Reading Lists

These novels (and a play) ask how we strike the balance between calling out harm and accepting when accountability goes too far

Photo by ALEJANDRO POHLENZ via Unsplash

Besides death, being canceled might be my biggest fear. Like with death, I navigate this fear by thinking about the concept pseudo-academically, following the case studies as they emerge from my algorithm. I am of two minds when it comes to canceling. One, I am happy when people I think deserve it are canceled. Two, I am uneasy when I’m unsure if they deserved it.

When it came to writing my novel Lucky Girl, tracing a young dancer’s tumultuous relationship with an embattled pop star, I knew my main character would get canceled. An ardent and pseudo-academic fan of reality television, especially Dance Moms, it would be disingenuous to not include the looming threat. I especially wanted to explore how canceling counteracts and complicates coming-of-age narratives. Many coming-of-age stories involve mistakes, but always the kind of mistakes one recovers and learns from. Often, this is not the case with canceling. The subject defends, apologizes, vanishes, and sometimes returns, but never the same and seemingly always for the worse. What does restorative justice in a canceling life cycle look like?

Really, my unease about cancel culture is my unease with the internet, with social media, with being perceived by strangers online. It is why I find fiction a useful tool for exploring this concept, and why I developed this list. Some of these books view canceling as a societal warning while others position canceling as a moral consequence. In novels that center revolting characters like Yellowface’s June and My Dark Vanessa’s Jacob Strane, I am rooting for the Greek chorus of cancel culture to beam the everlasting shit out of them. In other stories, cancel culture is the boogie man behind the unwitting yet likable character, making the reader shout “look out!” down into the pages. All, I hope, add nuance to this tired dialogue. I know, we’re so tired! But it’s worth having this conversation about how we strike a balance between calling out harm and accepting when accountability goes too far. Fiction remains an important way to interrogate the limits and possibilities of public discourse.

The Crucible by Arthur Miller

Written in the 1950s as allegory for McCarthyism, Arthur Miller’s The Crucible is a high school curriculum favorite, and I love teaching it to my freshmen and sophomores. The first act sees Puritan girls desperately trying not to be canceled—they’ve been caught engaging in some non-Puritan activities—and they manage to evade the snare by accusing maligned community members of witchcraft. Soon, Salem is undone by a spiral of allegations. Our “hero” is John Proctor, striving to free his accused wife while battling his own moral shortcomings; the protagonist is further condemned in Kimberly Belflower’s 2022 play John Proctor Is the Villian, following high school girls reading the play while an accusation of sexual assault rocks their small Georgia town.

Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe

After an affair with a college professor leaves her pregnant, penniless, and alone, single mom Margo turns to OnlyFans. It seems a perfect work-from-home solution for her childcare dilemma; Margo can remain anonymous and make enough money to get back on her feet. But she learns that sex alone doesn’t sell. Margo must devise a compelling alt-ego to attract more viewers, so she taps her ex-pro wrestler Dad. As it turns out, the pro-wrestling world and this new frontier of digital sex work both depend on crafting enticing storylines for viewers. Thorpe does a masterful job comparing these two mediums: Both rely on using your body, yet one is celebrated while the other shamed.

Songs of No Provenance by Lydi Conklin

In Lydi Conklin’s debut novel, the canceling comes down swiftly. Set off balance from her eroding career and personal relationships, folksinger Joan Vole goes overboard—to put it lightly—during a performance on stage, causing her to flee New York before the vultures come for her. Joan sets her sights on a remote writers’ camp in Virginia, where it just so happens the students are not allowed access to their phones. Betting that news of her poor actions have not reached the school, Joan weasels her way into teaching, allowing her to lick her wounds before she plans to find permanent refuge on some Arctic island, where she’ll renounce music and live out her days. And yet, her time at the camp with her students and a fellow younger counselor challenge how she exists as both an artist and a person.

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

Rebecca Makkai’s novel tackles our obsession with true crime podcasts as filmmaker Bodie returns to her alma mater to teach some media courses on films and podcasts. Years ago, the campus was rocked by a shocking murder of Bodie’s roommate, a murder she finds herself unpacking with her plucky students. These Gen Zers cannily intuit the police were quick to condemn athletic director Omar, one of the few people of color on campus. The kids get to crafting a podcast that seeks to crack the case open. In the background, Bodie contends with a more personal issue: Her amicable ex-husband has been accused of sexual misconduct—his culpability is fuzzy, think Aziz Ansari-level fuzzy—but the online discourse seeks to quickly dismiss him, and Bodie along with it. Makkai uses this B-plot to interrogate the main focus of the novel, illuminating the dangers of certainty.

*Yellowface *by R. F. Kuang

My sister described listening to the audiobook of Yellowface to me as “being on FaceTime with your terrible friend justifying themselves when they’re clearly the bad guy.” It’s tough (yet hypnotizing) being in June Hayward’s head. Sole witness to literary wonderkid Athena Liu’s choking death, June steals her friend’s manuscript on the plight of Chinese laborers in World War II, edits it to completion and passes it off as her own. Over the course of the novel, June conducts Olympian gymnastics to both assuage herself of guilt and evade condemnation from the Twitter mob, serving as the canceling Greek chorus. Oddly enough, I describe watching June’s plight as sublime—evoking both awe and terror. As a reader, you root for these Twitter handles to uncover the truth, and, trapped in June’s head, you squirm.

Honey by Isabel Banta

Isabel Banta’s debut novel reminds us that canceling existed in the early aughts too. Tracing Amber Young’s rise to fame as a Britney-esque pop star, we see Amber leap from local talent show to girl group and beyond. Meanwhile, Amber navigates real friendships and crushes, complicated by false relationships drummed by tabloids. When Amber is caught in the middle of this, she becomes a lightning rod for the public’s ire. What especially struck me throughout the novel is how, though we didn’t have the term in the 2000s, canceling was a feminine issue—and as a feminine issue, it was generally accepted as the way culture worked. It is Amber’s body and hyper-sexuality broken down by chatrooms and media when she’s caught engaging in bad behavior, not the boyband dreamboat she’s doing it with. Oh—you almost want or hope to say—how times have changed. Have they?

The Atmospherians by Isle McElroy

This dark comedy debut by Isle McElroy tackles influencer culture as well as the alpha-male epidemic sparked by Andrew Tate when two friends seek to create a cult that reforms problematic white males. Sasha’s once successful wellness influencer platform dissolves when a guy publicly blames her for his viral suicide. She has little other choice but to say yes when her best friend Dyson asks her to be the figurehead for this cult he’s starting. In The Atmospherians, canceling serves as Sasha’s catalyst into the zany world where man-hordes will either trip over to help or rob you blind, depending on the way the wind blows. Sasha’s task becomes how to influence these men to become, in her own words, more human. Much of the novel explores how we perform, both in social media and real life, and how this performance invents the self.

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