Dear Conservative Booktube

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]We need to talk.

[00:00:03]>> [music] >> Hello and welcome back to Bookish and welcome to a video which I am really sincerely hoping to establish a dialogue with people who are on BookTube whether they make content or not or where they just watch videos and make and leave comments. I really want to open a dialogue with people who are let's say right of center on particularly social issues involving books so that I can get a better understanding of their positions and hopefully they can get a better understanding of mine.

[00:00:34]I really think dialogue is going to be become increasingly important between the left and the right finding you know deeper understanding of each other's positions >> [clears throat] >> and what each other wants I think will be important moving forward and I think that you know both left and right have moved so far apart in an effort to gain clicks and tension that we are in danger of never being able to find any common ground again. So this is my effort to kind of find common ground about books.

[00:01:04]This may sound odd to people who watch my channel all the time because I am an avowed leftist who considers myself to be a socialist in a certain kind of way.

[00:01:15]I am a long time despiser of Donald Trump and a highly suspicious of the MAGA movement to say the least but I don't believe that everyone who's on the right particularly in the book community is a MAGA supporter and may have voted for Trump in the past but it doesn't mean they ascribe to all the things that are MAGA. So what I want to do is have a dialogue or discussion with those groups of people and one reason one of the things that brought this up is I've seen the rise of at least two channels by creators who I believe are to the right of center who make a lot of videos in which they seem to be talking about their they seem to be talking about books through the lens of their conservative ideas and certainly you know talk about books through the lens of my liberal ideas and probably it's easier for me to do so because I do think that books primarily are published by publishing houses that lean left and therefore you do get a large number of books that seem to particularly novels fiction those kind of things that lean to the left rather than lean to the right. So for me it's probably easier but those two channels are the second story which is a huge channel and I don't expect a response from them and then a channel that has experienced really rapid growth and this is the channel I've really been paying a lot a lot of attention to. They just started making videos I think in August 2024 and they are already have eclipsed my channel in terms of subscribers and regular viewers and that channel is belongs to a creator named Jumi Kim.

[00:02:59]So I've watched videos from both these channels and in the process of watching videos from both these channels I have been frustrated occasionally angry occasionally wanted to fire off you know a sarcastic or a snarky or you know a comment designed to kind of pin them down in a way which will expose the weakness of their arguments and I think I've successfully fought that for the most part even though I there is one comment I think I've left that I really would like an answer to and so it'll be one of the questions here. But rather than do that and just kind of engage in what I frequently engage with in terms of right wing people leaving comments and comments in the comment section of my videos this kind of snarky back and forth type thing I would like to engage in real dialogue. I I've been able to do that with a few people in my comment section who are to the right of center or at the very least to the right of me which doesn't take that much work and so I'd like to be able to to do that either with the creators of these channels or people who are fans of their channels or people who just happen to click on this video because of the title or because of the thumbnail.

[00:04:06]And what I want to do is I want to talk about I want to kind of focus our discussion strictly speaking on books and and kind of limit it to that and how you know our political differences affect our our view of publishing the state of modern books and literature in the United States and maybe in the in a sense of [clears throat] how those reflect on society because and I want to do that I want to ask these specific questions because in watching the videos of these two creators one of the things that frustrates me the most is they they seem and this this is this is just from my viewing and it I'm not saying it's fair.

[00:04:47]They seem to speak a lot in generalities and so what I want to do is I want to get down to specifics by asking questions and that's really what this video is about. So there are words that you know we hear all the time in American politics and American society that I've heard them use and talk about in relationship to books that I would like some clarification on. So there's that and then there are then there's my basic question.

[00:05:17]So that I think we could actually engage in a very specific discussion. So question number one is what do you mean by woke?

[00:05:25]Often times you will hear people from the right criticize today's books and literature by claiming that they are woke. That term today is so fraught with meaning and you know baggage that I'm not sure it's clear what anyone means.

[00:05:37]When I hear I'll just tell you that as a leftist when I hear somebody on the right talk about something being woke what it sounds like to me is that they are frustrated that the traditional white male dominated world of publishing and books has been diminished supplanted by a more diverse group of authors telling more diverse group of stories.

[00:06:01]So when I hear you when I hear someone complain that books today are woke I wonder if they're not just saying that books today aren't wide enough and I I realize that that is my kind of racially charged view of what they're saying. So what I would like them to explain is you know what they actually mean when they use the term woke and and when they use it as they do as a pejorative against these books and against you know what's going on in publishing today. My second question is is what do you consider to be feminism in books and is it always bad? You know what do you consider to be feminism in in a book?

[00:06:39]You know I've been listening to some of these videos what I think I hear them focusing on is what they consider to be feminism are books in which they believe female characters or women are be the the women characters are behaving like men. They're either being very promiscuous very you know transactional about sex or that they are overly masculinized.

[00:07:04]I don't see that as feminism books. I'll talk more about this in relation to a specific title in the next question. I don't really see that in relation to books. I suppose it's there but even when I think about what I know about Romancing Novels you know I don't see main characters in those books who reject the the help or the presence of men.

[00:07:27]I don't see these kind of highly masculinized characters who don't want men in their lives at all. I don't see that. You know I don't see the characters who are presented perhaps in that way or close to that way as being characters that the author intends to be positive role role models. Characters that the author themselves you know necessarily admires or expects readers to admire. And so that then leads to my third question.

[00:07:58]Uh can you give me specific books in which you think are tainted or ruined by wokeness or by kind of this negative view of feminism that you have you see applied to book. Now as Jumi Kim talked in one video about the book All Fours by Miranda July and you know I thought she made a number of points about the main character in All Fours that I've seen a number of women here on BookTube make who I don't think are right wing and this is kind of one of those reasons why I really want to have this discussion.

[00:08:32]To me when I read All Fours the main character is not somebody that the author wants us the reader to admire quite the opposite. I think what the author or at least what I got from it whether this is Miranda July's intent or not was that you know this woman is in a sense self destructive in a pursuit of you know only things that apply to her she loses I think more than she gains. That's what I got from the book. Now although I know a lot of people found the book to be unpleasant I kind of liked the book or I actually liked the book I thought for what it was trying to do or for kind of its newness but you know what about that feminism or if you interpret that as feminism did you see as being presented in a positive way? So I want to use that specific book because it's a book I've read it's a book lots of people that I follow here on BookTube have read and it's a book that like I said Jumi Kim mentioned specifically in her video. So there you go those are my three questions that I really would like to engage in what I hopefully hopefully can be a respectful and constructive dialogue around these three questions whether you make a video and tag me in it or whether you leave comments in the comment section below. You don't have to be conservative to you know leave comments and you know share your point of view as I shared my point of view.

[00:09:49]Please feel free if you're on the left left of center right dead down the middle to leave your thoughts and ideas as well cuz I really want to have that discussion. I may be biting off more than I can chew here, but I really want to have that discussion and to kind of open this dialogue so that we talk to one another and not just as I often times do at at people on the other side. Anyway, there you go. I look forward to your comments in the comments section below and as always, thank you for watching.