Fair Representation In Science Fiction and Fantasy Is Not Censorship

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Lately there’s been a heated debate over how young adult fiction is written. Many YA authors have been slammed by critics, both pro and amateur, for including controversial material in their books, such as racism, and how it represents minorities. One of the latest cases has been with Amelie Wen Zhao’s fantasy novel, Blood Heir (due for release in November).

Back in January Zhao had pulled her book from the pre-publication stage because several people on Twitter, many who were also YA authors, criticised it for being insensitive to the slave trade in the U.S. This was regardless of Zhao herself being a minority of colour, an immigrant from China. It was also regardless of her intentions to, as reported in Publisher’s Weekly, make people aware of the issue of human trafficking as well as telling an engaging story and that much of the slave trade and indentured servitude scenes in the book were rooted in her own Asian culture’s history and not meant to depict the U.S. slave trade. In addition to posting an apology on Twitter to those critics, she sent the book to sensitivity readers, people who review a work for any elements that may offend certain groups of people, and revised the book to make it more “fitting”.

What was there really to apologise for? I mean, Zhao’s book is a book of fantasy, a book that takes place in a made up world and culture. Sure there’s root elements from Asian culture but they’re from Asian culture, not U.S. culture. Zhao, an up-and-coming author whose Blood Heir will be her first published novel, was simply trying to communicate her ideas based on the experience of her own culture. But because several people couldn’t, or perhaps wouldn’t, understand this she was nearly forced to censor her own book! Well that was a warm welcome to a new author.

To accuse a work of fiction, especially if it’s set in a made up world, of wrongly depicting a real life sensitive issue is basically reading into it which is how a lot of censorship starts. It starts because readers assume things about a book that there is no evidence for. If we allow our books to be manipulated by people’s assumptions, especially ones that come through organised criticism and review such as sensitivity readings, the author’s vision can be thwarted, his or her true story may not be told and so will be censored.

In particular, if that were to happen to works of science fiction and fantasy, the genres may some day no longer exist. That would be because characters and situations distinctive to the genres would be interpreted as poorly depicting marginalised people in real life. In science fiction, aliens can be interpreted as poorly represented immigrants of colour. It can be the same with fairies in fantasy only the marginalised group would likely be homosexuals.

Such criticism is an intended liberal cause that has gone full circle! Much of the ‘60s cultural revolution went against censorship. Thanks to that, we got better freedom to tell the stories we wanted to in fiction, film and television. Now a so-called liberal cause is, whether its members realise it or not, pushing for what’s been historically a conservative act: book banning. Much of this debate grows out of the need for more minorities to be represented fairly and accurately in fiction. But it’s not the job of critics to demand that authors write their characters a certain way; it’s their job to criticise how authors write those characters and to show how they appear to be poorly depicted.

The solution to unfair representation in fiction isn’t to require the author to write a certain way. The solution is to encourage and support marginalised writers of all backgrounds and races to write about their cultures using characters based on those cultures. And, as a person of Hispanic/Latino roots, I’ve been well aware that minority writers have been lacking in science fiction and fantasy. Go to the first page of the science fiction and fantasy category on Amazon and you’ll see very few books by authors with Spanish surnames.

The more marginalised authors we promote, the more fair representation of them in their fiction will occur. After all, those authors are controlling their work. And if they’re not then maybe we need more transparency of the publishers’ editing processes.


Do you think situations such as with Zhao’s novel can lead to institutionalised censorship?

Until next time . . .