Nat Newman is an award-winning writer of short stories, content, podcasts, feature articles, ghost-written books, drunk text messages and, soon, a novella. Born and raised in Australia, she now calls the universe her home.
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Dinosaurs and Extreme Commenting
This is the tweet that started it.
Interested to know what led to this, I obviously wandered over to the Apex Magazine website, typed ‘dinosaur’ into the search bar, and read the story in question. (If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love by Rachel Swirsky)
The comments were mostly positive, except for one at the end, which said:
I was intrigued. I had to go back and reread the story, thinking I must have missed something. I didn’t remember there being any “working people” in the story. Nope, definitely not there. Not one mention. Not even a hint. Anywhere.
Let me be (as) straight (as possible) here. I don’t think that much of the story. It’s a bit wishy-washy for my tastes. It’s a mushy love story with a tear jerky ending. But bigoted? Ignorant fear of working class people? I can’t see it.
The only reference is to “five blustering men soaked in gin and malice […] seizing pool cues”. I didn’t for one second read this as referring to any class of people, merely a group of drunk thugs. Bankers, cops, private school boys, anyone.
Certainly someone is making assumptions about the working classes here, and I don’t think it’s the author.
Nat Newman
Nat Newman is an award-winning writer of short stories, content, podcasts, feature articles, drunk text messages and, soon, a novella.
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