I say that because I *know* I am going to get in trouble for this thread. I know it because even alluding to it publicly before has led to serious backlash—people emailing the RWA Board about how Courtney is Being Terrible Online Again.
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I am not trying to be terrible online. I am saying this because I do not see how we can move forward as an organization if the white women who make up the bulk of the membership remain unaware of just how *badly* WOC are being hurt.
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This is a tale of two RITA finalists. It is also a tale of two RWAs. I’m going to have to name a name, and in fact—I’m going to quote tweet a thread that this person tagged me in earlier today later in this thread.
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This is not really about that person. I’ll say more later, but I want you to listen to what is happening. Systemically. It’s not just about people. It’s about the entire system of power.
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In 2016, more black women were RITA finalists than in any of those other years before. One of those black women was
@PhyllisBourne, who finaled with a book that was released by Harlequin Kimani.Näytä tämä ketju -
Harlequin tends to celebrate its RITA-finaling authors—they’re very proud of the fact that their series authors write wonderful books that capture hearts, and they *should* be. Those authors are often given pride of place at their publisher signings.
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Phyllis Bourne, who was attending RWA, was not invited to sign her RITA finalist book at their signing. She wasn’t invited to sign at all. She reminded them she had a RITA finalist (was, IIRC, the only black Harlequin finalist?), and they just snubbed her.
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If you’re not familiar with Harlequin lines, Kimani was the “African American” line, which basically meant the authors (not the characters, the characters didn’t have to be African American!) were black.
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The other lines are defined by things like common plot elements. They are also predominantly—and I mean in a *big* way—written by white women. (There are exceptions. We are just talking predominance right now).
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(If you look at the Ripped Bodice, 4.8% of Harlequin series authors are POC. That dismal number *includes* all the Kimani authors. So that tells you how bad their percentages are in non-Kimani lines.)
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Things got worse with Harlequin as conference approached. Harlequin had a conference call with authors from multiple lines—not including authors from Kimani. Harlequin told these (almost entirely white) authors that they needed to start writing diversely.
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Of note is that Harlequin didn’t contact Kimani authors asking them to write for other lines—something that many of them had repeatedly asked to do for years. They just asked their white authors to write diversely.
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Going into conference, there was worry that Harlequin intended to drop Kimani, and just push readers who wanted to read about black people into lines being written by white authors, leaving the black authors writing for Kimani out in the cold.
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(This worry was well-founded, by the way—Harlequin is dropping its Kimani line and has invited only a tiny fraction of its former Kimani authors to participate in its other lines.)
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It got worse at conference. An editor who worked for Harlequin approached an award winning black author and told her, to her face, that she didn’t want her books, but she wanted her to help her develop a guide for white authors writing diversely.
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When I say tensions were high, I mean... Tensions were HIGH. I think that about 3% of white authors noticed this. By contrast, many women of color knew what was happening.
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Like I said, this is a tale of two RWAs—one in which every woman of color was aware that a large number of black authors faced an existential threat to their career, and one where most white woman had no idea.
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Let’s get back to the RITA. Phyllis Bourne was nominated for a RITA, and yeah, we all understand that RITA finalists are all amazing, that it’s an honor to be nominated, and that someone is going to win and it doesn’t make anyone else who finaled a loser.
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WOC wanted Phyllis to win. We really did. And yeah, we understood it might not happen, but man, publishing is full of disappointments. You get up and you keep going.
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But there was ONE book in that category that...um, let’s say, I didn’t hear a lot of WOC they wanted it to win.
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This was a book (written by a white author) where the heroine was Native. She had a family history of alcoholism and poverty (because of course she did) and the hero was a white savior, and... it’s really not about that book.
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Nor is it really about the other book that the author had written that year—a book in which the black (maybe biracial?) hero had been abandoned in a literal trashcan by his crack whore mother.
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People read this books. They had issues with them. A lot of issues. It was *hurtful* that we knew some of our fellow authors who served as judges had read these books and didn’t notice that they were deeply racially problematic at best.
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But it’s not like racially problematic books hadn’t finaled before. You just hope they don’t win. It’s one thing if five judges randomly chosen don’t notice it. But five final round judges, hand-picked, would have to like it for it to win.
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You know which book won. And—by the way, this is important—Harlequin also published this book.
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It felt like a slap in the face. I was sitting at a table with multiple women of color, and we all felt like we had been stabbed through the heart.
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And then—to make things worse—and I recognize that this part here isn’t that author’s fault—that author who wrote that book that no editor had noticed was racially problematic, that none of our white peers had noticed was racially problematic?
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In her acceptance speech, she mentioned that Harlequin had made a donation to that native tribe that her heroine was from.
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I don’t know if I can explain how it felt to hear everyone white applaud Harlequin for their wokeness in making a donation, when some of my dearest friends had spent the entire conference feeling like they were under attack by that very publishing house.
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When you hear black authors say “the RITA ceremony is not for us” that is what they mean.
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