High Tide

Although the zombified entity that is wokedom is not dead – not by a long way yet – there are green shoots of hope. Recently, Rickie Gervais and Laurence Fox put their heads above the parapet and endeared themselves to the non-woke public at large by wading into the risible intersectional racism of the far left.

Now we have another resistance forming. This time it is to that nasty concept of cultural appropriation.

Jeanine Cummins’s British publisher, Headline, is standing shoulder to shoulder with the American press that published her divisive thriller, declaring that it is proud to publish her in the UK. As the backlash continues over her novel about migration from Mexico to the US, the imprint acknowledged the book has “sparked debate about the legitimacy of who gets to tell which stories”.

Not so long ago, they would have caved, issued a grovelling apology and withdrawn the book. Now they are standing firm. So something has changed. Is it that they detect something in the wind? Is it that they, correctly, decided that who gets to tell stories is whoever wants to tell them?

Meanwhile the far left wokerati are on the attack:

But reviewers have called into question Cummins’s right to tell the story and accused her of stereotyping – criticism that intensified when it emerged Flatiron celebrated the book last year with a dinner party featuring barbed wire in floral arrangements. Writing on Medium, the Mexican-American author and translator David Bowles called the novel “harmful, appropriating, inaccurate, trauma-porn melodrama”, while the Chicana writer Myriam Gurba condemned Cummins for her “overly ripe Mexican stereotypes”, and for prose “taint[ed]” by the “white gaze”.

The appropriate answer to this pile of dogshit is to tell them to fuck themselves. There is no law that says someone cannot tell whatever story they wish to tell. There is no “right to tell the story”, authors can tell whatever story is in their head and no one has any right to gainsay them for doing so. It being fiction and all…

“Latinx authors have objected to [Cummins] – who in the past has identified as ‘white’ – appropriating a story that could have, and should have, been voiced by someone of Mexican heritage,”

But they didn’t, did they? Cummins did, she hasn’t appropriated anything as it is a product of her imagination and she took the time to write it. If you don’t like it, don’t buy it and don’t read it. Problem solved. However, whatever colour the author’s skin, they are free to tell whatever story they wish to tell as it is their creation. It is not up to woke reviewers to decide on the author’s behalf and if they try, they need to be slapped down good and hard.

Which, it seems, is what has happened. There’s the usual blather about listening to these voices – which is fine. Listen if you wish, but then ignore them. The important point is that Cummins’ novel is being published and not squashed by the wokerati. Three wins in the space of a month. As I say, a few green shoots isn’t a huge amount but it is cause for quiet optimism.