Bad Art Friend

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honest to God, I'd like to pursue writing, but I just CANNOT STAND writer Twitter. And it seems like you have to have a Twitter following to get published. Have some other folks decided not to take certain career paths because of social media nonsense?

Agreed. This has been a barrier to my development and confidence as a writer, tbh. I've mostly kept away from social media for my mental health. Privacy is incredibly important to me as a survivor of violence. But my lack of social capital via a notable twitter/ig presence, or the desire to achieve one, has discouraged me from submitting my work and connecting with other writers out of fear of rejection. I'm still trying to forge my own little path but I do worry that there is no space left in this field for people who aren't Extremely Online.

This is how i feel too -- that success would require embracing Extremely Online stuff, which i just can't ever do.

I’m very sorry for this, PPs. As a visual artist I feel similarly. The cream is not rising to the top, just the IG detritus.

This is so, so true

Unfortunately this is how it is for anyone in any creative field now. If you want to be a model, writer, singer, actor, artist etc. nobody will look at your or your work without already having a social media following. If you go to audition for something or submit work you are expected to put you social media handles and number of followers on the resume you submit. There is no room for discovery or introductions anymore because there is too much media and everyone is trying to grab your attention plus the fact that at least in the entertainment world profits have plummeted and there is only room for safe guaranteed hits.

Can you all please stop circulating this myth, at least as it pertains to fiction writers? It just does harm to people who want to write, who are mostly introverted. You need zero social media presence to be a novelist. ZERO.

I had none when I signed my two-book deal. My publisher asked if I would be willing to create any accounts to help promote them first book and I said yes. I have a minimal presence now, I check my IG and FB once a week.

I could list many, many novelists who have little or minimal social media presence. And you certainly won't need it to get published.

And yet every writing conference and seminar you go to has 15 speakers telling you the opposite.

I doubt that. I doubt agents and editors are telling fiction writers to beef up their social media. Please show me the agents and editors saying this.

Look, I know a lot of published authors. I am in private FB groups for published authors. I have friends who are authors, and mentors. Not self-published but commercially successful. I've discussed this issue with my agent.

If you have a huge SM following it can help you publicize your book, but it will not GET you an agent, and it will not GET your book published. It's a nice thing to have when it comes time to promote your book, but that's it.

This narrative of needing to be all over SM does a disservice to writers who tend tone shy and introverted. Yes, you will be asked to promote your book, but plenty of writers don't.

I think there is an issue here in the fact that there are writers and there is the business of publishing and they aren't always in step. Sure you can be a great writer and produce fantastic work and practically be as reclusive as Emily Dickinson. Then you have the publishing world-specifically the big firms. They are businesses out to make a profit and the art and quality of writing is in a sense a secondary concern. There is a reason why they would at least would prefer to work with an author who has a strong social media presence. It gives them some assurance that your book will be read and that your ideas have active and engaged readers out there while they spend money editing, printing and promoting your book.

I am not trying to be disrespectful when I say you are mistaken, and although what you are saying seems logical, it's not the way the biz works.

I am currently in the middle of getting the promotional stuff together for my next book, which comes out summer of 2022. Yes, they want me to post my cover on Insta, but we all (me, my agent, my editor and my publicist) know that my doing so moves the needle very, veery little. They know that the social media of an author is more about being a good literary citizen than anything else, like building a community, helping out newbies, interacting with readers.

But the publicity department has no illusions about social media. That's why they have a job and its a tough one.

[Anonymous]

The conclusion I’ve come to is that Ng exploited Larson for her own amusement. She gave her bad advice about plagiarism that I refuse to believe she didn’t know was wrong. She whipped everyone in the group up against Dawn and Sonya was the only one at risk Of losing anything. She’s not blameless, she sucks in this but Ng seems like the ringleader and monster in this.

[Anonymous]

A huge social media following might help with a non-fiction deal, or in genres like romance or YA, but I don't think it is necessary in lit fic. I know writers who have gotten 7-figure deals (literary fiction) who have no social media presence beyond a personal website. I also know writers who tweet a few times a week or month at most. And some writers in my network keep their IG private. They are all well-published.

Even the writers I know who are active on social media (the minority) use it for some purpose, like commenting on local politics, socializing with other writers they know personally, or giving friends a heads-up when something is published. It's rarely purely promotional.

IMO, use social media if you want to be an influencer or if you plan to self-publish. But any editor or agent who pressures a writer to be highly active on social media is undercutting that writer's ability to produce a honed manuscript.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honest to God, I'd like to pursue writing, but I just CANNOT STAND writer Twitter. And it seems like you have to have a Twitter following to get published. Have some other folks decided not to take certain career paths because of social media nonsense?

Agreed. This has been a barrier to my development and confidence as a writer, tbh. I've mostly kept away from social media for my mental health. Privacy is incredibly important to me as a survivor of violence. But my lack of social capital via a notable twitter/ig presence, or the desire to achieve one, has discouraged me from submitting my work and connecting with other writers out of fear of rejection. I'm still trying to forge my own little path but I do worry that there is no space left in this field for people who aren't Extremely Online.

This is how i feel too -- that success would require embracing Extremely Online stuff, which i just can't ever do.

I’m very sorry for this, PPs. As a visual artist I feel similarly. The cream is not rising to the top, just the IG detritus.

This is so, so true

Unfortunately this is how it is for anyone in any creative field now. If you want to be a model, writer, singer, actor, artist etc. nobody will look at your or your work without already having a social media following. If you go to audition for something or submit work you are expected to put you social media handles and number of followers on the resume you submit. There is no room for discovery or introductions anymore because there is too much media and everyone is trying to grab your attention plus the fact that at least in the entertainment world profits have plummeted and there is only room for safe guaranteed hits.

Can you all please stop circulating this myth, at least as it pertains to fiction writers? It just does harm to people who want to write, who are mostly introverted. You need zero social media presence to be a novelist. ZERO.

I had none when I signed my two-book deal. My publisher asked if I would be willing to create any accounts to help promote them first book and I said yes. I have a minimal presence now, I check my IG and FB once a week.

I could list many, many novelists who have little or minimal social media presence. And you certainly won't need it to get published.

And yet every writing conference and seminar you go to has 15 speakers telling you the opposite.

I doubt that. I doubt agents and editors are telling fiction writers to beef up their social media. Please show me the agents and editors saying this.

Look, I know a lot of published authors. I am in private FB groups for published authors. I have friends who are authors, and mentors. Not self-published but commercially successful. I've discussed this issue with my agent.

If you have a huge SM following it can help you publicize your book, but it will not GET you an agent, and it will not GET your book published. It's a nice thing to have when it comes time to promote your book, but that's it.

This narrative of needing to be all over SM does a disservice to writers who tend tone shy and introverted. Yes, you will be asked to promote your book, but plenty of writers don't.

I think there is an issue here in the fact that there are writers and there is the business of publishing and they aren't always in step. Sure you can be a great writer and produce fantastic work and practically be as reclusive as Emily Dickinson. Then you have the publishing world-specifically the big firms. They are businesses out to make a profit and the art and quality of writing is in a sense a secondary concern. There is a reason why they would at least would prefer to work with an author who has a strong social media presence. It gives them some assurance that your book will be read and that your ideas have active and engaged readers out there while they spend money editing, printing and promoting your book.

What PP is telling you is that a large social media following can help but it isn't essential.

She gave you the best advice you are ever going to get: if you want to be a writer, go write. Go hone your craft. Produce. Get better. Get good. Don't let yourself get distracted by things like not being on twitter enough.

Love you all!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The conclusion I’ve come to is that Ng exploited Larson for her own amusement. She gave her bad advice about plagiarism that I refuse to believe she didn’t know was wrong. She whipped everyone in the group up against Dawn and Sonya was the only one at risk Of losing anything. She’s not blameless, she sucks in this but Ng seems like the ringleader and monster in this.

I think that’s a good take.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And despite Ng commercial success I take issue with here writing her themes her characters and her poor me attitude. Now the real person is revealed.

Is Ng's book like the Reese Witherspoon show? That show was so ham handed and stupid. Every single person was an over the top caricature, obvious, one dimensional and so dumb. Couldn't stand it. It watched like a cheesy soap opera.

I read LFE before it got a TV deal and felt like her prose was a cut above "grabbed it at the airport kiosk" but the plotting was very heavy-handed and predictable. I'm not surprised it got a TV deal because of the themes and soapiness, but I am surprised to learn this week that she's considered Literary Fiction and not just . . . fiction.

It must be because she has an MFA. I find her writing prosaic and clunky, at least in the excerpts I've skimmed. Not a reader of hers.

I guess I will be the dissenter. I read LFE well before it got the TV deal and really loved it. In part I think I loved it because while closer to commercial fiction in tone, it brought in a host of complicated and sometimes unlikeable female characters and gave them lots of room to be themselves. That is so, so rare in mainstream fiction. It's becoming more normal, thankfully, but I would credit LFE a bit with showing that there is a huge audience for that kind of thing and that protagonists don't always have to be charming or weak or in love. I also feel that Ng made a lot with her familiarity with both Shaker Heights, and put her intimate knowledge of that place and time to good use, especially in exploring the intersection of class and race. It's not a perfect book but I did feel it was a good one and different from much of what was out there at the time. I tried watching the TV show but agree with all the criticism above -- it just didn't capture the nuance from the book for me. I actually think the book was not as ripe for a soapy TV adaptation as, say, Big Little Lies.

A thought that has come to me now after all of this, though, is that it is interesting HOW Ng writes about class and race in Shaker Heights. Notable to me is that she chooses to place all the white characters on one side of the SES divide (rich) and all the POC on the other side. I think it works in the book specifically because there are these other themes (largely around art, ownership, and motherhood) that connect characters and create sympathies in interesting ways. But it does not reflect Ng's own background. She grew up middle to UMC in Shaker Heights as a WOC. She was the child of immigrants, but they were scientists and academics. Very unlike the AAPI immigrants in LFE, who as I recall work in a restaurant and live in poverty or close to it. Her other major novel does explore a family more similar to the one she grew up in, but it's interesting that the book that made her famous portrays all the POC as much more marginalized than what Ng has actually experienced in her life.

To be clear, I am not saying Ng has not experienced racism -- I am certain he and her parents experienced plenty of it, in many forms. Being an educated immigrant, especially if a POC, can be an easier road but it is by no means free of oppression. And I'm sure the same is true of Larsen. However, having now also read Larsen's story, something that jumps out at me that both of these women grew up as middle class, fairly assimilated POC, but both choose to write about characters who are much more othered. Ng made the POC characters in LFE extreme outsiders to the white, UMC culture of Shaker Heights. Larsen writes about a Chinese-American woman with a Chinese name and husband, while Larsen is herself mixed race and could be white passing.

Again, not trying to say these women don't have something valuable and important to say about being POC in a country that has always been and is still white supremacist. In some ways I wonder if they are writing about more marginalized, less assimilated POC characters because they know that is what many white readers expect to see, and that their own more nuanced experiences may be too complex for a predominantly white audience to understand. But after seeing these women also accuse Dorland of being a white savior and using white womens tears to oppress a WOC, I also wonder if they have a hard time reconciling with their privilege alongside their oppression. Because there is privilege in both of their backgrounds, a lot of it.

Just thinking out loud here.

This argument strikes such a negative, false note to me. Meaning, I just must reject it out of hand. I find it incredible anyone could really think this: that Ng desperately wanted to write something else and cannibalizes the experience of much more marginally settled immigrants/POC because of a White book-buying audience or White women who edit for the big 5 or who run publicity. I reject it. I’m angered by the consistent refusal (NOT by you, PP! I am not laying this at your feet as an individual reader at all) to treat some of these abusive, top of the heap authors as less than full adults, as less than fully responsible for their output and their behaviors. I am TIRED of it.

Ng wasn’t forced to do some kind of SES minstrel act in fiction because no one wants to read about a wealthier girl/woman. I know it’s not the same kind of art, but Kevin Kwan found a way. I’m not saying she has any obligation to only write her lived experience. But the Joshua Luna thread on Twitter (dropped into this thread at least a couple of times) touches on this. She, and Gay, and others, want to move that privilege needle where ANY White author from any background may be fairly presumed to overstep in ANY social or professional dynamic and that is a crock of shit. And she knows that. But if she can pretend that her assimilation was essentially never achieved, and that she is her parent, instead of a later generation, and that she has greater economic struggles, that SHE is like Luna, then her behavior is always right and how dare you look at it. It’s outrageous and intellectually dishonest, and I’m guessing some of the readership of LFE didn’t think her characterizations of the Asian-American experience at a low SES level, the non model minority experience, was that well etched. That’s my guess. But she is inhabiting that territory for a reason. And of course she may well have been subject to hideous treatment at different multiple moments of her life expressly because of her race/ethnicity. But she’s playing a card game now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The conclusion I’ve come to is that Ng exploited Larson for her own amusement. She gave her bad advice about plagiarism that I refuse to believe she didn’t know was wrong. She whipped everyone in the group up against Dawn and Sonya was the only one at risk Of losing anything. She’s not blameless, she sucks in this but Ng seems like the ringleader and monster in this.

I think that’s a good take.

Maybe Ng was planning on writing a book about it

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The conclusion I’ve come to is that Ng exploited Larson for her own amusement. She gave her bad advice about plagiarism that I refuse to believe she didn’t know was wrong. She whipped everyone in the group up against Dawn and Sonya was the only one at risk Of losing anything. She’s not blameless, she sucks in this but Ng seems like the ringleader and monster in this.

I think that’s a good take.

+1

Also agree with this take. She was the ringleader and when Larson was looking for support, she gave the go-ahead. I’m not sure what would’ve happened in all of this without Ng in the picture, but I’m not convinced The Kindest would’ve seen the light of day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And despite Ng commercial success I take issue with here writing her themes her characters and her poor me attitude. Now the real person is revealed.

Is Ng's book like the Reese Witherspoon show? That show was so ham handed and stupid. Every single person was an over the top caricature, obvious, one dimensional and so dumb. Couldn't stand it. It watched like a cheesy soap opera.

I read LFE before it got a TV deal and felt like her prose was a cut above "grabbed it at the airport kiosk" but the plotting was very heavy-handed and predictable. I'm not surprised it got a TV deal because of the themes and soapiness, but I am surprised to learn this week that she's considered Literary Fiction and not just . . . fiction.

It must be because she has an MFA. I find her writing prosaic and clunky, at least in the excerpts I've skimmed. Not a reader of hers.

I guess I will be the dissenter. I read LFE well before it got the TV deal and really loved it. In part I think I loved it because while closer to commercial fiction in tone, it brought in a host of complicated and sometimes unlikeable female characters and gave them lots of room to be themselves. That is so, so rare in mainstream fiction. It's becoming more normal, thankfully, but I would credit LFE a bit with showing that there is a huge audience for that kind of thing and that protagonists don't always have to be charming or weak or in love. I also feel that Ng made a lot with her familiarity with both Shaker Heights, and put her intimate knowledge of that place and time to good use, especially in exploring the intersection of class and race. It's not a perfect book but I did feel it was a good one and different from much of what was out there at the time. I tried watching the TV show but agree with all the criticism above -- it just didn't capture the nuance from the book for me. I actually think the book was not as ripe for a soapy TV adaptation as, say, Big Little Lies.

A thought that has come to me now after all of this, though, is that it is interesting HOW Ng writes about class and race in Shaker Heights. Notable to me is that she chooses to place all the white characters on one side of the SES divide (rich) and all the POC on the other side. I think it works in the book specifically because there are these other themes (largely around art, ownership, and motherhood) that connect characters and create sympathies in interesting ways. But it does not reflect Ng's own background. She grew up middle to UMC in Shaker Heights as a WOC. She was the child of immigrants, but they were scientists and academics. Very unlike the AAPI immigrants in LFE, who as I recall work in a restaurant and live in poverty or close to it. Her other major novel does explore a family more similar to the one she grew up in, but it's interesting that the book that made her famous portrays all the POC as much more marginalized than what Ng has actually experienced in her life.

To be clear, I am not saying Ng has not experienced racism -- I am certain he and her parents experienced plenty of it, in many forms. Being an educated immigrant, especially if a POC, can be an easier road but it is by no means free of oppression. And I'm sure the same is true of Larsen. However, having now also read Larsen's story, something that jumps out at me that both of these women grew up as middle class, fairly assimilated POC, but both choose to write about characters who are much more othered. Ng made the POC characters in LFE extreme outsiders to the white, UMC culture of Shaker Heights. Larsen writes about a Chinese-American woman with a Chinese name and husband, while Larsen is herself mixed race and could be white passing.

Again, not trying to say these women don't have something valuable and important to say about being POC in a country that has always been and is still white supremacist. In some ways I wonder if they are writing about more marginalized, less assimilated POC characters because they know that is what many white readers expect to see, and that their own more nuanced experiences may be too complex for a predominantly white audience to understand. But after seeing these women also accuse Dorland of being a white savior and using white womens tears to oppress a WOC, I also wonder if they have a hard time reconciling with their privilege alongside their oppression. Because there is privilege in both of their backgrounds, a lot of it.

Just thinking out loud here.

This argument strikes such a negative, false note to me. Meaning, I just must reject it out of hand. I find it incredible anyone could really think this: that Ng desperately wanted to write something else and cannibalizes the experience of much more marginally settled immigrants/POC because of a White book-buying audience or White women who edit for the big 5 or who run publicity. I reject it. I’m angered by the consistent refusal (NOT by you, PP! I am not laying this at your feet as an individual reader at all) to treat some of these abusive, top of the heap authors as less than full adults, as less than fully responsible for their output and their behaviors. I am TIRED of it.

Ng wasn’t forced to do some kind of SES minstrel act in fiction because no one wants to read about a wealthier girl/woman. I know it’s not the same kind of art, but Kevin Kwan found a way. I’m not saying she has any obligation to only write her lived experience. But the Joshua Luna thread on Twitter (dropped into this thread at least a couple of times) touches on this. She, and Gay, and others, want to move that privilege needle where ANY White author from any background may be fairly presumed to overstep in ANY social or professional dynamic and that is a crock of shit. And she knows that. But if she can pretend that her assimilation was essentially never achieved, and that she is her parent, instead of a later generation, and that she has greater economic struggles, that SHE is like Luna, then her behavior is always right and how dare you look at it. It’s outrageous and intellectually dishonest, and I’m guessing some of the readership of LFE didn’t think her characterizations of the Asian-American experience at a low SES level, the non model minority experience, was that well etched. That’s my guess. But she is inhabiting that territory for a reason. And of course she may well have been subject to hideous treatment at different multiple moments of her life expressly because of her race/ethnicity. But she’s playing a card game now.

PP here and I'm not offended and I agree with you. That's basically how I feel but I was trying to make the best argument in favor of Ng/Larsen because I wanted to extend them the benefit of the doubt that they refused to offer Dorland. But yes, while I liked LFE (I didn't like The Kindness, for the record), when I saw this pattern in thinking about Bad Art Friend but instinct was to feel that these women are exploiting their proximity to marginalized people by writing about characters much more marginalized than they are and then kind of imputing that experience onto their own lives. As though those are their experiences. But they aren't. They might be experiences of people they know and are close to, they might be experiences that resonate in their families. But it's not their live experience. Which is fine! In fiction you don't have to write only about your own lived experience, that's what imagination and creativity and craft are for. That's the whole point.

But I wonder this is part of what bothered them about Dorland. Here was this white woman writing about a marginalized experience that she actually lived, writing about white characters experiencing poverty and doing so from a place of authenticity and understanding. I wonder if this bothered them, somehow. This really seems to be part of the conflict, this idea that Ng and Larsen are entitled to some greater empathy or allowance because of their race, but that Dorland is not entitled to the same due to her background. And as someone who is the children of two white people who experienced profound poverty, abuse, and trauma in their childhoods, that bothers me. I think Dorland might have something really valuable to say about these issues. So for it to be communicated to her by Grub Street and Larsen and the CMs that her perspective doesn't matter is very uncomfortable to me. I mean, what is Dorland supposed to do, write about rich white people on Cape Cod like Chip Cheek even though she has much more limited experience with that world? The whole thing is very strange to me.

[Anonymous]

What is remarkable is that no one from this large group of well educated individuals ever attempted to get Larsen et al to pump the brakes. This is freakish. What a corrupt business.

[Anonymous]

Anyone want to submit a letter about being bullied by your colleagues for no apparent reason and then, when you get upset about it, being accused of using white fragility to destroy the career of a POC with more resources, connections, and professional success than you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone want to submit a letter about being bullied by your colleagues for no apparent reason and then, when you get upset about it, being accused of using white fragility to destroy the career of a POC with more resources, connections, and professional success than you?

She should lose this gig. Goddamn. What a malevolent human being Roxane Gay has turned out to be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Becky Tuch remains the only ChunkyMonkey with a real and heart-felt apology. Larson probably has been advised not to say anything because of the active litigation. But the others could speak up. Tuch thoughtfully answered a Tweet asking why.

https://twitter.com/BeckyLTuch/status/1448319645669339137

Well, she does and she doesn't. She explains that she only ever had positive interactions with Dawn and that she fell prey to hive mind because she was told Dawn was a villain and went with it. Fair enough, and good for her for being willing to admit this.

But I am still waiting for the explanation as to why the people who said she was a villain said that (presumably Larsen but maybe others? unclear). We keep being told Dawn's earnestness and personality were annoying but... was that really all it was? That is honestly frightening.

I feel certain there is more. Some incident, or series of incidents. Some conversation that made people turn. It's just too strange. As someone who has been known to rub people the wrong way at times, this just feels so weird and unfair. And I know the issue people have with me is similar to what people say about Dawn -- that she is "extra" and "intense". That's me. That's a lot of people with neurodivergence or childhood trauma or both. That's a lot of people who have spent years in therapy or who have learned in other ways that they have a lot of trauma triggers, that they need to be intentional about how they approach the world to stay on an even keel. That's people in addiction recovery, and people who have been the children, siblings, and partners of addicts.

I have always held that I can, in fact, be a lot, and that no one is required to deal with it. I'm pretty gracious when I meet people who are clearly not into me and happy to just move along to the next person. But in professional environments, in particular, I always lean on the idea that I can be professionally connected to someone and not have to be their best friend. That I work with and around people who aren't my cup of tea all the time so of course others can do the same.

So this story is terrifying to me, and the way so many people casually piled more so. There is so much talk in the world about "canceling" about people being punished too harshly for stuff they actually did. But what about people who are cancelled for doing nothing at all, for merely being "a lot" and rubbing people the wrong way. That seems a lot more troublesome than some comedian having trouble getting booked after his long history of masturbating in front of colleagues comes to light. Just saying.

yup. this. Being annoying is not evil or monstrous. And what is 'annoying" anyway? It's a subjective judgement that says just as much about the judgor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And despite Ng commercial success I take issue with here writing her themes her characters and her poor me attitude. Now the real person is revealed.

Is Ng's book like the Reese Witherspoon show? That show was so ham handed and stupid. Every single person was an over the top caricature, obvious, one dimensional and so dumb. Couldn't stand it. It watched like a cheesy soap opera.

I read LFE before it got a TV deal and felt like her prose was a cut above "grabbed it at the airport kiosk" but the plotting was very heavy-handed and predictable. I'm not surprised it got a TV deal because of the themes and soapiness, but I am surprised to learn this week that she's considered Literary Fiction and not just . . . fiction.

It must be because she has an MFA. I find her writing prosaic and clunky, at least in the excerpts I've skimmed. Not a reader of hers.

I guess I will be the dissenter. I read LFE well before it got the TV deal and really loved it. In part I think I loved it because while closer to commercial fiction in tone, it brought in a host of complicated and sometimes unlikeable female characters and gave them lots of room to be themselves. That is so, so rare in mainstream fiction. It's becoming more normal, thankfully, but I would credit LFE a bit with showing that there is a huge audience for that kind of thing and that protagonists don't always have to be charming or weak or in love. I also feel that Ng made a lot with her familiarity with both Shaker Heights, and put her intimate knowledge of that place and time to good use, especially in exploring the intersection of class and race. It's not a perfect book but I did feel it was a good one and different from much of what was out there at the time. I tried watching the TV show but agree with all the criticism above -- it just didn't capture the nuance from the book for me. I actually think the book was not as ripe for a soapy TV adaptation as, say, Big Little Lies.

A thought that has come to me now after all of this, though, is that it is interesting HOW Ng writes about class and race in Shaker Heights. Notable to me is that she chooses to place all the white characters on one side of the SES divide (rich) and all the POC on the other side. I think it works in the book specifically because there are these other themes (largely around art, ownership, and motherhood) that connect characters and create sympathies in interesting ways. But it does not reflect Ng's own background. She grew up middle to UMC in Shaker Heights as a WOC. She was the child of immigrants, but they were scientists and academics. Very unlike the AAPI immigrants in LFE, who as I recall work in a restaurant and live in poverty or close to it. Her other major novel does explore a family more similar to the one she grew up in, but it's interesting that the book that made her famous portrays all the POC as much more marginalized than what Ng has actually experienced in her life.

To be clear, I am not saying Ng has not experienced racism -- I am certain he and her parents experienced plenty of it, in many forms. Being an educated immigrant, especially if a POC, can be an easier road but it is by no means free of oppression. And I'm sure the same is true of Larsen. However, having now also read Larsen's story, something that jumps out at me that both of these women grew up as middle class, fairly assimilated POC, but both choose to write about characters who are much more othered. Ng made the POC characters in LFE extreme outsiders to the white, UMC culture of Shaker Heights. Larsen writes about a Chinese-American woman with a Chinese name and husband, while Larsen is herself mixed race and could be white passing.

Again, not trying to say these women don't have something valuable and important to say about being POC in a country that has always been and is still white supremacist. In some ways I wonder if they are writing about more marginalized, less assimilated POC characters because they know that is what many white readers expect to see, and that their own more nuanced experiences may be too complex for a predominantly white audience to understand. But after seeing these women also accuse Dorland of being a white savior and using white womens tears to oppress a WOC, I also wonder if they have a hard time reconciling with their privilege alongside their oppression. Because there is privilege in both of their backgrounds, a lot of it.

Just thinking out loud here.

This argument strikes such a negative, false note to me. Meaning, I just must reject it out of hand. I find it incredible anyone could really think this: that Ng desperately wanted to write something else and cannibalizes the experience of much more marginally settled immigrants/POC because of a White book-buying audience or White women who edit for the big 5 or who run publicity. I reject it. I’m angered by the consistent refusal (NOT by you, PP! I am not laying this at your feet as an individual reader at all) to treat some of these abusive, top of the heap authors as less than full adults, as less than fully responsible for their output and their behaviors. I am TIRED of it.

Ng wasn’t forced to do some kind of SES minstrel act in fiction because no one wants to read about a wealthier girl/woman. I know it’s not the same kind of art, but Kevin Kwan found a way. I’m not saying she has any obligation to only write her lived experience. But the Joshua Luna thread on Twitter (dropped into this thread at least a couple of times) touches on this. She, and Gay, and others, want to move that privilege needle where ANY White author from any background may be fairly presumed to overstep in ANY social or professional dynamic and that is a crock of shit. And she knows that. But if she can pretend that her assimilation was essentially never achieved, and that she is her parent, instead of a later generation, and that she has greater economic struggles, that SHE is like Luna, then her behavior is always right and how dare you look at it. It’s outrageous and intellectually dishonest, and I’m guessing some of the readership of LFE didn’t think her characterizations of the Asian-American experience at a low SES level, the non model minority experience, was that well etched. That’s my guess. But she is inhabiting that territory for a reason. And of course she may well have been subject to hideous treatment at different multiple moments of her life expressly because of her race/ethnicity. But she’s playing a card game now.

PP here and I'm not offended and I agree with you. That's basically how I feel but I was trying to make the best argument in favor of Ng/Larsen because I wanted to extend them the benefit of the doubt that they refused to offer Dorland. But yes, while I liked LFE (I didn't like The Kindness, for the record), when I saw this pattern in thinking about Bad Art Friend but instinct was to feel that these women are exploiting their proximity to marginalized people by writing about characters much more marginalized than they are and then kind of imputing that experience onto their own lives. As though those are their experiences. But they aren't. They might be experiences of people they know and are close to, they might be experiences that resonate in their families. But it's not their live experience. Which is fine! In fiction you don't have to write only about your own lived experience, that's what imagination and creativity and craft are for. That's the whole point.

But I wonder this is part of what bothered them about Dorland. Here was this white woman writing about a marginalized experience that she actually lived, writing about white characters experiencing poverty and doing so from a place of authenticity and understanding. I wonder if this bothered them, somehow. This really seems to be part of the conflict, this idea that Ng and Larsen are entitled to some greater empathy or allowance because of their race, but that Dorland is not entitled to the same due to her background. And as someone who is the children of two white people who experienced profound poverty, abuse, and trauma in their childhoods, that bothers me. I think Dorland might have something really valuable to say about these issues. So for it to be communicated to her by Grub Street and Larsen and the CMs that her perspective doesn't matter is very uncomfortable to me. I mean, what is Dorland supposed to do, write about rich white people on Cape Cod like Chip Cheek even though she has much more limited experience with that world? The whole thing is very strange to me.

Really thoughtful posts. I’m really enjoying the insights and discussion on this thread (although let’s not detour back into personal publishing/ social media experiences please!)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And despite Ng commercial success I take issue with here writing her themes her characters and her poor me attitude. Now the real person is revealed.

Is Ng's book like the Reese Witherspoon show? That show was so ham handed and stupid. Every single person was an over the top caricature, obvious, one dimensional and so dumb. Couldn't stand it. It watched like a cheesy soap opera.

I read LFE before it got a TV deal and felt like her prose was a cut above "grabbed it at the airport kiosk" but the plotting was very heavy-handed and predictable. I'm not surprised it got a TV deal because of the themes and soapiness, but I am surprised to learn this week that she's considered Literary Fiction and not just . . . fiction.

honestly same. It's just standard fiction which I LOVE, don't get me wrong. But literary um what