You’d think it was akin to publishing launch codes by the way this affair has been handled, but a few people really didn’t want you to read this review. In the end, as many suspected, it was not a racist rant that somehow snuck on to the pages of The Fiddlehead. The crime, if there was one, was a review that wasn’t 100% favourable and supportive of Emily Riddle’s work. You’ll probably never hear about one inexplicably powerful person who decided to smash up this small corner of CanLit, with no regard to casualties. The real power of the Internet is smear: accusations, damage, then maybe the truth long after it matters, maybe never. If the cause is righteous, the truth doesn’t matter, and no apologies are ever required, right? How do censors sleep at night? Of course, they’re convinced that they’re doing good. They have seen the offending text, and they’ve made a judgment, but allowing you to do the same must not be allowed. You can’t handle the truth.
In case the link to Susan’s blog blows up, I’ve included screen shots.
Thanks!
You’re welcome. I’m glad you decided to post it on your site. I hope they reconsider the blacklist.
You did a valuable service in getting this balanced, insightful and predominantly favourable review before us. In my own reading of Emily Riddle I found myself struck by similar responses to her work. EmilyRiddle writes well about the vicissitudes of a young person’s love life, especially when she describes how it is shot through with the casual sometimes completely unconsidered, racism she has encountered, but that’s not nearly as interesting a subject when set against the history and the landscape she presents to us, and the characters who inhabit it. I
I found the use of Cree language unsettling at times, but I appreciate the effect as something intentional. People for whom this is a first language would face this same dislocation all the time when confronted by the languages of the settler culture.
That Susan Haley has a critique of Riddle’s work that isnt simply cheerleading is a testament to the value and importance of what Emily Riddle has done. And I think that Haley has made it clear that she was thoroughly syruck by the value and importance of Riddle’s work.
Like her, I’m eager to see where Emily Riddle will take usnext.
Thanks, Mark. There are plenty of people in the silent majority who would agree with you but very few who would actually say it out loud. Good on ya. Saying reasonable things shouldn’t be something that requires courage, but it does.