Milan called the book "a f***ing racist mess," but she didn't use asterisks.

I write romance. The organization has been dealing with this issue (badly) for some time now. The complaint against Milan came from a new publishing house where Davis is an editor, along with another editor who retweets Trump.

I assume the members write stories. Why does anyone, much less the ethics committee, have a voice in what they write?

Historically, those people have been almost exclusively white and heterosexual. And when a POC was one of the protagonists, he/she was often portrayed in stereotypical ways, such as quiet, obedient Chinese women.

The other issue is our big contest, the Rita. There are about 10 - 12 categories, and books written by authors of color almost never made the finals. Same was true about books with characters of color or non-heterosexual characters. No African American author had won until last year. There's clearly bias in the judging.

a shakeup at R.W.A, hardly the first or 50,000th organization to not always evolve smoothly with the times. I notice this novel was first published in 1999. I haven't read it and of course have no opinion on this, but that was long into the "woke" days on these issues. At least it was in urban areas.

Not sure about that, but if true, at least one editor looked at it.

I wouldn't want to defend some of the things I wrote in 1990. I don't think I was ever racist, but I did write things that would be a problem with "me, too." I was actually embarrassed to read one of my old books. Of course, no one is reading that book now.

Beat him with a stick. It's still inexcusably acceptable to insult people by calling them black and white, but for how long? How on earth are we going to explain ourselves, especially when both terms are constantly used by bigots to direct their insults?

Seriously, we must all cringe at some things in our past, even if only some unfortunates actually published them under their own names. But, a lot of things are considered insulting now that just weren't insults then.at least not by good-hearted people, as Dr. King illustrates. It's not always ONLY that we didn't realize we were being wrong and insulting when we were.

I have a dream, actually more of an expectation, that someday people will be so comparatively relaxed and secure about racial issues that the sensitivities of this era will be analyzed as a symptom of the striving and counter-reactions of a tumultuous transitional era, enormously amplified by new social media, not as healthy, "woke" ends in themselves.

I looked up the book's publishing history, and it was reissued, I believe in 2014, so as you say.

the set-in-China short story "Eating Vinegar" by Rita Hooks worse than that.

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/EatiVine935.shtml

There were more than a few negative reader responses to the story, but one reader wrote this:

Amazing story. I am a Chinese. I have to say the details in story are so real just like a second or third line Chinese city 15-20 years ago and reminds me of my childhood experience. the bad smells, bad living conditions, elder women with bounded feet and talking styles are still deep in my mind, and those descriptions are exactly matched the era(only happened in the time). it seems like the author had spent a long time living in china with Chinese, because there are lots of real life experiences in the story.

Yeah I get why this is disturbing. Foot binding was for higher classes if I recall correctly, and opium, was an English import. There a war about it

I get that books are a snapshot in time, but I except I just read was pure cringe.