A furore has broken out in the children’s books world around claims by Alex Rider creator Anthony Horowitz that he was “warned off” creating a black character in one of his novels.
Authors including Ben Aaronovitch and Patrice Lawrence have reacted with scepticism to the claim, as writers of colour accused the bestselling author and screenwriter of diverting attention away from the lack of diversity in print and among novelists.
Aaronovitch, who has included black characters in his Rivers of London fantasy series, was alarmed by the news. Writing on Twitter, he described as “bollocks” Horowitz’s claim that an editor told him that devising black characters could be “patronising” after he revealed plans to create a black as well as white protagonist in his latest children’s book. “If you don’t feel confident or just don’t want to write black characters, just say so,” Aaronovitch tweeted. “Don’t pretend it’s political correctness gone mad.”
The controversy ignited last week when Horowitz claimed in a newspaper interview that he had been told it was inappropriate to include a black character. Describing the issue as “dangerous territory”, he said an editor told him that creating black characters who did not reflect an author’s own experience, was “by its very nature, artificial and possibly patronising. Therefore I was warned off doing it. Which was, I thought, disturbing and upsetting.” His publisher Walker Books has strenuously denied the claim. Horowitz was unavailable for comment.
Lawrence, whose debut Orangeboy scooped the Waterstones children’s award for older children, said white writers’ fears of accusations of cultural appropriation if they created black of Asian characters was “a diversion”.
“The whole issue of equality and diversity has been hijacked by white writers,” she said, arguing that prize shortlists were full of white writers whose work featured black characters. “It made me feel really angry when I heard this,” she added. “I come from a background where I was working in equality for 20 years and as soon as you raise the difficulties faced by black people, you get someone saying, ‘But what about white working-class boys?’ This feels the same.”
Instead of complaining, Horowitz was in a position to help black and Asian authors in the struggle for publication, she said. “The number of black debut writers published in the past year is barely in double figures,” she said. “He has got to be top of the tree compared to his editor, compared to the rest of us, and he is in a position to make such a difference in the way that Ben Aaronovitch has.”
Author Courttia Newland said Horowitz’s intervention was an odd complaint, and cited a range of writers, from Maggie Gee to SJ Watson, who have black characters in their work. “The issue isn’t whether or not [white writers] are given the right to create characters of colour. Rather, it is whether they do it well and the privilege that comes with being enabled to tell stories that writers of colour are routinely marginalised for.”
Newland said white writers must recognise the privileged position from which they write, and understand the basis of accusations of cultural appropriation. “Cultural appropriation is about power, or the lack of acknowledgment thereof, and respect,” he added. “There’s a reason Eminem largely escapes that type of criticism and Miley Cyrus doesn’t. It’s mainly to do with their actions.”
Fellow novelist Zoë Marriott said writers like Horowitz needed to understand that writing rich, diverse characters was not the same as appropriating someone else’s culture. “People from marginalised groups are always being promised diversity and being delivered patronising, whitewashed and outright offensive portrayals instead,” she said.
The reaction to Horowitz’s remarks has reignited debate around the use of “sensitivity readers”, who check manuscripts for offensive portrayals of minority characters. Lincolnshire-based Marriott said she supported their use. “I think sensitivity readers are a wonderful resource [that] writers can utilise to avoid making fools of ourselves,” she explained. “The problem is that many writers don’t want to be given a chance not to make a fool of themselves. They want a free pass.”
According to the horror writer KJ Charles, who is also a freelance book editor, sensitivity readers are “grossly misrepresented by people who don’t want to be called out on the fact that they doing it wrong”.
“The whole industry has a problem with diversity, so you can easily end up with a white writer being edited by a white editor,” she said. “A sensitivity reader is just to get another pair of eyes involved in the editing process.”
Joanne Grant, an editor who uses sensitivity readers at Canadian romance publisher Harlequin, said that they were “part of efforts to ensure that diverse representations are fairly and accurately presented”.
Harlequin has never had an author refuse to make changes suggested by a sensitivity reader, Grant continued, and she wouldn’t want authors to feel any restrictions on the kind of stories they want to write. “What we do feel is a responsibility for ensuring that the stories we publish are as sensitive and inclusive in their representations as possible, which is why sensitivity reads are important.”
But not all writers of colour regard the use of sensitivity readers, and accusations of cultural appropriation, as helpful. Booker-shortlisted author Ahdaf Soueif said: “In the end, what it comes down to is: are you going to write well or not? I think a novelist should be able to write about anything or anybody they like.”
“People and countries like Egypt and Palestine are used by writers as if they were simply stage sets, backdrops on which they can write their fantasies,” Soueif continued. “It is problematic, but it is not a problem to be solved by some kind of edict that says you can only write white male characters if you are a white male. The problem is far more subtle than that.”
- This article was amended on Friday 26 May 2017 to remove a suggestion that Courttia Newland is working on a forthcoming novel featuring a white female protagonist.
