In the latest edition of George Orwell's 1984, the publisher has chosen to include an Orwellian trigger warning for the reader written by American author Dolen Perkins-Valdez.
Valdez wants the reader to know that 1984 doesn't have any minorities in it.
A sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity…in Orwell's novel there are no Black characters at all.
Never mind that at the time Orwell was writing 1984, Britain didn't have any black people in it.
Walter Kirn says,
When Orwell wrote the book, Black people made up maybe one percent of the population. It's like expecting white characters in every Nigerian novel.
Valdez doesn't stop with the race-baiting comments; she then moves on to sex, calling Orwell a misogynist:
For example, we learn of him he dislikes nearly all women. And especially the young and pretty ones. Winston's views on women are, at first, despicable for the contemporary reader. He is the kind of character that can make me put a book down.
When I was younger, that's exactly what I would have done. But I'm a more seasoned reader now and I know the difference between a flawed character and a flawed story. And I remind myself that this is a dystopian novel, an idea of what society might look like if certain dark forces prevail.
I wonder what dark forces she's referring to there?
She frequently throws in references to The Handmade's Tale as a more relevant dystopian novel.
As if criminalizing women murdering their children is the same thing as the authoritarian state controlling its population's speech and thoughts.
We don't quite live in Orwell's dystopia here in America yet, so Valdez is still free to publish her ridiculous, somewhat ironic reinterpretation of the warnings of 1984.
And we are still free to point and laugh.
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