George Orwell's 1984 now comes with a... trigger warning

Blazing Reader,

The 75th anniversary edition of George Orwell's 1984 was released in March with a... "trigger warning."

While not an outright censorship of the book, the new foreword by Dolen Perkins-Valdez has raised much debate over her criticism of the book's... lack of black characters. She observes that “a sliver of connection can be difficult for someone like me to find in a novel that does not speak much to race and ethnicity.”

For someone like me, I find it odd that a novel would be judged on how much its theme deals with race and ethnicity (keeping in mind that one of my all-time favourite novels is To Kill a Mockingbird).

Orwell's 1984 is a classic outcry against the oppression of human beings in general, regardless of skin colour.

Perkins-Valdez, the author of 1984's new foreword, is a novelist most famous for her bestseller, Wench. While I haven't read it yet, I find the synopsis fascinating. Set before the Civil War, Wench takes place on a resort in Ohio, which hosted Southern white plantation owners and their enslaved Black mistresses as regular summer visitors.

So, needless to say, Perkin-Valdez has a passion for stories which chronicle the absurdity of racial oppression in American history. Her new foreword to 1984 may contain some woke overreach and suffer from a personal bias, but it's hardly the shadow of Big Brother's hand ready to toss the book into a Ray Bradbury bonfire.

You can read more about the debate over the 75th anniversary edition of 1984 at The Daily Dingle or purchase a copy through my shop.

John C.A. Manley

PS If you found the theme of Perkins-Valdez bestselling novel, Wench, as interesting as I did, you can purchase a copy here.

PPS Now, for a movie that depicts the absurdity of plantations and racial oppression as a metaphor for the absurdity of elections and political oppression check out the indie film, Jones Plantation.

John C. A. Manley is the author of Much Ado About Corona, All The Humans Are Sleeping and other works of philosophical fiction that are "so completely engaging that you find yourself alternately laughing, gasping, hanging on for dear life." Get free samples of his stories by becoming a Blazing Pine Cone email subscriber.