More than two dozen writers including Junot Díaz, Joyce Carol Oates and Lorrie Moore have joined a protest against a freedom of expression award for Charlie Hebdo, signing a letter taking issue with what they see as a “reward” for the magazine’s controversial cartoons.

In their letter the writers protest against the award from PEN America, the prominent literary organization of which most of the signatories are members, accusing the French satirical magazine of mocking a “section of the French population that is already marginalized, embattled, and victimized”.

Twenty-six writers, including Pulitzer and National Book Award winners, joined six others – Peter Carey, Michael Ondaatje, Francine Prose, Teju Cole, Rachel Kushner and Taiye Selasi – who had previously withdrawn from the PEN gala celebrating the award. The letter condemns the murder of 12 Hebdo staffers by Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, two extremists enraged by the magazine’s cartoons of the prophet Muhammad.

But the writers also criticize the decision to give an award to Charlie Hebdo.

“There is a critical difference between staunchly supporting expression that violates the acceptable, and enthusiastically rewarding such expression,” the letter reads.

“The magazine seems to be entirely sincere in its anarchic expressions of disdain toward organized religion. But in an unequal society, equal opportunity offense does not have an equal effect.

“Power and prestige are elements that must be recognized in considering almost any form of discourse, including satire.”



The writers go on to say that to the certain segments of French society – “a population that is shaped by the legacy of France’s various colonial enterprises, and that contains a large percentage of devout Muslims” – Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of the prophet “must be seen as being intended to cause further humiliation and suffering”.

Joyce Carol Oates, who has herself provoked outrage with comments about race, class and gender, tweeted her qualified support for PEN although she signed the letter: “Important to support PEN even if one does not always agree with individual awards. Suggest polling membership re ‘controversial’ decisions.”

“PEN honors & defends ‘freedom of expression’ but not all ‘expression’ – it is selective,” she added. “Not antisemitic, for instance. Seems reasonable.”

“To some, cartoons depicting black women as monkeys are just so offensive we resent ‘award’. But would defend freedom of expression. If we are ‘offended’ we can just look away, not censor. But we are reluctant to give ‘award.’ (Realize others disagree),” she continued.

Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) Important to support PEN even if one does not always agree with individual awards. Suggest polling membership re "controversial" decisions.

Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) PEN honors & defends "freedom of expression" but not all "expression"--it is selective. Not anti-Semitic, for instance. Seems reasonable.

Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) To some, cartoons depicting black women as monkeys are just so offensive we resent "award." But would defend freedom of expression.

Also on Wednesday, Charlie Hebdo cartoonist Luz announced he would no longer draw the prophet Muhammad. “It no longer interests me,” he told Les Inrockuptibles magazine in an interview. “I’m not going to spend my life drawing [cartoons of Muhammad].”

Luz drew the sellout cover after the January massacre of his colleagues, which portrayed the prophet under the words “all is forgiven” and holding a sign that said “Je suis Charlie”. “The terrorists did not win,” Luz said. “They will have won if the whole of France continues to be scared.”

On Monday, PEN America’s president, Andrew Solomon, told the Guardian that “the award does not agree with the content of what they expressed”.

“If we only endorsed freedom of speech for people whose speech we liked that would be a very limited notion of freedom of speech,” Solomon said. “It’s a courage award, not a content award.”

In a statement, PEN said it will hold a “public dialogue” on Tuesday at New York University, with a panel that will include an NYU professor, PEN’s executive director and two Charlie Hebdo staffers.

Novelist Salman Rushdie, who hid for years after Iran’s highest religious leader issued a fatwa against him, upbraided his peers. On Twitter, Rushdie called the six other writers “just six pussies. Six Authors in Search of a bit of Character.” (He later said he should not have reused the word “pussies” from another’s tweet.) In a letter to PEN, he accused them of having “made themselves the fellow travellers” of extremists who seek to censor writers “into a cowed silence”.

Francine Prose, one of the six who withdrew from the Gala, wrote in the Guardian on Tuesday that although she admires “the courage with which Charlie Hebdo has insisted on its right to provoke and challenge the doctrinaire, I don’t feel that their work has the importance – the necessity – that would deserve such an honor.”

Gérard Biard, editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, will receive the award with the magazine’s film critic on 5 May. Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova – imprisoned since December for her corruption reporting – will also be honored with an award.

Journalist Amitava Kumar, a signatory to the letter, told the Guardian that he knows “a bunch of overdressed writers in a large room getting up to applaud or, for that matter, not applaud an award isn’t going to change much in the world. Not the number of people getting killed by drones, or getting drowned in the Mediterranean, or dying at the hands of the police in the US.

“That said, one of the things that folks like Salman Rushdie taught me when I was coming of age as a writer was that you have to take sides. On the Charlie Hebdo question, I wish I had the triumphant certainty of those who are all gung-ho about the award. I mean, fuck the killers who gunned down the cartoonists.

“But as I think of the wars unleashed upon whole peoples and the brutal realities of occupation as well as theocratic rule in the Middle East, you have to ask yourself if one shouldn’t instead be championing those who see the greater violence and who rebel against our own cravenness and our complicities.”

Kumar added that many artists and writers continue to fight for expression without western fame, and that he hopes that the gesture of the letter is an “appeal for a small pause”.

“Before we begin clapping, let’s ask if we aren’t just clapping for ourselves.”

Philip Gourevitch, a staff writer for the New Yorker and PEN host, said he thought the protest ill-founded and part of a debate that had “lost track of the reality of how Charlie Hebdo functioned in French society.” He said that in France, the paper “was not seen as a racist paper or as an enforcer to the French establishment hegemony.”

“The real test of support for free speech is not whether it’s speech that you approve of,” Gourevitch said, noting the magazine’s “puerile, gross, often offensive” style. “It’s whether it’s speech that has faced a crushing threat.”

He said he finds it “very sad” that the protest “seems now to be turning into a broader rift that’s very reminiscent of the way that some people basically said Salman Rushdie shouldn’t be killed, but he never should’ve written the Satanic Verses.”