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Clay Bonnyman Evans's avatar

Though it's in no way her responsibility, I can't help thinking of an alternate reality in which the luminous, lyrical Gorman would have stepped up to a microphone to kindly, gently, thoughtfully and publicly say she did not agree with the decision, and that she was withdrawing her work from a publisher would make such a silly, pointless decision.

One can dream, no?

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Susan Zakin's avatar

I'm a white American female journalist who stumbled onto a story set in West Africa that I thought would make a great novel. Ten years and tens of thousands of dollars, many trips to Senegal, one husband and two delightful stepsons later, wish me luck getting it published. I thought you'd be entertained by the only rejection so far. Keep in mind that the story is set in an imaginary country called Grand Mare (common border with Liberia and Guinea). The frontispiece states that the country is mythical but like the U.S. was a creation of Enlightenment thinking. The novel has two narrators, one a paramount chief's son who gets caught up in a coup, the other a white British Kenyan reporter. Here's the excerpt from the reject letter that my agent forwarded to me: "...but at the same time, I ultimately hoped it would be paired with a perspective from someone from the Grand Mare community. As the novel stands now, I think it would be a challenge for me to pitch a story set in Africa from a white American point of view.”

Who would "someone from the Grand Mare community" be? Would this editor (or, more likely, her assistant) ask Jonathan Swift for a co-author from Lilliput?

The irony being that this PC nonsense is coupled with a lack of basic map reading skills, and certainly no knowledge of Africa.

The message of the novel is that failed states don't only exist in "other" places. It's an important takeaway. Blanche McCrary Boyd called the novel "a missing piece of the canon."

Will it ever get published?

You tell me.

And, Professor McWhorter, I would love a blurb!

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