BOOKING IT WITH EMMA
November 21, 2022
Welcome back to controversial authors! Recently, I’ve done some research on The Literary Phoenix. They have a whole section dedicated to the levels of severity of authors and their problematics.
Currently, if you look at the “Code Red” portion of the website there are a lot of authors on that list. To be exact, there are 26 authors on that list.
One of the authors is Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid’s Tale, who is on the list for being an alleged outspoken supporter of those accused of sexual harassment.
“In 2016, Atwood signed a letter in support of Steven Galloway who had been accused of sexual assault. While many authors removed their names, Atwood continued to write a letter defending herself against being called a ‘bad feminist.’ She also took to social media to defend her stance. In doing so, she continues to support the oppression of sexual assault victims,” according to the website.
Author Jojo Moyes, who wrote Me Before You, is on this list for allegedly being ableist.
“Me Before You is noted as deeply problematic due to the themes of disability and suicide that were written by an able person, who is accused of grossly misrepresent the value of the disabled community – from their happiness to their sexuality. The message that the film and book both project is that ‘it’s better to be dead than disabled.’ In an interview Moyes defended her choices and said it was unfortunate readers and viewers came away with that message. It’s worth noting that authors rarely have creative control over film adaptations,” quotes the website.
Even with having no creative control, if you didn’t want the readers and viewers to “take it that way,” you probably should have changed a lot of stuff up.
While there are so many other author’s on this website, and I could, if I really wanted to, name all of them and tell you every little thing they’ve done wrong.
I won’t do that only because you guys should go ahead and look at the lists. I mean really look at them, from code yellow all the way to what we were just talking about in code red.
Let me know if you knew this about any of the authors mentioned on any of the lists!
