The story is that last year, during her freshman year at Harvard, she signed a $500k contract to write two books in the "chick lit" genre (the contract is fifty times more what most first-time authors receive, probably because it's a first in reaching out to the rising South Asian community). Shbe also inked a movie deal and was on her way to becoming a shining star, but recently she has been in the midst of major allegations of plagiarism, and her deals have been rescinded and the book pulled.Phrases in Viswanathan's book are alleged to be copied from the books Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings by Megan McCafferty, The Princess Diaries from Meg Cabot, and Can You Keep a Secret? by Sophie Kinsella (which incidentally, I bought at the Manila airport during our recent travels). There are also notable similarities to Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie's novel. Most of the passages that are recognizable were phoned into the Harvard Crimson and the New York Times by fans of those authors.
Viswanathan's note through her publisher says that any similarities were "unintentional and unconscious," and may have occurred because she claims she has a photographic memory and "I remember by reading... I never take notes."
As a fellow over-achieving Asian woman, I feel for what this author must have been going through: she was groomed to continuously achieve, both as an immigrant and the daughter of two doctors. She was the editor of the school paper at her magnet school, The Bergen County Academy for the Advancement of Science and Technology, and she went through heavy coaching to get high SAT scores and apply to the Ivy League schools. She's at Harvard! How much more can you do?!Viswanathan must have felt an enormous pressure. For whatever reason, she must have wanted to follow in the footsteps of "what works" for sales: if those other books have done well, why not utilize that same model? Who knows what must have been going on in her mind... perhaps she internalized passages from the sources she researched and then modified them for her book, all the while thinking that was her own writing.
I still believe there is a need for modern, fresh, real books to speak to the Asian American experience, the Latino experience, and the African American experience.
For other authors out there, I hope you write and publish your books with your own, authentic experience and imagination, and through your own voice: we all need to hear these stories.
And for publishers, I hope that this incident does not lessen the need for, and the desire to publish, the voices of minority audiences.
Comment Preview