Tayari's Blog: Rushdie's New Roomie?

Posted by TayariJones on August 8, 2008 09:27 AM
Filed under The Writing Life

Sherry Jones asked her publisher, Random House, to send her new book to Islamic studies scholar Denise Spellberg, hoping to get a blurb. Spellberg wrote back telling the editor that Jones's novel, Jewel of the Medina, was so offensive that it would be the same as declaring war against Islam. Random house pulled the book and Jones is madder than a wet hen.

This has sparked the usual conversations about who gets to write what. You know that argument. And we can probably guess that a lot of people who would never read a novel written by an actual Muslim woman would proably read this. I'm thinking about the Memoirs of a Geisha crowd and all those Tony Hillerman readers. This quote from a Guardian article profiling Alexie, should be considered:

He (Alexie) says he has always argued that non-Indian artists doing Indian work should certainly enjoy success, "but I think, for instance, Tony Hillerman's work [mystery novels set around reservations] should be classified as what it is - colonial literature... I think there's an arrogance amongst white Americans about their relationship to the oppressed people that prevents them from seeing themselves as coming from a position of privilege."

On another note, I sort of empathize with the scholar who refused a blurb. I was in that situation once. I was asked to blurb a book that I found so offensive that it made my teeth hurt. Even the letter asking for the blurb was so problematic that I almost hired an exorcist. After a lot of soul searching, I decided to tell the editor that this book wasn't the racial feel-good novel, she was making it out to be. My letter was met with a curt "thank you for your opinion" and the book went on with production. I don't know if I was trying to save the author from embarassment, or if I wanted to make sure that I wasn't condoning with my silence. In the end it didn't matter because they blew me off anyway. And the book did just fine.

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