Okay, I'm talking about it, though I think people are getting ahead of themselves and going into a moral panic and policing writing a little too much for my taste.
So, Taipei Story and R.F. Kuang.
First of all, I would like to disclaim that I am a writer and I'm currently doing my masters about hegemonic and resistance discourses on the Palestinian Genocide, in which I defend that pro-Israel stances and Israel itself is a market not a State, so I'm not in the slightest bit even a little pro-Israel or even neutral-Israel, please keep that in mind.
At first, I was thoroughly disappointed when I learned about Kuang's normalization of Isr*el in her upcoming book. However, since then, I've watched this video and now I've got some thoughts on the matter:
While I still do believe it's in poor taste to just throw an Israeli character in a book, that it is (allegedly) done to point out how part of a society idolizes white colonizers is a major thing and it has been left out of the discussion, so we've been going on circles over something we (a) haven't read in it's entirety, (b) haven't read even the EXCERPT apparently, (c) are actively picking at with a tunnel vision.
See, if the character is a minor character within the story and it's used to portray a certain attitude of the people around the MC as an admiration of colonizers and the colonizer's culture, then that's not pro-Israel. "Israel" is a colonizing venture and therefore, its "citizens" are colonizers and occupiers, and how other societies relate to them show a lot about themselves which is very good for writing social context.
Now, did they have to be Israeli? Well, not exactly, but I would say that it makes sense that the pianist is Israeli for the sole reason that Taiwan and Israel share a lot of history International Relations-wise and that, within Taiwan, there are colonial relations very similar to that of Israel and Palestine. So yes, it makes sense that the pianist is Israeli and is so admired, especially if we're talking about the colonial relations within Taiwan, which I get is probably the case.
But again IF that's even the case, because we don't KNOW.
I've recently seen a post here on tumblr talking about the portrayal of this Israeli pianist as something that is morally wrong, and I think that's very alarming:
First, because the portrayal itself is not the problem. Israelis exist —that is the whole crux of the matter, because they shouldn't. Or, at least, not in a land that doesn't belong to them and moreso, not if their existence is tied to the colonization and genocide of Palestinians and people on the Levant as a whole. But nonetheless, they exist, and literature portrays reality. It's not wrong to portray them, it is wrong to portray them as anything other than the colonizers they are because that wouldn't be realistic or honest of an author.
From what I've seen on the excerpt, that's not the case.
Second, this also brings me to a bigger issue we've all been discussing, which is the moralization of literature. R.F. Kuang has been known to write characters who are prejudiced, bigoted, flawed, imperfects in ways that we are all uncomfortable with. It's not a stretch to know that she's doing the same in Taipei Story and the truth is, not a lot of people who are not politically engaged think much about Israel or ANY International Relations problem —they have more urgent matters to worry about.
Now, calm down, guys, I'm NOT saying those things don't matter and that those struggles aren't tied together —I KNOW they are. But a big amount of people don't and they don't think too hard about it as well. Writing a character like that isn't a moral failing on Kuang's part, it's just a reality.
I'm a politically engaged person, a socialist, I've been politically aware since I was eleven. But I am also a writer and I worry about the policing of literature we've been seeing lately. And I've seen that this is expressed much more thoroughly against Kuang's books. One of the posts about the matter I saw on Tumblr was that it was just as bad to portray an Israeli as it was to portray a Russian, and I'm sorry, what?
There is nuance to this conversation, of course: portraying an Israeli as a nuanced character while speaking on colonization is not acceptable. But when is it that we're going to stop? Oh, you can't write a Russian because of what is doing to Ukraine; you can't write a Iranian because of what the Ayatollah Regime does; you can't write Venezuelans because Maduro... Dude, just stop.
The difference is that Israel is a political project. It is not a State, or a people, or a culture, it's a market of resorts and religious vacations and oil. Russia, Venezuela, Iran and so forth are States (though, yes, this comes with its own dose of violence as well) and identities that are formed because people are from those Territories and share a language and a culture. Israeli identity, on the other hand, is tied to whiteness and to (very antisemitic btw) propaganda.
All that to say: just wait to read the book and please actually READ it, guys. You can read it in epub or pdf if you don't want to buy it or give money to it if you're not comfortable, but truly, stop trying to censor art based on moral panic online and actually UNDERSTAND what the text is saying about it before you pass judgement. I swear to God, it's not a moral failing to read whatever you want or things that are problematic (with nuance once again: please don't give money to people who are actively causing harm to groups with their money).
One of my favorite books of all time is a Brazilian classic that portrays the boyhood and coming of age of poor homeless boys in the state of Bahia, and it's astounding how much violence against women it portrays. But it's not there just for the sake of it: instead, it is a very interesting study about how patriarch, class struggle, race and gender are passed along and internalized within the poorer parts of society. So, yeah, it's not because someone wrote something morally wrong that they are terrible people.
And please, don't tell me about this one person who read the arc and all of that. Read it for yourself THEN form an opinion about if for fuck's sake.
