Deadline City's Podcast

S4 Episode 5 - Destination: Cancel Court

March 16, 2021 Zoraida & Dhonielle Season 4 Episode 5
Deadline City's Podcast
S4 Episode 5 - Destination: Cancel Court
Show Notes Transcript

This week we talk about the controversial parts of publishing! As always we want to make sure we cover everything, even subjects that are a bit tricky to navigate. This is a huge discussion and we only cover a bit of it, but we have to start somewhere. The Deadline City court is in session!

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Both:

Hello everyone. And welcome back to Deadline City. We are your hosts. I'm Zoraida Cordova and I'm Dhonielle Clayton. And today, where are we going? Dhonielle? We are going to Judge Judy's cancel court. Honey, not judge Judy!

Dhonielle:

I watched Judge Judy every freaking day.

Zoraida:

I used to when I used to pretend to be sick and stay home from school, I used to watched Judge Judy and Maury.

Dhonielle:

Wow. You took it a step far, but you, you went to Maury and you went to, you are not the father! I am a Judge, Judy, Stan. I love her. I aspire to be her. No nonsense. She's playing no games and suffers no fools and has a lie detector. So yeah, this is Judge Judy's cancel court today. We have it in Deadline City.

Zoraida:

Well, look, we're here. This is a tricky question.'Cause I feel like we're going to get canceled because of this episode. Is it a millennial thing? I don't know. I don't even know what generation it is, but when you're on the Internet, like everyone decides that you're-- If you're a television show, your show is now canceled. Like you are you're canceled as a human person. Nobody wants to read your books. You're blacklisted. You're just like no gracias.

Dhonielle:

It's so interesting to the phenomenon of being canceled. And it's global, it's on a national level. Politicians get canceled, right? Like so many people get canceled, right?

Zoraida:

Actors, writers.

Dhonielle:

And it becomes this whole thing where they become a stain on society or like they deserve to be de platformed and--

Zoraida:

If you were part of the Catholic church, the homophobic Catholic church, you would be ex-communicated.

Dhonielle:

It's an interesting phenomenon. And it's so interesting that if anyone is a fan of Black Mirror, there's an episode, I believe in season two, that deals with this where one of the consequences--it's an anthology show that talks about technology taken to the extremes--one of the punishments in the show... I forgot[it] so I'll link in the show notes what episode it is without spoiling it. But if you get canceled in this world, you become an outline like, you know, when the TV has the white screen and has that sort of white noise, that's what you become. That static noise. And you're a static noise shadow. And someone can block you and someone can cancel you. The government can permanently have that be your disposition forever, if you do something that results in you being canceled. And that means nobody can see you, nobody can talk to you and you can't engage. You have been canceled from society. So it's a very interesting topic to think about because in our book publishing world this has been happening for a while. People are getting canceled for the things that they say online, um, for their books, for their behavior, and for things that people say about them--for charges they bring forth in the court of public opinion. And so I've had my run-ins with people trying to cancel me, which I'm going to talk about on this episode. But it's a very interesting topic and I just really truly believe that if you come to cancel court, you better come with the right evidence. Otherwise you have to come with receipts. So now let's talk about how this idea of canceling that we see happening to politicians, to actors, to musicians, to high-profile people being deplatformed--how is this affecting the book community?

Zoraida:

It affects the book community[because] it's that something happens usually in a very public forum like Twitter. I have seen some attempts at cancellation on Instagram, in the romance community. Unlike actors, we're not on a national stage, we're on this like concentrated noise machine that is the bird app. And so I see it as like, it starts with a drag, right, where somebody says, we need to talk about X, Y, Z. And these are the reasons this person is terrible. Or somebody says something on their platform and it becomes this like perfect storm. Why everyone thinks this is wrong. And then usually the subject apologizes or doesn't, or doubles down. And when the doubling down it's just so... And then they go away and we don't see the author or the book quietly publishes. Like, let's say that it's a book with racist themes. To be frank I'll use the example of The Continent which was a book that was published by Harlequin. Harlequin Teen went through a rebrand and created a new brand called Inkyard.

Dhonielle:

Tell us about the book for those of us who are young in publishing.

Zoraida:

It feels like a hundred years ago. It really does. The book was about a young--in the original draft. I'm just going to go by the original draft--it was about a young white girl who lived in this dystopian world, a utopian world, excuse me. And for her birthday, she won tickets to this place called the continent. And basically civilized people, or civilized society, takes essentially a cruise, like a tram cruise or helicopter cruise, to look at the continent. And the continent is where these two savage societies live. One is coded as Native American and the other one's coded with literal ninjas, wearing all black. The author put in all of these stereotypes about this noble savage who could have raped the young girl, because she was like laying there all by herself, but then didn't, and then they rescue her and she goes to the other savage kingdom. It was full of a lot of problems. And you know, I still have the original manuscript. I still have the original ARC. Cause I feel like it lives in time and space. It's definitely an interesting thing to hold onto as like a place... it's part of a library, right? Like this happened. It's part of my archive. I'm not going to pretend it didn't happen.

Dhonielle:

She's[Zoraida] a cancer folks. She holds everything in her little crabs, um, pincers.[Laughs].

Zoraida:

Oh, this is one of those things where you learn from it and move on. Right. And so this was like, the book got temporarily canceled. And so we've seen this happen where a book gets either completely canceled or temporarily canceled and then quietly gets published or not published at all. Whether it's with apologies, whether it's with edits. And so that's how it sort of works in the publishing industry. People called out it's bad representation using quotes, right? Like evidence from the book, not just I made this up. I'm accusing you of something like this is... analyzed and broken down. It's my literary criticism of the book. The book needed to be worked on. Right. I'm not the person to say that, but I am saying it.

Dhonielle:

[Laughs]

Zoraida:

Cause like I'm not, I'm not the editor, or the agent, right? Like, was this book even for me, no, it wasn't, it wasn't written for me. So that's an example of cancellation, right. This book got canceled and then the sequel got quietly published. I think.

Dhonielle:

Yeah. I believe it was yeah.

Zoraida:

Never heard from this author again, maybe they appeared under a new pen name. Like the ghosts of canceled past, right.

Dhonielle:

It's interesting. There were several books that we can sort of chart this growth of being taken to cancel court. I remember when I debuted, there was a book that was canceled, not canceled as in like didn't come out canceled--as in the author was held to task and the publisher and the editor for what they had in the book. And it was like aired out and it was called, Hello, I Love You. If you ever want to read a Kirkus review that will snatch your edges and forever sort of singe your butt hole--

Zoraida:

Not my butt hole!

Dhonielle:

Yes. Burn it where it's real burned. We debuted together and I remember watching my debut class. And if you don't want to know what the debut class is, in kidlit and in young adult, the debuts, the people who are coming out that year, usually band together. And they form a group where they can still help support each other and boost each other, read each other's books, share information. There's often a Facebook group or like an online chat board and email groups and lists threads.

Zoraida:

My group was called the Apocolypsies.

Dhonielle:

And mine was called the Fearless 15s. And so it relates to the year that you came out and usually they're quite helpful. You find a community. So it was really difficult to watch the growing pains of this book, which was literally about a white girl who goes to Korea for boarding school. And she falls in love with a Korean pop star, but her observations of Korea and the people and the food and the culture is just really, really not well done. And many prominent Asian folks have spoken up about it. And it was just plainly offensive and the Kirkus review goes into it in depth. There were some harmful depictions. And if I was an Asian child and a Korean child reading that book, I would have been like, Oh no, oh gosh, I would be very, very upset. So that was a book in my year coming out that went to cancel court court and got canceled. People didn't buy it, support it. The author slowly went away and I don't think ever published again or might be publishing under a pen name, but was never active in the community again. So there's a history of this. And it's getting bigger and louder and spilling over into things that are not just books, but other things like agents and editors. So we can look at something like American Dirt by Jeanine Cummings and see that book was brought to cancel court. But because Macmillan paid so much money for it and got all of the support from people who didn't read it. Some people did, some people didn't, but some of those celebrities shouted it out. It became a huge controversy.

Zoraida:

It became too big to cancel.

Dhonielle:

Exactly. Even though it went to cancel court and I'm pretty sure Judge Judy said it was found lacking and could be a problem. And dehumanization of Latinx communities and culture, it was too big to cancel because it was given just a sort of a huge, huge--I felt like it was like an iron monster, almost like an iron train that had left the station and you couldn't slow it and you couldn't stop it. No matter how many people came out and said, this book is harmful. This book is damaging. It had already been lifted as the single narrative about the Mexican immigrant experience. People were calling it the Grapes of Wrath for Latinos, like the definitive word on that experience by an outsider. You're not Steinbeck and also you're a cultural outsider. And then it became, okay, the book is bad, got a lot of coverage detailing how bad it was. Then you saw the rollout of the book. There were pictures on social media of barbed wire fence. You know what I mean?

Zoraida:

It was a perfect storm. It was a perfect storm because the publisher said that the decoration company--it was a private party that the publisher had for the book at BEA(Book Expo America) for influencers and media people. Right. And reviewers and scout or whatever, all this stuff, right? Like a VIP party. And that's just expensive. Right? It's expensive at BEA, it's expensive to throw parties with caterers in New York. And if I recall the company said that if they had known the book was about immigration, they would not have done barbed wire and flower centerpieces.

Dhonielle:

Right. It's, it's terrible. It's like, oh, there's a book that features slavery. Let's put shackles on the table with flowers growing out of them. Oh, it's a book about the Holocaust. Let's do[unknown]. Let's make sure that the waiters are in jumpsuits, right? Like Holocaust iconography that we know that I will never forget that I will always remember. This stuff is not funny and it's not a costume. It's not cute. It's not a game. And so that book was taken to cancel court and it was interesting to watch, how it was too big to cancel, but it opened up a big conversation. One that has come up lately is our good friend Dr. Seuss, because it's, you know, it was World Read Day and Dr Seuss's birthday. Theodore Geisel? I don't know his name, either Thomas or Theodore. I know it's a T , but I could be completely wrong. And this is terrible because I'm a children's scholar. And I have a master's in children's literature, but I focus mostly on the Brown kids. Anyways, Dr. Seuss' estate said, Hey, we're going to stop putting certain books into publication--because at certain points in Dr. Seuss's life, he drew caricatures of black people and Asian people. And the black people look like the racist iconography coming out of the Jim Crow South and the Asian people were butter yellow and their eyes were accentuated. And they looked just like just evil, yellow peril imagery. And that Dr. Suess had grown over time. Right. And they decided not to keep those books in rotation.

Zoraida:

It wasn't we're going to burn these books. We're going to like give them back.

Dhonielle:

They're just not going to continue to print them because they're harmful. The depictions were harmful to two groups of people. And then the right wing media really started going on about, you know, canceling people and like, you know, Dr. Suess and censorship. And it's like, curation is not cancellation. We can curate our shelves and make better, more equitable shelves, but it's not cancellation. No one's saying, never read Dr. Seuss anymore. It's saying these five books that have racist, caricatures now belong to museums and libraries and classrooms to talk about and to teach, but are not out for sale anymore. And I never really speak about this. I got a lot of people requesting me to come on different radio programs and TV programs. And I declined it because every time I speak about Dr. Suess or To Kill a Mockingbird, I get months of hate mail and rape threats and death threats. And it's wild to me that white nostalgia is violent. And it's just a reinforcement of that.

Zoraida:

O ne of the most surprising things is that the books that they listed were not even books that people had read. Like it wasn't the Cat in the Hat. It wasn't Green Eggs and Ham. It wasn't the Lorax. These w ere o bscure titles. They were probably not put out there for a reason. Or weaned for a reason. Everyone's so afraid of like, oh, everything's s o P C P C, but it's like, no, we're asking you to have human decency and like refer to people and create imagery that is not a caricature and that's not racist and not homophobic. Like that's not PC. That's just being a good person. Do you wanna know how many copies The Cat in the Hat sold last week after the cancellation drama? I have the numbers 105,402 copies. Two units. Six figures in units for that one book. So it has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 out of the top 25 picture books--20 titles by Dr. Seuss are in that top 25 from Publishers Weekly.

Dhonielle:

That's ridiculous.

Zoraida:

Green Eggs and Ham sold 89,000 copies, 87,000 copies, right? Like this is 19,000 copies and more.

Dhonielle:

I can't handle it. And literally the ones that were taken, discontinued, were ones you've never heard: Scrambled Eggs Super! And On Beyond Zebra. And I Saw It On Mulberry Street. If I Ran the Zoo, The Cat's Quizzer, McElligot's Pool, you probably never grew up reading those at all. The last time I got really bad hate mail was literally, there was a story about Dr. Seuss in the museum, and a mural they were putting up on the wall. And one of the murals that they were going to put up on the wall in the Dr. Seuss museum depicted Asian people in the way that I described earlier from one of the books. They were going to put a mural of that portrait up and a placard that talks about how Dr. Seuss learned not to be racist and to depict people like that. And I spoke on NPR about how it was ridiculous, because why do children of color have to walk into a museum about Dr. Seuss and become a teachable lesson for other children? And that's an unfair burden to put on those kids. And they walk in and it's like supposed to be fun. We're gonna see the Lorax. We're going to see the Cat in the Hat. We're going to see all of these things. And then you've got the yellow peril and yellow face on the wall and basically a teachable lesson. And you've got Jim Crow iconography. It's like, okay, kids, let's talk about bad depictions of Asian people and bad depiction of black people for everyone. And if you're the little black kid and the little Asian kid, you're like, Oh no, you get the hot flash of embarrassment. And like, Oh God, now I have to be the one that sticks out. I'm the teachable lesson. And so Dr. Seuss will never be canceled. You see those numbers and he was taken to cancel court and he is too big to cancel. And no one even said, cancel. They literally said curate--very different. He was really taken to curation court. And so it's interesting to see how the book conversations spills into that. And then we get into people, right? And people's actions and behaviors and authors. And we are human beings living online and talking about books. And we have to go to cancel court too. And it's super fraught as a situation of living in an online space where you want to play around and have fun and communicate and be outraged and laugh. And there's always people watching.

Zoraida:

Right? Because I can say something as innocuous as like, I love Reylo. So it started the Star Wars fandom because when the trailer for the Rise of Skywalker came out, there was like a shot, a pan shot of Rey and Kylo walking toward each other in the rain. And it reminded me of the shot from Pride and Prejudice with Keira Knightley and Mr. Darcy walking toward each other, also in the rain. And the shots were mirrors of each other. It got like a thousand likes--a tiny blip--and the anti-Reylos were like, Star Wars author is problematic and anti-feminist and supports abuse because Kylo abused her and tormented her. And then I had the other group being like, you're making fun of Reylo, you're also anti-feminist. And I'm like, I'm not making fun of anyone! There's literally no texts in this tweet, just four images together. So like, people make assumptions, they make assumptions of you because of the Internet. I muted it and it didn't bother me, but I did get a couple of emails being like, you hate feminism. You know, like stuff like that. It's just wild to me. It's just...

Dhonielle:

I won't even mention Reylo online because I got a dust up because another Star Wars author was talking about Reylo, or talking about Kylo not being scary and about the character. And I chimed in on the thread saying basically like, I wasn't scared of him. Right. Very simple. Oh boy. I got called all kinds of names. An abuser, because he's been abused.

Zoraida:

Cause Han solo abused Kylo. Okay. Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

Dhonielle:

Right. And that I am awful because he's child abuser victim and I don't care about victims and blah, blah, blah. It went on for weeks to where all of the authors that were involved, it was me, Alexandra Bracken, Susan Dennard, Sabaa Tahir, we were all like, yo.

Zoraida:

If I search for that, the screenshots pop up. Like that doesn't go away. And that's the thing that's scary about stuff like this. Like holy shit. I think a lot of authors get very afraid at this stage. But you really can't control it. I can tweet I love writing every day, and someone can say, you are toxic because writing every day is bad for people with anxiety. But I didn't tell you to write every day. Or I could say I love bread. Oh my God, Zoraida is anti-vegetables.

Dhonielle:

And it spirals. You can do what happened to me where I responded on a thread with some other friends to Sarah Dessen who was outraged about a college student, actively trying to get her book off of a syllabus and had cropped a photo and felt slighted. I can respond in a way that was like not nice on it, on her feed and then get called all kinds of things, an abuser, a bully, all of these things. Maybe I probably should have researched beforehand, but we were on her feed just talking. And for months it just kept resurfacing. I called someone a bitch. I called somebody this, I called somebody that. They were petioning for a black book to be on the syllabus and not Sarah Dessen. We didn't know any of that when we went into there, we had no idea. We were just talking shit. And I learned a lesson about having fun online with your friends. People are watching and people are judging and people are making, you know what I mean, their conclusions about the way that you speak and the way that you interact and all of that, to the point where people were, you know, taking me to cancel court saying I needed to be canceled for calling someone a bitch, that I wasn't a feminist, then saying that this person was Native and then saying, this person was Black. And then saying, this person was this and that. And I'm like, this person is a white lady. And it didn't matter because it spiraled out of control and it was a lot, but I learned a lot of things about going to cancel court. And I see on the timeline, there are a lot of agents that have been taken to cancel court. And a lot of, you know what I mean, other authors who have been taken to cancel court, and it's interesting to watch people. It doesn't seem to matter what you say, the person who tells the story first gets to control it. Who sets the narrative in motion gets to control it. And there's a swarming that happens and there's a demanding of an apology that happens. And there's all of these things that spiral.

Zoraida:

Then there's the deconstruction of the apology. Like this is not good enough because, I'm sorry, but I don't think that I just apologize. I don't think that people know how to apologize. Because we're always going to couch our own feelings first.

Dhonielle:

I don't think you can actually effectively apologize online as individuals. The best we can hope for, because nuance is lost and you don't hear anyone's voice, you don't see their face, you see the notes app. Right. And you see the long paragraph of the notes app screenshot. And I think social media is a dehuman platform. So you see what someone wants you to see. So I just don't think anything will be good enough in terms of apologies. But I do believe in them. I do believe that you should attempt to. And I think what happens is that it spirals out of control and then you've got the war of the screenshots and then you've got the swarming and the harassing and the tweeting at someone consistently and constantly, I had one person say that they were going to torture me for the rest of my life for calling another woman a bitch. And that I would have no peace, right. Sending me all kinds of hate mail, texts, tweeting at me all day long, swarming my photos, swarming everything because they wanted to be heard. And they were mad that I called someone a bitch. And so it's a very interesting thing to sort of watch happen. And it doesn't matter what you did before. It doesn't matter. Even what evidence is really presented because the evidence can be presented in any way to serve a point in cancel court. Right.

Zoraida:

To serve a narrative.

Dhonielle:

Yeah. Even when you really figure out like, Oh, this person has no evidence, they're just popping off at the mouth or they've created a narrative they're able to spin. If you use the language of justice and of social justice to prove a point feminism, ableism, racism, transphobia, inequitability right--if you couch what you're lobbing in that language, people don't even think to deconstruct what you're actually accusing someone of. And it's very interesting to watch that play out online.

Zoraida:

So then I wonder what is our role as authors when it comes to this book is problematic. I'm going to, I'm going to champion the cancellation or this person's problematic, I'm going to out-- like what is, what is our responsibility as authors?

Dhonielle:

I don't have an answer.

:

I don't have an answer for that either because I wrote an essay about The Continent, but I've read other books that have some problematic things, but I'm not going to advocate for it being removed from shelves and like, whatever, because it's just like, okay, somebody can make their own decision. Whereas[The Continent] was something that is intrinsically, actively harmful and could still be changed. Right. That was the thing. It was still an ARC form. It could still be changed.

Dhonielle:

Right. And for me, I'm watching the types of books publishers put out, I'm watching the types of books editors buy. I'm watching the types of books that publicists and marketing people give the million dollar marketing plan to and prop up. I'm watching tokenism and I'm really here to critique industry. And I'm really here to focus on the industry. Books are, you know, symptoms and derive from it. But I've always tried to focus on the bigger machine and books. I'm open and honest about books that I think are problems, but I don't take them to cancel court in the same way. I might make fun of them and make fun of the publisher and the editor who thought it was a good idea. But I think it's personal. I think that there are people that really feel the need to, to always say something and that's their truth.

Zoraida:

I think that becomes a slippery slope because that burden without continual education about a topic is hard to reinforce. I think that if a white person reads a book about a culture that's not theirs, and they're like, Oh, Oh, you used food to describe skin color. This is bad, canceled.

Dhonielle:

That's what happened to me, bro! Literally one of my first reviews of The Belles was someone saying that I used food to describe bodies and skin color.

Zoraida:

Right. Your book is about consumption of course.

Dhonielle:

Literally Lou You used one of my sisters against me by saying in Angie Thomas' The Hate U Give she comments on like, don't use this, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I literally used connected bodies and food as a metaphor and a motif for consumption.

Zoraida:

So your intentionality didn't matter.

Dhonielle:

I didn't do the things that made this rule exist. It's because whenever people of color showed up in books by white people, they used food to describe them: coffee and mahogany, right. All the time. And that was the problem because it became stale and cliche and often those objects were things that were used to trade for Black and Brown bodies. So yeah, it is a stale thing to do. But if you read my book, I'm using macarons and pralines and syrup and sugar and you know what I mean? Like literal pastries.

Zoraida:

It's specific. it's interesting because like anyone who is critiquing that book, they're trying to do a good job. Right? They're trying to be a good ally, but in being a good ally, they're harming another Black woman because they're talking about something--they're not reading with context and reading without context can also be dangerous. Like I've seen people who took a specific detail that happened to a single character--and there are several reasons in the text, supported in the text, of why this character has to have this thing. The reader used it as a generalization to say, this author is anti these kinds of people because this one character does this one thing that is, you know, it's not even a harmful--when I watch things like that, I get so upset. Because--did you read the book? But then I can be accused of invalidating someone's personal read.

Dhonielle:

It's all frustrating because we all come at reading from a complete, from different vantage points. We all have different training, have different educational backgrounds.

Zoraida:

I remember discussing Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov in college. And I'm glad that that discussion is not on a recording or on Twitter because we were given like, okay, so some of you support why this is like one of the greatest novels, some of you support"was Lolita asking for it?" You know what I mean? You can take anything and justify your argument by pulling a couple of lines.

Dhonielle:

Absolutely. You can. You really can. You can isolate and do a micro read that supports your conclusions about something and you can take it to cancel court. And it's just, it's just interesting to watch. And at some point someone's going to want to cancel me for something in my books. Something that I've decided and purposefully put in there that I want discussed. I have a book coming out next year with Sona Charaipotra, my writing partner, called the Rumor Game, and it follows three girls and the destructive path of a rumor. And it's also about a girl. One of the girls has lost a bunch of weight. She's Indian and has cultural sort of pressures on her to do that. And it's going to be an interesting conversation because I know that the YA community doesn't like books about weight, about weight loss, about weight fluctuation. There is a real conversation to be had about it. And because there needs to be more fat characters who love themselves in books and where it's not an issue, but for this particular book we wanted to talk about, again, I'm always talking about bodies--it's because I've always felt uncomfortable. And we wanted to talk about how weight is talked about and dealt with in communities of color, and also talk about high school and how it becomes a pressure cooker and how people literally treat you differently based on before and after. And it's going to be controversial because people, especially, I find that white women dominate a discussion about bodies, about weight, about exercise, about nutrition, about food. It's, dominated by white culture. And so when you insert Brown kids who also have opinions and feelings about their bodies and about weight loss culture, and who don't agree, it's going to be interesting to have white women, especially, read this book and be frustrated that a character's mother has forced a character to lose weight and how that character then goes on a journey of both self discovery of loving themselves, but also experiences a lot of pain because of the new body that they now have and is now a target and is treated in a very particular way. People might want to cancel me because I wrote about weight in general and that maybe we shouldn't write about weight. I feel like there are certain topics that people don't want you to write about.

Zoraida:

But I also think that if you don't like it you can also just not read those books. I mean, there's a difference between like, I don't like this thing, therefore, no one should like it at all. And that happens all the time. Versus like, this is actively a harmful thing no one should consume. I think that some people say a book is bad, you should take my word for it and not read it. And I don't think that that's literary discussion. I think that like, we can exit conversations a hundred percent. Like there are books by Latinidad with bad representation. I'm not going to read those books. I'm not going to support those books. I'm supporting those doing the best job, you know, doing the work and uplift those books and try to help other voices. Right. I'm not gonna concentrate on like this other negative thing.

Dhonielle:

Right. And I, you know, I truly believe that we can make choices, like you said, and there will be content warnings in my book, for the first time, because for my debut Tiny Pretty Things, we weren't allowed to put them in. So now, you know, going in that this new book is going to discuss racism, homophobia, weight, loss, weight issues, body dysmorphia, right. Like, you know, going in. So you can choose what you want. Right.

Zoraida:

And obviously, like we're not talking about like still wanting to read a book by an author who is like a physical abuser or harasser, you know, things like that. Like, that's not what we're talking about. Before anyone tries to cancel us and being like you support Kylo Ren!

Dhonielle:

Taking us to cancel court.

Zoraida:

I mean, and it's okay. These are discussions that we need to have as authors and as people who create content. Because I don't know what's right. What if it happens to like my friend? What if it happens to me? It's a very tricky situation to navigate. Because at the end of the day, like, are we just authors? Where does the line end? Are we, are we allowed to make mistakes and learn? Authors are not publicity experts. I think that there should be a 101 author class.

Dhonielle:

Let's do that. Let's let's give some author 101 when it comes to getting your ass taking to cancel court. Right. Here's some ways to stay out of cancel court. Don't be a racist, homophobe, ableist, transphobic, like get your life.

Zoraida:

Don't touch people inappropriately who don't want to be touched.

Dhonielle:

Exactly. Like that should go without saying in general, don't be a harasser. Don't be a terrible person, but here are some things when you're using and engaging with social media that might help you not land in cancel court. And these are some things that I've learned myself. Like don't engage unless you know what someone's talking about, right? Yes. I made a mistake. I walked straight into the trap.

Zoraida:

Me too. I was like, Oh, I have zero context in a thread that is like 20 tweets deep. And I'm like, started arguing something that I don't, I didn't even like, have all the facts about and I was wrong and, you know, deleted it. Don't bulldoze in. Take a breath before you respond to a Goodreads review. It's not for you. There was a really excellent tweet by a Native blogger that I saw. And I, I can't remember the exact wording, but it was like publishing is a corporation. We're[authors] the content creators, bloggers and consumers are sort of like taste testers. And so like, when you go to your taste tester, like if somebody's sampling like Cheez Whiz, this is not good-- And you're like, you're wrong for hating Cheez Whiz! You have zero taste buds! You don't do that to your taste tester. Okay, Cheez Whiz was not for you.

Dhonielle:

Exactly. Move on to the next taste tester. Okay. Awesome. Get a group chat, put all that shit in the group chat offline. I have so many group chats now where they're my petty chats. That's where I put it. I see stuff online. I go to the group, chat to talk about it. I don't talk about anything online anymore. I don't react, nothing. I'm on there to[unknown], laugh and maybe tell jokes about the devil. That's it. That's what I'm doing.

Zoraida:

My husband, all hail.

Dhonielle:

You said don't answer bad reviews. Don't answer reviews. Just don't answer them, it's for readers. They're not for you.

Zoraida:

Nobody knows how to interact. Oh, should I do this? Should I do that? This one author doesn't like it. When I do this, this author loves it. When I talk to them, it's a personal thing. Like, I love interacting with people who interact with me, but I'm also like an extreme extrovert. And if somebody says something like you're a dumb bitch, I'm not going to fight them. I'm just going to block them. The block button is your friend.

Dhonielle:

And you're allowed to use it. You're allowed to have boundaries. For me, I just don't answer reviews. I don't. I think that it's a slippery slope. And sometimes I don't even see them, but people do tag me in bad reviews all the time. I don't think it's widespread that it's like, not that nice to do so. So I just keep going, because I know who I'm writing for. I see them in my line when there were lines, when we had festivals and I saw all of my little readers, like I know who my people are. Every book has its reader. You need one reader and that's it. And so I focus on that. Don't feed the trolls, like you said, just don't fight back. It's a waste of your time. You have books to write, don't feed them. I used to fight with them all the time and I'm like, Oh, these are bots. They came here looking for a fight. The worst thing you can do. I mean, the best thing you can do and the worst thing for them is when they get no response, they just go away because they're looking for a fight.

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I actually stopped blocking people. I just mute them. Just hear no evil, see no evil.

Dhonielle:

Exactly. I've started to also, I don't quote retweet on Twitter. If we're talking about Twitter, I don't. Unless someone is being really nasty to me. And I'm feeling froggy on a day, but I don't usually do that.

Zoraida:

Right. I, Oh my God. I think that as authors, we forget that we have a platform. Even if nobody knows who you are yet. I think that there's a power imbalance in quote re-tweeting somebody. And I've learned that now, but I didn't know that before, because I just didn't think, I just don't think that authors have power. We're just people who write books and publish them. And yeah, our words matter in the context of people reading them and wide audiences reading them. But like we have zero influential power in the industry itself. Right. I can't tell somebody-- I can't tell Kirkus what to review. I can't tell an agent what books to buy. In that sense, we're not powerful, but the abjects of me, quote, re-tweeting like a person with 12 followers in front of my followers so that everyone could be like, Oh, you're being mean to Zoraida, that's a gross misuse of my power, that sentence. And it's something we have to learn. It's something you learn as you navigate online spaces. I think I've also started to assume that I don't know who people are online. I don't know if someone's a teen or an adult and that means that I act accordingly. And some people want to fight, like, they'll fight with you and then change their profiles to like all of a sudden I'm a teenager. And you're like, well, there's nothing in your profile that says you're a teenager or a person of color. But like, now you want to do that because like-- So just don't fight with people because you never know who is a teen and who isn't and just assume that like, you don't follow me. We don't have any followers in common. You just here to fight, like, goodbye, mute, mute.

Dhonielle:

You have way more important things to do.

Zoraida:

Like talk to you.

Dhonielle:

Yes. And I think we are navigating a strange time, especially with a lot of people being home because of coronavirus, everyone's tight, everyone's on edge that the online space, everything feels like a grenade has gone off. And then you end up in cancel court and I think, you know, just be careful. And if you're going to take somebody to cancel court, you better have the receipts. And y ou better speak clearly on what you mean and mean what you say, because you will be screenshotted and it will travel. A nd the worst thing to do to someone, you know, is to try to create a narrative about them that isn't true.

Zoraida:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because you can't take that back.

Dhonielle:

And it will follow you. And I just believe that when you do that, it comes back to you. Yeah. So stay out of miss Judge Judy's court, honey, and yeah, there we go. Thanks for visiting cancel court. This court is adjourned.

Zoraida:

All right. That's it for this week's episode of Deadline City. Thank you so so much for listening to us, our goal is to demystify the publishing and writing process and count on listeners like you for your support. So don't forget to review comments, subscribe, and chat with us on our Twitter and Instagram Deadline City accounts. If you like what you hear, buy us a coffee on Kofi or join our Patreon community. So see you next week. And for now, write on.

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