Until recently, Kosoko Jackson’s website described him as “a vocal champion of diversity in YA [young adult] literature, the author of YA novels featuring African American queer protagonists, and a sensitivity reader for Big Five Publishers.” Jackson, who is black and gay, was preparing for the release of his debut young adult novel, A Place for Wolves, an adventure-romance between two young men set against the backdrop of the Kosovo War. But Jackson’s “heartbreaking and poignant story of survival” has already run into some problems.
While the motivations of the movement for more diverse voices in young adult fiction is commendable, the manifestation of this impulse on social media has been nothing short of cannibalistic. The Twitter community surrounding the genre, one in which authors, editors, agents, and adult readers and reviewers outnumber youthful readers, has become a cesspool of toxicity.
But surely Jackson, an enforcer of social justice norms and a gay black man writing about gay black protagonist should have been safe, right? Instead, it all came crashing down quite quickly. And as with any internet outrage, it’s hard to know exactly what sparked it, writes Jesse Singal in his latest at Reason.
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