A Place for Wolves
Book cover
AuthorKosoko Jackson
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreRomantic thriller
Historical fiction
Young adult fiction
Set inKosovo

A Place for Wolves is a young adult novel by Kosoko Jackson. Although the novel was scheduled to be published in 2019, its release was cancelled by Jackson soon before publication when it faced social media backlash for perceived insensitivities in its depiction of the Kosovo War.[1][2]

Background

A Place for Wolves was to be Jackson's debut novel. He had previously worked as a sensitivity reader for major publishing companies, identifying content regarded as offensive or problematic in book manuscripts.[1][3]

Jackson, a gay black man, had been an advocate of the #ownvoices movement, which promotes books with characters of diverse identities written by authors who share those identities.[4] He had argued that, for example, "stories about the civil rights movement should be written by black people" and criticized female authors who "profit" from gay men's stories.[1][3] Jackson had also been a prominent critic of Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao, a young adult novel that in January 2019 faced accusations of racial insensitivity before its publication.[4][5]

Plot

The novel takes place during the Kosovo War of the late 1990s. It follows James Mills, a gay African American teenager who lives in the Kosovar village of Restelicë with his aid worker parents. When war breaks out in the region and he is separated from his parents, James attempts to flee with his Brazilian boyfriend Tomas to the safety of the U.S. embassy in Pristina.[6]

Reception

Advance reviews

Prior to its publication date in March 2019, A Place for Wolves had received a starred review from Booklist and been selected for IndieBound's "Kids' Indie Next" list.[3] The book's marketing included blurbs from young adult authors such as Shaun David Hutchinson, praising it as "a masterful debut," and Heidi Heilig, who called it "an intricate, rich story".[6]

Reception on social media

Backlash to A Place for Wolves on social media began in February 2019 with a review posted to Goodreads. The review criticized Jackson's choice to make the novel's villain an Albanian Muslim with the Kosovo Liberation Army, since Kosovo Albanians had been subject to widespread ethnic cleansing during the war and since it contributed to stereotypes about Muslims as terrorists.[1][4][6] The review suggested that readers who enjoyed the novel might suffer from "subconscious Islamophobia" and argued that the book had potential to cause real-world harm.[7] Journalist Jesse Singal later challenged this perception, stating that the villain's religion was not mentioned in the novel and that the KLA had also committed atrocities during the war, albeit on a smaller scale than the opposing Serbian forces.[6][8]

In addition, the review argued that the novel was insensitive because it emphasized the perspectives of Americans while using the war as merely a backdrop for the story. It criticized Jackson for writing about a largely Muslim country as a non-Muslim author with non-Muslim main characters.[1][7][9]

The contents of the Goodreads review were quickly amplified and spread by members of Twitter's young adult fiction community. Since the book had not been released, most of those criticizing it had not read it.[3][6] Heilig and others edited their formerly positive Goodreads reviews of the book, with Heilig apologizing "to those I've hurt by my blurb". Jackson was also removed from the lineup of an upcoming literary festival.[1][7]

Six days after the review was published, Jackson released a statement apologizing for the novel's "problematic representation and historical insensitivities," writing: "I failed to fully understand the people and the conflict that I set around my characters. I have done a disservice to the history and to the people who suffered." He also announced that he had asked the novel's publisher Sourcebooks to withdraw the book from publication.[1][5][10]

Later reviews

Following the reaction on social media, commentators took an interest in the book's artistic merits. After obtaining an advance copy of the book, Jesse Singal wrote that A Place for Wolves "isn't great, but it didn't deserve to be canceled." He called Jackson's writing "clunky" and the book's characters "poorly developed," criticizing it for the "flatness" of the wartime setting.[6][8] Jennifer Senior of The New York Times said that although Jackson "can write with charm and the authentic sass of an American adolescent, much of the book is painfully clumsy and poorly paced — which makes it a fairly typical debut novel, by the way."[3]

Analysis

Media coverage of A Place for Wolves' cancellation mainly examined it through the lens of cancel culture and online shaming. Katy Waldman wrote in The New Yorker that the debate surrounding the book "seems rooted in who gets to speak, and when, and how much power their words can wield". She noted the irony that Jackson had previously been involved in assessing and calling out books for controversial content before becoming entangled in controversy himself.[5]

The New Republic contributing editor Osita Nwanevu disagreed with the notion that Jackson had been a "casualty of cancel culture". He noted that Jackson, not the publisher, had decided to cancel the book's publication, and that Jackson still had another novel set for release.[11]

Ruth Graham of Slate criticized the incident as an example of the "increasingly toxic online culture" in young adult literature, "with evermore-baroque standards for who can write about whom under what circumstances."[1] Jennifer Senior of The New York Times called the controversy "frightening," saying that attacking authors in the name of diversity would paradoxically lead to an overly censored "dreary monoculture" in book publishing.[3]

In an article for Reason, Jesse Singal characterized the online critics of A Place for Wolves and other controversial young adult novels as "left-wing identitarians" who believed that "the more marginalized you are, the better you are as a person." He claimed that these critics were a highly vocal minority of young adult fiction readers on social media, making their views appear deceptively popular to publishers and authors and making it more difficult to identify truly problematic content.[8]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Graham, Ruth (March 4, 2019). "Wolves". Slate. Archived from the original on September 25, 2023. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  2. ↑ Vartan, Kristin (November 20, 2019). "A timeline of 2019's 5 biggest YA controversies". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on December 23, 2023. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Senior, Jennifer (March 8, 2019). "Teen Fiction and the Perils of Cancel Culture". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 19, 2023. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  4. 1 2 3 Singal, Jesse (February 28, 2019). "He Was Part of a Twitter Mob That Attacked Young Adult Novelists. Then It Turned on Him. Now His Book Is Canceled". Reason. Archived from the original on December 23, 2023. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  5. 1 2 3 Waldman, Katy (March 21, 2019). "In Y.A., Where Is the Line Between Criticism and Cancel Culture?". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on December 21, 2023. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Singal, Jesse (March 15, 2019). "A Review of a Book That Will Never Be Published, Thanks to the Young Adult Twitter Mob". Reason. Archived from the original on November 1, 2023. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  7. 1 2 3 Lukianoff, Greg; Schlott, Rikki (2023). The Canceling of the American Mind: How Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 978-1668019146.
  8. 1 2 3 Singal, Jesse (June 2019). "Teen Fiction Twitter Is Eating Its Young". Reason. Archived from the original on December 2, 2023. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  9. ↑ Rothstein, Katie (February 28, 2019). "Another YA Author Withdraws Book From Publication After Backlash". Vulture. Archived from the original on February 7, 2023. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  10. ↑ Benedictus, Leo (June 15, 2019). "Torn apart: the vicious war over young adult books". The Guardian. Archived from the original on October 9, 2023. Retrieved December 24, 2023.
  11. ↑ Nwanevu, Osita (September 23, 2019). "The "Cancel Culture" Con". The New Republic. Archived from the original on November 14, 2023. Retrieved December 26, 2023.
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