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NAILED IT.
"I spent late 2021 writing a pair of articles examining the Harry Potter novels. Reviews came back asking that they be revised. ***One reviewer was especially adamant that my analysis could not be published until it was made 'less positive' in light of Rowling’s stance on transgenderism.*** I struggle with this.... Which question, really, is more interesting? How an author turned an old-fashioned literary formula into a lush, polysemous narrative of resilience, redemption and humanitas which enraptured and edified a generation? Or how an author made some tone-deaf remarks about transgenderism and handled the resulting backlash very badly? The latter is grist for the mill of gender theory, but as a scholar of fantasy I find it a limiting focus. Investigation of the defining literary phenomenon of the last quarter-century is poorly served by contracting the discussion to affronted itemisations of the author’s shortcomings as a public intellectual."
— Joseph Rex Young, "Mythlore" 41: No. 2 (emphasis of a profoundly censorial anti-scholarly gatekeeping attitude added).
Available at:
This is a review of the book Harry Potter and the Other; Race, Justice and Difference in the Wizarding World edited by Sarah Park Dahlen and Ebony Elizabeth Thomas.
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