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deborahDates to please not be starting the events of your book:
- 9 November, 1938
- 1 September, 1939
I get it, I do. Those are some pretty shocking days. They are an exciting time to plunge your characters directly into the action! But -- and I know this will come as a shock to some of you -- over the last 80 years, a few other authors have had the exact same thought you have. Also, some of you who are professional re-tellers of Holocaust narratives[1], have started several of your own books on those two days. There were many, many other horrific days to choose from. At least a decade's worth, depending on where your protagonist lives!
Also, hear me out, I know this is weird, but there are other exciting crimes against humanity to write about. I know! Nutty idea! But in just the last eighty years, it turns out that shitty people have been horrifically shitty any number of times! Never Again is a meaningless slogan if it just means we ignore all the Agains. If you'd like some untread ground, I'm pretty sure I've read maybe a couple each of YA or children's books about the Porajmos, the Holodomor, South Sudan, the Khmer Rouge, Bosnia. Not to mention all the more recent or ongoing disasters with no kidlit at all: the Yazidi, Myanmar, the Uighurs. So much unmined pain for you to wallow in! So many Never Agains that Agained!
Maybe if we stopped thinking of genocide as a one-time ever quirk of monstrous non-humans, and taught kids that it's actually a banal thing people do under certain circumstances that make normal humans act monstrously, it would be easier to head the horrors off at the post.
And don't you, dear author, want to be at the forefront of a groundbreaking new genre of tragedy porn? Instead of just writing another Holocaust book?[2]
Notes
- Despite my snark, god love you for it, especially at this point in history. But seriously, quit it with those two dates.[back]
- That makes it clear that you never read any of the twentieth century classics of WWII survivor-narrative, to which your book will never live up? There's a weird thing in contemporary Holocaust books, which is modern authors simultaneously buying into the ahistorical story that the Nazis were a uniquely monstrous villain, unlike any other group in modern history, but also unwilling to engage with exactly how vile they actually were. The twentieth century Holocaust kids' books, written by relatively young people who were either survivors themselves or knew survivors, are much more willing to engage with the petty banality of evil, and certainly never paper over the vileness of it.[back]
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Date: 2021-08-02 12:02 am (UTC)