How bad is it exactly to use the state-sanctioned murder of a Black woman as an aside in a promotional post?

On September 24, 2020, the day after a grand jury declined to charge a single officer for killing Breonna Taylor in her own home, Sarah J. Maas posted the cover for A Court of Silver Flames. Perhaps it's easy for some of you reading this now to forget the context, some almost six years later, but on that day, Louisville was under curfew, and over a hundred people had already been arrested. Storefronts were boarded up, and National Guard members and armored military vehicles were downtown. On that day, on the very same social media app, Tamika Palmer posted an illustrated picture of her deceased daughter, captioned that the system had failed her.

Outside of Kentucky, it was New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Denver, Nashville, and a march that ran from the Justice Department to the White House. And in that same year, it was Ahmaud Arbery, Daniel Prude, George Floyd, Tony McDade, David McAtee, and those whose names never took up long residence in a headline.

And Sarah J. Maas posted her cover reveal and captioned it, "a bit of light for you guys today, given the appalling lack of justice" for Breonna Taylor. She reminded everyone to get out and vote for people who would battle racial injustice and climate change and protect democracy. The release date for ACoSF was right there, in the image.

When readers, and Black readers in particular, said this was hurtful and out of touch, the criticism went unanswered. The post stayed up. It remained up until recently, when her social media was scrubbed in order to promote her two newest books.

So, of course, we must discuss it again because every time SJM has something new to sell—which is honestly often; she's one of the biggest authors in the world—we must dissect this all over again. We stand over the body, weigh it against a fandom, calculate the worth of our entertainment against the worth of a Black woman and all the Black readers we are purportedly in community with. Gather 'round, everyone. It's time to do the math and decide how bad it is exactly. Don't forget to show your work.

Why is this post "bad" if it was bringing attention to Breonna Taylor and encouraging people to vote?

I think framing this as "bringing attention" is awfully kind. Personally, I would say that it borrows. It borrows the name of a murdered Black woman, the grief of a community, the moral weight of an uprising, and it spends it all on a product. Or, if we're being kind, on a product and a call to vote. Breonna Taylor is not the subject of that post. She was the lip service that had to be paid during a moment when there was actual social pressure to stand in solidarity, or at least to be seen doing so. 

Intent doesn't rescue this, either. Perhaps this was drafted kindly, from a place that felt like balance to a woman whose privileges mean she lives in a world where a cover reveal is light against the darkness of police brutality and state-sanctioned violence. This could very well be a genuine offering from a woman who imagined her readership as a group of people who would find comfort in a pretty picture on a horrible day.

Which is, of course, the entire problem. "A bit of light for you guys" only works if Breonna's murder is the set-up, and her murder only works as a set-up to a promotion if you see her as something more like a plot device than a person. A whole person. A 26-year-old woman, with a life and a future and a name and loved ones, who was reduced to a distant discomfort that could be cured by a fantasy novel, available wherever books are sold.

The commodification of Black women is so ingrained in society that it can wear the costume of solidarity, and most people won't clock it. It's so ingrained that a dead woman can be repurposed as an emotional beat in a post tied to a marketing calendar, and the ensuing conversation—over the course of six years—is primarily about whether the author is being treated fairly. That commodification is so ingrained that it's catching. The labor of even noticing, of arguing for the humanity of Black women, gets assigned to the same Black readers over and over again.

Well, was she supposed to say nothing?

If the concern was Breonna Taylor, that post didn't need a cover. If the concern was voting, it didn't need a release date. If neither of those was the true concern, tying them to book sales is dehumanizing. And if Sarah J. Maas somehow did that by mistake, it wouldn't have lived for so long on her social media. 

It would've cost her nothing to wait a day, or a week, or to create separate posts. It would've cost her more to apologize and course-correct, and so it speaks volumes that that was a price she was unwilling to pay. This is not a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situation, because there were more options available to her outside of "saying nothing" and "saying something as long as it still supports her bottom line." 

So, what, I can't read Sarah J. Maas? 

Before I even attempt to answer this question, let me offer a distinction I think is crucial: no one in the world knows what you read in the privacy of your own home. No internet stranger is going to let themselves into your house to audit your shelves. The content of your e-reader is truly between you and God. You can read whatever you want, build a shrine of merch and an altar of special editions, and that is genuinely between you and your own conscience.

The thing that people never want to quite look in the eye is that this isn't really a conversation about reading Sarah J. Maas as much as it's a conversation about doing so publicly. This is a conversation about platforming, promoting, and building a community around it. 

And listen, it's one I have with myself. I am currently reading A Court of Thorns and Roses here on this page in order to do in-depth recaps of each chapter. I have to contend with myself about also contributing, in some sense, to the reach of ACOTAR. If you want my view on the necessity of criticism and how it exists separately from promotion, we can talk about that some other day, but the truth remains that those are my boundaries, well considered, and people still won't agree with me engaging with her work at all. 

And so there is a cost to me to do so. And there is a cost to you to decide to platform, promote, publicly engage in fandom, and build community around these books.

Too often, when people stand up to do the math again about how bad it is exactly, it is to absolve them of the cost of making the choice they want to make. They want to have the neon stack behind them in every video and for everyone to shut up about it. They want to decide that the cover reveal post wasn't that bad, but for that to say nothing to the Black readers around them.

To say it another way: you don't have to unquestioningly accept anyone's verdict here, including my own. You can sit with everything I've written, every argument you've seen, and agree that the post was wrong, but perhaps not wrong enough to change how you behave publicly. That's a real position, and it's yours to hold if you want it. There is certainly no one authority on where the lines are to be drawn, and if there were, I would not apply for the job. What you must then contend with is the fact that if you platform, promote, discuss, participate in fandom, and build community in public spaces, the public will respond. Other people get to draw lines, too, and it might be that that line is you. 

Which brings me to the thing that actually made me want to sit down and write this: have you noticed that in these conversations, the justification is always the side that gets called "nuanced?" It infuriates me. The long post about why someone still stans is "holding complexity." The one that says invoking a dead Black woman while selling your fantasy book is weird and deeply in conversation with all the ways said fantasy is weird? That one is reductive. 

Why are the arguments against using Black death in service of commerce the ones that lack nuance? That entire argument is made up of history, the complexities of community, the negotiation of the ethics of consumption, and the politics of escapism. It's made of nuance. And I wish very much that we all could be better at recognizing when we are conflating an emotional impact with a lack of rigor. The people closest to the harm cannot automatically be disqualified from analyzing it.

So, look, I can't tell you how bad to think that cover reveal post was or what to do about it. Read it or don't. Post about it on your social media or don't. There was a price to Sarah J. Maas for posting it, but not one high enough that she would ever feel the cost. There is a price you'd pay either way in deciding how to engage with her work, though for the most part, you'd pay in personal comfort. The people who always pay the highest prices are the ones who were never really given a choice about being in the transaction at all. 

And if you take away anything from this post, I hope that sticks with you the next time the community dusts off the calculation of how bad it is to stand on the back of a murdered Black woman.

♥️

Marines