The Weaponization of White Privilege | We All Fall Down by Rose Szabo

Title: We All Fall Down
Series: River City #1
Author: Rose Szabo
Published: June 7, 2022
Genre(s): Urban Fantasy
Page Count: 416
Rating:

Summary from Goodreads:

In River City, where magic used to thrive and is now fading, the witches who once ruled the city along with their powerful King have become all but obsolete. The city's crumbling government is now controlled primarily by the new university and teaching hospital, which has grown to take over half of the city.

Moving between the decaying Old City and the ruthless New, four young queer people struggle with the daily hazards of life―work, school, dodging ruthless cops and unscrupulous scientists―not realizing that they have been selected to play in an age-old drama that revives the flow of magic through their world. When a mysterious death rocks their fragile peace, the four are brought into each other's orbits as they uncover a deeper magical conspiracy.

Rose Szabo writes books about white women inflicting violence upon gay men. This is a plot choice they have made in both of their published novels. This hardly seems to be a coincidence.

In Szabo’s debut novel, What Big Teeth, protagonist Eleanor (and her grandmother) manipulated and enslaved a gay man for their own ends, and the book ultimately left each of its gay male characters dead, dying, or destitute. The author failed to confront either the internal bigotry baked into the narrative or the characters’ explicitly harmful actions. The end result was a book that seemed to prioritize a white woman’s victory, no matter the collateral damage. [My review of Rose Szabo’s What Big Teeth here]

A similar dynamic exists in We All Fall Down.

This is a book about the murder of two police officers. Tiny white lesbian Jack knows who the murderer is—her sister. Said sister is trying to pin the murder onto an eight-armed monster-girl in order to stir up racially motivated panic amonst the citizenry. In order to deflect suspicion from her sister (who isn’t great at plotting), Jack points the finger at a person she 100% knows to be innocent.

Who?

David. A seven-foot tall gay Black man who everyone is already terrified of by reason of his race and physical size.

It’ll be fine, Jack tells herself, as she uses her incredible privilege as a white woman to frame a stranger. He’s a professor at the university, he must be rich and well-connected and able to sort this out.

The police arrest David and hold him without charging him. They subject him to interrogation and torture in order to coerce a confession.

Jack’s only apparent regret with this situation is that, when the police eventually let David go, she hadn’t been able to point the finger at a more plausible suspect. She displays no awareness or insight the actual harm caused to David or how she might make amends.

And the novel itself ultimately portrays Jack as the hero and David as the villain. David’s rightful quest for vengeance against the woman who attempted to frame him for her sister’s crimes is Wrong and Selfish and Upsetting the Balance of Magic. In contrast, Jack is the capital-H Hero who must stop David from creating cosmic unrest as a result of his rampage. So the sequel to We All Fall Down is, apparently, going to be about Jack and her monster girlfriend stopping “evil” David?

The optics of this book are shit.

Rose Szabo keeps trying to tell stories about subjects that they are just not able to tell due to their own lack of perspective. You cannot write a book about police brutality against monsters but then have your hero subject a gay Black man to police brutality. You can’t then take the Black man’s completely justified anger at the violence done to him and turn it into an “anger is bad and forgiveness will heal the world” lesson. Some things are not forgiveable, and oppressors have no right to demand that the people they have harmed put aside their righteous fury.

(I should add that this is a fantasy novel that takes place in the American South. David has already lived in fear of falling victim to “existing while Black” his entire life, so the fact that the police who arrest him are Magic Police instead of Human Police is irrelevant, and only makes Szabo’s authorial choices more egregious.)

I don’t know what Szabo’s deal is. They’re a very good writer. But there seems to be a repeated lack of insight into the way their narratives reinforce and condone bigotry and the weaponization of white female fragility.