Well, Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver finds himself in hot water this morning! His 400-page fantasy children’s novel Billy and the Epic Escape has been pulled from shelves worldwide after complaints the book stereotyped Indigenous Australians.

Much of the online furore revolves around the question of whether a ‘privileged’ white man should be writing about First Nation peoples at all. 

My experience is, so long as a writer undertakes the necessary research and consultation, it is possible to write authentically and without controversy outside of one’s own cultural or identity ‘lane’. 

Absolutely not, when an author relies on, for example, their singular primary school class on ‘the colonies’ – on preheld simplifications and anachronistic stereotypes. Absolutely not, when the narrative self-serves as a Eurocentric fantasy that feeds a comfortable and superior worldview. Absolutely not, when an author has not undertaken and completed all the necessary homework.

The question should not be who wrote the text, but does the text appeal to and resonate with the experiences of the community described.  And in the case of Jamie’s lazy efforts with Billy and the Epic Escape, the answer appears to be a resounding no.

M2M books hopes to receive submissions and publish work that speak to (rather than about) children and YA from marginalised communities.