This is the last i'll post on the whole Tamora Pierce thing but this is the most important
The thing is, tamorapierce:
I am woman of color. I am a queer woman of color. I am girl who grew up with your books. Your books were books I re-read every single year as soon as I discovered them at age 11. Your books were the books I read throughout the first abusive boyfriend in high school, the backstabbing drama, the time I got raped, the time 2 weeks after that when my grandmother died, the time after that that my abusive boyfriend at the time told me that I should have known better than to get raped, the times when I was dealing with depression and self-harm and an eating disorder and unholy ungodly stress from law school that resulted in physical damage to my body’s health. Yes. Your books.
Why did I read your books? because you portrayed women of color, QUEER WOMEN OF COLOR, LIKE ME, in settings where their queerness, their race, actually was an asset—where they become heroes in their own right, NOT despite these qualities of their person. Where women like me kicked ass and saved the prince at the end of the book and it was lovely and wonderful and escapism at its finest and it comforted me.
yes, I pirated your books. Hell, I even remember printing them out when I was 13 from the internet because my mother refused to buy them for me, because I needed them everywhere I went. Because I wanted to buy them, to have them with me under my pillow at night, so I could fall asleep in these worlds you created, where I thought I could slay the monsters and fight the evil and WIN. Win BECAUSE of who I was. Not despite it.
Your books were important to women of color, queer women of color, BECAUSE of your characters. Of your integration. Of your “fuck you” in the face of the “historical accuracy” arguments. of the sheer amount of research you did to say “fuck you” to the “historical accuracy’ arguments.
THIS is why your fans were upset and shocked at your statement. Your initial was worrying. We wanted to correct you, we wanted to ask you, we were upset because this flies in the face of all of your work and the ways your novels helped us through life. We were not attacking you personally, not out of some weird “social justice warrior witch hunt.” We were unable to contact you personally via your inbox. We just wanted to ask everybody we knew “what is going on.” We were upset. We were horrified. We wanted you to respond in a way to make us think “no this isn’t what I meant.”
Instead you lashed out at us. You accused us of hunting you down just because you were famous. Of pointing things out just because we wanted to attack somebody and burn them at the stake. I don’t think you truly understand a huge portion of your fandom if you think this behavior is typical of it. After 5 years on tumblr, running a prominent social justice blog, I can honestly say that I have never received any sort of virulent response from anybody in the Tamora Pierce fandom. The things we blog about here, in conjunction with your novels? They ALWAYS include discussions about race and historical accuracy and white washing because we feel that your books FIGHT against all the negativities of that bit of society.
We were not attacking you. We were saying “we are hurt” and you took that as an insult.
I am very upset. I was crying earlier, because you were my hero. Your books made me feel human and made me feel worthy. And yes, this may seem a little extreme, but you reblogged another person who said “gee thanks guys, this author got me through suicidal ideations and hospital stays and now you’ve chased them off.”
Well I am another person who used your books to get through some incredibly incredibly dark times. And I am hurt. I am hurt that you are gone. I am hurt that you ran away instead of addressing these things in a constructive manner. I am insulted. I feel demeaned. I feel like your final post flew in the face of everything I thought your books stood for.
I too feel like the victim of a witch hunt. I too feel burned.
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