I've been refining my take after reading some interpretation and explanations and this is final take:
Not every book will or should be for a white audience. It should cater to whoever they want. But the tweet also also seems to assume that every non white person has sufficient knowledge of their own culture to understand everything being written. Of course maybe that kind of person is not the intended audience which is also fine, but it's a bit alienating to be told that you're not entitled to learn about your own culture just because some random :lmayo: might benefit from a free translation
And no, this is not written by some mad white guy who doesn't understand what shawarma means. It's coming from an Asian immigrant who's far removed from his culture with little resources in English to learn about it.
Yeah I mean with this tweet it's worded well enough to get across the point but it's ridiculously easy to read both 'no one should have to assume and write for middle class white Americans as their intended audience and make everything easy for them to understand because they aren't actually the centre of the fucking universe' and 'I like to make sure what I write is mostly inaccessable for a huge number of people unless you've got the time and education to sit down with a big fucking reader alongside the book cos then if you have that privelege you get to show off how super special you are.'
So yeah everyone arguing about it winds up basically shouting past each other.
Okay, yes, but what about all the people who are reading it in English because it hasn't been translated to their first language and English is one of the main lingua franca of the world? Being obtuse doesn't help anyone, and deliberately making your text hard to read is going to cause more problems for second language readers or people with limited education than it is for middle class college educated white people.
Yeah it's a tricky issue alright. I mean ideally, translations etc. Wouldn't be driven by profit but by making the work accessible to many people.
And again it is case by case. If an editor wants a writer to change an idiom to a less precise US mid class idiom that's an issue as it strips whoever wrote it/said it of some of their cultural identity. There's also the argument that hey, maybe this work isn't supposed to be as accessable to as many people as possible because in doing so you're removing nuance from the work.
I do completely understand the whole annoyance at smug liberals who have the time, education, money etc... to actually get the most out of literature like this.
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I would take a chill pill, you have some decent points in this thread but come across far too aggressive to convince anyone. Have a nice bath and do something that calms you. I know how it feels, here have a hug :meow-hug: