#sonya larson

[redpandarascal]

"I don’t understand why these people don’t approach the subject of kidney donation from the point of view of very ill people on dialysis, people who are dying of kidney disease, and their families and friends. Everything else is so trivial in comparison. There aren’t enough kidneys to go around. There are over 100,000 people on the waiting list in the U.S, and every single day, about thirteen people of those people die before they can get a transplant.

In other words: in the two hours after you finish reading this article, someone in the U.S. will die because they couldn’t get a kidney in time, and their family and friends will be devastated.

Donors who talk about their experiences frequently inspire other people to become donors. Also, the donor’s motivations, whatever they may be, don’t affect the kidney’s function. These facts seem self-evident, yet they must be carefully explained to people who have barely considered the recipients.

I personally didn’t write any letters to my anonymous kidney recipient, and I didn’t feel sentimental about the process. It was rational; I knew lots of people would die without a kidney, and I could get by without one of mine. However, after my surgery, I got a packet of letters from my transplant coordinator, written by members of my recipient’s family, with their names redacted. The letters made me understand the hopelessness the recipient’s wife had felt and just how difficult it can be for a whole family when one person has end-stage kidney disease. His granddaughter wrote that she could go to the beach with her grandfather again; his daughter said he could now see her graduate."

Wanted to take a moment to promote the topic of kidney donation on my blog!

You'd think, "of course kidney donation is good! what kind of a MONSTER hates those who donate their organs?" well, I'm having a hard time keeping cool about it, but, some writer REALLY took issue with her friend donating a kidney.

[joyglass]

#article goes CRAZY

[grendelsmilf]

oh what was the bad art friend debacle it sounds so uninteresting ✌🏽

can't believe u managed to avoid this drama i still think abt it on a regular basis ngl.....

#ask #brownpaperhag #ngl i find this fascinating #just bc i do have a very personal relationship w both the topic of the ethics of plagiarizing #and the exploitation of racial identity to garner white (guilt) (faux) sympathy #anyway celeste ng is ostensibly dead to me bc of this article so thats cool

[sin-scape]

Art often draws inspiration from life — but what happens when it’s your life?

#longform #reading #curated #recommended #nytimes

[branmer]

imagining how much sooner kidneygate would have imploded had sonya larson accidentally @'ed dawn dorland in the chunky monkey dm group on mastodon alksdjlksadj

[pinerprofiles]

My fake boyfriend script studio c

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Her short fiction was published, in Best American Short Stories and elsewhere she took charge of GrubStreet’s annual Muse and the Marketplace literary conference, and as a mixed-race Asian American, she marshaled the group’s diversity efforts. But in the years since Dorland left town, Larson had leveled up. They were just a few years apart in age, and for several years they ran in the same circles, hitting the same events, readings and workshops at the GrubStreet writing center. Larson and Dorland had met eight years earlier in Boston. On July 20, she wrote an email to one of them: a writer named Sonya Larson. But just after the surgery, when she checked Facebook, Dorland noticed some people she’d invited into the group hadn’t seemed to react to any of her posts. In time, Dorland would start posting outside the private group to all of Facebook, celebrating her one-year “kidneyversary” and appearing as a UCLA Health Laker for a Day at the Staples Center to support live-organ donation. By a stroke of luck, Dorland would even get to meet the recipient, an Orthodox Jewish man, and take photos with him and his family. “It’s kind of like not overthinking love, you know?” “As soon as I learned I could,” she told me recently, on the phone from her home in Los Angeles, where she and her husband were caring for their toddler son and elderly pit bull (and, in their spare time, volunteering at dog shelters and searching for adoptive families for feral cat litters). But in truth, Dorland, in her 30s at the time, had been wanting to do it for years. There was some risk with the procedure, of course, and a recovery to think about, and a one-kidney life to lead from that point forward. As a so-called nondirected donation, her kidney was not meant for anyone in particular but instead was part of a donation chain, coordinated by surgeons to provide a kidney to a recipient who may otherwise have no other living donor. She donated one of her kidneys, and elected to do it in a slightly unusual and particularly altruistic way. in creative writing, Dorland did perhaps the kindest, most consequential thing she might ever do in her life. On June 24, 2015, a year after completing her M.F.A. (“I’m compelled at funerals to shake hands with the dusty men who dig our graves,” she has written.) She is known for signing off her emails not with “All best” or “Sincerely,” but “Kindly.” An essayist and aspiring novelist who has taught writing classes in Los Angeles, she is the sort of writer who, in one authorial mission statement, declares her faith in the power of fiction to “share truth,” to heal trauma, to build bridges. Her friends call her a “feeler”: openhearted and eager, pressing to make connections with others even as, in many instances, she feels like an outsider. There is a sunny earnestness to Dawn Dorland, an un-self-conscious openness that endears her to some people and that others have found to be a little extra.

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[fantastic-nonsense]

the moral of the Bad Art Friend/Kidney Donation story is that if you're going to talk shit about your incredibly obnoxious and narcissistic acquaintance behind her back, you should maybe not steal her recognizable life event for a short story you intend to publish, plagiarize her words, and then gaslight her when she comes around asking for an explanation

Because said obnoxious and narcissistic acquaintance WILL, in fact, recognize that shit and focus all of her time to the point of legitimate obsession making sure you regret that decision

In other news:

#bad art friend #sonya larson #dawn dorland #writing drama #this is just an 'objectively bad person' vs. 'objectively worse person' story and literally no one comes out of this looking good #anyway tldr pretentious plagiarist gaslights litigious narcissist; everyone sucks

[greenlivvie]

role of race in bad art friend

link to main page about bad art friend

This is the narrative pushed out solely by Larson and her people, and it is the one that is most difficult to battle - because it is hard to bring facts into this. I would like to explicitly state that I have no idea if Dawn Dorland is a racist, or has committed race-based transgressions on people of color. I can only talk about it in the context of the facts at hand, and try to examine if Dawn's actions were solely motivated by race, as so many people on writer Twitter claim.

the idea

I don't know if this was the first time Larson was hearing of it: according to the chat transcripts submitted to court, it is clear that her friend Alison (who is white) suggested she send the article to a group of writers of color, so they could "draaaaag her(Dorland)" when the she tries to come forward with (very legitimate) claims of plagiarism. Larson replies by calling it a "really good idea". Now I don't know about you, but to me it looks like she is weaponizing the feelings of writers of color to counteract a (what she knows to be legitimate) plagiarism claim. To me, it looks like the whole "white woman angry at an Asian woman's success" narrative is deliberately manufactured by Larson and her defenders to label Dorland's claim as a racist action. It is also important to note that the timestamp here is June 16, 2017. Dorland had not taken any legal action yet. She had not sent any cease-and-desist letters, she had not contacted Larson's employers. Larson and her friend were already talking about using race to deflect from plagiarism claims - claims that had not been made. This shows that the Dawn "taking it too far because race" narrative was literally created before she took any actions.

the evidence

There is zero evidence that Dawn Dorland did anything because of her, or Larson’s, race. If there is, then it isn’t out yet - and given how most of writer Twitter wants to paint this woman’s actions as race-driven, I’m going to assume that if there was any evidence regarding her being motivated by race, then it would be out by now.

the argument

Most people who claim Dorland’s motivations have something to do with Larson’s race paint the following picture: 1) Dorland is a narcissist with a white savior complex, 2) Larson refused to fawn at Dorland’s white-savior-ish actions so Dorland got angry, 3) Dorland is now angry at Larson for painting her as a white-savior and wants her to suffer, and that 4) Dorland feels she is owed something as a white woman who inspired a story written by a woman of color.

Let’s break it down:

We have no reason to believe Dorland has a white-savior complex, period. She gave her kidney in a blind donation, she couldn’t have possibly known the race of the person the kidney was going through. She has never claimed to “save” any people of color. She has never asked for praise for saving a person of color. There is z-e-r-o evidence to support the claim that Dorland has a white-savior complex.

There is zero evidence to support the claim that Dorland got angry at Larson because Larson wasn’t reacting to her FB posts. First, it is important to note that the group in question was a private group created by Dorland to talk about her surgery (the exact size is still debatable), and from the first post, she makes it absolutely clear that people are free to leave. From FB metrics, Dorland saw that Larson was reading her posts but not reacting to them, and because she thought they were friends and she was sharing private medical info in the group, she messaged Larson telling her to leave the group if she didn’t want to stay. She emailed Larson only when she heard from her friend Tom Meek that Larson was writing a story on kidney donation, which Meek thought was inspired by her. Apart from letting Larson let know that she was free to leave the group, Dorland didn’t react at all to Larson’s inactivity. 

Dorland actually hasn’t commented on what she thinks of Larson calling her a white savior. The only thing Dorland has asked for is the removal of the letter that Larson plagiarized - that’s it. That is literally it. She has not once claimed she is bothered by Larson’s white-savior character

Dorland’s claim is that she is owed something because a deeply personal text was stolen from her - one that she was gaslighted about, even though literal text was lifted from the letter. We can’t know her personal motivations, but we do know that there is no evidence to suggest her actions would be different if it was a white man who stole from her.

in conclusion

Is it possible that everything being said about Dorland’s motivations being race-motivated is true? Yes. But it is also possible that Helen Mirren is a cannibal. Or that Jimmy Carter is a stripper. We don’t say any of these things are true, because any claim we make in a logical discussion has to be based on evidence. The evidence states that the narrative of Dorland taking it too far because of race was created before she took any actions at all. There is no evidence to support race had any role in Dorland’s actions.

We can’t ask Dorland to prove she was not being racist, just like we can’t ask Jimmy Carter to prove he is not a stripper - the burden of proof lies on the people alleging something about someone. The people claiming Dorland’s actions had anything to do with race need to back it up with evidence - and so far none of them have.

#bad art friend #badartfriend #dawn dorland #sonya larson #kidney story #the people alleging wrongdoing need to bring proof

[fondwand]

Maybe the real bad art friend was the morally unhinged decisions we made along the way

#bad art friend #New York Times #Dawn dorland #Sonya larson #Who is the bad art friend?

[obaewankenope]

So the whole #BadArtFriend tag on twitter is a ride.

Ableism is rife with someone who checks who likes their Facebook posts in a private group somehow being "narcissistic" and a "stalker" when the person lurking in said private group takes a whole ass letter From The Person Who Made The Group and uses it in a story that said lurker wrote to Bully The Person They Don't Like.

Like seriously it's a joke.

People calling Dawn Dormand crazy, a psycho, and narcissistic based off one article that blew up written by a guy Without A Degree In Psychology Or Psychiatry and who uses the word "narcissistic" like it's a buzzword for "self-obsessed and shouldn't be believed ever".

Sonya Larson being Asian-American and using the poc writers of the writing community she was part of as a weapon against the woman she plagiarised and gaslit for months and then sued.

Like, there's so much in it but the really important thing to recall is that Dawn Dormand isn't crazy or a psycho or even narcsissitc. She's a woman who is awkward, doesn't get the Social Rules of the group/community she joined, and who was mocked and her VERY GOOD ACT OF CHAIN KIDNEY DONATION was lambasted and used as a tool for a book where a poc character who Larson has admitted is based on herself calls the woman who gives her a kidney in the story "a bitch" with a white saviour complex and repeatedly mocks a woman who did a good thing like it's just done for attention...

It's just. Christ almighty.

#Bad art friend #BadArtFriend #Sonya Larson #Dawn Dormand #Weaponising race politics as a smoke screen to bully a likely neurodivergent woman is. Just #Not cool

[kittykittykittyzz]

Just caught up on Bad Art Friend discourse that's swamped book twitter and I guess my unpopular opinion is being cringe after anonymously donating a kidney doesn't mean you get to be plagiarized, gaslit, bullied and sued. But that's just me!

#dawn dormund #sonya larson #bad art friend #i talk sometimes #jsyk everyone on twitter is blaming the kidney doner lmao writer twitter is unhinged #one person being insufferable =/= an author plagiarising a work and making fun of who she plagiarized and gaslighting her at the same time #funny times on twitter dot com

[swimmingback]

girl best friends what about bad art friends

#bad art friend #nyt #who is the bad art friend #dawn dorland #sonya larson #a soap smash

[quinnfabrayapologist]

#dawn dorland #sonya larson #dorland v larson #writing discourse #ignore me #it just gets me bc dawn has spent 5 years trying to screw sonya over rather than just... writing her own thing?.

[tom-at-the-farm]

Vogue speaking the harsh truths about THAT article

#listen I have very little free time rn and i made dawn dorland vs sonya larson my bedtime reading last night which I very much regret #i thought I was in for another I Was Caroline Calloway #instead it was an unbearably boring saga abt a deeply disturbed woman her kidney& some petty high school-level antics by a published writer #dawn dorland #sonya larson #we need to rethink our definition of 'paper of record'

[stele3]

Caught up on the legal filings surrounding the Bad Art Friend debacle and all I can say is, YIKES. Sonya Larson, Celeste Ng, and the rest of the Chunky Monkeys are repulsive human beings. Larson plagiarized a student who had taken a paid writing workshop from GrubStreet (where some of the CM worked), all of the CM established a group chat to mock said student, Celeste Ng helped Larson plan ways to play the race card in order to discredit the plagiarism lawsuit that they anticipated Dawn Dorland would file, and when Dorland tried to get Larson to go to a low-cost mediator Larson filed a flurry of litigation, including suing Dorland’s lawyer for being opposing counsel. At this point according to the court docs Dorland has tried to settle repeatedly and Larson keeps dragging it out—looks like she’s basically trying to bankrupt Dorland. At least one of the CM has left the group and apologized, admitting that Dawn Dorland has been “nothing but kind to her.”

#bad art friend #sonya larson #celeste ng

[seph-on-an-irrational-planet]

honestly the big takeaway from the Bad Art Friend saga is: under no circumstances should you befriend or share unfiltered thoughts and personal information with coworkers ESPECIALLY if they’re writers or some other kind of artist trying to “make it big”

#bad art friend #dawn dorland #sonya larson