“There’s a lot of White Feminism TM going on”

I totally agree with all of that, but it does still look like Dessen’s behaving pretty poorly - she should move the conversation to focus on the bigger picture, rather than encouraging people to pile onto one young woman.  

I did not know that about Safran Foer! The author of Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close deserves publicized humiliation. Say what you will about how much of an asshole Franzen is, but he’s at least a better writer than that 9/11 exploiting hack.

Honestly I somehow get Franzen and Safran Froer mixed up sometimes, which makes sense, they’re both enormous assholes. I’ll never get over Safran Froer leaving his wife because Natalie Portman deigned to write him like, a single email.

You are truly a follower of the golden rule. Thank you.

I agree! But that doesn’t mean we should be undiscriminating about what YA books we choose. Some just aren’t that good or interesting (to adults).

“What was the point of telling the journalist that?”

“calling out a legit problem” and magnifying some sophomoric distaste for an author expressed by a random college student need not go hand in hand.

Yeah, I don’t know how to break this to you but I graduated from university less than five years ago. Our version of the common read picked novels only from the Booker long list, and did a lecture with the author to match, which was, you know, sold on the fact that they were long-listed for the prize. 

Yeah I just looked through them and they’re almost uniformly a mess. Like, I’m sure it didn’t feel good for Dessen to see that, but the hundreds of “that’s such a horrible and cruel thing to say” like get a grip, y’all. That comment was... pretty mild. 

IDK, “Ready Player One” was her freshman year so maybe she was like “JFC this is like 2014 all over again!” when someone proposed another YA book. Why aren’t people with strong opinions on books supposed to join the committee? Who else would join? And how does this stop other people from reading the book?

I get that…

What context?  You don’t know the full extent of her remarks. Nor do you know the full extent of her thoughts on YA novels or other novels targeted towards teen girls by authors other than Dessen, since it seems like she was just asked how she got to be on the committee that was the subject.  I do not have a…

Like I am SHOCKED at how fragile this woman is and how badly she apparently needs attention. Nothing about the quote was “mean and cruel.” 

How the fuck is he ANY different than Danielle Steele? They both write about privileged white people who have terrible communication skills and only communicate via grand gestures that are really stalker tendencies!

Oh the FRANZEN thing! I can talk about serious author douchebaggery all day.

And? That’s the target audience for Dessen’s books, right? Is it always internalized misogyny to say a particular author’s books are good for their intended audience of teenage girls but not good as thought provoking required reading for college students? You can read into her comments a thing she didn’t say, i.e.…

There’s a lot of White Feminism TM going on in there about “I experience 1 form of oppression, therefore EVERYTHING I DO IS OPPRESSED” as well as some serious Choice Feminism, i.e. “I demand that because I am a woman and I chose to read this that I be considered an empowered feminist because I made a choice”.

My favorite (/s) response to Dessen’s tweet was when someone replied “Fuck that fucking bitch.”, and Dessen replied to that with “I love you. [heart emoji]”.

How would Dessen even find this criticism?

WOW. I’m shocked by all this in part because I am a huge fan of Sarah Dessen... so I know that statement is absolutely true.