People on Twitter begin responding to her initial tweet, offering support and echoing Ortiz’s statement that My Dark Vanessa sounds similar to Excavation. On January 19, Ortiz tweets about My Dark Vanessa, calling it a “white woman’s book of fiction that sounds very much like Excavation.”Ĭan’t wait until February when a white woman’s book of fiction that sounds very much like Excavation is lauded, stephen king’s stamp of approval is touted, etc,- Wendy C. Russell, in a statement, later emphasized that her book was based on personal experiences.

She later called the book a “ fictional take on a reality I lived,” and published an essay noting that her memoir and My Dark Vanessa have “ eerie story similarities.” This prompted a debate online about whether Russell had plagiarized her novel from the memoir, and the discourse eventually spiraled into conflict over who has the right to tell stories about sexual abuse. In January, Ortiz called out My Dark Vanessa on Twitter - without actually naming it - for being similar to her memoir. (The teacher is now a registered sex offender.) My Dark Vanessa tells the story of Vanessa Wye, a woman who, 17 years later, is forced to confront a sexual relationship she had with her English teacher when she was 15 after another former student comes forward with sexual-abuse accusations against him. In Excavation, Ortiz writes about how her eighth-grade English teacher engaged in a five-year sexual relationship with her as a teenager. ( My Dark Vanessa sold for a reported seven figures and is slated for release on March 10.)

Ortiz, a Latinx writer whose memoir, Excavation, was published back in 2014, and the forthcoming, highly anticipated novel My Dark Vanessa, from Kate Elizabeth Russell. As the controversy surrounding Oprah’s latest book-club pick, American Dirt, continues to swirl, there’s another literary debate brewing online.

Excavation ortiz