Author Gabrielle Zevin is the Latest Target of a Disturbing Mindset in the Lit World

We talk a lot about when and whether to separate art from its creator. But too often of late, the conversation about Jewish writers is a monologue of exclusion.

The most recent example involves Gabrielle Zevin, the Korean-Jewish author of the New York Times bestseller Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, in an incident emblematic of a disturbing trend.

For those not familiar with the 2022 novel, recently named to the Times’ list of top 100 books of the 21^stcentury, it explores friendship, relationships, gaming, disability and more. The Los Angeles Times and Jimmy Fallon picked it for their book clubs. It made numerous best-of lists, including roundups from Time, the Washington Post and BookPage.

So it makes sense that it appeared on a list of potential picks for the Pretty in Paperback book club at Chicago’s City Lit bookstore. That’s when the trouble started.

Multiple emails raised a fuss, and a store employee swiftly removed the title from consideration.

“It was brought to my attention that the author Gabrielle Zevin is a Zionist and I am not comfortable having us reading something by her, especially knowing people would buy it from the store and she would receive monetary support from us,” an assistant manager wrote in an email.

The bookstore has since apologized and reiterated its support for Jewish authors in a lengthy post on Instagram. But the speedy, blithe extraction of the title is telling. Being called a Zionist–someone who believes in the Jewish people’s right to self-determination–is a one-way ticket to ostracism.

Readers certainly can decide which authors they’ll support with their dollars. But Zevin does not appear to be an ardent supporter of Israel’s military action in Gaza. In fact, she hasn’t spoken publicly about the conflict at all.

In early 2023, Hadassah Magazine featured her book as part of its national reading initative. Founded more than 100 years ago, Hadassah is a U.S. women’s Zionist group that raises money for hospitals, among other causes. It’s the largest Jewish women’s organization in the United States. Zevin did a virtual interview for the magazine to discuss the book, which includes a brief mention of a main character winning a community-service award from Hadassah.

That, plus the inclusion of an (unlikeable) Israeli character, was enough for some to brand her and trigger the exclusion.

Does speaking to Hadassah Magazine mean Zevin supports everything Israel does? No, friends. Is including an Israeli character an endorsement of Israeli military action? Also no.

Do Russian novelists lose their opportunity for consideration because of that country’s war with Ukraine? Do we sideline Chinese authors because of their government’s treatment of the Uyghur population? Must writers from Serbia regularly and openly denounce their country’s conduct in Bosnia in order to have their novels included?

They do not, and we all know it.

This hasn’t been the only literary litmus test. Earlier this year, Zevin also landed on a boycott list of “Zionist” authors, some of whom had merely evinced support for a two-state solution or made a random comment about traveling to Israel as a teen. The Jewish Book Council began tracking worrisome incidents earlier this year.

Tossing this novel to the curb to avoid any whiff of support for Israel’s existence is holding Zevin to an impossible standard. It’s antisemitic, because it also holds her personally responsible for the actions of Israel’s government. And it normalizes antisemitism at a time when antisemitism is surging nationally and globally.

Because we can’t ignore that this is happening at the same time that Jewish day school buses are set aflame, university students bar those who refuse to deny Israel’s existence from campus groups and classrooms, and scores of Americans wake up to white supremacist flyers chucked on their doorsteps.

Look, you can criticize Israel’s actions all you want. Israelis certainly do. And no one’s forcing you to buy Netanyahu’s memoir.

But as we’ve seen time and time again in cycles of censorship, the ripple effects in the industry are real. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow will likely be fine. (In fact, it landed on City’s Lit’s home page as a weekly store bestseller.) The ones who really lose are the debut authors, the novelists who rely on book-club discussions or Goodreads ratings as a sales boost, the ones who aren’t already a known quantity or reviewed by major outlets. Those Jewish literary voices will be fewer if this continues.

Excluding authors for imaginary support of Israel normalizes excluding Jewish writers. It also paves the road to more. Stop fueling the false binary that anyone who thinks Israel should exist or has an Israeli character in their novel is a warmonger. The antisemitism you normalize spreads — and we’ve already got too much.