Poet James Massiah claims that author Coco Mellors based a character in the novel Blue Sisters on him, the Guardian reports.
Mellors’ novel, published in September by Ballantine, follows three sisters who gather in New York after the death of a sibling in hopes of preventing the sale of their childhood apartment. A critic for Kirkus wrote of the novel, “It seems like a lot of heavy lifting to illustrate well-worn points about sisterhood and addiction.”
In an Instagram post, Massiah, who is also a DJ and songwriter, wrote, “Throughout the latter half of the year, I received several messages from a number of friends and lovers about a character called…‘Charlie’ who they’d discovered in a recently published bestselling novel.”
He went on to say that Charlie, like him, is a Black man who writes “party poetry” and espouses the philosophy of “amoral egoism.” In a series of slides, Massiah intercuts passages from Mellors’ novel with excerpts from interviews and profiles of him.
Massiah told the Guardian that he is friends with Mellors, whom he met in 2018. He said that he had spoken with her before her novel’s publication but that she did not mention the character of Charlie.
“More than anything else I think it would have been nice for her to have let me know beforehand,” he said. “To say, There’s a character in the book I’m writing and he bears some similarities to you. Just know that and this book is coming out and I’ve based some elements of this character on you and your life and some of the conversations you’ve had with me.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
