Thank you for signing up! Keep an eye on your inbox. There’s a great post here by a Chinese reviewer which goes into more depth about Novik’s approach to categorisations and descriptions. This is because she is really, really antisocial, struggles to connect with her classmates, and - in a world where languages literally mean everything - of course she would identify them by the words they can speak, and therefore the magic they can perform. I do not believe this is El (or Novik) being actively racist. We have the ‘Mandarin speakers’, for example, or the ‘Hindi speakers’, and more. The criticism points out that El tends to view people and group them by their knowledge of languages. The magic in A Deadly Education is based on your knowledge of language: what you can speak dictates which textbooks you receive and which spells you can learn. However, I think other accusations of racism are less justified. The fact that this paragraph slipped in shows how pervasive historically racist perceptions can be, even when a writer is trying to showcase diverse viewpoints, and therefore how much work is still left to be done. The conversation about locs was clearly a necessary one. The passage will be cut from later copies, and this incident has highlighted how important it is for white authors not to make missteps when writing about backgrounds they don’t personally identify with, even when the background is unconnected to a specific character. While contextually, the book is seeking to make a point about how long hair in general attracts monsters, Novik has rightly apologized for singling out a hairstyle connected to Black people.
Locs (the preferred name for dreadlocks) have historically racist associations with dirtiness.
One paragraph, for instance, discusses how monsters might attach themselves to dreadlocked hair, laying eggs in them.
Some of the concerns raised are certainly valid. In October, however, a reviewer called the book out for a perceived racist approach to a wide range of issues.
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