DUSTUPS

CONS & PRICY PROS

It happened not twenty feet from where I slept. The shadows of it and what came after hover over both my novels—the one about to launch and the one I’m in the process of completing.

Photo by Lawrence Chismorie on Unsplash

These stories aren’t palatable and also often not visible to the naked eye.

I don’t mean to be coy here but sometimes tough subjects need some preamble in order to warm up, buck up, and get brave to state the issues plainly.

I’m referring to stories, here—fictional ones and true ones—and the web that both the reading of them and writing them has woven for me.

The last book I read was Yellowface which featured a few dustups regarding a novel written by a Chinese-American woman that was taken by her white friend directly after she died, completed by the said friend, and passed off as her own. It referenced another so-called dustup in the literary world that reminds the reader of the one surrounding American Dirt. Specifically, the novel points to appropriation and how white authors may receive six and seven-figure deals for books already written by non-white writers who’d been relegated to indie publishers and not given the same super-star promotion.

Now I’m reading My Dark Vanessa and a few pages in I cannot close my mouth. (I need to back up a little in order to broaden this picture.)

One of the big challenges of getting one’s book out into the world is identifying comparable titles to potential agents and publishers. When I first started querying What the Living Do, I had terrific comparables: Alissa York’s, Fauna, and Barbara Gowdy’s Little Sister. After years of rejections, these titles were deemed too old. They require titles younger than five years. I found All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, which was a bit of a stretch but served the purpose of where to place my novel.

Two years after my novel was accepted, I’m reading My Dark Vanessa. Maybe you can hear my silent scream. This one, this one! Oh my god, this book is it.

Too late to use it as a comparable title, I searched out the author with the dim hope she might consider blurbing my novel. And lo and behold, there’s been a dustup with her book and Excavation, a memoir written by Latina author, Wendy C. Ortiz. In her article claiming Russell used her work, Ortiz referenced the American Dirt dustup. The similarities between what happened in the fictional Yellowface and the real-life backlash are stunning.

Every paragraph seems to be a minefield.

Now, a bit about why these books and revelations have set off little bombs in me.

My Dark Vanessa and Excavation both address the grooming of a child by an older man. Then there’s What the Living Do where that young grooming has a profound effect on the protagonist. Then there’s The Soft Ones, my work in progress, where the pedophile is a teacher (My Dark Vanessa, Excavation, The Best Kind of People) a story closest to my experience.

Side note: They’re going to ask me, aren’t they, where my stories intersect my life? It would be easier to tell, I think, if, in my personal story, the man in question was white. When they ask, I wonder if I should skip over his identity. Otherwise, I can imagine a racist-style dustup.

Whose story is it to tell and how will it be told and is it true that writers of colour or marginalized writers can only be published as a “token”; a nod toward inclusivity? The lines are so blurry and they seem to move every time I put my finger on them.

Russell admitted that she had indeed read Oritz’s fine memoir as well as many other similar and tangentially similar stories, but she also revealed that the novel was based on her own experiences.

Aside from dustups, there’s the aspect that, with the exception of American Dirt, all these stories, including mine, share a common theme: that of sex between a man and a child. Rape, in fact. But rape with a twist. Pleasure. Adoration. Gratitude. Where the child regards the adult male as a lover. The soft ones; the young, impressionable, malleable ones—they are capable of pleasure. So capable. And when they are emotionally fragile, they are easy pickings.

In All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, Bryn Greenwood has the child and man ride off into the proverbial sunset. I don’t imagine that My Dark Vanessa ends that way and it isn’t the way either What the Living Do or The Soft One end.

Trust me, I know this piece is a tangle of intersecting observations and concerns, but thank you for staying with me. I’m trying to weave all these elements into something I can pin to the wall and stand back for a good look.

In the stories that happened not twenty feet from where I slept, she was unstable and hungry for attention. She needed someone she could trust; someone to look up to.

He puffed up his chest and offered her solace.

The price was so high.

Mine and other unpalatable stories already out in the hands of readers tell versions of the same story.

I read My Dark Vanessa and All the Ugly and Wonderful Things long after I completed and submitted What the Living Do. And after completing The Soft Ones. Although I can prove these things happened not far from where I slept, I should be so lucky as to create a dustup, since those disputes generally result in sales bumps. As demonstrated in the novel Yellowface and by the meteoric rise in My Dark Vanessa’s sales.

But, I have to ask, at what cost?

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