Dr Zuleyka Zevallos

#HandmaidsTale - As much as I enjoy watching about dystopias and thinking about them with a sociological lens, I really think this one misses the point in capturing how 'race'/'ethnicity' would play out in an extension of Gilead (which is basically Trump's America)

Black women and other women of colour have written about this extensively, for years, about the book and the TV adaptation It's not "Trump's America." Atwood uses history of what's happened to Black & Brown women under colonisation, erases race, & imagines it as White women

Thanks for clarifying Zuleyka, I haven't read the book - had no idea Atwood appropriated colonial stories in this way. I am told that in the book, the issue of 'race' wasn't dealt with at all. It appears this dystopian society removes 'race' as an issue between humans within.

Race in the novel is largely swept aside. Almost all dystopian fiction by White people is imagining how unfair slavery, dispossession and murder would be if it happened to White people. And POC mostly don't exist, plus there's the idea that all of humanity would unite...

OMG Zuleyka excellent point re: Dystopian Fiction. Yeah you are right, I am getting really annoyed with how POC characters are usually sidelined. With #HandmaidsTale, I think that the inclusion of POC secondary/minor characters is their way of 'addressing race' in the TV series

Yes. Inclusion of Black queer woman was sloppily handled, even though she's potentially the best character.And Mexican diplomats buying White kids is an insidious and wilful twist on reality. That White people would take kids of colour without enforcing racial categories is ridic

There's much more. That the story centres a White woman, & this resonates so deeply with White audiences, when actually, Aboriginal kids removed from family & given to White families, WOC all over the world forced to give up their kids, or exploited in surrogacy deals for WW.

It is amazing how after all this, Atwood is celebrated among Leftists. I do find the TV version universalises the experiences of POC women with white women in this fictional society.