Should Authors Use Problematic Premises?

a rumination on one of my favorite series of all time, + a summer reading check in!

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Idk about y’all, but if someone were to ask me what the best reading season is, I would point to the summer. Course, being a descendant of tropical-blooded folks, I think the spring/summer is the pretty much the best season for everything, so this is not really that surprising.

Sorry, Fall girls gays & theys — I am not, nor will I ever be, a ~sweater weather girlie~. Having to take take an extra fifteen minutes to put on layers before I head out the door makes me want to weep. Seeing the sun disappear before 6PM? A literal tragedy.

Thankfully, we have a whole month before I have to tearfully put away my iced coffee glasses! Here are some of my highlights from the summer so far:

Don’t Let Me Go, Kevin Christopher Snipes

Are you a hopelessly romantic drama queen, like me? Do you love epic love stories that defy time? Enjoy genre blends — in this case epic romance with small-town queer found family? Love soulful writing that really showcases the heartstopping joy / beautiful anguish of queer love? Live for a diverse found family with characters that are a perfect blend of hilarious & poignant? If you said yes to any of that, please RUN to your local library / bookstore to get Don’t Let Me Go by Kevin Christopher Snipes!! A poignant, tenderly written story about two boys who seem to keep finding each other throughout the ages — despite the machinations of fate. Perfect for fans of The Song of Achilles.

Are Prisons Obsolete, Angela Y. Davis

Me? A non-fiction book? During the summer, of all times? If you’d told me even a few months ago that I would pick up Angela Davis’s pivotal Are Prisons Obsolete this summer, I would have laughed, loudly, in your face. But then recent events had me reflecting a lot on the use of carceral logics in bookish spaces, and that made me want to reconnect more directly with Angela Davis’s words. And I’m glad I did! This was a great primer on the U.S. prison industrial complex, its history and its impact, particularly on communities of color. Davis lays out thoroughly the inception of imprisonment as punishment in the US, & why prison abolition is needed, & I appreciate the thoroughness of her approach.

The Winner’s Curse Trilogy (4th Re-Read), Marie Rutkoski

Whew, okay. Okay. I am going to be SO NORMAL while I talk about one of my top 5 YA trilogies of all time, I promise. SO!! NORMAL!!!

(Narrator: *laughs hysterically in the distance*)

Okay. Have you ever encountered writing so phenomenally brilliant it gave you a literal high? Because I feel like I had begun to float the minute I started re-reading The Winner’s Curse. It’s incredible, because I read the first book when it was first published in 2014, so have read each of the books in the series at least 4-6 times since then. And every single time, it feels as if my soul is utterly, irrevocably changed. Yes, the storytelling is that good. Yes, the characters & themes actually seem to somehow get more exquisitely resonant with time. This will not be the last time I scream, cry, squeal, and flail about this book, of that, I am certain!

Here was my initial breakdown / review from 2014 of the first book, which I absolutely stand by:

Kestrel and Arin come from opposite worlds. She is a Valorian, the daughter of a beloved general famed for conquering half the world. He is a slave, a once-gentle boy now full of simmering rage at the injustices done to his conquered peoples in the lush country of Herran. She wants peace. He wants justice. They both (unthinkably) want each other. But how far are they willing to go to get what they want? And what are they willing to give up?

Is the premise of this series problematic? Yes. The author, however, knows this — and uses it to discuss themes of power, privilege, and loss in stunning language that captures the wild beauty, and the impossible pain, of love found in the most horrific of circumstances. Richly imagined and searingly told, Rutkoski’s story of the struggle between love & country is a breathtakingly lyrical exploration of how “asymmetries of power are poisonous.” A MUST READ for fans of fantasy YA.

Now, this is what I wrote about the series sometime around my second/third read, maybe in 2015/2016. And since then, I have to say — the way Marie Rutkoski deftly and exquisitely takes what would be an awful premise and deconstructs it in service of themes of decolonization and the importance of dismantling privilege and power is nothing short of truly awe-inspiring. I was actually crying by the time I got to the end of book 3. This, while still giving us an achingly tender romance! If you have never heard of this series, or were thinking about picking it up but haven’t yet, please, PLEASE go read it! You’ll thank me for it!!

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Re-reading The Winner’s Curse trilogy always has me deeply reflective about inspiration, and whether any author can, or should, write any story. And that was no different this re-read, during which my reflections were also punctuated by the conversations that I’ve been seeing the last month or so over Julie Soto’s new book.

I don’t want to get too much into what Soto’s new book is about, because I adamantly do not want to platform a book that so gleefully connects itself to transphobic assholes. But, the main breakdown is this: it’s a retooled Dramione fanfic, and as if that wasn’t rather icky enough, it is also a master/slave romance where the Hermione character is enslaved by the Draco character.

If your face scrunched up and you yelled “EW!” after reading that sentence, then you had the same reaction I did. With this book and the other book being published at the same time by Brigitte Knightley, which is also heavily marketed as a Dramione fanfic, there has been a lot of really great, insightful, important conversation about the use of transphobic, antisemitic, racist IP to promote anything, but especially to promote a pairing that is barely veiled Nazi or KKK romance.

These conversations are what led me to pick up The Winner’s Curse trilogy for my fourth re-read, to see if my thoughts about writing problematic premises still hold.

The short answer: Yes, I still believe writers can start with any premise. But, as with everything when it comes to writing craft, what they then do with that premise is what matters most.

The longer answer:

It is possible for stories, and in this case romances, to start in problematic places. BUT, it is imperative for authors to then do the work of THOROUGHLY engaging with the harm caused by the power dynamics of that premise, and to use the narrative to unequivocally explain why those dynamics MUST be dismantled for the romance to exist.

The Winner’s Curse trilogy is a great example of doing this well. Yes, the initial premise is awful at first glance: Kestrel buys Arin as a slave at an auction. It’s brutal, it’s ugly, and Rutkoski does not romanticize or shy away from the inhumanity of the circumstances both Arin & Kestrel (but more importantly Arin) find themselves in. No matter how many times I read that scene at the beginning of Winner’s Curse, I always have to put the book down and go touch grass for a few minutes, because there is no way for us as readers to turn away from the awfulness of that moment — nor should we. In this way, the author makes it very clear from the start that it’s supposed to feel tremendously awful, what Kestrel was pushed to do. And in fact, Kestrel herself is thoroughly sickened by what led her down that path.

With this opening, Rutkoski then spends the entire trilogy dismantling the mistress/slave premise piece by piece, with an epic, thoroughly researched, well-designed decolonization plot wrapped up inside a romantic fantasy. Every scene is geared towards showing us why these two characters absolutely canNOT be together in any sense unless they are both equal and free, and she spends every ounce of the plot making her characters work tirelessly, sometimes even aggressively, towards decolonization, to make their dreams a reality. And the themes of the story specifically revolve around how folks in the dominant group have to be 100% willing to throw out everything that gives them power — including people in their own community, if needed — in order for everyone to achieve true liberation.

In an interview with Vulture about her work as a sensitivity reader, Black author and COO of We Need Diverse Books Dhonielle Clayton had this to say about Rutkoski’s decision to start with the mistress/enslaved person premise:

“Look at Kate Elliott's books. Look at Tessa Gratton's books. Look at Marie Rutkoski's The Winner's Curse. These authors take these really big premises that are problematic, but because they've analyzed power and what power is in a narrative, and because they are well read and have done their research, they know how to dismantle these things on the page. The premise of The Winner's Curse is about a girl who buys a slave and then the power structure between them flips, and there's a romance — which is inherently problematic — but the way that Rutkoski does it is that she takes away the white girl's power and it's fascinating. It's because she's a good writer. She literally dismantles privilege and power and slavery on the page, and you are there for it. It's so good. I think one of those writers could have taken the premise of American Heart and done what needed to be done.”¹

One thing I would humbly add to Dhonielle Clayton’s point is that not only does Rutkoski take the white-coded girl’s power away, but at NO point — when she has power or otherwise — does Kestrel even remotely agree with her family’s or her peers’ pro-colonial, pro-slavery rhetoric. While her peers are gleefully joining the conquering army’s Youth Group & leaning into the propaganda, from page one Kestrel resists that same propaganda — she knows there’s something wrong from the get go, & while she does need some correction (which she receives, without equivocation), she never has to be fully taught by the oppressed group to see her privilege.

And this, I think, is what leads me to the fundamental and incredibly important difference about authors like Marie Rutkoski: slavery & colonialism aren't “interesting romance tropes” to her. They are not ~fun window dressing~ to put on an enemies-to-lovers or forbidden-romance trope. They are the undeniably horrific lived experience of her characters. They are actually the whole goddamn point of the story, even in a romance. And she made sure that would absolutely come across in the narrative through strong research, world building, & characterization.

And, look. There are people out there who say no one should write a master/enslaved person romance, no matter how good they are at writing or how willing they are to Do The Work to deconstruct it. It’s too awful of a premise. And maybe nothing good can come of depicting slavery or colonialism in any way.

In fact, I recently saw on Threads a conversation about Addy, from the American Girl books. There were some people who were saying that they find it very wrong for Addy, the only Black girl in the American Girl collection, to have been born an enslaved person.

For myself, I vividly remember, as I was reading Meet Addy, getting to that scene with the overseer (if you know, you know) and feeling a little bit of my soul get cut from my body at what Addy was forced to endure. I was nine years old when I read that book, and yes, it fundamentally changed me. It brought home to little me the horrors of slavery & racism in a way that my teachers at school had yet to do. And, based on what I have seen of the conversation around Addy, many people of all races seemed to have had the same experience.

It’s not surprising that we all had this shared awakening, though, once you learn that Pleasant Company, the founder of the American Girl franchise, first appointed an advisory board comprised of highly respected Black scholars & artists to aid in the creation of Addy’s story. And:

According to Polly Athan, who served as Pleasant Company’s in-house research coordinator, it was the board that made the decision to set Addy’s story amid the end of slavery and the Civil War. Though the board also discussed placing her in other periods, including the Harlem Renaissance, the members’ thinking was that slavery was the foundation for everything that came after it and must be tackled first in order for children to understand more recent history.²

In short, there was an incredible amount of care put into telling Addy’s story. And, the creators understood the importance of not shying away from the terrible parts of history because of the pain they caused. In fact, it is perhaps because of the pain they caused that they are a very necessary part of depicting the breadth of human experience in storytelling today.

Similarly, you only need to look at the list of books Rutkoski used in her research to know she put in a great deal of care into her story too. From the third book’s Author’s Note:

“I’m grateful to the following books, among others, for their inspiration and guidance: Edward Said’s Orientalism, Saidiya V. Hartman’s Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Making in Nineteenth-Century America, Linda Colley’s Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600–1850, Herodotus’s The Histories, Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Susan Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others, Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Arrian’s The Campaigns of Alexander, Jacob de Gheyn’s The Renaissance Drill Book, and Bert S. Hall’s Weapons and Warfare in Renaissance Europe.”

Like the folks at Pleasant Company, Rutkoski was deeply invested in making sure that the horrors of her fictional fantasy world are completely real, and as lived in as the rest of it. And wow, does her research shine through with every scene in this trilogy. The beginning scene isn’t the only time I have to stop and go touch grass. She drops in details and hints about the kind of experiences Arin & his people go through regularly, making sure that we don’t take the slavery & colonialism aspect of the story for granted even for one second.

And so, for me, taking on problematic premises is actually kind of a necessary part of the fabric of literature. I believe we not only can but should write stories that start in terrible, problematic places. Because stories are meant to educate us not just intellectually but emotionally. They can help us understand and learn from the horrors of our history on a deeply human level. Shying away from terrible parts of human history because it is too painful to remember may end up erasing those parts from our collective memory. And refusing to depict them in fiction may end up erasing our ability to learn from them emotionally, until we end up losing our empathy for the people that really did live through those unspeakable horrors. And then where would we be?

But, again, in order for those depictions of the worst parts of humanity — in fiction or otherwise — to really resonate and make us learn and grow, they must be handled with absolute precision and care. By all means, write what you want. Take on that problematic premise, if it speaks to you! But it’s not easy, what the folks at Pleasant Company did for Addy, or what Marie Rutkoski did in service of her characters. It took meticulous planning, conversations, re-planning, sensitivity reading, and research. And if you’re not going to at least put in the level of effort Pleasant Company did with Addy, or Marie Rutkoski has in this series to discuss — and thoroughly dismantle — the horrifying aspects of the terrible premise, then what is the point? At best, you end up dismissing the terrible parts. At worst, you end up glorifying them. So if you’re going to write that terrible premise — write it! But do the work and be thorough in depicting and deconstructing it, please.

Now, I haven’t read Julie Soto’s new book. Nor do I plan to — largely because, given the utterly insensitive, sloppy way she & her team have marketed this book, I have absolutely no trust in the idea that she would take a master/enslaved person premise and do The Work, the way Marie Rutkoski has. In fact, I would venture to say she isn’t even interested in Doing The Work, based on the few reviews / comments I’ve seen from people who have read the book. Which is disappointing, even if it is also unsurprising.

So I guess what I’m trying to say is this: if you decide to write a story with a terrible premise, be a Marie Rutkoski, and not a Julie Soto. In my view, Julie Soto’s book will eventually become lost among the never-ending shuffle of romantasy books being thrown at us of late. Meanwhile, Rutkoski’s story, for all that it is over a decade years old, only becomes more and more gorgeously resonant with time, because of the work she was willing to do to make her story both deeply relevant and unforgettable for us all.

Do you agree that writers can take on any premise? What are your thoughts re: problematic premises in general? Tell me your thoughts in the comments!

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1. https://www.vulture.com/2018/01/sensitivity-readers-what-the-job-is-really-like.html

2. https://toysandcollectiblesmuseum.org/articles/addy-walker-the-making-of-a-character