Beware of these books, danger!

Should literature offer a moral model and approach with careful respect the issues that affect some marginalized minority?

Judging by the winds that blow from the Anglo-Saxon countries, and especially from the United States, one might think so.

The fear that an editorial release will end up crushed on social networks due to an alleged narrative bias of the author has led publishers to claim the services of so-called

(sensitive readers), people who review a text looking for any aspect that may hurt the sensitivity of a certain group.

The demand has given life to a market of agencies with a portfolio of reviewers.

The Salt & Sage Books imprint, for example, displays a wide range of specialists with photography and curriculum incorporated.

The areas of sensitivity range from sexuality —"non-binary" or "transgender", for example— to "chronic pain", going through "depression", "eating disorders", "rape and sexual abuse", "infertility" or " weave".

The British writer and educator Kate Clanchy has recounted on the digital site UnHerd.com her experience with these re-readers hired by the Picador publishing house to review the reissue of her memoir

(some kids to whom what I have taught, and what they taught me).

The drawbacks they found in it implied that for them the mission of literature is "to represent the world as it should be and not as it is," she says.

Clanchy has no doubts: "They corrupt literature."

The model, at the moment, is not implemented in Spain.

“We don't have that kind of reflectors.

We apply the good work of the editors”, says Carlos Revés, director of the editorial area of ​​Grupo Planeta, by email.

In his opinion, “to dispense with topics likely to bother is to infantilize the reader to a great degree, not giving him the opportunity to react to a dilemma, proposing a flat, easy path, without curves, without doubts…;

In short, one book like another”.

For his part, Juan Díaz, editorial director of Penguin Random House, explains that the firm takes "very much into account" the sensitivity of readers.

"It is the responsibility of our editors to choose the books that we publish and assess the needs that each one requires."

But he also adds via email: "We cannot avoid potentially disturbing topics in our books precisely because we believe that only in this way can they contribute to creating a quality public debate around them."

For the American novelist Lionel Shriver,

incite the most insidious of censorship, self-censorship.

“Assuming what a group of people will think of a book is a mistake and a waste of energy that forces authors to prudence.

Now, the more prudent, the less creative you are, ”she told

Given the complexity of American society, turning to these collectors may not be enough to avoid scandal.

The writer Jeanine Cummins, born in Spain to a Puerto Rican father, suffered a true lynching on social networks on account of her novel

(American Earth), published in 2020. The book told the story of a woman and her son forced to leave Mexico for the United States, persecuted by Mexican cartels.

Its release, preceded by very favorable reviews, was met with the direct rejection of more than a hundred Latin American writers, based in the United States, who saw in the novel a caricatural portrait of Mexico, and a flagrant case of cultural appropriation.

The publisher was forced to cancel the promotional campaign.

Of course, the controversy did not prevent the book's sales success

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