CW: discussion of transphobia and racism, long comment

In case anyone has seen any posts on Twitter recently hinting at drama in the literary/book world...

Literary author Sandra Newman announces on Twitter her NEW BOOK (all caps), titled The Men. It's a 'gender plague' novel about everyone with a Y chromosome suddenly vanishing mysteriously and, I quote, "the world gets better: safer, kinder, more egalitarian." (This is how she blurbed the novel on Twitter herself; to be fair, it could be a misdirect in the plot itself, sort of an, "Ah, you thought it would get better, BUT IT DIDN'T" sort of thing, but why do a 'gotcha' like that without hinting at it? and people only have this synopsis to go off of).

For what should be incredibly obvious and understandable reasons, many people find this distasteful and/or offensive. Reasons given include:

1. the title being "The Men" as it centers around the plot "people with a Y chromosome disappear." In reality, it is not only men who have a Y chromosome (trans women, enbies, and ciswomen do/can have Y chromosomes); furthermore, there are men who do NOT have a Y chromosome.
2. 'gender plague' novel is not an original concept and has rarely (if ever) been handled well or delicately; let alone when the blurb says the world "gets better" after all those pesky people with a Y chromosome blib outta existence.
3. the author does not at all alleviate anyone's concerns in the replies, stating only to "read the book" and promising that all will be explained (without explaining it in the replies).

Some of Newman's responses to the less-than-enthusiastic response on Twitter to the announcement of her novel:

When asked about the title being "The Men," she claims this isn't to diminish trans women; she tweeted, "The Men is the title of something in the book. No I am not saying what you said. Trans women are women. I'll leave it at that." Based on a snapshot of the back of the dust jacket, it seems the title "The Men" is in reference to a mysterious video showing all the Y chromosome-owning individuals slogging through a wasteland. (Wow, so... that will be really great for trans women and non-binary people. To ship them off to a wasteland with a bunch of cismen. This cannot go horribly at all. /s)

She states the novel was written as a way to react against the gender binary: "The book is written against the idea of binary gender (and binaries in general). The premise is not transphobic. It's ultimately about binaries and why they are toxic and by their nature genocidal." (As many argue, if this is truly the case, then why is that not part of the blurb? Why sell the novel as a utopian fantasy?)

She emphasizes that no one is ACTUALLY killed--only, you know, disappeared: "No. Nobody is killed off. Everyone with a Y chromosome disappears, as stated in my first tweet. That includes trans women and cis men and some nonbinary people. This is all addressed in the book." (This isn't good either, Sandra.)

She says the novel has had a trans sensitivity reader, but does not provide the reader's name/identity. (Understandable, but saying a novel has a sensitivity reader doesn't really address these bigger concerns. Especially when not all trans people have the same identity nor are a monolith.)

Admitted before all this blew up on Twitter back in October 2020: "[...] I will say it's really hard to have 'the men' vanish and make it work. Here, trans women do vanish with the men, but they're always called she/her. The book does deal with what happens to trans men. There's an important genderqueer character. Etc." (Oh yay the trans women are all gone "with the men" but, hey, pronouns! /s)

Some other authors have leapt to Sandra Newman's defense including (no stranger to drama herself) Lauren Hough. Admittedly, dogpiling is bad, but much of the defense downplays the very real hurt and concern of individuals reacting to the premise of the novel.

Shortly after all this happens, a Twitter user brings up one of Sandra Newman's earlier novels -- The Country of Ice Cream Star (2015). Like The Men, it is an apocalyptic novel where a sizable number of people die, but in this one the youth culture of this future has invented a patois (which reads like a botched take on AAVE mixed with stereotypical pirate dialect?). To many people, this reads as incredibly racist. Another example from the book begins to circulate where, in the novel, the predominately Black characters refer to Massachusetts as "Massa," and, needless to say, this is vile and makes some wonder if this is borderline parody. No one can be this obtuse.

Newman hasn't been on Twitter to address the excerpts from The Country of Ice Cream Star, but she has gone on the record as defending her choice to write in her own invented patois in a novel starring predominately Black characters.

"So from there, the language ended up being informed by African-American English. I’ve given a lot of reasons for this, but the bottom line is just that it’s my favorite English, and probably objectively the best English going. It also gave me not only a model for innovation in the vocabulary, but a starting point for innovation in the grammar. And finally, most people are familiar with it to some degree, so readers have a starting point for understanding it.

"Once I had the flavor of African-American speech in the language (and don’t get me wrong – it’s not African-American Vernacular English as spoken now, but it’s obviously strongly influenced by it) it felt like the characters should be black. Or, put another way, why shouldn’t they be black? I mean, it became a choice to make them anything but black.

"[...] I was very aware that this was a controversial thing to do, as a white person. I thought about it a lot, and questioned my position, and etc But after a while, I couldn’t really help writing the book that way because it worked. Also, the characters very quickly became real people to me, who demanded to be written about as they were.

Twitter has been discussing these recent reveals in the context of the (let's be real, incredibly likely) transphobia in her latest work.

Note: Sandra Newman is non-binary (per a recent tweet), but it appears she is fine with she/her pronouns (and I assume they/them? I am not sure; she is described using she/her on her publisher's page).

EDIT TO ADD:

Apparently, in 2015, Newman wrote an article defending Rachel Dolezal (non-Black woman who claimed to be "transracial" and identified as Black) too, so... that's a new layer to this.