Hi hello welcome back to my channel. If you don't know, my name is Kat and today I'm doing a very
unusual video for my channel. I am talking about 40 authors who are problematic. I will
just go ahead and tell you what the problematic umbrella entails. This also acts as a trigger
warning for anyone watching this video. So I will be talking about people who are racist, colonists,
anti-Irish, anti-Semitic, white supremacists, pedophiles, performed blackface, misogynists,
homophobic, transphobic, sexual abusers, physical abusers, emotional abusers, liars, TERFs (which are
trans exclusionary radical feminists), cultural appropriators, historical appropriators, bullies,
stereotypers, plot stealers, and cover stealers. So those are the types of problems that you are
going to hear about from me today. So we have two main parts to this video, problematic as
people and problematic as authors. And then there are you know breakdowns within each.
If you just want to read a book and not think about the context, or what kind of person the author is,
then probably don't watch this video because there might be some of your favorite authors on here.
But if you are like me, and you do not separate art from artists, then I think this is a very
important list because a few of these I only recently found out about. And, you know, I mean
one of these authors was on my best of 2020 list so it's quite shocking actually and that's the
reason why I wanted to make this video. For every single person I mention, the links to articles
detailing what I'm talking about will be down below. So let's start out with "Problematic as
People" where I just... I just can't agree with what they're doing as a human being. So let's start out
with the "Classically Bad" section. So first up, let's talk about Rudyard Kipling. Okay so Rudyard Kipling
is a colonist, misogynist, and a racist. Next up, HP Lovecraft is racist, anti-Irish, anti-Semitic, and
a white supremacist. Lovely. Again, links are down below. We also have Lewis Carroll... is a pedophile
and took over 30 pictures of children nude or semi nude. He was very affectionate and
would hug and kiss young girls. And the sister of one of these young girls (who he
based the Alice series off of) indeed like told her mother that he was being too friendly
with Alice and then Caroll stopped visiting the family. So... yucky. We also have
Dr Seuss who is a racist, performed in blackface, and is anti-Semitic. I feel like a lot of people
know that one, yet so many children are still given Dr Seuss books? I am confused. The same actually
goes with Roald Dahl who was anti-Semitic. And then also Enid Blyton who was racist,
sexist, and homophobic. There was going to be a commemorative coin with Enid Blyton on it.
The mint actually refused to use her because [they] just don't want a racist on their coins.
We also have Dickens. You might not know but Charles Dickens decided to separate from his wife to
pursue the attentions of an 18 year old (which is gross but fine).
But he then tried to have his wife committed to an insane asylum to get rid of her. Excuse me, what?
Yeah I was never taught that. I have a literature degree, I have read Dickens, I've read a lot of
classics, and no one ever mentioned that Dickens tried to put his wife in an insane asylum.
That finishes up all of the "Classically Bad" ones. There are so many classics authors that are
problematic, or the culture of the time does not stand up to modern scrutiny.
I'm not saying that's all of them. If you have more, leave them down below.
However, that's all I'm going to mention in this video because what I would prefer to talk about
are authors that are kind of more modern day authors that you might actually be reading
and think that they [have] contemporary [views] but actually these people are very problematic.
So one that I recently found out about is Cixin Liu. He is a Chinese sci-fi author,
he wrote The Three-Body Problem, and he supports China's re-education camps of ethnic minorities.
That is a huge problem. They are imprisoned and tortured just because they are a different
ethnicity and... gross. And it also is gross that Netflix continues to work with him and he's just
making so much money and [he's a] horrible person. Okay moving on. We have Marion Zimmer Bradley who
you might know wrote The Mists of Avalon. She was accused of child sexual abuse, as well
as her husband. So, lovely couple there. Next up we have Jay Asher who is the author of Thirteen Reasons Why.
He was accused of sexual harassment by seven women. We also have James Dashner who was accused of
sexual misconduct by three women. He wrote The Maze Runner series. We also have Aziz Ansari who was
accused of pressuring a woman for sex... gross. We also have Junot Diaz who people have come out
saying that he assaulted and harassed women and he is a misogynist and a sexist. We also have
David Foster Wallace who has been accused of stalking, physical violence, and not taking "no"
for an answer in any way. So this goes in terms of him not accepting that a woman doesn't want
to date him or see him and then his response was to show up unannounced,
leave things for her unannounced, and also get a tattoo of her name
when she in no way wanted that. We also have Sherman Alexie who believes that mixed blood
Native Americans are less than full blood and he was also accused of unwanted sexual advances.
We also have Orson Scott Card who is homophobic. We also have Brandon Sanderson who is homophobic.
And this one I am going to take a moment and elaborate on. He had a blog (which I think was originally
published in 2007 but it's now taken down... I can't find it) But in the blog he basically said that
Dumbledore being gay is not okay. But then, in 2011 after he received a lot of backlash,
he posted an apology. And a lot of people will say "Oh Sanderson's not homophobic, he apologized."
I would like to say if you actually read the apology, he says he supports gay people but
he doesn't believe that same-sex marriage should be allowed. I'm still saying he's homophobic and
I'm not down. Okay next up we have AJ Finn, also known as Dan Mallory. He wrote Woman in the Window.
So this one is really egregious. So he lied about a lot of things. He lied about having brain cancer
himself, he lied about his family dying, he lied and lied and lied in order to get extensions,
to prove why his grades weren't that good, to seek out publishing deals. All around really gross. And then
the last one in this section, I have Brett Easton Ellis who wrote (obviously) American Psycho. He said
he can't be that racist on twitter because he will receive more abuse than black women... NO.
And also he was basically saying that millennials are getting too riled about trump.
He doesn't understand what all the fuss about trump is and it's just like wow okay.
So now we are to this section that I'm going to call "Rowling Roll Call." JK Rowling is a TERF
(a trans-exclusionary radical feminist). There was also a petition to support JK Rowling, and if you go to
the petition, you can see who signed it. So the roll call is basically authors that sign this petition
[supporting] JK Rowling, basically outing themselves also as TERFs. So we have Ian McEwan, Lionel Shriver,
John Boyne. I also have two authors who didn't sign the petition, however, they have come out in
support of Rowling at this time. So Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was in hot water in 2017 when
she said some TERFy things. People largely forgot. In fact, I didn't know about it. However, since
Rowling has been terrible and a TERF, Adichie said there's nothing wrong
with what Rowling wrote and that it's a perfectly good essay. And so, no. Done with Adichie as well.
And then the last one on here is one that you could judge for yourself.
So it's Stephen King. And I know a lot of people are gonna be very upset about this one but hear me out.
So I will leave the link down below to Jess Owens who does the Book CommuniTEA video series
where she talks a lot about contemporary author issues and this is where I heard about this one.
So Stephen King posted a tweet supporting Rowling's Cormorant Strike novels and how
eloquent of an author she is and a writer and I was just like... in this time right now, that's
what you really want to post about Rowling? And then I also have problems with the overt misogyny
which is rampant in his books. Now we are getting to the second huge section which is "Problematic
as Authors." So within here, we have two different sections, "Cultural and Historical Appropriations"
and "Bookish Missteps." So alright, let's start out with "Cultural and Historical Appropriations."
So this is actually Rebecca Roanhorse and Trail of Lightning, which as you may know,
was one of my favorite books of 2020. However, the book is appropriation of Dine culture and
inappropriate Navajo disclosure. Rebecca Roanhorse claims that she is from the Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo and
that's a whole other can of worms that I'm not getting into but there is much debate because
the Pueblo that she claims to be from have never heard of her, she's not registered, etc. But I'm
not going to get into that. All I'm going to say is that the content that she wrote about in her book
is Dine Navajo. So I was reading an article by Indian Country Today and it said: "To an audience
uneducated in Native American history, it might be easy to conflate one native identity (Roanhorse's
Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo background) with another (such as the Navajo identity)." And I feel really stupid
about it. I will not be continuing on in the series for sure. A Storm of Locusts I will not be reading
because it's just cultural appropriation no matter which way you slice it. However, I am undecided if I
will read Black Sun which is a complete fantasy world which I believe is all different types of
made up cultures. So I'm a bit, I'm a bit torn. Next up, I have Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden.
So this one I'm sure you know. It is documenting a geisha's life in Japan. However, although Golden
talked with a geisha about the book to learn about the customs and everything about the
culture, he published it without letting her see the final Japanese manuscript. So she never saw
because it was originally written in English. And when it was published in Japanese, she was just
appalled because it is riddled with errors about geisha life although he had conferred with her.
So he says that it is fiction and that any errors are because he kind of took artistic license,
but... because he says it's like based on this geisha's life, she feels like he appropriated
the parts of her life and cherry picked the things that would look good and then he made up other
parts that she said actually make her look bad. So like she feels really awful about it and like
hates the book and she wishes it would be retracted. Next up, I want to talk about
American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins. This is cultural appropriation of Mexican culture. I feel like
a lot of us know about this one because it made big news because a lot of it was stereotyped
or incorrect. Like she clearly didn't have people who were actually Spanish-speaking from that area
check the Spanish because apparently it's wrong. Also, a lot of the Mexican culture is wrong.
And it's wrong in general. So that one's no good either. And then the last one in
this section is Tattooer of Auschwitz by Heather Morris. The author kind of claims that it's based
on a true story and it's factual. And some of it is factual, however, many many aspects of it--
very important aspects such as timing, dates, and the actual number which was tattooed on
the actual Auschwitz prisoner--are incorrect. So there has been much debate between people who are
comparing actual events and the life of this woman that this is supposed to be based on and Heather
Morris' portrayal. So I think that it's a bit hard to say, but for me personally, I would rather
just steer clear of that one. And we are to the last section which is "Bookish Missteps." So we have
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. This has egregious misogyny in here.
For instance, one of the quotes is nine times out of ten, if a girl gets raped, it's partly her fault.
I'm sorry? No. Alright moving along. Mackenzie Lee's A Madness Blooms. So she
misgendered and dead named a trans character on the dust jacket of her ARCs for this book,
which is obviously super problematic. But then when people called her out for it, she doubled down
which makes it so much worse. We also have Shaun David Hutchinson who... there is a lot here to unpack.
But basically, in his book The State of Us, there is racism, stereotyping, it's completely tone deaf, and
then outside of the book but about the book, he publicly dragged his asexual sensitivity reader
which is not okay in any shape or form. It's completely unprofessional and just
garbage behavior. We also have (in the romance community) Seven Rue/Vanessa Siena
who has been online bullying from multiple fake accounts in order to take down people
who give her bad reviews or also competitors. We also have Date Me Bryson Keller by Kevin van Whye.
This is a bit of a contentious one because the plot seemed very similar to the manga
Seven Days. And a while ago, I said I wouldn't read this because of that (that I thought the author had
stolen the plot and wasn't giving credit). And a lot of reviewers say that only that general idea
is the same, however, later in response to the criticism, the author did in fact say that
it was heavily inspired by Seven Days. I feel like the author wouldn't have mentioned that
it was inspired by Seven Days if people hadn't called him out so, to me, that's
problematic. Let me know your thoughts down below. We also have A Deadly Education which
I thought was just horrible in general, like just a bad book. But it did have a lot of
racist stereotypes about dreadlocks and about cleanliness and about different cultures.
I will leave the video that Jess Owens did at Book BommuniTEA obviously down below.
She pulls exact screenshots and different people's responses so that you can see
more fully. Next I want to talk about Francina Simone's Smash It which has cultural Hawaiian
stereotyping and tone-deaf/horrible phrasing. So the Hawaiian stereotypes you can see in Jess Owens'
video again, which I will leave linked down below. But I do have the tone deaf horrible phrasing.
So the phrase is: "His parents are Israeli and Palestinian. Damn, I'd let him holy war up in me."
Who thinks to write that? We also have Breasts and Eggs by Mieko Kawakami. I was watching a Jen
Campbell video (and I actually cannot find it, I can't remember which one it is because it's not
a dedicated video, I'm very sorry). She said that there is a scene in which the main character
is watching a trans person and trying to see if they are passing or not by examining their body,
and their dress, and their emotions. It's very transphobic. We also have Rainbow Rowell
who has been accused of fetishization of Korean characters in Eleanor and Park. As well as Veronica
Roth's Carve the Mark has some racist content. She has also said that chronic pain is a gift.
And then the last one I want to talk about is LJ Shen. Again, Jess Owens has a video with screenshots
about LJ Shen stealing the plots and covers from other writers and passing it off as her own.
I would love to know your thoughts down below. Are you the same as me and you do not separate artists
from art? Or is there kind of a gray area where you would buy from an op shop or read from a library
but you wouldn't buy it [new]? Or do you completely separate it? Let me know your thoughts down below,
I look forward to hearing from you, and I will see you in another video soon. Lots of love, bye~