A writer’s essay explaining why she plagiarized parts of what would have been her debut novel has been deleted after it was revealed she copied that as well.
Jumi Bello’s book The Leaving was scheduled to come out on July 12 and had appeared on several ‘most anticipated’ lists, according to Publisher’s Market, when its publisher Riverhead Books suddenly scrapped it in December.
The 30-year-old has now revealed the reason the book was abruptly canceled when it was in its final stages was because she admitted to the New York City-based publishing company she had plagiarized parts of the novel.
It would have chronicled a young black woman’s unexpected pregnancy, but as Bello explained in an essay posted to Literary Hub on Monday, she had never been pregnant and had searched online for descriptions of what the process was like.
She wrote in a post entitled ‘I Plagiarized Parts of My Debut Novel. Here’s Why’ that she had intended to change these passages, but felt pressured to finish her book as she attended graduate school and struggled with her mental health.
But shortly after she published the 4,500-word essay to Literary Hub, other writers and publications noticed some similarities between Bello’s description of the origins of plagiarism and the work of others.
Within hours, Literary Hub took down the post, and said in a statement: ‘Because of inconsistencies in the story and, crucially, a further incident of plagiarism in the published piece, we decided to pull the essay.’
DailyMail.com has also reached out to Bello for comment.
In her now-deleted essay, the New York Times reports, Bello sought to explain why she resorted to plagiarism in her novel, as she explained that she had never actually been pregnant and had sought out good explanations online of what the experience is like.
‘I tell myself I’m just borrowing, and changing the language,’ she reportedly wrote. ‘I tell myself I will rewrite these parts later during the editorial phase. I will make this story mine again.’
Bello went on to say she felt pressure from the publishing company as she attended graduate school and struggled with her mental health.
‘I just wanted to get through it, to a place where I can sleep again,’ her essay read, according to Gawker.
‘Looking back at this moment, I ignored my instincts,’ she reportedly wrote. ‘I ignored the voice inside that said, quietly, this is wrong, wrong, wrong.’
But when she described the origins of plagiarism, many found examples of the very same literary sin she was describing, with fellow Riverhead Books author Kristen Arnett writing that she Googled parts ‘and it popped up online as something someone else wrote.’
In Bello’s article, for example, Gawker reports, she wrote: ‘Plagiarism has been with us since the birth of language and art.
‘For as long as there have been words to read, there has been someone copying the passages.
‘It goes as far back as 8 AD with the poet Martial, who caught another poet, Fidentinus reciting his work.
‘He called Fidentinus a ‘plagiarus,’ meaning a kidnapper.’
That is very similar to a 2011 article from Plagiarism Today written by Jonathan Bailey in which he writes: ‘Plagiarism, the act of taking another’s work and passing it off as your own, has almost certainly been with us since the dawn of artwork and the written language.
‘For as long as there has been art and artists, there have been people who have put their name to it incorrectly.’
‘But while the art of plagiarism is as old as time, the word ‘plagiarism’ is not. The etymology of the word ‘plagiarism’ is an interesting one, and its history actually dates back to the first century AD, and involves a Roman Poet and his literary ‘kidnappers.’
And in a 2019 article for the plagiarism detection site Turnitin, Bailey wrote: ‘Plagiarism has almost certainly been with us since the dawn of language and art.
‘For as long as there have been words to repeat, and art to copy, it stands to reason someone was doing so.’
He adds later in the article that ‘Martial referred to Fidentinus as a ‘plagiarus,’ essentially calling him a kidnapper.’
Bailey later replied to the apparent plagiarism in a post on his website entitled ‘Plagiarism Today Plagiarized in a Plagiarism Atonement Essay.’
‘In short, Bello, an author who admitted to plagiarizing in her now canceled debut novel, wrote an article about the experience and, in that article, included poor paraphrasing without attribution to an article that I wrote over a decade ago,’ Bailey wrote.
‘It’s a moment that even 16 years of work in this field did not prepare me for. To be honest, even as I write this, I am still confused trying to figure out how to approach this both intellectually and emotionally.’
But he said he was not angry at Bello, saying instead that her writing style of copying from other’s work just to rephrase it later would inevitably lead to plagiarism.
‘The way you avoid plagiarism isn’t to ‘change the language,’ but to never have that language in your original work in the first place,’ he wrote.
‘Furthermore, the editorial process is not the time to paraphrase or add citations, that needs to be part of the writing process.
‘In short, Bello has, by her own description, a deeply flawed writing process. One that makes plagiarism not only likely, but inevitable,’ he concluded, noting: ‘An author should never paste the works of another into their paper without immediately citing it.
‘Notes need to be kept in a separate location,’ he urged. ‘Furthermore, citation should never be left for the editing process and, instead, be part of the original writing process.
‘If Bello had done that, her pressures and issues may have hampered the book, but would never have led to plagiarism.
However, it’s pretty clear that this is simply how she writes. We know this because of what happened in her essay.
‘That style of writing bears all the hallmarks of ‘paste and rewrite’ plagiarism that she described in the essay itself.
‘While I do not dispute any of the struggles that Bello claims to have had, until she addresses the way she approaches writing, these issues will continue to follow her.’