More on the "victim canon":

This notion assumes that we would only be interested in American Indian poetry, for example, because we stole their land and committed genocide against them, not because any American Indian poet has anything to say. I really don't think most readers are motivated mainly by guilt. It wouldn't take us that far, really. As for writers being demonized because they are sexist/racist, whatever, that is a much less significant problem than someone outside of academia might suspect. Take Milton, for example. There were the Milton-as-a-sexist-bogeyman articles written, in 1980s mostly. They probably needed to be written. But the Milton Society is doing quite well. They have their sessions in the MLA every year, doing Milton with whatever critical approach happens to be in vogue. There are articles on Milton published in the PMLA, authored by both men and women, that simply take for granted that Milton is a valuable writer who should be studied. Most of these are quite dull, from the point of view of a specialist in Modern Spanish Poetry, but once you try to say there should be more articles on Simon Ortiz, someone's going to use that "victim" line on you.