A writer’s essay explaining why she plagiarized parts of her debut novel has been deleted after it was revealed she copied that one too.
Jumi Bello’s book The Leaving was scheduled for release on July 12 and had appeared on several “most anticipated” lists according to Publisher’s Market when his publisher Riverhead Books abruptly announced its cancellation in December.
Bello, 30, has now revealed that the reason the book was abruptly canceled while it was in its final stages was because she admitted to the New York City-based publisher that she had plagiarized parts of the novel.
It would have chronicled the unexpected pregnancy of a young black woman, but as Bello explained in an essay published in the Literary Hub on Monday, she had never been pregnant and had searched online for descriptions of the process.
She wrote in a post titled, “I plagiarized parts of my debut novel. Here’s Why” she had intended to change those passages but felt pressure to finish her book as she was in graduate school and struggling with her mental health.
But soon after she published the 4,500-word essay on the Literary Hub, other authors and publications noticed some similarities between Bello’s description of the origins of plagiarism and the work of others.
Within hours, Literary Hub removed the post, saying in a statement, “Due to inconsistencies in the story and, most importantly, another incident of plagiarism in the published piece, we have decided to withdraw the essay.”
has also reached out to Bello for comment.
Jumi Bello, 30, admitted to plagiarizing parts of her debut novel in an essay posted online Monday – which also turned out to be plagiarism
Her book, The Leaving, was scheduled for release on July 12 and had appeared on several “most anticipated” lists before Riverhead Books canceled it in December
About the Author: Jumi Bello from The Leaving
Jumi Bello grew up in suburban Washington DC and began writing spoken-word poetry at the age of 16, according to her website.
Thanks to a scholarship from the Posse Foundation, she graduated from a small liberal arts college in the Midwest and spent most of her twenties teaching high schools in Taiwan and mainland China.
She then returned to the United States to study fiction on a scholarship at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.
Bello now attends the University of Nevada Las Vegas as a graduate student in non-fiction at the Black Mountain Institute.
In her now-deleted essay, the New York Times reports, Bello attempted to explain why she resorted to plagiarism in her novel, explaining that she had never actually been pregnant and had searched online for good explanations of the experience.
“I tell myself I’ll just borrow and change the language,” she reportedly wrote. “I tell myself I’ll rewrite those parts later during the editing phase. I will make this story mine again.’
Bello went on to say that she felt the pressure of publishing as she was in grad school and struggling with her mental health.
“I just wanted to get through, to a place where I can sleep again,” her essay read, according to Gawker.
“Looking back on that moment, I ignored my instincts,” she reportedly wrote. “I ignored the inner voice that softly said, this is wrong, wrong, wrong.”
But as she described the origins of plagiarism, many found examples of the very same literary sin she was describing, with Riverhead Books writer Kristen Arnett writing that she Googled bits, “and it turned up online as something that… someone else wrote”.
Several perceptive users, such as Riverhead Books author Kristen Arnett, noted that Bello’s now-deleted essay used passages from other articles on plagiarism
For example, in Bello’s article, 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 to copy the passages.
“It goes back to AD 8 when the poet Martial caught another poet, Fidentinus, reciting his work.
“He called Fidentinus a ‘Plagiarus’, which means a kidnapper.”
This is very similar to a 2011 article by Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today, in which he writes: “Plagiarism, the act of taking someone else’s work and passing it off as your own, has almost certainly been with us since the dawn of the Art and art accompanies written language.
“Ever since there have been art and artists, there have been people who misname themselves.”
“But while the art of plagiarism is as old as time, the word ‘plagiarism’ is not. The etymology of the word “plagiarism” is interesting, and its history actually dates back to the first century AD, involving a Roman poet and his literary “hijackers”.
And in a 2019 article for plagiarism detection site Turnitin, Bailey wrote: “Plagiarism has almost certainly been with us since the dawn of language and art.
“Since there are words to repeat and art to copy, it’s obvious someone did.”
He adds later in the article that “Martial referred to Fidentinus as ‘Plagiarus,’ essentially calling him a kidnapper.”
The origins of plagiarism according to Plagiarism Today
“Plagiarism, the act of taking someone else’s work and passing it off as one’s own, has almost certainly been with us since the dawn of art and written language.
“Ever since there have been art and artists, there have been people who misname themselves.”
“But while the art of plagiarism is as old as time, the word ‘plagiarism’ is not.
“The etymology of the word ‘plagiarism’ is interesting, and its history actually dates back to the first century AD, involving a Roman poet and his literary ‘hijackers’.
The origins of plagiarism, according to Jumi Bello’s essay
“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 to copy the passages.
“It goes back to AD 8 when the poet Martial caught another poet, Fidentinus, reciting his work.
“He called Fidentinus a ‘Plagiarus’, which means a kidnapper.”
Plagiarism Today Jonathan Bailey later responded to the apparent plagiarism of his articles in a blog post entitled “Plagiarism Today Plagiarized in a Plagiarism Atonement Essay”.
Bailey later responded 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 her now-cancelled debut novel, wrote an article about the experience and added bad paraphrases in that article without attributing an article I had written over a decade ago” , Bailey wrote .
“This is a moment that even 16 years of working in this field did not prepare me for. To be honest, even as I write this I’m still confused about how to approach this both intellectually and emotionally.’
But he said he wasn’t angry with Bello, saying instead that her writing style of copying the work of others only to restate it later would inevitably result in plagiarism.
“One does not avoid plagiarism by changing the language, one does not use that language at all in one’s original work,” he wrote.
“Furthermore, the editorial process is not the time to paraphrase or add quotes that need to be part of the writing process.
“In short, by her own description, Bello has a deeply flawed writing process. One that makes plagiarism not only probable but inevitable,” he concluded, noting: “An author should never incorporate the works of another into his work without immediately citing them.
“Notes need to be kept somewhere else,” he demanded. “Furthermore, citation should never be left to the editor, but should be part of the original writing process.
“If Bello had done that, her pressures and problems might have hindered the book, but never resulted in plagiarism.
However, it’s pretty clear that’s just how she writes. We know this because of what happened in her essay.
“This style of writing bears all the hallmarks of the ‘insert and rewrite’ plagiarism she described in the essay itself.
“While I don’t dispute any of the struggles Bello is said to have had, these issues will continue to haunt her until she addresses her approach to writing.”