When reading interviews, I noticed Joyce Maynard doubling down on the idea of herself as a victim of overly PC publishers:
Q: I was interested in what you wrote in your acknowledgments. What was the initial reaction to the book? Did you have trouble pitching it?
A: “The Bird Hotel” is written from the point of view of [a North American] woman. In no way do I appropriate the voice or point of view of the Latinx community, or those of Indigenous heritage. But in our current world, it appears, a writer must confine herself to stories set in the culture of her origins — and none other. I, as a white writer raised in New England, can no longer tell a story involving characters who come from different backgrounds from my own.
https://www.boston.com/culture/books/2023/07/05/life-imitates-art-for-joyce-maynard-author-of-the-bird-hotel/
I don’t think her last two sentences are accurate.
I just finished Demon Copperhead, written by 70-year-old, white, female Barbara Kingsolver narrating in the first person as a Melungeon teen boy caught up in the foster system during the opioid crisis. Looking at our CC club books: Geraldine Brooks is not a 19th century Black horse trainer (Horse); Daniel Mason is not a Puritan woman, an elderly spinster, a gay artist, or a runaway slave (North Woods); Amor Towles is not of Russian descent, much less from nobility (A Gentleman in Moscow); and Shelby Van Pelt is not an octopus (Remarkably Bright Creatures). The list goes on and on.
Yes, it’s a challenge to write outside one’s own culture and experience, and it requires a great deal of sensitivity, along with expansive knowledge and a dash of imagination, but it’s done – and often done well.
Looking online, it seems that a common pitfall is employing cultural elements as “decoration” rather than creating authentic, complex characters. Perhaps the The Bird Hotel’s lack of an indigenous character with real depth struck publishers as superficial.
Also, did anyone else think there was a tiny bit of White Savior in Irene’s character? She’s sort of a benevolent queen — arranging for lifelong financial security for her household staff, graciously forgiving Elmer and Walter after they steal, giving away her land adjacent to the hotel to local families for farmimg. These are all fine, generous acts. But to have those gifts come from a wealthy white outsider to an indigenous people might result in misinterpretation of the author’s intent.
In any case, I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall during the publisher discussions that preceded the book’s rejection.
