Times Interview with Kate Clanchy - shared article in post

I can't find any links to this. Can you supply?

How do you know about this?

Tried to track down the woman's employer and get her fired. For leaving a critical review. Way to flex your privilege and status.

...she ... viciously hounded a woman for leaving a bad review.

What did she do?

Quick reminder than Kate Clanchy is running poetry workshops for Afghan girls that she shares on her X account:

x.com/KateClanchy1/status/1985401559207862421

Clanchy's book was deeply unpleasant. I'm not sure if it should have been pulled but I do think most decent people would have recoiled and avoided. It didn't even have literary merit to commend it. I think people sometimes like to be contrary or put being a free speech absolutist over everything, maybe there's even a touch of racism in the mix for some. Lots of books are awful, this was no different so I have no idea what makes it special enough to defend.

As for cancel culture, it's a bit rich for her to play the victim when she so viciously hounded a woman for leaving a bad review. I have an extremely limited amount of sympathy for anyone who is hoist by their own petard.

Another paragraph from that article.

I remember studying English for my A-levels, when we read The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. I was the only Hazara in the class, and I felt extremely uncomfortable at some of Hosseini’s descriptions of the Hazaras. Kate’s use of “almond eyes” is in no way the same. People have been very quick to criticise her because she is a white, privileged writer. Hosseini is a person of colour and an Afghan; he has not been questioned at all. I think this is hypocrisy.

Interesting that no one is demanding that Hosseini be cancelled. I'm obviously not suggesting that he should be.

It is a horror because 80 years earlier, a little further east, boys, even with no known Jewish ancestry, were murdered because members of their countries' establishment measured their noses and chose them for death on that basis.

That mindset, categorising humans, and human worth, on the basis of certain physical characteristics, is dangerous. She wasn't writing novels. She wasn't writing as an insider. She was writing about children in specific identifiable schools as though she was a naturalist describing exotic species. A very colonialist mindset - like those Belgian zoos that exhibited humans.

Anyhow, Clanchy's style, nice lady being benevolent to the deserving poor, reminds me of Camila Batmandelidjh in the way she was briefly lionised by the London-centric media. Different personal presentation, different approach, provoking a similar sense of distaste.

Why is it a "horror" to say someone looks like they have an Ashkenazi nose? Only if you believe that it's an insult to be Jewish or look Jewish.

And Jewish people are having nose jobs (Jewish Chronicle) mainly young women. So people can't look diverse and we can't describe diversity? What a horrible world to live in. https://www.thejc.com/news/the-complex-history-of-jews-nose-jobs-and-antisemitism-cygdnrx2

As for Clanchy's other descriptions of children she quoted the children's descriptions of themselves from their own poetry.

From The Times article "She used the phrase “almond eyes”, for example, but did so because it was a term she had learnt was used by the Hazara people of Afghanistan as an “important political term and identifier” of their ethnic group. One of her old pupils had even written a poem that included the line, “In Iran where they offend because of their almond-shaped eyes.” Similarly, a pupil wrote in a poem that “the scorching sun melts my chocolate face”. "

https://www.thetimes.com/article/7681d5ec-3773-4b36-ab95-e4ab409d7899?shareToken=e76def471fd13ded750d7295fd554675

If you or those 3 twitter bullies are offended by what children wrote about themselves that doesn't make Clanchy's work offensive or her the problem.

Yes, this is a very strange, and I think rather disturbing, development.

It reminds me of the rule that we are not supposed to mention that we know people's real sex, because it's somehow impolite.

The fact that ethnic physical characteristics exist is somehow now taboo as well. Although not usually among the group being described, at least in my experience. We all see that they exist, but we are supposed to pretend we don't.

I have wondered in the past if some people actually don't recognise patterns adequately to notice, but I have come to the conclusion that, largely, they do, they just lie about it.

Thanks for the share token. She was treated disgracefully. I sincerely hope we're coming to an end of this, no-one should be bullied to the point where they're at the medicine cabinet contemplating their suicide.

People have tried to cancel Chimamanda too! https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/feb/15/cancel-culture-we-should-stop-it-end-of-story-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-on-backlash-writers-block-and-her-two-new-babies

Not being black, I do not feel qualified to pass judgement upon the author of a book I read, where a young black character is described as having shiny skin and deep folds in their neck. While I was aware of the stereotype of black people having shiny skin, I had no idea about folds in their necks. But then I saw that some of the black people I know do have folds, I had just never noticed. Did it mean that the shiny skin description was racist because it was a stereotype, but the folds description was not racist because they were not a stereotype? But not all black people have shiny skin and not all have folds in their necks, so why would it be different? And does the ethnicity of the author make a difference? How on earth would I be qualified whether they were being racist in their descriptions?

(IIRC it was in a book by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.)

Kate's next novel -
There was a boy (am I allowed to say boy?) Ok a young human sat next to me reading his/her/their poem.
This human had a face with a nose which wasn't big or small. It was attached to his/her/their face with nostrils that existed too. Eyes were in his/her/their head with irises of neither blue, green, brown or grey (can't mention colour can I) there were eyes and he/she/they could see with them and read things.

We had a lovely chat the young human and I but I'm not allowed to mention what was said even my own experience of it in case it invalidates the young human's memory or experience or worse upsets you dear reader who wasn't there. But words were spoken oh yes.

(500 more pages of this).

Yes, her bullies (and they are bullies - they haven’t just bullied Kate Clanchy, you know) aren’t white. But as the article rightly points out, they are all from comfortable, middle class, educated backgrounds.

And none were as successful as Kate Clanchy, and none had done as much as her to elevate children from minority backgrounds.

Professional jealousy is an ugly thing. The disgusting Sunny Singh saying Kate was weaponising her “white woman tears” when she described feeling suicidal.

A vile trio.

Her critics (not 'bullies') were themselves from minorities and marginalised communities. That was why they noticed how offensive her narcissistic charity was. I suspect that was why she could not stand them not knowing their place and expressing the gratitude she expected.

I am sure the publishers were at fault - they should not have let the stuff get into print in the first place. But having done so they should have stood by their author.

And maybe she should have just let it go.

As a woman from an ethnic minority myself, I totally get Kate’s students’ frustration. All too often I come across people who are so intensely sensitive on my behalf to racist stereotypes, that they are oblivious to their own patronising mini-aggressions, as well as to the fact that I and my ethnic group are not offended by these statements that they are so busily protecting us over. Like the girl with the almond-shaped eyes, this is me, this is who I am, this is how we see ourselves - how dare you assume that there’s something wrong with this description of me.

I’m disgusted, but, sadly, not surprised, that the publishers had never read the book that was apparently so offensive. I’m also curious about the ethnic backgrounds of the ‘sensitivity readers’.

I imagine it was a bit like this working under Stalin - having to constantly make sure you have the 'right opinion' and be ready to change at a moment's notice...

For those who lack nuance, I am not actually saying this is how it would have been under Stalin.

Well, yes - of course those children may have done equally well without Clanchy.

But a slightly daft statement like that doesn’t negate that she did lift those children up. But apparently that counted for nothing among the bullies and the weaklings.

I work in publishing. I saw this situation play out. And I have never been more ashamed to work in publishing as I was then.

Indeed.. how else could people from disadvantaged backgrounds and/ or with a history of trauma ever get ahead without our middle class saviours to lift us from the mud 🙄

Exactly. I feel like all I ever say on any thread now is 'things are not black and white'. I also dislike some of the things she wrote in the book but they don't negate all the good she has done which is more than most of us will do.

Just think about what those children's experiences might have been like without Clanchy. She gave them the opportunity to express their traumatic experiences in poetry, she enabled them to publish their work, she helped some of them get into top universities. What would have happened to them without Clanchy?

And it really is worth bearing in mind that none of them seem to have a bad word to say about her.

Yes, for all Clanchy's faults, I think she is the only person in this who did actually care about the children. And it's clear the children saw it that way as well.

And yet she has done more to raise the voices of children from minorities and marginalised communities than any of her bullies have ever done. (And outsold them all hugely.) That’s how “awful” she is, right? Using her privilege to raise up others.

The response from her publisher was appalling. You’d think she’d committed a heinous crime the way they behaved.

Interesting that they redacted their correspondence (same happened around Rachel Rooney, too - and that involved an unprofessional publicist as well) - thank goodness the external
PR company did the right thing.

I did read it. The same self-promotion as every other article by her I've read in the last four years. She obviously neither knows nor cares why her dehumanising descriptions of children are offensive and rather frightening.

She wants to be praised and admired, and anyone who withholds that tribute must be denounced. Which, as pointed out upthread, is what caused the whole thing. If she'd read the negative review, shrugged her shoulders and let it go, there would have been no online flurry of attention and no 'cancellation'.