Is Twilight Racist?

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, author of the rather good YA "Haters" along with some adult books, asks if Twilight is racist. I don't completely agree with her analysis, because I don't believe that Stephanie Meyer is a good writer. When Valdes-Rodriguez says that Meyer is too good a writer to do any of the things she's doing by accident, I think she's wrong. I think that the Twilight books are an id-vortex fever-dream kind of thing and Meyer is by no means smart enough to purposefully do something even as simple-mindedly obvious as give the less-appealing love interest "Black" as a last name.

...That is less diplomatic, perhaps, than I meant to be.

It's undeniably creepy how Meyer fetishizes having skin the color of typing paper. Extreme deathly pallor is related to being sexxay, and also to being rich beyond belief, to being sophisticated and cultured... and that's never problematic in any way? Really?

Debbie Reese, a Nambe Pueblo woman who studies American Indians in children's literature, has written about Quileute characters in Twilight - she's always worth reading.