Times Interview with Kate Clanchy - shared article in post

[NorthSouthEast]

This is a sobering, thoughtful, harrowing, blood-boiling read. What Kate Clanchy went through 😡. I’ve put this in FWR as it’s yet another story of a woman being cancelled on the basis of rumour, supposition and hearsay with self-righteous people scrambling to jump on the “be kind” wagon as it rolls another human being and their career into the mud.

Kate Clanchy: I was cancelled. It made me contemplate suicide

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

What I find interesting about this particular incarnation of shunning is the way once someone is designated as a hate figure you are allowed or even expected to work yourself up into a frenzy of indignation that becomes totally disconnected from what the person actually did or said. Anyone who suggests they deserve a fair hearing is as bad as them.

Yes. This is seem everywhere (and even sometimes on this board).

Everything is portrayed as clear cut - someone's either bad or good. No discussion is allowed, no nuance - you're just expected to accept someone else's viewpoint if they're OTRSOH. We know this yet for (often understandable reasons) allow the shouty ones to insist on one narrative . And people suffer.

I've not read KC's books or followed the issues closely. But I thought the article was credible and chimes in with a lot of what been clearly evidenced about toxic bullying / cancelling in the publishing industry.

“She wasn’t a pretty girl, even by the standards of the IU… she was fat, a swathe of freckly flesh bulging out of her collar, blurring her jawline, giving her premature double chins.”

There is a lot to criticse with her so called writing. But the worst was reading her description of a child's physical changes after being raped. It came across to me as absolutely unhinged and sociopathic.

To me, she's no different to creative types making poverty porn... Getting paid off the back of exploiting others under the guise of 'giving a voice to the voiceless' .

The fact she is still getting any airtime at all is a disgrace and clearly demonstrates she has not been 'cancelled' how ever much she doth protest...

I haven’t read her books, though I used to read, admire and enjoy the children’s poems she shared, with pride and affection, on Twitter. I remember my mother and sister, who had both found the books moving, being shocked by the depiction of them in the press after everything blew up, and wondering what they had missed.

But what I find really bizarre is the way that her publishers went from “this is writing we deem worthy of publication, which we will promote and benefit from”, to “this is exploitative, racist writing and its author should be ostracised.” She wasn’t cancelled for any behaviour or comment - it all came down to the content of the book itself. Which they had explicitly chosen to publish. I don’t understand how they could then turn round and act like victims themselves, going “oh! We didn’t know THAT was in the book!”
I know she says in the interview that some of them turned out not to have read it, but surely her own agent and whoever decided to publish it had?!!

I hope we're seeing the beginning of the end of this disturbing culture of cancelling. It's the modern equivalent of the stocks or the gladiator arena. People may say or do things that are wrong but that doesn't mean they deserve to have their lives entirely destroyed. Surely only murderers and rapists deserve that?!

It's interesting that we've reached a point where, in certain sections of polite society, mere acknowledgement of the existence of certain physiological features is apparently seen as bigoted and hateful.

@DeanElderberry you really should read the article because you’re comments are coming across badly and from a position of ignorance.

And your description of her not being cancelled is pretty disgusting and echoes abusers. “What do you mean, I don’t let you speak when I can STILL HEAR YOUR FUCKING WHINING VOICE.”

She was 100% cancelled. She was treated appalling by her publisher, who kowtowed to a trio of nasty bullies no doubt motivated by a large dollop of professional jealousy.

And has publishing really leaned anything? I don’t think so.

https://www.thetimes.com/culture/books/article/i-do-have-almond-shaped-eyes-my-teacher-kate-clanchy-described-me-beautifully-vtwp50b06

https://archive.ph/Qngpp

'Critics labelled this description patronising, insulting, offensive, colonialist and racist. This upset me. I am that girl with the almond eyes. I did not find it offensive.
To be clear, I would not dream of commenting on whether other words and phrases Kate has used are offensive to others, but “almond eyes” is a term that I have often used in my own poems. My almond-shaped eyes are at the core of my Hazara identity. Hazaras are an almost invisible ethnic group in Afghanistan.'

Sensitivity readers are a blight on the publishing industry. They are required to find fault in order to justify their existence and are aided and abetted by social media.
"If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him." Cardinal Richelieu

The whole sensitivity reader thing is so cowardly on the part of publishers. If they really cared about diversity they would look at their own management structures and address the fact it's pretty much always a white man at the top making the financial decisions. It's purely about avoiding social media storms, not about making anything better.

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'.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 🙄

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.

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.

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’.

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.

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.

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).

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.)

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

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.