A Tin House essay by author Claire Vaye Watkins—who wrote the short story collection Battleborn (2013), and, earlier this year, published Gold Fame Citrus—has many chattering on Twitter about privilege.

Having originally delivered it as a lecture at a Tin House Summer Writers’ Workshop, Watkins considers in “On Pandering” “...a phenomenon that happens in my head, and maybe in yours too, whereby the white supremacist patriarchy determines what I write.” She ends her essay with a call for action: “Let us burn this motherfucking system to the ground and build something better.”

The essay has garnered enthusiastic responses from other women on the Internet—Tin House noted after the byline that the lecture, too, “was met with enthusiastic applause”—but some writers of color argue that they pander to white women to sell books.

The 2015 Man Booker prizewinner Marlon James (A Brief History of Seven Killings, 2015) said at a sold-out Guardian event last weekend that publishers too often seek fiction that “panders to that archetype of the white woman, that long-suffering, astringent prose set in suburbia. You know, ‘older mother or wife sits down and thinks about her horrible life.’”

In response to Watkins’ piece, James wrote on Facebook, “If I pandered to a cultural tone set by white women, particularly older white female critics, I would have had 10 stories published by now. Though we’ll never admit it, every writer of color knows that they stand a higher chance of getting published if they write this kind of story. We just do.”

Female readers—particularly white female readers—make up the majority of regular fiction readers; according a 2012 report from the National Endowment for the Arts, more women (sixty-four percent) read than men (forty-five percent).

Flavorwire contributor Alison Herman argues that the essay wasn’t meant to include all experiences, but it does have the power to “start a broader conversation.” ““On Pandering” is the hopeful starting point of a conversation that will expand outward from Watkins,” Herman writes. “It’s neither her job nor her probable desire to speak for all writers outside the establishment. But by striking a nerve, she’s accomplished something remarkable.”

Related Reading: Marlon James and novelist Jeanette Winterson discuss reading and writing women, among other things.

Photo Credit: Vol. 1 Brooklyn.