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March 2018: “The publisher of Sherman Alexie is postponing the release of the paperback edition of the author's memoir about his mother, You Don't Have to Say You Love Me.
“Hachette Book Group says it took that step at the writer's request.” https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/11/592779038/sherman-alexie-postpones-memoirs-paperback-release-amid-sexual-harassment-claims
“Hachette Book Group says it took that step at the writer's request.” https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/11/592779038/sherman-alexie-postpones-memoirs-paperback-release-amid-sexual-harassment-claims
Guess people can stop being mad at us for him being “cancelled”
The book adjacent in Tiffany’s photo is called “On Managing Yourself” and the description begins, “The path to your professional success starts with a critical look in the mirror.”
Are you sure
Are you sure
I have always known, because of the hand-wringing about how to go on without him, how to deal with the pain of knowing a hero mistreated people, etc etc, that he'll come back to the literary world without much objection. I promised myself I'd object even if it makes me look bad.
I blame myself for not keeping control of my own narrative. My NPR interview was 40 minutes long. The story was short and only a few sentences could be included. https://www.npr.org/2018/03/05/589909379/it-just-felt-very-wrong-sherman-alexies-accusers-go-on-the-record
What's missing is that I was a contract worker and he had immense power in faculty hiring/dismissal. This seemed implied by an email about hiring he sent me after the residency at which he sent the hotel room emails mentioned in the NPR piece.
(Some people were saying there was no evidence of the hotel thing--what? I have the emails, I have a photo in which there are condoms on an end table....???? The article was thoroughly fact-checked!)
. @KUOWLiz gave me a chance to say more about context. I have been sexually harassed by a lot of men in the workplace. He was the one who had harassed, harmed, and bullied many other people I knew, and who held the power to make OR BREAK people's careers. https://www.kuow.org/stories/what-these-women-couldn-t-say-publicly-about-sherman-alexie-until-now
He is the only Native writer a lot of non-Native people know. That is not an accident. It is a direct result of intentional efforts to suppress the careers of other writers. I cannot believe we have to see non-Native readers mourning the end of that.
"I believe the women, because they are my community, and have been, before and after whatever small successes I have had. They have little to gain, and everything to lose, by telling their stories." - @badndns https://badndns.blogspot.com/2018/02/inmate-93223-in-san-quentin-of-my-mind.html
"If he disses these writers, even privately, their careers are effectively over." -Linda Rodriguez
https://www.vidaweb.org/report-from-the-field-native-women-writers-take-on-the-indian-du-jour/
https://www.vidaweb.org/report-from-the-field-native-women-writers-take-on-the-indian-du-jour/
"...in threatening the career prospects of Native women writers, Alexie made subjugation the bar Native women would have to clear to be heard." -Jacqueline Keeler https://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice/why-reading-sherman-alexie-was-never-enough-20180312
"We, the community of Indigenous writers coming up behind him could not rise with him on top." -Julian Brave Noisecat https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2018/06/29/tommy-orange-and-the-new-native-renaissance/
There are still quite a few people who have not gone public with their accounts of his behavior toward them. I don't blame them at all. It's not pleasant. Writing this right now is not pleasant. Having to do this was not pleasant: https://www.abqjournal.com/1161205/alexie-accuser-disputes-iaia-officials-accounts.html
And our motivations/credibility are called into question, as they were by Om Johari in this @Crosscut roundtable; she clearly had no sense of the work we do. I’m discussing violence against Indigenous women. I’m writing about it. I could disappear, and I live with that!
And I certainly lived with it in Seattle, where the roundtable happened, where this man told me he could fuck me if he wanted to. On the reservation? Seattle, it's in your house. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/homeless/survey-reveals-high-rates-of-sexual-assault-among-native-american-women-many-of-them-homeless/
We who spoke publicly about our experiences have done more than our share. People who haven't spoken publicly may be still sitting with the fear that they won't be believed or supported, and I wish more people looking on would say it's not okay for him to keep racking up ISBNs.
I've seen it in comment sections and tweets and in that Crosscut piece: that some people think my speaking out "benefits particular women but not all the women." Of course I did this for myself. The silence was terror. But I did it for my sisters, too. I wish it were enough.
Oh, yup, the (non-)apology is gone, the website is back, like nothing ever happened. https://twitter.com/ashakijackson/status/1197932306981257216
Also, a reminder, the other women who shared their experiences are writers. I’m not tagging them in because I don’t know whether they’re up for rehashing this. Please visit/revisit their beautiful work, buy/assign/recommend, and help them keep doing what they do.
