Victoria Foyt's novel coming under fire...

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Blarg

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Her hubby has just put up a five-star review/rebuttal on Amazon. Amazon immediately marked it "most helpful" of the more than 30 5-star reviews(as compared to over 170 one-star reviews) despite there being only one rating of the review, which marks it as unhelpful. haha!

Mosthelpful.jpg


I took a screenshot of it because I thought that was so ridiculous, and wanted to get it before the numbers changed.

I also made the first comment on his "review."
 
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benbradley

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Her hubby has just put up a five-star review/rebuttal on Amazon.
The "Editorial Review" section is huge, with about 8,000 words. I don't recall seeing any other book on Amazon with that section anywhere near that big.
Amazon immediately marked it "most helpful" of the more than 30 5-star reviews(as compared to over 170 one-star reviews) despite there being only one rating of the review, which marks it as unhelpful. haha!

I took a screenshot of it because I thought that was so ridiculous, and wanted to get it before the numbers changed.

I also made the first comment on his "review."

P.S.: I think Amazon is deleting some of the negative reviews. I could have sworn there were 231 one-star reviews an hour ago, and now I see 175.
I now see 233 TOTAL reviews, maybe it was 231 total reviews you saw.

The comment on her husband's review - you mean this?
As her husband, you're my go-to guy for an impartial viewpoint on the subject.
Hmm...
1 of 1 people think this post adds to the discussion. Do you?
:)

ETA: Blarg's and my comments really aren't about Weird Tales magazine, perhaps they should be moved...
 

Blarg

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The "Editorial Review" section is huge, with about 8,000 words. I don't recall seeing any other book on Amazon with that section anywhere near that big.

I've seen some with like 700 or more -- think The Hunger Games, that kinda hugely popular franchise.
I now see 233 TOTAL reviews, maybe it was 231 total reviews you saw.
Yeah, I was probably mixed up there, so I deleted that not long ago. I do remember Amazon doing that for other bad reviews before, like for the game "Spore."

The comment on her husband's review - you mean this?

That's the one.
Thanks. :)

ETA: Blarg's and my comments really aren't about Weird Tales magazine, perhaps they should be moved...
They're about the same controversy, though. Doesn't bother me either way.
 

aruna

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Her hubby has just put up a five-star review/rebuttal on Amazon. Amazon immediately marked it "most helpful" of the more than 30 5-star reviews(as compared to over 170 one-star reviews) despite there being only one rating of the review, which marks it as unhelpful. haha!

It is the "most helpful" only because a 1-to-5 ratio (at the time of writing) is much better than (for example) an 8-to-42 one!
 

scottken

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The third comment by E.A. Solinas on Jaglom's Amazon review really sums it up:
"You're hysterically comparing people giving low ratings and bad reviews on amazon to the Communist blacklisting?"
What's really remarkable is the unwillingness of Foyt/Kaye/Jaglom et al to listen and comprehend why PoC might find this book objectionable.

It's like their generation, which witnessed the explicit racism of Jim Crow laws in effect and the subsequent Civil Rights act, can't comprehend more subtle forms of it. Their ideas on race seem locked in the past, and unable to understand more modern thought, such as how white privilege can limit one's own point of view and understanding and perpetuate the racial divide.
 
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Blarg

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The third comment by E.A. Solinas on Jaglom's Amazon review really sums it up:
"You're hysterically comparing people giving low ratings and bad reviews on amazon to the Communist blacklisting?"
What's really remarkable is the unwillingness of Foyt/Kaye/Jaglom et al to listen and comprehend why PoC might find this book objectionable.

It's like their generation, which witnessed the explicit racism of Jim Crow laws in effect and the subsequent Civil Rights act, can't comprehend more subtle forms of it. Their ideas on race seem locked in the past, and unable to understand more modern thought, such as how white privilege can limit one's own point of view and understanding and perpetuate the racial divide.

There are probably a lot of people around who would invite black people over to dinner but, when they've gone, throw away the silverware or boil it for hours. And the world is full of people who believe others should have the same rights, but never, ever, ever marry their daughters. There are all sorts of strange types and degrees of racism, some bound up in tolerance or even admiration in the most peculiar ways.

I haven't read Foyt's book, but her outlook definitely falls into the "half-digested" category, at best, to judge from what other readers have said about her bizarrely negative characterizations of blacks in "Save the Pearls." It all smacks of the squeamish sort of tolerance and acceptance because you're supposed to, not because you feel and believe it and accept it as obvious, ordinary, and not at all optional or a gift to be granted from on high.
 

Lavern08

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...It all smacks of the squeamish sort of tolerance and acceptance because you're supposed to, not because you feel and believe it and accept it as obvious, ordinary, and not at all optional or a gift to be granted from on high.

QFT
 

Blarg

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And yet the more people breathe fire about it.....the more popular it will become. Nothing sells in America like controversy. Sigh.

She'll probably be welcomed with open arms by some of the radical right media within days. Would anyone be surprised if she, a purported liberal, jumped at their offers to appear?
 

Rachel Udin

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Her hubby has just put up a five-star review/rebuttal on Amazon. Amazon immediately marked it "most helpful" of the more than 30 5-star reviews(as compared to over 170 one-star reviews) despite there being only one rating of the review, which marks it as unhelpful. haha!

I took a screenshot of it because I thought that was so ridiculous, and wanted to get it before the numbers changed.

I also made the first comment on his "review."

Not sure continuing this thread is doing any good... I mean we learned what we needed to learn. We saw a magazine go down in flames and we got a good book selection to go after that does reversing the races right. After this, I don't think there can be much gained from chasing after it...

Besides, the majority of the five star reviews are puppet accounts... so is there more to be gained by giving this that much *more* attention?

You can complain when she releases book 2 and does brown face or yellow face then. But I don't see what's to be gained by harping on it further.
 

Blarg

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It's still interesting. The story hasn't hit the major media in any significant way, and I wonder if it will.
 

NicoleJLeBoeuf

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by Niki (new) Jul 12, 2012 06:22am
interesting. i think white people are already the minority. i'm in Virginia right now and I'm seeing a heavy block community not much different from Los Angeles. Ironically, I am in a coffee shop filled with white people, but I wouldn't be surprised if in 10 years time, blacks and latinos will become the majority compared to whites.
Oh FFS. See, there's the other problem with this book. There are morons out there who'll see it as a prophecy.

Oh dear.

Relatively unimportant tangent: I would like to publicly distance myself from the clueless white lass in Virginia quoted above. "Niki" is a somewhat uncommon spelling of my nickname; when I see people who share it acting like asses, I feel the urgent need to pipe up, "That's not me, OK?"

Signed, a hopefully less clueless white lass in Colorado (orig. Louisiana).

(I'm sure since 7-28-2012 this comment by Niki-in-Virginia has already been adequately deconstructed for white privilege and bigotry, and that regardless the regulars in this thread don't need anyone to deconstruct it for them, least of all me. But hoo-boy is it a sterling example of all-of-the-above.)
 

kuwisdelu

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Relatively unimportant tangent: I would like to publicly distance myself from the clueless white lass in Virginia quoted above. "Niki" is a somewhat uncommon spelling of my nickname; when I see people who share it acting like asses, I feel the urgent need to pipe up, "That's not me, OK?"

You know, many thoughts popped into my head when reading that quote, all of them quite negative, but "gee, all people with the name Niki or spelling variations thereof must be really dumb and racist" wasn't really one of them. Just sayin' ;)
 

veinglory

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The author/publisher has input in the editorial review section. A cynical person might suggest it is "huge" to try and push the customer reviews as far down the page as possible.
 

Cyia

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The girls in her videos are terrible actors.


On at least one of the videos, the people featured aren't actors. They're visitors to some convention she went to who thought it was some silly "play along" kind of feature. With no context, it's likely most had no idea what the videos were actually for.
 

eqb

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The author/publisher has input in the editorial review section. A cynical person might suggest it is "huge" to try and push the customer reviews as far down the page as possible.

That was, indeed, the first thing that occurred to me.

But then, on the days I'm not being overly optimistic, I'm quite cynical.
 

Blarg

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You know, many thoughts popped into my head when reading that quote, all of them quite negative, but "gee, all people with the name Niki or spelling variations thereof must be really dumb and racist" wasn't really one of them. Just sayin' ;)

Haha! Ditto.

I blame the general category of persons named Nicole or Nicolette or Nicki, or any variation thereof, in no way for this fiasco.

But I've always been suspicious of people with the name of Carol, or Marty. I'm not saying they did anything. Not yet, anyway. Just ... keep an eye on them.
 

aruna

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The author/publisher has input in the editorial review section. A cynical person might suggest it is "huge" to try and push the customer reviews as far down the page as possible.

You mean, on Amazon? But that huge editorial section has been there from the beginning, even when there were only 5* reviews.
 

fireluxlou

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Revealing Eden author needs some Good Black Friends

If Victoria Foyt is serious about portraying the horrors of racism in her young adult trilogy, she should listen to those who know

Last July, a post about a "problematic" new book came up on my Tumblr dashboard. I only paid it minimal attention – I had Avengers gifs to look at, after all – but then someone else posted about it, and then another, and then another. I began to pay more attention to it.

Revealing Eden: Save the Pearls is the first in a trilogy of self-published young adult novels by Victoria Foyt, in which the world as we know has drastically changed: "the Heat", a mysterious global happening, has wiped out most white people (the "Pearls" of the title). Darker-skinned people have survived this disaster thanks to their skin's melanin; they're called "Coals".

Book one follows a young Pearl, Eden, who "loathes her white skin and accepts the oppressive opinion that it is ugly, even worthless". She wears a "special dark coating in order to protect it from the Heat". In an added twist, Eden must find a mate by the time she is 18, or else she will be killed. In book two, we learn that Eden's father works in a laboratory owned by a Coal (Bramford, who Eden falls in love with), where he develops the technology to enable mankind to overcome the Heat. The "technology" is essentially a human-animal hybrid, and Bramford becomes the first "man-beast" after trialling this new technology. There's also some other stuff about a terrorist Coal group, a community of near-naked rainforest-dwellers with a prophecy and some mild bestiality, too – and this is just Book One. Hoyt has also created an accompanying website to promote the book, with individual bio pages to flesh out her characters' back stories. One young Coal named Jamal (sigh) notes his bucket list thusly: "mate, turn 24, buy a new gun, become president of the FFP, destroy all Pearls".

It's a lot to take in.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/27/revealing-eden-good-black-friends?newsfeed=true

Longer article at the source.
 
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