Social Justice Lit

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

I’ll take that and raise you one.
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First published in 1928 under the title “Almos’ a Man” by Richard Wright.

Why the fuck would you ever write like this on purpose? It's almost illegible.

 

[Linako 2.0]

Why the fuck would you ever write like this on purpose? It's almost illegible.

it's pretty legilable to me. just read it phonetically like someone from the deep south .

 

[QuokkaCaptain]

Louise O’Neill is another good example for this thread. One book called ‘Only Ever Yours’, in essence a ripoff of The Handmaid’s Tale, and another ‘Asking For It’ where woman gets reviled for being sexually abused. Predictable, cookie cutter feminist victim complex shite. It gets rave reviews from The Guardian, naturally.

I remember some other book which also got raves about women suddenly developing electric powers (I think it was called The Power). Don’t know who the author was but similar to the above, with some bullshit pretense of ‘what if the world was like this’ with none of the intrigue, creativity or subtlety that makes these things work.

Oh JESUS, I read like half of 'Only Ever Yours' years ago. It was godawfully preachy, and I remember people who criticized it saying it was Handmaid's Tale Lite. Here's two others I've found recently:

(Link)

The Girls of Innovations Academy are beautiful and well-behaved—it says so on their report cards. Under the watchful gaze of their Guardians, the all-girl boarding school offers an array of studies and activities, from “Growing a Beautiful and Prosperous Garden” to “Art Appreciation” and “Interior Design.” The girls learn to be the best society has to offer. Absent is the difficult math coursework, or the unnecessary sciences or current events. They are obedient young ladies, free from arrogance or defiance. Until Mena starts to realize that their carefully controlled existence may not be quite as it appears.

As Mena and her friends begin to uncover the dark secrets of what’s actually happening there—and who they really are—the girls of Innovations will find out what they are truly capable of. Because some of the prettiest flowers have the sharpest thorns.

(Link)

No one speaks of the grace year. It’s forbidden.

In Garner County, girls are told they have the power to lure grown men from their beds, to drive women mad with jealousy. They believe their very skin emits a powerful aphrodisiac, the potent essence of youth, of a girl on the edge of womanhood. That’s why they’re banished for their sixteenth year, to release their magic into the wild so they can return purified and ready for marriage. But not all of them will make it home alive.

Sixteen-year-old Tierney James dreams of a better life—a society that doesn’t pit friend against friend or woman against woman, but as her own grace year draws near, she quickly realizes that it’s not just the brutal elements they must fear. It’s not even the poachers in the woods, men who are waiting for a chance to grab one of the girls in order to make a fortune on the black market. Their greatest threat may very well be each other.

With sharp prose and gritty realism, The Grace Year examines the complex and sometimes twisted relationships between girls, the women they eventually become, and the difficult decisions they make in-between.

I didn't read the book itself, but the author had a really stupid note at the end where she describes (iirc) being on a bus, and seeing an older lady side-eyeing a younger girl (teens/twenties) like she was judging her, and the author saying (again, iirc) that she wanted to cry over how we treat young women in society and how we pit women against other women. Which was the most idiotic, projecting nonsense that I've ever heard: You saw what you thought was an older woman side-eying a younger woman on a bus. No words were exchanged, and yet you assume that she was judging her or wanting to treat her badly because she was young and pretty. Someone has been chugging the paranoid feminist kool-aid.

I think I mentioned it somewhere before, but a lot of YA books have come out with a sort of Handmaid's Tale bent to them since the Hulu show took off. It's Feminist Oppression Porn, and it's very marketable right now. The same thing happened back in 2012 when YA exploded with Rape Lit after the Steubenville Rape incident (I think 'Only Ever Yours' might have been part of that wave). And now #MeToo has revived the fucked-up call to arms. Speaking of which:

In today's edition of "Why is This Fucked Up Book With an Obvious Political Bias Being Marketed at Middle Schoolers", we have Barbara Dee's

(Link)

Barbara Dee explores the subject of #MeToo for the middle grade audience in this novel about experiencing harassment and unwanted attention from classmates.

For seventh grader Mila, it starts with an unwanted hug on the school blacktop.

The next day, it’s another hug. A smirk. Comments. It all feels…weird. According to her friend Zara, Mila is being immature, overreacting. Doesn’t she know what flirting looks like?

But it keeps happening, despite Mila’s protests. On the bus, in the halls. Even during band practice-the one time Mila could always escape to her “blue-sky” feeling. It seems like the boys are EVERYWHERE. And it doesn’t feel like flirting–so what is it?

Mila starts to gain confidence when she enrolls in karate class. But her friends still don’t understand why Mila is making such a big deal about the boys’ attention. When Mila is finally pushed too far, she realizes she can’t battle this on her own–and finds help in some unexpected places.

Same thing with the Trayvon Martin case: Loads of "black kids getting shot by cops" books came out afterwards. Jewell Parker Rhodes is one of them, although this is based off of that kid Tamir Rice who pointed an airsoft gun that was literally fucking indistinguishable from a real gun unless you looked closely at a cop and got shot for it.

(Link)

Twelve-year-old Jerome is shot by a police officer who mistakes his toy gun for a real threat. As a ghost, he observes the devastation that’s been unleashed on his family and community in the wake of what they see as an unjust and brutal killing.

Soon Jerome meets another ghost: Emmett Till, a boy from a very different time but similar circumstances. Emmett helps Jerome process what has happened, on a journey towards recognizing how historical racism may have led to the events that ended his life. Jerome also meets Sarah, the daughter of the police officer, who grapples with her father’s actions.

Once again Jewell Parker Rhodes deftly weaves historical and socio-political layers into a gripping and poignant story about how children and families face the complexities of today’s world, and how one boy grows to understand American blackness in the aftermath of his own death.

 

[Piga Dgrifm]

I remember some other book which also got raves about women suddenly developing electric powers (I think it was called The Power). Don’t know who the author was but similar to the above, with some bullshit pretense of ‘what if the world was like this’ with none of the intrigue, creativity or subtlety that makes these things work.

The author is Naomi Alderman. Fun fact about that one: It involves women constantly gang-raping men and boys en masse, torturing them, and getting away with murdering them, which the author as well as her fans think is just the reverse of the world we currently live in.

I enjoy a lot of grotesque horror books, but reading scenes in this one and knowing it's something the author genuinely believes and not something she wrote to just be a scary, gruesome story, it made me hope she never has a son.

 

[QuokkaCaptain]

"economist who advocates for open borders"

A globalist who apparently bet heavily on globalist trade instead of doing business with those "flyover" states.

I particularly enjoy how the first page shows a man (presumably an illegal alien from Mexico) expressing astonishiment at the fact that you should be able to prove you are a U.S. citizen prior to voting, as though this is a novel event that has only ever existed in one country in the entire world. Then you have a woman who is buying up supplies to send back to her family. That remind me of something, but I can't remember what ...

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That book kept being foisted on us when I was training to be an English teacher. My fellow student teachers kept suggesting it to me and that's what a lot of my students chose to read. I think I got to the second page before I quietly shut the book and set it aside, never to open it back up.



You never can win in oppression olympics: it's a constant game of one-upmanship in which each person participating fucks over another person to become the main focus of attention, all to earn some fame and shekels.

I'm fond of repeating this story, but there was a class I was forced to take in which we had to come up with an annotated bibliography for a unit in a potential English class that we would teach. This bibliograph would include all manner of media, and we had to write, for the notes, what it contributed to the unit. I came up with a "wild west" unit, in which I had works like True Grit, The Searchers, etc. My professor docked points from my assignment, stating that I didn't have enough minority representation with regard to the authors. I wrote her an e-mail back, asking her what the diversity quota should be, and why "minority representation" was needed. I asked her why quality and intent should be sacrificed for that quota, and then I explained how, even though she may not approve of the authors' ethnicity and sex, that they portrayed a wide variety of women, Native Americans, etc. in complex ways. I demonstrated how, for instance, the main antagonist from The Searchers was a round character who had justifiable motives for doing what he did. I went on to discuss how the protagonist of True Grit was also round and dynamic, and how she's not portrayed in either a positive or negative stereotypical light, but instead is treated as a complex character with both admirable traits and flaws, and how she grew as a character. I finished my e-mail by saying that people shouldn't find themselves restricted in connecting to a character just because they don't share the same exact list of physical and personality traits, and people who do get hung up about skin color and sex in literature are the problem, not a "lack of representation." The funny thing is, I was completely respectful in this letter. I used another term to describe "diversity quota."

I don't think she appreciated my e-mail, because I never heard back from her and she never changed my grade.

If I was just taking a shot in the dark, I'd wager she didn't respond to you because she knew she could possibly get in trouble for showing her biases.

She gave you an assignment to come up with a bibliography for a pretend-unit you would teach. I'm assuming she did not put "diverse authors" as part of the requirements for the project. Ergo, she docked your grade for something that was not part of the requirements for the project.

Now, I don't know what the "culture" was at your college, but at the one I went to I would have felt very comfortable going to the department head and saying "Hey, my professor docked points from my project for something that was explicitly not in the requirements she set down". And the conclusion, in this case, would likely be that the professor did it because of her own personal sociopolitical biases. She probably knew that, and realized that giving you an explanation for why she penalized you for not having "diverse authors" would only add a few more nails in her coffin if you did report her to someone for it.

That's my theory, anyway. College is big money, and as such grades are a big deal. If you think a professor penalized you NOT because you failed to meet the requirements for an assignment, but because she had ideological reasons for disagreeing with you? That's reportable.

 

[AnOminous]

Why the fuck would you ever write like this on purpose? It's almost illegible.

It's gone out of style but phonetically representing dialects used to be common. For instance, Joseph's Yorkshire dialect in Wuthering Heights, which is nearly incomprehensible today, although some people find even modern Yorkshire dialect incomprehensible when spoken as well.

 

[Piga Dgrifm]

"economist who advocates for open borders"

A globalist who apparently bet heavily on globalist trade instead of doing business with those "flyover" states.

I particularly enjoy how the first page shows a man (presumably an illegal alien from Mexico) expressing astonishiment at the fact that you should be able to prove you are a U.S. citizen prior to voting, as though this is a novel event that has only ever existed in one country in the entire world. Then you have a woman who is buying up supplies to send back to her family. That remind me of something, but I can't remember what ...

Ver archivo adjunto 1221516​

That book kept being foisted on us when I was training to be an English teacher. My fellow student teachers kept suggesting it to me and that's what a lot of my students chose to read. I think I got to the second page before I quietly shut the book and set it aside, never to open it back up.



You never can win in oppression olympics: it's a constant game of one-upmanship in which each person participating fucks over another person to become the main focus of attention, all to earn some fame and shekels.

I'm fond of repeating this story, but there was a class I was forced to take in which we had to come up with an annotated bibliography for a unit in a potential English class that we would teach. This bibliograph would include all manner of media, and we had to write, for the notes, what it contributed to the unit. I came up with a "wild west" unit, in which I had works like True Grit, The Searchers, etc. My professor docked points from my assignment, stating that I didn't have enough minority representation with regard to the authors. I wrote her an e-mail back, asking her what the diversity quota should be, and why "minority representation" was needed. I asked her why quality and intent should be sacrificed for that quota, and then I explained how, even though she may not approve of the authors' ethnicity and sex, that they portrayed a wide variety of women, Native Americans, etc. in complex ways. I demonstrated how, for instance, the main antagonist from The Searchers was a round character who had justifiable motives for doing what he did. I went on to discuss how the protagonist of True Grit was also round and dynamic, and how she's not portrayed in either a positive or negative stereotypical light, but instead is treated as a complex character with both admirable traits and flaws, and how she grew as a character. I finished my e-mail by saying that people shouldn't find themselves restricted in connecting to a character just because they don't share the same exact list of physical and personality traits, and people who do get hung up about skin color and sex in literature are the problem, not a "lack of representation." The funny thing is, I was completely respectful in this letter. I used another term to describe "diversity quota."

I don't think she appreciated my e-mail, because I never heard back from her and she never changed my grade.

Unless she put "You must have [X number] of [Y ethnicity] writers" in the assignment's description then that's total and complete nonsense.

It would be a silly requirement anyway, but to just pull it out of her ass after the assignment was already done is bullshit. You can't just not ask for something and then complain because you didn't get it.

 

[QuokkaCaptain]

I can't remember if I mentioned it on this site or somewhere else (I feel like I have?), but this is another one that had me tearing my hair out.

(Link)

Debut YA author Natasha Díaz pulls from her personal experience to inform this powerful coming-of-age novel about the meaning of friendship, the joyful beginnings of romance, and the racism and religious intolerance that can both strain a family to the breaking point and strengthen its bonds.

Who is Nevaeh Levitz?

Growing up in an affluent suburb of New York City, sixteen-year-old Nevaeh Levitz never thought much about her biracial roots. When her Black mom and .J.e.w.i.s.h. dad split up, she relocates to her mom's family home in Harlem and is forced to confront her identity for the first time.

Nevaeh wants to get to know her extended family, but one of her cousins can't stand that Nevaeh, who inadvertently passes as white, is too privileged, pampered, and selfish to relate to the injustices they face on a daily basis as African Americans. In the midst of attempting to blend their families, Nevaeh's dad decides that she should have a belated bat mitzvah instead of a sweet sixteen, which guarantees social humiliation at her posh private school. Even with the push and pull of her two cultures, Nevaeh does what she's always done when life gets complicated: she stays silent.

It's only when Nevaeh stumbles upon a secret from her mom's past, finds herself falling in love, and sees firsthand the prejudice her family faces that she begins to realize she has a voice. And she has choices. Will she continue to let circumstances dictate her path? Or will she find power in herself and decide once and for all who and where she is meant to be?

I did not read the book itself, but again, the author's note was pretty illuminating: The author more or less apologizes for being half-white and the inherent privilege that comes with it. Standard SJW "I Need to Apologize for Things I Have Zero Control Over" fare. It was so full of self-abuse that you just fucking knew that her black relatives had been shitting on her and brainwashing her for being half-white and light-skinned and therefore not being as oppressed as them. She sounded like she was in a goddamn cult.

I felt bad for her for having obviously had her self-esteem beaten to a pulp, but I also wanted to slap her for putting this attitude in a book marketed towards teenagers and children. There are probably a lot of mixed-race kids who struggle with racism from one or both sides of their family, and they don't need a fucking author coming in and saying "Your family is right, you are a piece of shit for being born with less melanin than them".

EDIT: Formatting and that goddamn word filter

 

[Monolith]

The fact that she's named Nevaeh is the icing on the cake.

 

[QuokkaCaptain]

Oh, @LetterlandMafia, since you brought her up: Did you know Louise O'Neill put out one of those Post-Steubenville Rape books I mentioned?

(Link)

It's the beginning of the summer in a small town in Ireland. Emma O'Donovan is eighteen years old, beautiful, happy, confident. One night, there's a party. Everyone is there. All eyes are on Emma.

The next morning, she wakes on the front porch of her house. She can't remember what happened, she doesn't know how she got there. She doesn't know why she's in pain. But everyone else does.

Photographs taken at the party show, in explicit detail, what happened to Emma that night. But sometimes people don't want to believe what is right in front of them, especially when the truth concerns the town's heroes...

She also did a feminist reimagining of The Little Mermaid, because of course she did.

(Link)

Deep beneath the sea, off the cold Irish coast, Gaia is a young mermaid who dreams of freedom from her controlling father.

On her first swim to the surface, she is drawn towards a human boy. She longs to join his carefree world, but how much will she have to sacrifice? What will it take for the little mermaid to find her voice?

Hans Christian Andersen's original fairy tale is reimagined through a searing feminist lens, with the stunning, scalpel-sharp writing and world building that has won Louise her legions of devoted fans. A book with the darkest of undercurrents, full of rage and rallying cries: storytelling at its most spellbinding.

One of my least favorite trends, YA or otherwise, is reimagining popular myths/fairytales from a "feminist" perspective.

Just let me have Ariel acting like a realistic twit teenager making bad choices to spite daddy instead of your shallow, one-note, GURL POWER! icon. What is it with feminists trying to pretend that girls aren't capable of being stupid or making bad choices (or blaming said stupidity or bad choices on the patriarchy)?

 

[Piga Dgrifm]

The author more or less apologizes for being half-white and the inherent privilege that comes with it.

It isn't a privilege though. The white supreeemacist tards shit on you, and the SocJus tards shit on you. How's it a privilege to be hated by both sides of that Autistic horseshoe?

 

[LetterlandMafia]

Oh, @LetterlandMafia, since you brought her up: Did you know Louise O'Neill put out one of those Post-Steubenville Rape books I mentioned?

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(Link)




She also did a feminist reimagining of The Little Mermaid, because of course she did.


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(Link)




One of my least favorite trends, YA or otherwise, is reimagining popular myths/fairytales from a "feminist" perspective.

Just let me have Ariel acting like a realistic twit teenager making bad choices to spite daddy instead of your shallow, one-note, GURL POWER! icon. What is it with feminists trying to pretend that girls aren't capable of being stupid or making bad choices (or blaming said stupidity or bad choices on the patriarchy)?

I think I mentioned Asking for It in my post about her. I haven’t read it but there’s really no need to because it’s so damn obvious what the story is about, what course it’s going to take and what message it’s going to push. I didn’t know about the Little Mermaid rewrite though - whenever I see stuff like that all I can think of is they‘ve held a grudge about a story they didn’t like for years and haven’t been able to let go of it.

I’m interested to see how kids who grow up reading these books are gonna turn out in the future.

 

[AzuraAquafina]

I don't know about you guys, but I find characters much more endearing when they're written like characters and not like political sock puppets. I mean, I'm fine with political themes and commentary so long as the story is good and that the author doesn't beat me over the head like I'm too re.tarded to understand basic storytelling.

I tried to find a summary for 'The Surface Break' since I'm not willing to waste my money on something I won't enjoy. I think it might be just as bad as you guys make it out to be.

Source
These are some highlights that I found from the review.

O’Neill’s Sea King isn’t controlling because he’s overprotective of his daughters, but instead because he regards them as his property and pretty objects that he is free to use to his advantage and benefit. He pits them against each, making them compete for his affection, letting them know that they are inferior. Through the Sea Witch, we learn that this stems from fear, insecurity and a misplaced sense of inferiority/superiority. Sound familiar?

It could be argued that the lack of any positive male characters is unrealistic, possibly even reductive, and this is understandable. The Sea King is almost cartoon-ish in his depiction (though undeniably effective), the embodiment of the selfish, chauvinistic man with no redeeming qualities, and Zale (Gaia’s fiancé) isn’t much better. Oliver, the human boy she falls in love with, although kinder, is indecisive and self-absorbed, unable to form much more than a shallow emotional connection with her. The only positive male figures are marginal and ineffective.

At worst, I'm guessing the theme is 'men bad, m'kay?'.

 

[QuokkaCaptain]

I think I mentioned Asking for It in my post about her. I haven’t read it but there’s really no need to because it’s so damn obvious what the story is about, what course it’s going to take and what message it’s going to push. I didn’t know about the Little Mermaid rewrite though - whenever I see stuff like that all I can think of is they‘ve held a grudge about a story they didn’t like for years and haven’t been able to let go of it.

I’m interested to see how kids who grow up reading these books are gonna turn out in the future.

DAMN IT you did and I forgot. Sorry!

At worst, I'm guessing the theme is 'men bad, m'kay?'.

Seems to be the theme for all her books tbh. "Men suck, women are perfect, and they only behave badly when men make them".

 

[Dirty Mug]

Deep beneath the sea, off the cold Irish coast, Gaia is a young mermaid

Gaia

mermaid

What
Of all the names, she chose the one from an earth goddess.

 

[GenderCop]

i've noticed even the non-PC novels are getting careful about describing their characters. like, does this person have red hair or what? can't you fucking tell us? you are a WRITER.

at first i thought it was to make these novels easily marketable for Hollywood. if you don't describe the character's appearance in depth, it means Will Smith or Zoe Saldana or whoever can play them. but even the lesser interchangeable characters are getting this treatment now.

its like they are afraid to assign the main characters an ethnic/religious background *of any kind*. since you'd then have to say :something: about it, & that's where trouble is.

excuse me but if its like that, why should i care about your characters? if you hold back information about them, why would we give a shit?

they are ruining fiction with this endless sjw bullshit.

good thread & thanks for starting it @QuokkaCaptain

 

[Calandrino]

See, the problem is you were reading H.G. Wells instead of Mark Twain.

Then my brother’s attention was distracted by a bearded, eagle-faced man lugging a small handbag, which split even as my brother’s eyes rested on it and disgorged a mass of sovereigns that seemed to break up into separate coins as it struck the ground. They rolled hither and thither among the struggling feet of men and horses. The man stopped and looked stupidly at the heap, and the shaft of a cab struck his shoulder and sent him reeling. He gave a shriek and dodged back, and a cartwheel shaved him narrowly.

“Way!” cried the men all about him. “Make way!”

So soon as the cab had passed, he flung himself, with both hands open, upon the heap of coins, and began thrusting handfuls in his pocket. A horse rose close upon him, and in another moment, half rising, he had been borne down under the horse’s hoofs.

 

[AnOminous]

What
Of all the names, she chose the one from an earth goddess.

I would guess illiteracy.

Shit like this is why absolutely nobody, young, children, or adults, should ever read YA unless they want to grow up dumber than they already were.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

Oh, @LetterlandMafia, since you brought her up: Did you know Louise O'Neill put out one of those Post-Steubenville Rape books I mentioned?

Ver archivo adjunto 1246420

(Link)




She also did a feminist reimagining of The Little Mermaid, because of course she did.


Ver archivo adjunto 1246430

(Link)




One of my least favorite trends, YA or otherwise, is reimagining popular myths/fairytales from a "feminist" perspective.

Just let me have Ariel acting like a realistic twit teenager making bad choices to spite daddy instead of your shallow, one-note, GURL POWER! icon. What is it with feminists trying to pretend that girls aren't capable of being stupid or making bad choices (or blaming said stupidity or bad choices on the patriarchy)?

The first book sounds like the writer just bit off of the Highschool football player rape incident that happened a few years ago.

 

[Piga Dgrifm]

The first book sounds like the writer just bit off of the Highschool football player rape incident that happened a few years ago.

I believe this is the case it is based off: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steubenville_High_School_rape_case