Kate Clanchy - poet - is 'cancelled' by her publisher

[ArabellaScott]

Picador are unpublishing - ceasing to distribute - all of Clanchy's books. The article says 'by mutual consent', but it's not a good thing to hear a poet/author being 'cancelled'.

Literature/poetry is not in a healthy state right now.

unherd.com/thepost/picador-cancels-poet-kate-clanchys-books/

In case you missed the brouhaha - Article from last year:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-58151144

Apologies if this has been posted before. It's critical of Clanchy but isn't coming at her with pitchforks.

culturematters.org.uk/arts/life-writing/item/3767-kate-clanchy-s-class-conflict

I have to say this has me boggled.

In an early teaching job, she admits that she found her Scottish working-class pupils to be so homogeneous that it was difficult to tell them apart

Now, was brought up in and live in Scotland, am as middle class as Clanchy and, in a spirit of honesty, will admit I'm a crashing snob but I can't get my head round this at all.

But having read the book before the controversy appeared, it was a clearly a well-meaning book, intended really for a white middle-class audience who don't actually know any working class or ethnic minority people to get an insight into how tough and different their lives are

Hmm, not sure about that. I'm white, middle- class, living in a part of the UK which is overwhelmingly white and have spent my entire life in a safe, middle class bubble.

Perhaps the critics are cherry- picking the worst parts for effect but I find them shocking.

Kate Clanchy is unfailingly honest in her expression of her experience and her feelings. We need a lot more if that if we are going to build understanding between people.

If someone says they struggled to tell apart a group of people that share a particular characteristic in a particular circumstance, then rather than denigrating her for being honest surely it would be more interesting to explore why?

@PaleBlueMoonlight

Kate Clanchy is unfailingly honest in her expression of her experience and her feelings. We need a lot more if that if we are going to build understanding between people.

If someone says they struggled to tell apart a group of people that share a particular characteristic in a particular circumstance, then rather than denigrating her for being honest surely it would be more interesting to explore why?

So if you're a member of that group that's being talked about, and you deal with oppression and bigotry on a personal and systemic level every day, is it your job to sit down and do gentle exploration with every single person who is "honest" with you? Do you have time in the day? Do you have to have the patience? Is there even any point if you know full well there's a good chance they'll accuse you of being nasty and trying to cancel them if you point out, even gently, that what they said was prejudiced?

Seriously, it is not the job of members of minority groups to be teachers or counsellors to the very people who are contributing to the system which disadvantages them, even if they are doing it inadvertently. There comes a point where people have to take responsibility for what they think and say for themselves, and if they react badly to honest criticism, that's their own fault.

No. That's not what I think or what I said.

@PaleBlueMoonlight

No. That's not what I think or what I said.

So who is supposed to be doing this exploration with them?

KC herself I think is being unfairly demonised, though. She’s the locus of an argument that’s divorced from what she wrote, despite people extensively quoting her.

I agree with this, NoSquirrels.

And as other posters have said above, there absolutely CAN be a fundamentalism of the left, just as there can be a fundamentalism of the right. People can be dogmatic and intolerant regardless of where their political views fall.

I increasingly feel that there's a split between old-fashioned liberal lefties, committed to values like free speech, and a new kind of hard left anti-racist discourse that attempts to police and ban anyone who doesn't fall into line.

I feel rather torn sometimes, because I think postcolonial theory and critical race theory are hugely important (and that the liberal left needs to recognise its own longstanding inadequacies in that regard), but in cases like this one, I find myself siding with the classical liberal left. In fact, ideally, I'd like to stake out a position in the middle, but that's hard impossible? to do when Twitter discourse effectively says, 'You're for us or against us'.

Also, I don't know KC personally, but I live in the catchment of the school where she teaches, and I've seen firsthand how she has helped to raise the profile of that school over many years, and encourage the pupils there, long before the book was published and everything exploded. Her elderly parents, the historian Michael and his wife Joan, a retired headmistress and teacher, were also much loved in the community and it was very distressing when they died during lockdown last year, within a couple of weeks of each other. I don't think KC was making a hollow play for sympathy when she said that bereavement had affected her and that she wasn't herself at the time she overreacted to the Goodreads reviews so badly on Twitter. I'm not saying that all this exonerates her, but there's definitely a more complicated human context that goes beyond the oft-quoted snatches from her book about the almond-shaped eyes and the Ashkenazi nose.

The quotes don't reflect the larger body of what she has written and how she has lived.

KiminkosNightmare

You know Kate Clanchy’s Scottish, right?

It was a joke. She was comparing the class to the inner city pupils she’d had the year before and joking that it was the entirely white, entirely Scottish-born class she ‘couldn’t tell apart’.

There does seem to be some out of context cherry picking, yes.

We as a society; people who are interested and want to talk about it. I actually think that in personal relationships we should let a lot more go in order for conversation to be able to flow and for people to chat and seek to understand each other without barriers being put up or anyone being cast as the bad guy or demonised for having different experiences, perspectives or unconscious bias.

@PaleBlueMoonlight

We as a society; people who are interested and want to talk about it. I actually think that in personal relationships we should let a lot more go in order for conversation to be able to flow and for people to chat and seek to understand each other without barriers being put up or anyone being cast as the bad guy or demonised for having different experiences, perspectives or unconscious bias.

But the thing is, this didn't happen. No one seems to have had any exploration at all with Clanchy at all about the possible problems with her work until these women of colour pointed it out. And I agree this is in part the fault of her publishers for not seeing any issues at the editing stage, but it's a fact that too often these "explorations" just don't happen until members of the affected minority have to point it out themselves, and then they get accused of being mean and aggressive and of trying to cancel people because they're less than perfectly patient about these issues which affect them very personally (and honestly often if they are perfectly patient, they will still get accused of being mean and aggressive and cancelling because some people just don't want to hear this stuff - Clanchy's initial refusal to accept the quotes even came from her book is an example of this).

And, y'know, WoC and other affected minorities are part of "society" and are numbered among the people interested and wanting to talk. I think xxyzz is absolutely correct in saying one of the problems with Clanchy's approach is she seems to have imagined her audience would be other middle class white people, and this feels like an extension of that. Other middle class white people (ie, society) were supposed to come along and - gently and kindly and with lots of validation - explore her prejudices with her, free from the intrusion of actual minorites, who weren't supposed to read the book or have feelings about it - it's all very "We're talking about you, not to you".

@Anactor

KiminkosNightmare

You know Kate Clanchy’s Scottish, right?

It was a joke. She was comparing the class to the inner city pupils she’d had the year before and joking that it was the entirely white, entirely Scottish-born class she ‘couldn’t tell apart’.

There does seem to be some out of context cherry picking, yes.

From Joanna Williams in Spiked

In her book, when Clanchy first meets her Scottish pupils she struggles to tell these white working-class ‘winter-coloured, mouse-haired children’ apart – her eye, she tells us, ‘had been tuned in to the multiracial London pupils’. By contrast, her Scottish pupils are ‘undersized, undeveloped’.

It's not much better - even in context.

KimikosNightmare

I noticed that you chose to quote a reported account, rather than from the book itself. Are you saying that you are offended by selected quotes from a book you haven’t actually read?

The point of whether or not one is allowed to have an opinion without having read the book has been discussed.

Clanchy offered to re-write it removing the problematic material - although as one commentator said it's a short book with large space settings and there's a lot to deal with.

I didn't say I was offended. My reaction to her comment about the homogenity of Scottish working class children was perplexment and puzzlement. It's a very odd thing to say.

I don't think the explanation makes it much better - that after the exoticism of her multi- cultural, inner city class the Scottish pupils were drab and indistinguishable

The things she describes doing and saying in school are a safeguarding nightmare. Particularly her attitude to the 'intern' raising a completely appropriate complaint about a male student.
But again, the point is being missed. Kate Clanchy herself said those quotations were offensive. So offensive she would never have written them and encouraged her followers to report the reviewer who mentioned them. They were not made up. They were in the book.
The sexualisation of young people within the book and the obsessive focus on looks as well as the moral superiority that leaks out of every page make it an awful book.
The problem was she didn't apologise for her behaviour.
She has had more coverage since this all started than she ever did before. Her books are widely available. She has not been cancelled by any definition of the term.
Those of us who object to the book are perfectly entitled to say so and point out the many, many issues. You are allowed to write bad reviews of books and you are allowed to criticise the work of others.

@PaleBlueMoonlight

We as a society; people who are interested and want to talk about it. I actually think that in personal relationships we should let a lot more go in order for conversation to be able to flow and for people to chat and seek to understand each other without barriers being put up or anyone being cast as the bad guy or demonised for having different experiences, perspectives or unconscious bias.

So as a Jew, I'm supposed to just "let it go" when people make remarks about my looks and my religious practises? If someone calls me a slur, I'm supposed to not see them as the "bad guy" because it might upset them.

No thank you.

I thinkxxyzzis absolutely correct in saying one of the problems with Clanchy's approach is she seems to have imagined her audience would be other middle class white people, and this feels like an extension of that. Other middle class white people (ie, society) were supposed to come along and - gently and kindly and with lots of validation - explore her prejudices with her, free from the intrusion of actual minorites, who weren't supposed to read the book or have feelings about it - it's all very "We're talking about you, not to you".

I think this is true, but if your book has a central theme of overcoming prejudice, surely it is reasonable to assume that you're mainly talking to people who might share those prejudices? Or should she have assumed that the victims of racism needed as much education about racism as the white middle classes? Can't imagine anyone finding that offensive.

As to whether it is reasonable to sack someone for unintended controversy... I think her intentions are relevant. Firstly, on a personal level, because it is simply not proportional for someone to lose their livelihood and career (she may have a new publisher but she might not have got one) because of something she tried her utmost not to do, and explicitly asked the reader to overlook if in spite of everything she slipped up. And more widely, because if you condemn people to lose their jobs for inadvertent microaggressions you are telling them that getting involved at all is just one enormous gamble with everything they hold dear. It is a tactic designed to silence and it will work. I know an author who is currently rewriting her book to take out a rounded, complex Black character because she doesn't want to expose herself to being cancelled. Now, does white people including Black characters even touch the sides of racism? No, of course not. But does it help anyone if the characters in books get even less diverse? Also no. And if white writers think diversity is too dangerous to touch with a bargepole, publishers expect Black writers to fill the gap, and only ever write about being Black - witch is already a problem in publishing.

Basically I think it's quite a simple question: are we prepared to put aside anger in order to enable people to do better? Even if our anger is justified, even if we are so fucking tired of educating and persuading and manipulating that we could weep. Do we want to punish, or do we want to improve? If it's the latter, then we have to resist the urge to silence the truth - at all, ever.

If it's the former, and we can only bear to be with other entirely enlightened people, then we'd better make sure that either we have a Plan B, or we're the one in charge, because for as long as there's more than one person there we'll drop into the danger zone eventually.

The problem was she didn't apologise for her behaviour.

She did, though. Perhaps not quick enough. But she did apologise.

She hasn't lost her livelihood or career though. Still published. More coverage than she ever had before. At a time when her sales were flagging seriously (the main reason to part company with Picador). Every time it dies down and people move on another story gets released. It's clearly orchestrated.

So as a Jew, I'm supposed to just "let it go" when people make remarks about my looks and my religious practises? If someone calls me a slur, I'm supposed to not see them as the "bad guy" because it might upset them.

No, of course not. Literally no one is saying racism should go unchallenged.

@NoSquirrels

The problem was she didn't apologise for her behaviour.

She did, though. Perhaps not quick enough. But she did apologise.

Later articles demonstrate that she really doesn't see what she has to apologise for.

Sorry, @EishetChayil, I misread what you were responding to - forgive me. I get your point.

I admit I haven't read the books. Based on the quotations I've seen here; I don't like the sound of them. I get that she was trying to explore her own prejudices, but the way she talks about the children seems very disrespectful. I teach in a mainly black African school and I do indeed get the two or three white children in a class mixed up sometimes, but I would never either think of them or describe them as 'winter coloured and mouse-haired' or 'undersized, undeveloped'. I can see these descriptions are quite poetic, but she is talking about real life children.

I don't agree with cancelling anyone. But as a teacher I don't think these books show the professionalism and respect for children that a teacher should.

Have you read the book, GrammarTeacher?

as a teacher I don't think these books show the professionalism and respect for children that a teacher should.

I think you should read it. As a teacher.

I would never either think of them or describe them as 'winter coloured and mouse-haired' or 'undersized, undeveloped'.

I think this is a fascinating comment. Are you saying that it is disrespectful of her to notice characteristics and describe them truthfully? "Undersized" can be true or false, it's not a value judgement. Should she deliberately try not to see her pupils? Or pretend she hasn't? Is this true of everything - race, disability, sex?

(When you say she is "talking about real life children", I don't know if you're aware that they are all extensively anonymised, and she is careful to say that she has made sure no one is personally identifiable. I think most of us agree that that's exactly as it should be, and writing about recognisable pupils would be an abuse of her position.)