Week Seven Prompt: The #MeToo Movement in the Literary World

Since 2017, the #MeToo Movement has been sweeping the world and exposing powerful male directors, actors, politicians, musicians, comedians, and others who sexually harassed and assaulted women. To this day, the movement continues to offer a sense of solidarity among millions of sexual harassment and sexual assault survivors around the world. The me too organization strives to “eliminat[e] sexual violence” and offers “programs that speak to a broad array of survivors” (me too, 2021). With allegations coming to light against powerful men in almost every industry, it was only a matter of time before the truth came out about certain male authors who used their popularity to take advantage of female fans, editors, and authors.

The allegations of sexual harassment and assault against National Book Award-winner Sherman Alexie, author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian and The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven, have disappointed and disgusted many of his fans. In particular, Alexie’s actions have “put educators in a challenging spot” as they often incorporated his coming-of-age book as well some of his essays such as “Superman and Me” into schools’ curriculums (Gross, 2018). Many teachers “continue to grapple with how to treat the work of men accused of sexual abuse” as “young people can form deep attachments to the writers and artists whose works help shape their worldviews” (Goldberg, 2019). Some teachers have completely removed Alexie’s works from their curriculum, while authors have chosen not to tell their students about the author’s actions so as not to disrupt their students’ “deep attachments” to the author.

After removing or boycotting the work of male authors who have been exposed by the #MeToo movement, what can we, as readers, educators, and librarians do to make an impact? Children’s book author Anne Ursu says, “‘We’re so used to seeing men as protagonists in our society’” (Underwood, 2020). The same can be said about the majority of the books we read. As readers, we can make a conscious effort to pick up books with female protagonists written by female authors, especially women of color who write about the Native American experience, as Sherman Alexie does, or the Latinx experience, as Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Junot Díaz, who was “accused by multiple women of sexual harassment and misogynistic behavior,” does (Underwood, 2020). We can choose not to let powerful men define our experiences or popular literature. As educators and librarians, we can incorporate works by female authors such as Carmen Maria Machado, Zinzi Clemmons, Joy Harjo, Angie Cruz, Celeste Ng, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and Angie Thomas, among many others into our curriculums and collections. Choosing to include more books by female authors is a simple yet powerful thing to do and gives a voice to women whose stories may have otherwise never been told due to the male-dominated culture of the literary world.

References

Goldberg, E. (2019, October 15). Do works by men implicated by #metoo belong in the classroom? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/us/metoo-schools.html

Gross, A. (2018, December 19). In the #MeToo era, teachers tackle the issue of accused authors. KNKX. https://www.knkx.org/post/metoo-era-teachers-tackle-issue-accused-authors

me too (2021). This is the work. https://metoomvmt.org/the-work/

Underwood, A. (2020, December 7). The #metoo movement hit the literary world hard this week. It's not the first time. Vox. https://www.vox.com/2018/5/10/17323642/metoo-junot-diaz-allegations-nobel-literature-prize