Every time the ridonk "don't be political, , you'll alienate half of your readers" bullshit comes around, my only reply is: No, I won't. I ran those bitches off *years* ago. Just like you ran off the people who could see the subtext in your "apolitical" books. 🤷🏻♀️
"No politics here" is moral cowardice.
Readers know. I once tried a new author only to find a book with a pro police brutality slant. I DNF that so fast. Not the author noted in my post. Her I could not pinpoint what turned me off until this interview and yeah I could see that in the 2 books I tried by her. bsky.app/profile/dabo...
I maintain a writer's politics often shine through in the tone of their books. A few yrs ago a certain popular RS author I could never get into was on a Podcast. She said she "hates talking politics" and "distrusts media preferring 'unbiased' podcasts like 'Seth Rogan' ". Me:
ALT: a man and a woman sitting at a table with a sign that says see on it
Most successful author in my province that I'm aware of, and been totally snubbed by a lot of local (business aligned) groups for my stances on rich people, taxes and other issues. Frig 'em.
"The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude." -- George Orwell "To abstain from politics is in itself a political attitude." -- Simone de Beauvoir I say the same applies to friendship. "Friends don't talk about politics?" Nah, your friends suck.
I feel the only people who say this are those who don't understand what "political" means. It's difficult to create art, or even "content", without some political aspect, to the degree it's fair to make the blanket statement "no art is apolitical". If you think yours is, I got something to tell ya
It would be so misguided to worry about that sort of thing. The people who find your politics so offensive they'll be alienated are going to be readers who will leave negative reviews because what we believe has a way of shining through in our writing too. 🤷
What is the point of art when you can't put your own agenda into it. And as long as tiny-minded people claim that being queer is "political", everything I do will always be "political", even existing.
There are a lot of people any decent person *should* alienate.
Most books have a political angle. Fiction, nonfiction, textbooks... Hell, *dictionaries* have a political point of view as self-claimed authorities on language. Besides, I'd rather read books with a strong political spirit. Otherwise, where's the story? 😁
Yah. The makers of Twisters claiming that a movie about increasingly severe storms is 'apolitical' because it doesn't mention climate change Civil War stories that carefully avoid mentioning slavery Black people consistently written as friends to white protagonists Sure, that's 'apolitical'