MFAW-VT faculty member Kenny Fries has published a response to Lionel Shriver’s recent attack on Penguin/Random House UK’s push for diversity online at Medium. The piece is called “The Exclusivity of Inclusion: On Disability and Diversity” In the article he quotes fellow faculty member Reiko Rizzuto. Fries’ article is a response to Lionel Shriver’s screed in The Spectator about Penguin/Random House UK’s push for diversity. Here’s the opening and Reiko’s response:
“In Shriver’s attack on Penguin’s goal that by 2025 the percentage of their staff and authors should reflect that of the UK population she writes, ‘If an agent submits a manuscript written by a gay transgender Caribbean who dropped out of school at seven and powers around town on a mobility scooter, it will be published, whether or not said manuscript is an incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible pile of mixed-paper recycling.’
To this, Japanese American writer Rahna Reiko Rizzuto responded: ‘Really? I would totally read that.’ My first thought was how much I’ve read by Caucasian heterosexual cis-gendered well- educated nondisabled biped writers that fit Shriver’s “incoherent, tedious, meandering and insensible” description.”
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