over 800 negative reviews on Goodreads. And this year Laura Moriarty's dystopian novel, American heart, was massacred nine months before its release by critics who saw all the defects of a story that paints the white man as the savior. “It was really exhausting, people were so mad at this book,” Moriarty said
The outrage is not confined to children's literature. The cultural appropriation debate has extended to adult literature as well, and even notable authors have started turning to sensitivity readers.
Jodi Picoult for her 2016 novel Little big things (published in Italy by Corbaccio) was aimed at readers belonging to the minorities described in the novel, including Nic Stone, an African-American writer and author of the bestseller Dear Martin, to review the first draft of the novel. Stone's findings helped Picault properly contextualize issues of racism from an African-American perspective, as Picault herself acknowledges in an email. Nic Stone has worked as a sensitivity reader on more than a dozen books, including Godsgrave an adult novel by Jay Kristoff that takes place in a fantasy world where slavery reigns.
In children's publishing, where there is a high demand for books on diversity, sensitivity readers have become routine in editorial work. In order to spot early critical points that could spark a social media conflagration, publishers and authors are seeking proactive feedback from readers who share the same cultural background as the novel's characters.
For a recent teen novel, Ghosts of green glass house - the story of a Chinese boy named Milo adopted by a white American couple through international adoption – author Kate Milford commissioned three readers, adopted by white American families, to rate the content. After getting their feedback, she perfected the vocabulary and role of the characters. One small but significant change was to drop the adjective adoptive from parents and refer to them simply as "hers' parents." Milford commented “I find it uncomfortable to write outside of my direct experience. There's a lot of paranoia and outrage going around."
Stacy Whitman, the director of the children's publishing house Tu Books, commissions preliminary readings by sensitivity readers for most of her books and occasionally also asks for the opinion of these readers during the submission phase, i.e. before buying the rights to a book.
While he was working on the novel ahimsa of Supriya Kelkar, which takes place in 1942 India and focuses on the action of a young girl in the non-violent movement, Whitman called a sensitivity reader from the Indian Dait community, which is at the bottom rung of the caste system Hindu. Whitman motivated this choice as follows:
I convinced myself that we needed someone from the Dalit community to look at the dynamic of the story, because there is an important dynamic and the author is not a Dalit.
Kelkar, who is Indian-American, says she was pleased with the feedback she received:
I wanted to make sure that the characters were framed correctly and that the injustices suffered were accurately portrayed.
I sensitivity reader protect them from the fury of social media?
Of course, the intervention of sensitivity readers is not always an effective antidote against missteps or to avoid unleashing online indignation.
Moriarty has already said that her novel American Heart, soon to be released, will be polarizing. The book develops a story in a dystopian America where Muslims are marginalized and sent to detention camps. It is narrated by a teenager who gradually overcomes prejudice against Muslims and tries to help a refugee, an Iranian migrant, flee to Canada.
Moriarty got the idea for the novel during the presidential race when she became alarmed by anti-Muslim and anti-immigration propaganda. “I felt the need to respond artistically,” she said.
While writing, Moriarty solicited feedback from a few readers, including a Muslim of Pakistani descent and two Iranian-Americans, to verify that she hadn't misrepresented their culture and faith. She has read books on Islam, watched YouTube videos that offer different readings of what Islam means to those who follow it.
Last November, he sold the book to HarperTeen who, in turn, took two readers of the Muslim faith to review them. Moriarty incorporated their suggestions. Finally, last spring, Moriarty received an email from a stranger warning her of a possible social media uproar over the book's content.
The campaign against the book escalated after Kirkus Reviews published a glowing, star-studded review of the book describing it as “suspenseful, profound, provocative and moving”. Critics of the book, who see the story as offensive and dehumanizing of Muslims, bombarded Kirkus with complaints demanding that she withdraw the review. The newspaper withdrew the review with a contrite statement from its editor in chief, Claiborne Smith, who said the review, written by a Muslim woman, had been re-evaluated by the editorial board. The revised version was much more critical and star-deprived.
Moriarty is concerned that readers are staying away from the book as a result of this controversy. She commented on this state of affairs thus:
I wonder how, in this context, books can come out. There is no sensitivity reader in the world that can solve this situation.
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Correct: The only solution is the resolution of the conflict between political correctness and political incorrectness and the return of intelligence in the public conversation. There will be a long time to wait.
