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A review by emmehuffman
A Place For Wolves by Kosoko Jackson
1.0
I had just finished reading the book when I stumbled across Own Voices reviews on Twitter. Instead of inserting my own voice into this, I am going to amplify theirs:
"Listen, Americans. I get it. There's a whole world out there with varied histories that you want to explore for your book. Thank you for being interested in our backgrounds.
But unless you're willing to center OUR voices, you don't get to tell that story.
Can you imagine having a book set in your country, set during a very real tragedy that happened to you or to people you care about, and it's not even about you?
It's one of the most insulting and demeaning things I can think of.
The author of A Place for Wolves essentially reduced the Kosovo War and the thousands of civilians who were murdered or displaced into a backdrop. A setting. A background for his two characters who are not Muslim, not Roma, not Albanian, not anything related to this tragedy.
And this isn't even distant history, mind you!!! Children from that time would be teenagers and adults in their twenties now. That's how recent it was.
Authors, do better."
-@yourtitakate
"Listen, Americans. I get it. There's a whole world out there with varied histories that you want to explore for your book. Thank you for being interested in our backgrounds.
But unless you're willing to center OUR voices, you don't get to tell that story.
Can you imagine having a book set in your country, set during a very real tragedy that happened to you or to people you care about, and it's not even about you?
It's one of the most insulting and demeaning things I can think of.
The author of A Place for Wolves essentially reduced the Kosovo War and the thousands of civilians who were murdered or displaced into a backdrop. A setting. A background for his two characters who are not Muslim, not Roma, not Albanian, not anything related to this tragedy.
And this isn't even distant history, mind you!!! Children from that time would be teenagers and adults in their twenties now. That's how recent it was.
Authors, do better."
-@yourtitakate