How identity-obsessed Twitter mobs make writers pull their own books from publication

Published March 4, 2019 2:25pm ET



Unless you’re writing your autobiography, it’s not safe to tell any story. Just ask Kosoko Jackson, who last year tweeted that only black people can write about civil rights, and only women can write about suffrage. Now he’s pulling his own book from publication.

The world of young adult literature inclines toward the superiority of identity, where writers are told what they can and can’t address based on their race, gender, or level of marginalization. Even Jackson, a gay black man who marketed himself as a “sensitivity reader” for publishing houses and wrote about a gay black protagonist in “A Place for Wolves,” was not impervious to critique.

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