Children’s publishing house Scholastic has apologized to the Asian-American writer of a children’s book about the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II for asking her to remove a reference to “virulent racism” from an author’s note.
Maggie Tokuda-Hall, whose 2022 children’s book “Love in the Library” was inspired by how her grandparents first met while they were confined to an internment camp in Idaho during the war, wrote a blog post detailing the publisher’s demands.
“They wanted to take this book and repackage it so that it was just a simple love story,” Tokuda-Hall wrote in the blog post, which was titled “Scholastic, and a Faustian Bargain.”
“Nothing more.”
She added: “Not anything that might offend those book banners in what they called this ‘politically sensitive’ moment.”
In the April 11 blog post, Tokuda-Hall included a screenshot of the author’s note with the suggested edits.
The words “virulent racism” are crossed out, as are references to “the deeply American tradition of racism.”
Tokuda-Hall wrote that her deal with Scholastic was “contingent” upon the changes.
She refused and ended up signing with Candlewick.
In response to the blog post, Scholastic President and CEO Peter Warwick offered an apology and said that the publisher would like to license the book without the suggested edits.
Warwick said in a statement that the publisher was “wrong” to have insisted on the edits, which were “not in keeping with Scholastic’s values.”
“We don’t want to diminish or in any way minimize the racism that tragically persists against Asian-Americans,” Warwick wrote Friday.
“Please know that we will always stand against censorship.”
The Post has sought comment from Tokuda-Hall.
Tokuda-Hall, who was picked by Scholastic as part of its “Rising Voices” series called “Amplifying Asian Americans and Native Hawaiians / Pacific Islanders,” accused Scholastic of “demanding that I strangle my own voice.”
“They want to sell our suffering, smoothed down and made palatable to the white readers they prioritize,” she wrote.
“And excuse my language, but absolutely the f–k not.”
Tokuda-Hall then posted a copy of the letter she sent to Scholastic in which she declined the publisher’s offer to license the book.
In the letter to Scholastic, Tokuda-Hall hit out at Scholastic’s “deeply offensive offer” and edit.
“To say yes, we’d like to sell your grandparent’s [sic] story but not in a way that connects them to the suffering of those just like them now for fear of potential bans is, to put it lightly, cowardly,” she wrote.
“They will not have the right to sell this story because they’ve proven to me that they’re not up to the responsibility of it,” she wrote.
Tokuda-Hall ended the letter by writing: “So, to Scholastic, with all due respect: absolutely not.”
“I wish them the best of luck finding safe AANHPI books that cater to the white readership they prioritize.”
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