- Joined
- Jan 17, 2018
A lot of the threads in the Art & Literature section touch on this, but I haven't found a consolidated thread dedicated to discussing/dissecting books with an overt SJW message to them. There's also the Social Justice thread, but I thought it might be nice to have a place dedicated to the literature side of things.
Obviously Young Adult/Juvenile Lit are big offenders, but there have been many books across many different genres that have started to pick up on the fact that including certain talking points in their book will get them attention and money (American Dirt and The Resisters are two that have recently been touched on in this forum, both are General Fiction). Some focus exclusively on a social justice topics (racism, sexism, LGBT, mental health, etc), and some slip the talking points into the book with all the subtlety of a baseball bat to the temple. These books get five-star reviews from Goodreads and all the major publications- and anyone who criticizes them gets their shit kicked in by an internet mob.
So if you find a book that just absolutely bashes you over the head with "SEXISM BAD", or insists that anyone who questions the legitimacy of a transgender five year-old is a bigot, please alert the rest of us so that we can avoid it. If there's an author that can't write a single goddamn book without having fifty ~queer poc~ characters, consider this a place to mock them with great prejudice.
Or, alternatively, if you have a book that you feel carries off a social justice message in a really subtle, positive, or well-written way, hell: let us know about it, because it's worth celebrating a book and author that knows how to make a point elegantly and maturely (or at least, you know, entertainingly)..
A few examples, across multiple genres:
Andrew Joyner wrote a picture book- as in, a book for small children- called The Pink Hat. It's about the women's marches post-Trumps' election; and thank fuck, the pink hat looks more like a ski-cap than a pussy hat, as the main character is a child.
Alex Gino is a gender-fucked forty-something year-old dude who writes Juvenile lit. He wrote George, the book about a ten year-old "transgender" kid. In the YA Bookgate thread, we discussed some of the creepier aspects of the book. He also wrote a story kissing the Deaf community's ass, You Don't Know Everything, Jilly P.! He's also going to be writing a book about an "asexual" ten/eleven year-old (Rick).
Robin Talley is a lesbian YA author who literally cannot write a book that does not focus on LGBT characters (or sexism). Lies We Tell Ourselves features a Civil Rights-era romance between a black girl and a white girl. What We Left Behind features a "genderqueer" main character.
Jodi Picoult, while not (I think?) known for social justice books, got quite a pat on the back for acknowledging her white privilege in writing Small Great Things (a book about a black maternity ward nurse involved in a conflict with white supremacist parents). As expected, white privilege ends up being the villain of the day.
Christina Dalcher is the author of Vox. Riding off dat sweet sweet "THE HANDMAID'S TALE IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER!" alarmism, the book's plot centers around a dystopian future where women are only allowed to speak 100 words a day.
I posted about this one in the Social Justice Warriors thread: Not So Stories is a collection of short stories reimagining Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. The summary states that Kipling's books reeked of colonialism and racism, and this book is "writers of colour from around the world reclaim[ing] these stories and remak[ing] them into something new. Something different. Something that belongs to us all. "
Amanda Lovelace is- I use this word loosely- a poet. She's written a series of poetry books entitled Women Are Some Kind of Magic. While all of them have a distinctly feminist taste to them, The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One is basically a collection of tumblr-tier "poetry" that translates to "men suck suck suck and women are beautiful goddesses, #yesallwomen".
Ariel Gore is the author of a new-age/self-transformation book called Hexing the Patriarchy. I think the title is fairly self-explanatory.
Obviously Young Adult/Juvenile Lit are big offenders, but there have been many books across many different genres that have started to pick up on the fact that including certain talking points in their book will get them attention and money (American Dirt and The Resisters are two that have recently been touched on in this forum, both are General Fiction). Some focus exclusively on a social justice topics (racism, sexism, LGBT, mental health, etc), and some slip the talking points into the book with all the subtlety of a baseball bat to the temple. These books get five-star reviews from Goodreads and all the major publications- and anyone who criticizes them gets their shit kicked in by an internet mob.
So if you find a book that just absolutely bashes you over the head with "SEXISM BAD", or insists that anyone who questions the legitimacy of a transgender five year-old is a bigot, please alert the rest of us so that we can avoid it. If there's an author that can't write a single goddamn book without having fifty ~queer poc~ characters, consider this a place to mock them with great prejudice.
Or, alternatively, if you have a book that you feel carries off a social justice message in a really subtle, positive, or well-written way, hell: let us know about it, because it's worth celebrating a book and author that knows how to make a point elegantly and maturely (or at least, you know, entertainingly)..
A few examples, across multiple genres:
Andrew Joyner wrote a picture book- as in, a book for small children- called The Pink Hat. It's about the women's marches post-Trumps' election; and thank fuck, the pink hat looks more like a ski-cap than a pussy hat, as the main character is a child.
Alex Gino is a gender-fucked forty-something year-old dude who writes Juvenile lit. He wrote George, the book about a ten year-old "transgender" kid. In the YA Bookgate thread, we discussed some of the creepier aspects of the book. He also wrote a story kissing the Deaf community's ass, You Don't Know Everything, Jilly P.! He's also going to be writing a book about an "asexual" ten/eleven year-old (Rick).
Robin Talley is a lesbian YA author who literally cannot write a book that does not focus on LGBT characters (or sexism). Lies We Tell Ourselves features a Civil Rights-era romance between a black girl and a white girl. What We Left Behind features a "genderqueer" main character.
Jodi Picoult, while not (I think?) known for social justice books, got quite a pat on the back for acknowledging her white privilege in writing Small Great Things (a book about a black maternity ward nurse involved in a conflict with white supremacist parents). As expected, white privilege ends up being the villain of the day.
Christina Dalcher is the author of Vox. Riding off dat sweet sweet "THE HANDMAID'S TALE IS RIGHT AROUND THE CORNER!" alarmism, the book's plot centers around a dystopian future where women are only allowed to speak 100 words a day.
I posted about this one in the Social Justice Warriors thread: Not So Stories is a collection of short stories reimagining Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories. The summary states that Kipling's books reeked of colonialism and racism, and this book is "writers of colour from around the world reclaim[ing] these stories and remak[ing] them into something new. Something different. Something that belongs to us all. "
Amanda Lovelace is- I use this word loosely- a poet. She's written a series of poetry books entitled Women Are Some Kind of Magic. While all of them have a distinctly feminist taste to them, The Witch Doesn't Burn in This One is basically a collection of tumblr-tier "poetry" that translates to "men suck suck suck and women are beautiful goddesses, #yesallwomen".
Ariel Gore is the author of a new-age/self-transformation book called Hexing the Patriarchy. I think the title is fairly self-explanatory.
