Cancel culture: Asked to delete references to racism, an author refused

It was the most personal story that Maggie Tokuda-Hall had ever written: the tale of how her grandparents met and fell in love at an incarceration camp in Idaho that held Japanese Americans during World War II. The book, called “Love in the Library,” is aimed at 6- to 9-year-olds. Published last year by a small children’s publisher, Candlewick Press, it drew glowing reviews, but sales were modest. So Tokuda-Hall was thrilled when Scholastic, a publishing giant that distributes books and resources in 90 percent of schools, said last month it wanted to license her book for use in classrooms.

When Tokuda-Hall read the details of the offer, she felt deflated — then outraged. Scholastic wanted her to delete references to racism in America from her author’s note, in which she addresses readers directly. The decision was wrenching, Tokuda-Hall said, but she turned Scholastic down and went public, describing her predicament in a blog post and a Twitter post that drew more than five million views.

Tokuda-Hall’s revelations sparked an outcry among children’s book authors and brought intense scrutiny to the editorial process of the world’s largest children’s publisher. The blowup came at a time when culture wars are fuelling efforts to ban books in schools — particularly books on race or sexuality — and raising questions about whether already published works should be re-edited to remove potentially offensive content.

“We all see what’s happening with this rising culture of book bans,” Tokuda-Hall said. “If we all know that the largest children’s publisher in the country, the one with the most access to schools, is capitulating behind closed doors and asking authors to change their works to accommodate those kinds of demands, there’s no way you as a marginalized author can find an audience.”

Scholastic moved quickly to contain the fallout. It apologized to Tokuda-Hall and the illustrator, Yas Imamura, and offered to publish the book with the original author’s note. Tokuda-Hall turned them down, saying that she was not convinced by the company’s efforts.

The company also delayed production of the collection that would have included “Love in the Library,” which was likely to include around 150 books by or about Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders, while they evaluate what went wrong.

In the case of Tokuda-Hall’s book, Scholastic’s proposed edits included deleting a sentence where she contextualized her grandparents’ experience as part of “the deeply American tradition of racism.” The company also asked for the removal of a paragraph connecting bigotry against Japanese Americans to current and past manifestations of racism, in which Tokuda-Hall describes a culture that “allows the police to murder Black people” and “keeps children in cages on our border.”

In an email to Tokuda-Hall, which was shared with The Times, Candlewick conveyed Scholastic’s request and the company’s concern that schools might shy away from purchasing a book with such a frank comment about racism during this “especially politically sensitive” moment. On Amazon and Goodreads, some readers have complained that Tokuda-Hall’s message is too political for its young audience.

Shortly after Tokuda-Hall posted about the incident on April 12, several authors and educators who were brought on by Scholastic to consult on and curate the series that would have included Tokuda-Hall’s book condemned the company’s actions, and demanded an overhaul of the editorial process.