When last we left Victoria Foyt, her young adult novel Revealing Eden (Save the Pearls Part One) — about a future where white people wear black face to survive the cruelty of life under their black overlords, who are not-so innocently nicknamed "coals" — was justifiably denounced as racist and a piece of literary excrement firmly dropped in the stereotyped toilet. And that was before Foyt and her enablers questioned the ability of anyone but themselves to correctly identify racism. In case you don't remember, this bizarre train of thought derailed spectacularly when Weird Tales editor Marvin Kaye proclaimed the novel "a thoroughly non-racist book" and promised to excerpt it in his legendary magazine. Or at least, that was his plan until his boss, the publisher of said legendary magazine, went "Oh crap" at the emerging shit-storm and pulled the plug.
If you want to catch up on all those fun and games, I suggest you read these insightful posts from N. K. Jemisin, Jim C. Hines, and Foz Meadows. And catch up you should, because Victoria Foyt is about to release the sequel to her novel, titled Adapting Eden, Save The Pearls Part Two.
According to the book's promo page, it's scheduled for release in early spring, while the book's Amazon page indicates a release of January 25. Since that's also the date B&N is giving, I'm betting on the January 25th date.
According to the book summary on Amazon:
"In the sequel to the award-winning, dystopian novel, Revealing Eden, Eden Newman must adapt into a hybrid human beast if she hopes to become Ronson Bramfords mate. She has no choice but to undergo her fathers adaptation experiment at his makeshift laboratory in the last patch of rainforest. But when the past rears its ugly head, Eden and Bramford must abandon camp along with their family and friends. Luckily, an Aztec tribe that has survived with the aid of a healing plant provides them with sanctuaryor is it? Too late, Eden realizes she is at the center of an epic spiritual battle between love and war. To survive, she must face her deepest fears or lose everything, including the beastly man she loves."
First off, Foyt must want us to ignore the grammatical mistakes in her summary. And she'll also likely want no mention that the award her novel won is questionable at best, or that the sentence about how the main character "must adapt into a hybrid human beast if she hopes to become Ronson Bramfords mate" indicates that Foyt is no more knowledgeable about racial issues than in her first novel. After all, that novel described the African-American character of Ronson Bramfords as a "beast-man;" this time the summary avoids that term and merely calls him "beastly." So if the white main character must adapt into a "hybrid human beast" to become a black man's mate...well, I can't even begin to comment on that.
Foyt has posted a short prologue of her novel, and guess what, she's embraced an additional stereotype — that of the romantic natives who teach "civilized" people about the folly of their ways. But don't worry. The novel's white girl is still the world's only hope. The prologue has the Aztec sun god Huitzilopochtli saying as much, right after he muses how the glorious 1960s was his heyday because it produced great songs like “Here Comes The Sun" (never mind that you'd think an Aztec sun god's heyday would have been during the Aztec's heyday).
Yeah, this novel is going to be way more uplifting and racially sensitive than its predecessor.
If it were reasonable to assume that Foyt is knowledgeable about African American history in the U.S. (or any particular country, for that matter), there might be something interesting in her work. The problem is that she's completely and utterly ignorant of things like "passing" or the various methods people have gone through to change their skin color (some of them dangerous), or even the socio-cultural conditions which led to these concepts, problems, ideas, concerns, etc. Someone with at least a college-level understanding of that history could take a concept like hers and make it into something compelling.
But because she's completely oblivious to the world as it actually is, her work comes off as offensive at best and downright racist at worst.
Posted by: SMD | January 08, 2013 at 10:59 AM
Wow I can't even imagine. This is going to be a complete and epic piece of excrement like the last one. The only thing that MIGHT be redeeming for this time around is the places like Weird Tales are going to know NOT to glom onto it and hopefully it won't even sell curious rubber necking copies. I really cannot believe a self-respecting book blogger or critic would even deign to take the book. May it die a very, very anonymous death.
Posted by: JBridger1313 | January 12, 2013 at 11:03 PM