I was called aggressive for criticising passages in Kate Clanchy’s memoir. But the real problem lies deep in the overwhelmingly white world of publishingIt started with a tweet. Kate Clanchy, author of Some Kids I Taught and What They Taught Me posted on her Twitter account that a reviewer on Goodreads had “made up a racist quote and said it was in my book”. She urged her almost 40,000 followers to flag the review that claimed she had bigoted views on race, class and body image, and had used terms such as “chocolate-coloured skin” and “Jewish noses”. Prominent authors and columnists swooped in to offer support, decrying how Clanchy could possibly be subjected to such inhumane treatment – including the current president of the Society of Authors, Philip Pullman, who declared: “But of all the people and of all the books to have had this happen … It’s hard to stay optimistic about the human race sometimes.”However, it soon emerged that those terms were, in fact, in the book. Incredulous that antisemitic and anti-Black tropes could have made it into a book published as recently as 2019, I downloaded and read it. I recoiled as a Somali boy is described as having a “narrow skull”, while one Muslim girl is “very butch-looking … with a distinct moustache”, and another “looked brilliant because she has such a strong skull shape”, which sounds more like something a eugenicist might observe than a trusted teacher. There is a troubling exchange where Clanchy is baffled by a boy who,... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2021-08-13 13:51:20 UTC ]
The former baseball commissioner, whose new memoir is “For the Good of the Game,” was a voracious childhood reader, “mostly about sports,” and especially “novels about the Brooklyn Dodgers.” Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-07-04 09:00:07 UTC ]
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Good news, memoir fans: Variety reports that Dani Shapiro’s bestselling memoir Inheritance will be adapted into a feature by Killer Films, with Cami Delavigne (the co-writer of Blue Valentine) on board to write the script. The memoir centers on Shapiro’s discovery, after a DNA test, that the man... Continue reading at Literrary Hub
[ Literrary Hub | 2019-07-03 13:43:07 UTC ]
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Book Reviews Alan Levenson Ever since early Islam, Jews have been dubbed the people of the book. The title stuck in European lands too, a deferential nod to the role of the Hebrew Bible in the Western canon, the breadth of Jewish literacy (never... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-07-02 20:46:30 UTC ]
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Self-publishing or traditional publishing? Author Robert McCaw has gotten his books published both ways and shares the pros and cons of each route. The post The Challenges of Getting Your Book Published by Robert McCaw appeared first on Writer's Digest. Continue reading at Writer's Digest
[ Writer's Digest | 2019-07-01 14:00:57 UTC ]
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SPCK has signed ex-Lib Dem leader Tim Farron’s “gripping” autobiography, detailing how he balanced being a Christian and a Liberal during his political career. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-07-01 12:23:42 UTC ]
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A short list of books includes a personal memoir about a family’s struggle with schizophrenia, a history of psychiatry and an exploration of how tyrants think. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-06-28 22:41:56 UTC ]
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“A Good American Family,” by David Maraniss, examines the paranoia and brutality of the McCarthy era through the lens of his father’s experience. Continue reading at The New York Times
[ The New York Times | 2019-06-28 15:12:51 UTC ]
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Ebury will publish the memoir of Holocaust survivor and concentration camp librarian Dita Kraus, who inspired the novel The Librarian of Auschwitz (Ebury). Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-06-26 06:34:21 UTC ]
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Interviews Shelly Bhoil Tenzin Dickie is a Tibetan writer and translator and editor of The Treasury of Lives, a biographical encyclopedia of Tibet, Inner Asia, and the Himalayan region. Her edited anthology, Old Demons, New Deities: 21 Short Stories from... Continue reading at World Literature Today
[ World Literature Today | 2019-06-25 14:25:59 UTC ]
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Philip H. Geier, Jr., the long-time chairman and CEO of the advertising giant known as The Interpublic Group of Companies, died on Wednesday, June 19, at the age of 84. Over the course of his nearly six-decade-long career, Geier made a name for himself in the worlds of both advertising and... Continue reading at Advertising Age
[ Advertising Age | 2019-06-24 19:42:28 UTC ]
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The title of Bobby Hundreds’ book — “This Is Not a T-Shirt” — is straight-up transparent: It’s not a T-shirt. It’s less obvious at the outset — but not for long — that it’s also not a traditional memoir, brand history or “how-we-turned-a couple-hundred bucks-into-global-streetwear-label”... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-06-20 15:40:00 UTC ]
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The title of Bobby Hundreds' book — "This Is Not a T-Shirt" — is straight-up transparent: It's not a T-shirt. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-06-20 15:30:01 UTC ]
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On a quest to make sense of what was happening to her body, the author Darcey Steinke sought guidance from female killer whales. Continue reading at The Atlantic
[ The Atlantic | 2019-06-18 14:40:31 UTC ]
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Memoirs of faith by Rachel Denhollander, Tom Voss and Rebecca Anne Nguyen, Helen Prejean, and others teach and reassure readers. Continue reading at Publishers Weekly
[ Publishers Weekly | 2019-06-14 04:00:00 UTC ]
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Serpent’s Tail will publish a new memoir by British-Zimbabwean author Alexandra Fuller. Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2019-06-13 15:11:33 UTC ]
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Adam Kay is sending his exposé of life as a junior doctor during the leadership candidate’s time as health secretary to highlight how he ‘left the NHS in tatters’Adam Kay is sending a copy of his bestselling memoir about life as a junior doctor, This Is Going to Hurt, to all 330 Conservative MPs... Continue reading at The Guardian
[ The Guardian | 2019-06-12 11:40:05 UTC ]
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Books are a go-to gift for Father's Day, but if you rely on chain bookstore displays, you'll probably find a lot of the same things: cookbooks with recipes for grilling obscenely large hunks of meat, ghostwritten memoirs by pro athletes, and techno-thrillers featuring very long descriptions... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-06-11 17:30:00 UTC ]
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Newly retired NBA star Dwyane Wade will tell the story of his life and celebrated basketball career in a new memoir. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-06-05 17:29:40 UTC ]
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Colin Dayan's brief but explosive memoir of her relationship to her mother should find a place among the more indelible life histories of the last several years. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-06-05 16:00:01 UTC ]
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In musician and magician Rob Zabrecky's new memoir, "Strange Cures," the Los Angeles of the 1980s and early '90s is an alien landscape of raucous underground nightclubs, seedy Hollywood crack dens and low-rent Silver Lake duplexes; and the Valley is a place where errant teens roam free, sans... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2019-05-30 18:01:20 UTC ]
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