Standing Up To The Impuritans
My lovely and talented wife wrote a response to the Amelie Wen Zhao situation. It is published at the Christian Fantasy site, Lorehaven
Standing Up To The Impuritans
You have probably heard by now about Amelie Wen Zhao, the Chinese immigrant who pulled her YA fantasy nove, Blood Heir, after being set upon by Twitter piranha.
Zhao based the invented world in her novel on her own experience growing up on mainland China. In China today, slavery is a concern, especially for young women, who are in danger of being kidnapped and sold to men who cannot otherwise find wives, due to China’s one-child policy. So Zhao included indentured servants and human trafficking as a plot issue in her novel.
Only, in her fantasy world, it was magic powers, rather than skin color, that fueled the discrimination that decided who ended up as a slave.
It was this that—of all things—that upset her attackers.
Nearly every fantasy or science fiction book I read as a child had basically this same theme—that prejudice would be different in an alien culture, and by viewing it from afar, we can learn to overcome it in ourselves. And yet, this very premise is what Zhao’s attackers denied. They condemned her for allowing slavery to be about anything but skin color.
They actually said this.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
