Quote:
Originally Posted by hildea
It's possible that Davis has hurt her career, but if so, it's because of her immature handling of criticism, not because of racism in an old book. After all, the author who published that anti-semitic romance between a nazi concentration camp commander (!) and a jewish concentration camp prisoner (!!) still has a career.
|
You meant this?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DWA695U...ng=UTF8&btkr=1
Anti-semitism is mostly a conspiracy theory about Jews being, in a malign way, more powerful than we are. I'm committing Milan's sin of commenting on a book I haven't read much of (just the Amazon free sample), but what I found from the above link doesn't look anti-semitic to me.
This raises, in my mind, the question of whether Davis's book is racist. Is is wrong to say (not everywhere, not every century) that women were oppressed in traditional Chinese society? Describing this less beautifully than Pearl Buck did doesn't make you a racist. Bronze skin? Yellow skin? Doesn't sound like great writing to me. Racist? Not so much.
The members of the RWA should be free to have a trade organization promoting romance novels, or a standards enforcement agency, or a bit of both, as they wish.
I do wonder what their readers would think. The small sample of heavy/exclusive romance novel readers I know aren't exactly what you might call woke. But there must be millions of exceptions to that generalization.
P.S. I've hesitated to participate in this thread because it concerns a subject tough to talk about both candidly and without offending. I hope it will be taken in an Avenue Q spirit and apologize in advance if I've not quite gotten there (or if you can't stand Avenue Q).