Alex Perez is a Cuban writer from Miami who attended the prestigious graduate writing program at the University of Iowa, which is one of the best in the country.
He’s now run afoul of the literary community for being too politically incorrect and masculine. With nothing to lose, Perez took to the pages of a literary magazine called “Hobart Pulp” to explain, in an interview, how the entire boring, crooked, and feministic industry operates:
My take is the only take and the one everyone knows to be true but only admits in private: the literary world only accepts work that aligns with the progressive/woke point of view of rich coastal liberals. This is a mindset that views “whiteness” and America as inherently problematic, if not evil, and this sensibility animates every decision made by publishers/editors/agents. White people bad. Brown people good. America bad. Men bad. White women, I think, bad…unless they don a pussy hat. This explains why nearly every book is about some rich fuck from Brooklyn confronting his white guilt or some poor black girl who’s been fighting “whiteness” and “patriarchy” all her life. All this stuff is ideologically-driven horseshit propagated by some of the most artless people on the planet. We know who they are.
You know, too, reader. Go on, whisper it to yourself. It’s okay, I promise. Fine, you can’t do it—that’s why I’m here. The Iowa pariah will say it for you! I’m working the gimmick already. Here it goes: 80% of agents/editors/publishers are white women from a certain background and sensibility; these woke ladies run the industry. And contrary to popular belief, I don’t hate the Brooklyn ladies. On the contrary, I respect how these passive aggressive prude ladies took over an industry. Tip of the hat, Brooklyn ladies.
Everyone knows these ladies took over, of course. Everyone querying agents knows this. Everyone dealing with a publicist knows this. If you follow one on Twitter, you follow them all. Every white girl from some liberal arts school wants the same kind of books…I’m interested in BIPOC voices and marginalized communities and white men are evil and all brown people are lovely and beautiful and America is awful and I voted for Hillary and shoved my head into a tote bag and cried cried cried when she lost…
These women, perhaps the least diverse collection of people on the planet, decide who is worthy or unworthy of literary representation. Their worldview trickles down to the small journals, too, which are mostly run by woke young women or bored middle-aged housewives. This explains why everything reads and sounds the same, from major publishing houses to vanity zines with a readership of fifteen. The progressive/woke orthodoxy is the ideology that controls the entire publishing apparatus.
You’ll never read a story about a pro-lifer or someone unvaccinated, as you said, because the woke commissars don’t consider them worthy of being humanized or represented in literature. Let’s be honest: these types of people, especially if they’re white working class, are looked at as repugnant by woke progressives. The fact that we’re even talking about pro-lifers and the unvaccinated in a literary magazine and treating them with respect is damn near revolutionary. I’m sure some readers are disgusted and enraged right now that we’re not damning our fellow Americans.
I think your career, as well, has been held back by these very same forces. Your work is abrasive in a working-class manner that disgusts the woke gatekeepers of the industry. You don’t write about Brooklyn women with all the proper beliefs and pristine voting records who blame the patriarchy and capitalism for every problem in their lives. Your women, from Ohio and Michigan and Florida—from America! —are broken by life and their self-destructive tendencies and not by passing political fads; your women probably don’t even vote! Which is to say that your women are the wrong type of women.
The whole entire interview is great and you should read it.
Imagine having to operate in such a Puritanical, prudish, women-led environment. These types of Puritan high-society women used to have to operate with their speech codes and drama behind closed doors amongst each other, in private, but now we’ve let them out into society to takeover and vampirize entire industries.
Sad, but with great corruption also comes great opportunity.
Perhaps never before have the heights of culture and society been led by such a weak, neurotic, and fragile group. Whoever can smash this establishment and move quickly to establish his own will prosper greatly. Hold fast, patriots! The enemy will exhaust itself and we will have our day. All we have to do is hold the line.
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