Write What You Know: Limiting or Authentic?

by Guest Contributor Neesha Meminger

The other day, I came across a blog post by Editorial Anonymous, “The CSK is Dead (Long Live the CSK).” The Coretta Scott King Award was established in 1969 and is given to outstanding African-American authors and illustrators of children’s books.

Editorial Anonymous writes,

“If the CSK were in charge, male writers wouldn’t be able to comment on what it’s like to be a woman. The CSK is saying that you cannot understand what it is to be black in America unless you are black.

“Giving an award for creating art about the experience of race is a wonderful thing. But giving an award for creating art and being a particular race?

“That’s racism in action.”

So this set me a-pondering. Is it cool for white people to write from the perspective of people of color? How about, as Editorial Anonymous mentions in the quote above, for men to write from the perspective of women?

Memoirs of a Geisha was highly successful, both in book form as well as in film form. Yet that “memoir” was written by a man, and Mineko Iwasaki’s own memoir (the retired geisha upon whose life and work Memoirs was based) has hardly received any of the fanfare or accolades that the former enjoyed.

A recent YA (young adult) release, Chains, about a young African-American slave girl who longs for freedom was written by a highly lauded, prize-winning white woman author – Laurie Halse Anderson. Chains has received rave reviews and was a finalist for the National Book Award.

On her website, the author writes, “As I researched [the history of slavery in America] I began to hear my main character, Isabel, whispering to me. She was chained between two nations . . . .”

As a writer, I totally get this. Characters show up in my head all the time without my summoning them up or even being aware of when they arrived.

Anderson also goes on to write, “Slavery affects all Americans today, regardless of ethnic background, or how long our families have lived here. Slavery is the elephant in our country’s living room. It won’t go away until we acknowledge, understand, and deal with it.”

This is absolutely true. Racism (and slavery) affects every single one of us, no matter what our background. White people should be taking it up as an issue – just as men should be taking up the issue of sexism and misogyny –and talking about it, examining it, exploring, and looking for more equitable and just paradigms. And writing a novel like Chains may be this one white woman’s way of doing that.

So . . . what’s the issue? Is there an issue?

There is the view among some writers that one’s creativity or artistic vision should not be limited or “fenced in,” and restricting writers to write only what they know does exactly that. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard some variation of, “Who wants to read about a liberal white woman from New Jersey/Iowa/Seattle?”

However, in an interview on ustrek.org, Sherman Alexie, author of Ten Little Indians and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian, as well as the writer/director for Smoke Signals, jokingly suggested a “10-year moratorium for white writers so that Indians can tell their own stories instead of having white people tell them. ‘The fact is, when white authors step away from their typewriters, they’re still white. When I get up from the typewriter, I’m still an Indian.’ He wants those authors to question their privileged positions.”

So maybe that is the key: questioning our privileged locations within the social and economic framework within which we all live, write, and create, and then allowing that new consciousness or awareness to shape our work before we set it free to impact and help culturally define our world.

Alexie’s statement seems less about the products being created, and more about the systems in place that privilege and advantage some over others. In other words, rather than continually going to authors and filmmakers who already have a voice and platform, perhaps authors and filmmakers from under-represented communities should be sought out and nurtured/cultivated so that they can find, hone, and have their own voices heard.

Recently, Mary Ann Mohanraj, author of Bodies in Motion, wrote a terrific blog post about this very topic. She provided a detailed, “how-to” guide on writing about what she terms CoCs – Characters of Color. In a note at the end of the post, she writes,

“One final note. Let’s say you, the white writer, are now deeply interested in Sri Lanka and would like to incorporate Sri Lankan characters into your fiction. I think that’s great, and give you full permission to go ahead and do so. (Not that you need my permission. You don’t!) You write some Sri Lankan characters, and do a great job, and everyone pats you on the back for doing it so well. There’s still one small problem.

I’ve encouraged white writers here to write about other cultures, other ethnicities. But sometimes we run into the problem that most, or all, the representations of a culture are coming from outside the culture. It’s so much easier for you or I to get published in America than it is for local Sri Lankan writers to get published, I can’t tell you. The difference of scale between the American publishing industry and Sri Lankan publishing is enormous…. The point is, given this discrepancy, I feel that it behooves me, as an American author who benefits from Sri Lankan material, to do everything I can to promote Sri Lankan authors. Primarily, that means buying and reading their books, posting reviews, spreading the word…

I wouldn’t say that any writer has to do any of this. As a writer, your main obligation is to write your truth, as honestly and well as you can. If you’ve fallen in love with another culture and want to write about it, please do. But if, in addition, you can do something to help writers from within the culture get their voices heard — well, I think that’s a good thing.”

The Sri Lanka/America analogy can be extended to authors and filmmakers of color/white authors and filmmakers, as well, in terms of privilege and access to those businesses. Next time you go to a bookstore, check the shelves and see how many books there, are in any given genre on any given subject, written by people of color. My guess is that very few genres, if any, will have an accurate representation of global demographics in the titles. And that is because there are so few writers of color getting picked up and supported by publishers in any kind of substantial way (a là Twilight, Harry Potter, The Princess Diaries, etc. And, of course, these examples hold true for film as they were all adaptations of novels).

As a South Asian author writing YA, I know from experience that many editors are hesitant to pick up more than one novel with an Indian-American protagonist written by an Indian-American author – even if the two novels are different genres and about entirely different subjects – because both novels still fall under the Multicultural category. This often creates the “everyone elbowing for the one seat on the bus” phenomenon among the marginalized authors who have to fight for that one lone multicultural spot. But I digress…

Yet, as we all know from visiting our local bookstores, or taking an online stroll through Amazon, there is an abundance of books/films by white writers writing on every subject, in every genre – with more than one writer often covering the same topic for varying perspectives. A publishing house can have several white fantasy authors and historical romance authors, even a few writing about spiritual journeys and all of those books are seen as different books. None of my white author friends have ever had their agents come back to them with, “No, this editor declined because she already has a European title about identity issues.”

I, on the other hand, have heard that exact same phrase, substituting “European” with “Asian.”(And on a side note: let’s face it – we’re writing YA. It’s all about identity issues, folks. Even when it’s not YA, there are still tons of “identity issues.” Is there a point when we are “done” with the identity search? Especially when identity is fluid and ever-changing – depending heavily on geography, changing social and economic structures, etc.? Aaaanyway…back to the topic).

So, my question is this: would having more white writers producing books and films about people of color help writers of color? Would it be beneficial for there to at least be characters of color out there for people to read about and watch on screen, regardless of who writes them?

If white writers or filmmakers write and create the experiences of people of color, does this open doors for authors and filmmakers of color?

And what about the “limiting creativity/artistic expression” argument? Is it reasonable to ask white or male writers and filmmakers to “take responsibility” for the images they produce? What if we extend this to say that authors/filmmakers who have not experienced rape cannot write about or create films about rape? Or artists who have not lived in another country cannot write about or produce films about living in that country?

What about the converse: if men cannot write from the perspective of women, and white writers from the perspective of people of color, then what about women writing from the perspective of men? Or people of color from the perspective of white people?

What say you, oh Racialicious readers? If someone were to write a book or make a film about your life, who would you want telling your story? Would it matter what their background was? Or would you rather have someone teach you how to use the tools of the trade effectively so that you could tell your own story?

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Writing Characters of Color « Afrodescendiente on 21 May 2009 at 10:11 am

[...] http://www.racialicious.com/2009/05/20/write-what-you-know-limiting-or-authentic/ Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Fan Fiction – Real or notCharacterizationSuburban LegendsTV Squad Ten: Most mysterious characters on television [...]
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[...] Write What You Know: Limiting or Authentic? at Racialicious – the intersection of race and pop cultu… "Alexie’s statement seems less about the products being created, and more about the systems in place that privilege and advantage some over others. In other words, rather than continually going to authors and filmmakers who already have a voice and platform, perhaps authors and filmmakers from under-represented communities should be sought out and nurtured/cultivated so that they can find, hone, and have their own voices heard." (tags: writing creativity privilege society race gender) [...]
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Comments

atlasien wrote:

There are two issues here:

1) the standards of authenticity of any work of fiction. Should there be standards of authenticity? If so, how should they be established?
2) the economic, political and demographic landscape of artistic production.

When it comes to standards of authenticity, I have a pretty relaxed approach. I don’t care that much who the author is, whether the author is a good person or an authentic person or not. I mean, I can’t say it’s totally irrelevant, but it usually doesn’t matter that much when it comes to my enjoyment of the work.

But for the second issue, it matters a lot who the authors are and who’s getting read and who’s getting paid and who’s getting listened to. It’s crucial. And it’s often a zero-sum game: if someone’s voice gets listened to, someone else’s voice doesn’t. When you claim to speak in the place of someone else, there are serious consequences and issues of appropriation.

I can’t say the two issues are the same… but I can’t say they’re totally separate either. It’s a tricky paradox.

Completing denying the issue of authorial intent… that’s popular in realms of theory but irrelevant for most consumers of fiction, who really do care about authors. I think it’s often useful to suspend authorial intent, so I’m not going to bash all lit crit by disagreeing with “the author is dead”. But denying authorial relevancy on all levels (including the sociological) is wrong.

On the other hand, there is something about fiction that will always escape any ideological standard you try to put on it. So I believe in critique, absolutely, but I don’t believe in any hard set of rules you can apply in each and every circumstance.

When it comes to the question about my life story… I’m a big Werner Herzog fan (I’ve seen Aguirre the Wrath of God about 20 times) so I’d like him to direct my life story. It wouldn’t resemble my real life at all, but I’m not a big fan of realism.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 11:24 am ¶
Thea Lim wrote:

Wow, I really appreciated this post! As an anti-racist who recently stepped out of my only-queer-poc-writers-please community and into the wide world of an MFA program (where for the most part my associates are straight white men), I have this conversation ALL THE TIME.

And I’m less forgiving than you What I have trouble expressing to my privileged fellows, is that is problematic to tell the story of a character who has less privilege than you, because they have less voice than you. Whether or not we intend it, we are able to tell their stories because they are NOT able to.

I’ve come around to thinking that it is ok for (for example) a white writer to write a marginalised character of colour. But only if (like Alexie says) the writer engages constantly with their privilege, and recognises at every step of the way that they can tell the story because of their privilege.

Otherwise I feel like it’s just self-aggrandising. Writers I talk to who are not radicals sometimes don’t like this notion. As a writer of colour who nonetheless has a great deal of all sorts of privilege, I think we don’t like this notion because it makes us uncomfortable to realise that we are where we are not simply on the strength of our talent, but very much because we are privileged: we were in the right place at the right time. So being told “you can’t write that” upsets people who are used to always getting what they want, or it upsets people because it reminds them both that others don’t have privilege, and that they themselves have privilege.

I don’t think it helps writers of colour when white writers write about non white cultures. The big problem (at least from my POV) has never been that there are not enough stories about non-white people. The problem is that there are not enough writers of colour, and that as you say, there’s only one or two spots at the table for us. Women writers face the same issue.

I just don’t buy it when white writers tell me they want to write stories of colour because they are so engaged with other cultures and “love” them. (I am really not sure what it means to “love” a culture) If you really care deeply about a culture, then you should care about the way it is treated. If you want to make a difference you should support and contribute to initiatives to make more room for writers of colour, not write stories that bring you praise at the expense of other people who wanted to tell their own stories.

I think anyone can write the story of something they haven’t experienced. My only problem comes when people of privilege write stories of a lack of privilege – w/o considering how privilege mediates the ability to speak in the first place. So I got no problem with a woman writing about a man. I might have a problem with a man writing about a woman, but it depends what kind of men and women these are, and what the writer is writing about.

And one last thing (I’m almost done!): I don’t think there’s anything wrong or less rich about the story of a white girl from Iowa. There are thousands of white girls from Iowa – they each have their own unique and fascinating story to tell. To say that their stories might be less interesting than the story, say, of a Sri Lankan refugee, is to feed into the myth that white folks have no culture and no interesting stories. And I often wonder why white writers can’t work through racism by writing about what it means to be a white person in a racist culture. That is their story – why not write that one rather than writing the story of the oppressed?

Thanks for bringing this up. I (clearly!) needed to vent!

Posted 20 May 2009 at 11:41 am ¶
polerin wrote:

I don’t have much to say here other than to point you to RaceFail ‘09, a discussion of appropriation and other “fun” things. In particular the idea I found extremely meaningful to me… Not dropping the baby.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 11:52 am ¶
atlasien wrote:

Getting back to another question that was asked in this piece… I don’t think it’s possible or advisable to put constraints on fiction, or the work itself.

However, when authors claim that they’re merely the instruments by which the work expresses itself, and use that as a defense… that’s too convenient. Inasmuch as they’re real people living in the real world getting paid real money, then yes, they should be held to the same standards of responsibility that as everyone else in the world.

So I don’t have sympathy for authors who complain about feeling “limited” to their own experiences. They can already write about whatever they want, there’s no law that says they can’t… they just can’t control the reception, because that’s up the readers. People will have reactions when you put your stuff out there, and some of those reactions will be “pissed off” if they don’t like the voices you’ve assumed. Deal with it.

The factor that I think needs to be discussed more is the readers/consumers. They/we don’t just passively consume what’s fed to us. We can create something anti-racist and liberating out of racist content, or conversely, we can misread according to stereotypes and blinded by privilege.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 12:01 pm ¶
Jinger_Bare wrote:

I agree with most of your points Atlas. It is indeed rare that a white person writes about racism from their POV.
In my opinion I will never be able to fully gain a complete understanding of how it is to live being a white person, or another culture entirely. If you do want to write about another culture or race, why not write about how it changed you as an individual, or attribute those feelings to the character you are fleshing out. Seems like a decent comprimise.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 12:05 pm ¶
Molly wrote:

Lately, I’ve been buying mostly books by POC. I’ve had to really make an effort to do so, and to get recommendations, because you’re quite right that when you’re browsing in Indigo, most of the books are by white people (and, frankly, about white people). The ease of buying and reading books by white people is such that I basically had to commit to not doing it at all in order to get anywhere with reading more books by POC.

And I gotta say—I’ve read more, read better books, and had more to say about books since I started. There is some amazing stuff out there (Octavia Butler and Chiamanda Ngozi Adichie are top of my list, definitely), and I’m glad I’ve been able to make a tiny dent in it.

Also, it has to be said—because the competition to be a publisher’s token black or Native or Chinese author is so extreme, the people who manage to get published are, overall, spectacular. There are a lot more white Dan Browns than black, as far as I’ve seen. So by choosing books by POC, I’m more likely to end up with a really satisfying, high-quality novel than if I were picking in the same way from white or “all” authors. Bonus!

Posted 20 May 2009 at 12:06 pm ¶
Shadow And Act wrote:

You should read August Wilson’s op-ed titled “I Want A Black Director” in reference to a Hollywood studio’s interest in adapting his play “Fences” for the big-screen.

Wilson’s frustrated suggestion: “Let’s make a rule. Blacks don’t direct Italian films. Italians don’t direct Jewish films. Jews don’t direct black American films. That might account for about 3 percent of the films that are made in this country. The other 97 percent – the action-adventure, horror, comedy, romance, suspense, western or any combination thereof, that the Hollywood and independent mills grind out – let it be every man for himself.”

To tell the story of my life as a black man, I would insist on a black writer and director, but not specifically because I feel that they would be better equipped to tell my story (because they may not be) than a white pair, but more importantly for me because there’s a dearth of work in the film industry for writers and directors of African descent. I would want to give the work to someone who needs it more – with proper qualifications of course.

Arguments like these ask whether there is indeed a unique “black experience” and a unique “white experience,” and whether the two are so markedly different that there are no intersections where both meet. Obviously, a work like Roots, a uniquely African experience, set in a specific time period, certainly wouldn’t mean the same thing if the characters were all white. It simply wouldn’t exist. Or a tale on the Holocaust and its aftermath simply wouldn’t work with an African American cast. Of course, one could suppress the actual events themselves, and instead focus on the very essence of brutal oppression that both groups of people have in common historically; and in that case, the color of the skin of the players wouldn’t matter.

This takes us back to that age-old discussion we’ve had periodically on how to define our individual races – in my case, “black” or “blackness,” or the proverbial “black experience,” or “black stories,” or “black film” – all labels that simply cannot be readily given meaning to. Are there stories/experiences that are uniquely “black” and others that are uniquely “white” that wouldn’t work in the reverse? Does emphasizing those differences help or hinder our collective progression, especially in this so-called (false) “post-racial” Obama era that we keep hearing about?

Posted 20 May 2009 at 12:17 pm ¶
Persia wrote:

I don’t think it helps writers of colour when white writers write about non white cultures. The big problem (at least from my POV) has never been that there are not enough stories about non-white people

I don’t know if that’s true, though, at least in the wider world of culture. The big bestsellers are still about white people (Dan Brown, John Grisham, Steven King). Yeah, you can find stories about non-white people if you go looking, but you have to go looking.

As a person of pallor myself, I try to write a variety of characters, and try to keep aware of my own privilege and why I make the choices I do. I just finished a short story set in a fantasy world that’s similar to our own but clearly not the same, and I spent a lot of time working on one non-white character’s background– doing research, avoiding stereotyping, trying to make her vivid and real to the reader. Is it enough? Probably not. But I want to keep trying and trying to do better.

Anyone looking to read more books by people of color should check out the Writers of Color 50 Book Challenge on Livejournal. There are some great reviews and recommendations. I’m doing it this year myself, under my LJ name.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 12:24 pm ¶
cb3n wrote:

@Thea Lim

I’m totally with you, I think you said much of what I was trying to figure out how to say.

However, coming from a broader pop culture standpoint instead of from writing specifically, I think that representations of PoC/queer/trans/disabled/ect people in media can be helpful regardless of who is producing that media. The issue of greater access to the ability to produce culture is a serious one, and I don’t think representation on the screen or page helps resolve that directly. I do think that it is important that, in light of the reality of a white male dominated culture industry, pressure be kept on movie studios and publishers and other producers of popular culture to do a better job presenting more than just stories about white guys saving the world and getting the girl. A few diamonds in the rough not withstanding, the last couple film, television and comics seasons have been shameful in this regard and video games are only doing slightly better in my book based on the current trend of games where players create their own characters. We continue to be bombarded mostly with the adventures of the white male protagonist and his (sometimes) PoC sidekick.

Clearly though I agree that white people writing about PoC without engaging with their privilege is problematic. I can’t help but think that the real problem is the steadfast refusal of Americans to engage in serious discussion of power and privilege, and writers are caught up in that as well. That’s really a given in any conversation around here but sometimes it’s worth stating.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 12:28 pm ¶
method wrote:

Stanley Crouch has an interesting essay called “Segregated Fiction Blues” that discusses the dangers of stressing authenticity so much that white authors stop trying to address other experiences. You can read some of it here. It contains a memorable line about “walking beneath a flag of white underwear stained fully yellow by liquefied fear.”

I like to think about this issue in terms of the difference between Spike Lee and Woody Allen (so fun to compare). Spike Lee tries to represent blacks, Koreans, Italians and Puerto Ricans. Summer of Sam is a movie by a black director that is mostly about Italian-Americans. Girl 6 is an amazing treatment of the fantasy life of a woman. For the most part Woody Allen only deals with the experience of Jews in Manhattan. Both are great directors; Woody Allen is probably artistically stronger overall; but Spike Lee deserves the honor for being so brave about stepping into other kinds of experience.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 12:31 pm ¶
Persia wrote:

Just found this post by James Bow, who describes himself as “a non-aboriginal Canadian, of Scottish, Irish, English, Swiss and Chinese descent.” Touches on a lot of the issues.

Also, I forgot to say– I’d want my biography to be written by Oscar Wilde. As he’s dead, I’ll settle for a biopic by John Woo. It wouldn’t be accurate, but damn it would be cool.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 1:02 pm ¶
E A wrote:

I have been writing about this and thinking about this for quite some time, in grad school myself. One of the things that intrigues me, esp, in the process of deciding to attend grad school is the way in which we are ‘discouraged’ to write our stories because they won’t get published. I have come across my own students who try to write from a minoritized position and called them out on it–also to note, that at times what we write as qpoc (queer ppl of color) is appropriated and used to justify the use of particular sets of language. In short, our authentic and honest voices are used against us precisely because we choose to speak. And sometimes, in speaking, silence white voices–as I have encountered in queer interactions.
A voice from a community does not represent the ‘community’–as even within ethnicities and genders and sexualities, there exist multiple communities because of the politics of representation–which may speak to why dominant ‘outsiders’–whites, men–are more considered for publication.
Some rising prof’s face similar frustration–why is it that queers and folks of color have such difficulty getting jobs in the professoriate and why aren’t universities seeking more of us? Then again, participation in institutions that seek to silence us seems less and less tempting, how to disrupt without getting lost in the process?

Posted 20 May 2009 at 1:05 pm ¶
Slush wrote:

Who decides which representations are more authentic, representative, or valuable?

I think that’s kind of more important than who wrote them.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 1:18 pm ¶
Whit wrote:

I don’t find it a problem when women write about men or minorities write about whites, or poor writing about the rich. The oppressed are steeped daily in the dominant culture. We have to be fluent in it for our own safety, so that we can understand what people who have power over us are doing and saying. The reverse is not true by orders of magnitude.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 1:19 pm ¶
Alyssa wrote:

There is an incredibly small amout of people that can actually write from a POV other than their own. Most people think they can and end up missing nuances that a person from that POV would have gotten. So unless you know without a shadow of a doubt that you are part of this tiny population, you really shouldn’t try to write from the POV of a demographic that you are not a part of.

However, this is not to say that every character in your story must be the same demographic as you. For instance, if you are a white male and have an interest in the black community, you can write about your experience with the black community. For example, Black Like Me is a true story about the experiences of a white man who made his skin dark and passed himself off as a black man. The book discusses a lot of black issues, but it is definatly from his own (a white man’s) perspective.

As far as writing about an experience that you didn’t go through, I don’t have a problem with this. Octavia Butler and Toni Morrison both have written novels about slavery, yet neither have actually experienced it. If we say one can not write about experiences that they didn’t go though, then this means that we will no longer have historical fictions or sci-fi. As long as it is clear that you are writing fiction (ypu are not lieing about actually experiencing the events) then you are okay.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 1:27 pm ¶
Jeremy wrote:

You know, after reading Tricia Rose’s new book and reviewing it on my site, I have been thinking about these issues a lot. Hell, as a graduate student studying race relations and minority communities, my damn career is based on thinking critically about these issues of authenticity.

Thinking about this question– “Or people of color from the perspective of white people?”–reminds me a lot of the works on whites in academia. Not to say that whites don’t have a lot of criticism coming (sarcasm), but it’s interesting how blanket statements about white people (their thoughts, motivations, racist intentions, etc), from minority academics, goes unchecked…whereas the opposite is more true for white academics talking about minorities.

There’s most definitely unequal power dynamics at play, no doubt. Still, it can be frustrating at times to feel like the topic of whiteness (and the study of whiteness) is never full fleshed out. Talking openly and critically about race requires us to be open and candid with all of our discussions about all races. I don’t question anyone’s “authentic” ability to discuss issues of race, but when we talk about whiteness, the conversation is noticeably one-sided.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 1:41 pm ¶
more cowbell wrote:

Good to see this topic covered here, both in the post and in the comments.

I particularly agree with the Sherman Alexie quote, also, commenters #2 (Thea Lim) and #14 (Whit).

I have tried to read fictional works by White authors about POC experiences/stories, and 98% of the time, I’m left disappointed or angry or annoyed. I admit that now I usually will pass up those white authors. The info is not usually accurate, or it exoticizes, and I’d rather support authors of color getting their voices out there.

Well intentioned or not, research or not, “loving the culture” or not, what happens is those stories inadvertently perpetuate inaccurate information, while simultaneously shutting out authors of color.

As a white person, I wish I’d understood that years ago, when I still thought being colorblind was a good thing. Who knows which of my ignorant beliefs or impressions were perpetuated by reading well intentioned down-with-diversity books by White authors?

My daughter, who is Black, occasionally participates in an online sci-fi writing site, and one of her biggest pet peeves is White writers’ stories or characters of color. Of course, they’ll often ask her opinion — which they don’t REALLY want. What they want is validation on what a good White person they are for “being inclusive”, and what a good job they did with their character/story, which is usually heavy on the exotic. When my daughter offers anything close to an honest evaluation, she is judged as angry or overly sensitive. They want her to be their token expert, but they only accept her critique if it’s validating them.

Granted, this is an online community, not published works, but it’s interesting how these White writers don’t want to listen to POC evals of their work, if it doesn’t support their interpretation of what a POC should be.

— I will add that I have no problem with White authors writing about privilege and racism from their viewpoint. We need more White people speaking and writing about that, and working to change the systems. My problem is mainly with fictional writers.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 3:22 pm ¶
Zahra wrote:

Alright, this is a great topic. I will admit my bias: I am a white person who makes a deliberate effort to write fiction about and from the POV of people who have less privilege than me, including characters of color. I think this is a good and worthwhile thing to do, and that it runs a very, very high chance of failure.

Of course you need to check your privilege, examine it, turn it inside out, revise and rewrite til you bleed, and then start again to create believable people with less privilege than you yourself have. I try to do all that, and I still think there’s a pretty high chance that I will fail at it.

Somehow I still think it’s worth it. I write for the same reason I read–because I want to see the world through different eyes, live a different life, gain a distant perspective on the ground on which I stand. I think reading like that changes the way I move through the world, as well as bringing me pleasure. (This is also why I love sci-fi and historical fiction.) Any character can do this, whether they match me in my demographics or not, but differences in privilege can be part of it–and, frankly, I feel like they should.

I strongly agree with Anderson’s quote above–slavery affect everyone. So does racism, and host of other inequities. Writing is one way I think about these things. The world I live in isn’t all white–why should the ones in my head be?

I’m sure Thea Lim is right that this doesn’t help writers of color; those problems of access, and who speaks for whom, matter immensely. I try to vote with my money there, following Mohanraj’s excellent essay.

But I think it does matter to readers. I’ve heard many POC talk about what they want, need, and look for in terms of representation; they can speak for themselves. But let me add it would have been helpful to me, as a white person, growing up in a largely segregated society, to have more accurate and respectful representations of POC, and also models of white people talking and thinking about POC in respectful, fully human ways, and grappling with their whiteness–and I think it still would be. I think the world needs more stories where POC aren’t sidekicks to white protagonists, and since I am a storyteller I feel like I should tell some.

Whether I will ever succeed in bringing these fictional people enough to life to share them seems highly uncertain–but trying feels important to me.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 3:37 pm ¶
WhatANightmare wrote:

Would it help writers of color? My instinct is to say no. Why? Because the characters can “just happen to be a POC” without the politics and history behind it. Because, even if they do “do the research,” they will still get more accolades for it than a POC would; daring to enter into a “foreign experience.”

Should white people write POC/ men write women? Sure, but with full knowledge of what they are getting themselves into. I just recently started reading books written by men again, because I had the hardest time trusting that a man would write a woman who wasn’t a fantasy, a “whore,” a robot or otherwise an object. I know many guys who will not read books where women are central to the story. Particulary I feel with writing, if your main character is not similar to you, you stand to alienate both your usual readers and new readers who reflect that character if you don’t do it a certain way. This is basically what Disney is experiencing now with The Princess and the Frog.

I don’t know. This is a great topic, I’m not sure if I’m making any sense and I just wish we lived in an alternate universe where at least in this ONE arena we were all just writers and authors. Sigh.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 3:51 pm ¶
Zahra wrote:

Re: the original comment about the CSK award. Awards play an important role in pumping up the sales and visibility of both books and authors–the CSK & its like aim to level an uneven playing field, where books by white authors get disproportionate press, readership, selection by librarians, etc. We need structures like this–especially with kids’ books.

More general awards can’t do this. Laurie Halse Anderson’s _Chains_ is a fabulous book, one of the best on slavery I have ever read–5 books later I still find myself haunted by the moment when the protagonist comes into her own. (I think it’s better than James “I-don’t-want-to-escape-to-freedom-because-my-descendants-will-listen-to-hip-hop-and-there’s-no-freedom-there” McBride’s _Song Yet Song_.) But a few years ago the NBA short-listed _Luna_, a YA book about a transgender teen that should be an object lesson in How Not To Write About People Unlike You.

Molly, I’ve done a similar thing for the past year or so–reading at least one book by a POC for every book by a white person I read, with an emphasis on buying books by POC, and I’ve noticed some of the same thing: it led me to read more books of higher quality. (Also much more sci-fi & fantasy, which is interesting.)

But I also noticed that it seems to be much harder for authors of color to publish what I would call series fiction–books with multiple sequels, often by not always fluff. It seems much harder for AOC to get such contracts, which is troubling. A series provides an author with more visibility, royalties, and steady employment–plus, publishers love them.

There are mystery writers like Walter Mosley, but Octavia Butler is one of the few outside that genre I know of who managed it (more than once), on top of her extraordinary brilliance.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 4:26 pm ¶
S's mom wrote:

This is something I think about. One of the problems is that one often doesn’t know the ethnicity of an author or an illustrator unless the book makes it obvious. (And if the writer is white British, like the author of the famous “Amazing Grace” series, the editors will not want you to know the author is white and let you assume that she is African-American.)

I often have to do research to figure out what ethnicity an author is. For example, I am very interested in buying “The Stories Julian Tells” but discovered that author is a white female. I also discovered that a previous cover illustration was drawn in a way that made Julian (an African-American boy) look buffoonish. I am still interested in knowing if this is a good book or not, if anyone knows.

I bet the average person does NOT know that Donald Crews is black, because his most famous works don’t deal at all with the black experience. The only reason I know is because I was looking at a compilation of famous children’s books illustrators, and it showed his photograph.

The same holds true for Asian-American or Hispanic authors. If a name pops out at you, like Kazuo Ishiguro, it seems pretty obvious that that person is not white–but what about people of color whose names don’t identify their ethnicity? (And ironically, Kazuo Ishiguro writes about the British experience, not the Japanese-British experience.)

Posted 20 May 2009 at 5:00 pm ¶
S's mom wrote:

Oh, another rant I have is: if you search “Asian American boy” at Amazon in children’s books, it comes up with twelve books.
If you search “Asian American girl” it comes up with thirty-eight books.
If you search “adoption” it comes up with more than a hundred books.

I hope people who are adopting Asian girls aren’t just buying books about adoption, but are also buying books with Asian boys predominantly featured.

Rant over. Thank you.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 5:22 pm ¶
Rita wrote:

After race fail, I really appreciate this post. I don’t think that people can/should only write about people who are exactly like them. The great power of fiction is the fact that it puts us in another person’s shoes. This is why I have problems with telling any writer what they should or should not write, or getting too hung up on issues of “authenticity.” Stories are written for a great variety of reasons, and empathy is far more relevant than authenticity. For example, who gets portrayed empathetically in fiction?

Your post clarifies the greater issue, which is not so much “writing what you know,” but the larger issue of “who gets published.” This is the truly pressing issue, and one that we can probably make more concrete progress on in talking with writers but also above all with publishers. To that end, I totally applaud the efforts to focus attention on writers from historically underrepresented groups.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 5:56 pm ¶
Fiqah wrote:

@Thea Lim: cosignage, fist pumpery. Semi-related note – I just finished Chris Cleave’s “Little Bee” and I loved it, but there were moments when I found myself remembering the (White male) author’s positionality when the primary protagonist spoke (it’s written in first-person but from two characters POV, I don’t recall the name of that?). Anyway, don’t wanna ruin the book for anyone but there was one scene in particular that made me put the book down and go, “Okay, Chris, that was kinda White and British of you, but okay…”

Posted 20 May 2009 at 5:59 pm ¶
Jha wrote:

In the thunder of the Wild Unicorn Herd Check In and Shatter the Silence, I think this is a really useful conversation to have.

As a child, my favourite comic strip featuring a PoC was Judge Dee, which ran during the 60s and someone from my family had cut out the strip and pasted it into an exercise book. It was a well-written series of mysteries, comparable to Sherlock Holmes, but so clearly Chinese. It didn’t use the Chinese setting as a prop or central detail, but it simply plonked some darn good mystery stories into a Chinese setting, and it was done very well. A Dutchman wrote and drew it, having done ten years of research in the era he was depicting.

Like many others here, I don’t have a problem with white authours who do their best to confront their privilege, depict their characters in the best way possible, and are open to criticism. I just wish there was more done to help PoC authours themselves get more exposure.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 6:07 pm ¶
Moondancer Drake wrote:

I’ve never supported the idea of “white what you know” I’m more into the concept of “know what you write”. I find it amazing to read the comments and hear that some folks don’t see the lack of non-white characters an issue. I grew up as a great lover of fantasy fiction, fiction that was highly monochromatic in its casting. It was frustrating as a ndn identified girl that only the white folks got to have the adventures, or that the only ndn folk I saw in books and movies were heavily stereotyped if they existed at all (not to mention the parts played by non ndnz). I heartily believe that a white author doing the proper amount of research and with a deep respect for the people they were writing about could write stories about non white characters. I also believe these same white authors who believe the stories of these characters need to be told, could use their privilege to support writer of those cultures struggling to find a place for their own work.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 7:11 pm ¶
anna wrote:

A majority of the depictions of POC by white writers is inaccurate or it tends to be filled with stereotypes. Because so much of our world is defined by whiteness POC aren’t captured with the same dept. A white write who wants to write about POC has to recognize that before they even come close to the type writer. Too often publisher’s don’t hold white writers to this task.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 8:42 pm ¶
Shveta wrote:

Excellent post, Neesha. Thank you.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 9:27 pm ¶
Elfwreck wrote:

This post has been included in a Linkspam roundup.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 10:15 pm ¶
misrepresented wrote:

I think that this is great post. it is interesting to see the sides of the playing field that people are really on. Why should white writers write about people of color and get the highest awards and honors? is it the way POC write about themselves in an authentic way that makes it not so interesting to them “the publishers” it is quote “unbelievable, too contrived, too over the top….come into the hood and see how relevant things are, how poignant it is..see how ‘REAL’ it is…but a white person writes about a black experience and they are told how brilliant they are for coming up with these sorts of things, how amazing the character she/he created is…meanwhile, these very people that they sympathize and empathize with, are the same ways that they are afraid of and want to adopt as young children. I think that when you are making money off the backs of POC and then passing the stories off as you being a brilliant and amazing writer, you should do something to bring out these brilliant and amazing PEOPLE OF COLOR that you don’t really know….your one friend that never eats at your home, or your one friend that works in the cube next to you, but doesn’t know your family….because he or she is too dark. WRITE YOUR STORIES about your people. i mean isn’t that what has been making the world go round…PNOC (people not of color) patting each other on the back and saying how great you all are for making such beautiful music with your words… then we can’t make our own stories because nobody believes our stories anymore because the blueprint for what and who we really are is stated by PNOC…so to reverse that, we have to get you to stop telling OUR stories and focus on your own culture or lack there of, i mean loving our exoticness and our food and our women/men and our bodies and hair and all that is good, but when do we get to tell you that we are more than that…..we don’t because you are busy telling us a fraction of that….so we can’t be more than that in the eyes of the public because a man or woman that looks like you holds the key to the gate that we aren’t allowed in without you saying its o.k. to come in….

i guess i just have one last thing to say……can you actually have a moratorium on writing about us, you might actually learn something more from our REAL stories that would allow you to see that we can tell our stories better than anyone else around because WE are the people we write about…..

Posted 20 May 2009 at 11:00 pm ¶
Matrix wrote:

@ #24 Fiqah: As far as white authors of POC stories go, HBO’s The Wire exemplifies what becomes possible when the ego of the author disappears and the stories get to fully sing. Though it didn’t hit the mark a hundred percent, it’s still by far the best work I’ve seen in terms of fully realized POC characters penned by non-PC writers.

Though this discussion is focused on novels, I believe it’s apropos to mention the tv show The Wire because it “reads” like a sprawling graphic novel come to life.

@ Moondancer: what’s NDN?

Posted 20 May 2009 at 11:34 pm ¶
Matrix wrote:

That should read “non-POC” writers.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 11:36 pm ¶
Mel wrote:

I just want to note that Memoirs of a Geisha was very popular–with white audiences. It’s a poorly researched, heavily fictionalized, Orientalist piece of tripe, in my opinion–and that’s a fairly mild opinion compared to some of the criticism I’ve read from Japanese readers. I’m white, and my contact with Japanese culture consists primarily of four years of language lessons and a Japanese history class in high school, which is more than most Americans, but still not very much.

There is apparently evidence that white readers are more likely to read about PoC when they’re written by white writers–when they’re *less* authentic. There are probably some logical psychological reasons for that (it’s easier to read something framed in a familiar way, for example). So maybe it would open some doors if more white writers wrote about characters of color–but maybe it wouldn’t, because publishers would still assume that *authors* of color don’t sell.

Posted 20 May 2009 at 11:40 pm ¶
m. wrote:

I don’t think non-Indigenous folks can ever do us justice with/in their writing. Period. I can’t get into why, because it will make for a really LONG comment, but I don’t think it ever makes for a worthwhile read…or AS worthwhile a read as any work by an Indigenous person. I don’t care how many Indians or Pacific Islanders or whatever the writer has talked to because to me, the characters will always seem less-than-developed (or just plain WEAK), if not completely stereotyped or pathetic, and the plots are usually sub par. Also, the dialogue…don’t get me started on dialogue. Perhaps all of this may seem unfair, and I am taking into account the fact that I am a *really* picky reader, but I’m sticking to my guns on this one.
In fact, the only instance in which an outsider has done an excellent job of telling a story about Indigenous people was with a film–’Whale Rider’–and that was based on a book written by a Maori author. I know this may seem a bit off-topic because it wasn’t literature, but I have a lot of respect for her (the director) for envisioning a film true to the book (well, almost…) and telling the story as well as any Indigenous director could. Film is the only avenue I think anyone should take if they absolutely INSIST on telling our stories, because I feel like that medium allows for more influence/input.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 1:14 am ¶
Restructure! wrote:

It should be noted that what is popular is not the same as what is good:

Publishers and Reviewers Feel Joy When Their Preconceived Notions of African-American Culture Are Indulged

Unfortunately, white people (readers) tend to confuse racial stereotypes for racial authenticity.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 1:37 am ¶
Ceri wrote:

Mel: There is apparently evidence that white readers are more likely to read about PoC when they’re written by white writers–when they’re *less* authentic. I’ve run into this in various freelance writing and editing jobs. Misrepresentations that seem plausible are often, routinely, more popular truths. I do my work in the gaming world (computer games and roleplaying games), and in this field, at least, I find two particularly strong tendencies:

#1. A lot of white male readers simply do not want to hear about others’ real experience of being on the wrong end of privilege. They set in to dismiss it all as not really that serious.

But at the same time…

#2. They’re often deeply committed to myths of powerlessness. I remember working on a book about chivalry for a game set in a fantasy-touched version of the middle ages, and reviewing current understanding about, among other things, women engaging in combat. Some places and times had female knights formally accepted as part of the system, and others had women of all classes taking up arms against bandits and invaders while men were at war or on crusade. Egad the stink. It seemed deeply important to some readers that women remain powerless in their vision of the time. I’ve seen the same thing again and again with other kinds of oppression. When it’s not denied, it’s apparently supposed to be total.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 1:53 am ¶
[dave] wrote:

great post, great comments. this ties in great with the ideas from LDP’s global hip hop piece as well i think.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 1:58 am ¶
alumiere wrote:

@matrix – i agree with you that the wire (at least the first two seasons; haven’t seen the rest) did an amazing job handling some really difficult issues

but the thing i think everyone misses when talking about that show or homicide is that in order to get baltimore right you have to get the POC right or you’ll fail miserably

as a non-POC i lived and worked in many parts of the city for about a decade – in almost any area of baltimore city proper from the gentrified corners to the worst parts of the “hood” that was just the way things were – no more than 10 blocks from wherever you were you’d be in the totally opposite economic area, and often it was much less distance; different races and ethnicities lived around the corner or next door to each other more often than any other city i’ve lived in

but at the same time there are neighborhoods populated by one ethnic group almost exclusively (visit little italy or “greek town”) and racism, sexism and classism was abundant no matter where you lived or how diverse or not the neighborhood was

and drugs – well the first season of the wire got that so dead on i couldn’t believe what i was seeing

i think part of the reason they got so much right about race on the wire is because they spent a lot of time in and researching baltimore itself; the city is such a beautiful mess i couldn’t imagine doing baltimore justice without getting that right

as for the rest of this thread, well it’s one of the best discussions i’ve seen come out of racefail – many thanks to Neesha for posting and to Racialicious for giving this conversation a home

Posted 21 May 2009 at 2:11 am ¶
Mark wrote:

If people were only allowed to write what they have experienced, then the world of fiction would be a very sad place indeed.

When writing about race or other races or other genders – all that matters is that the author researches the facts, and tries not to paint one side as a stereotype.

I know how to NOT show respect to other races and cultures through fiction – just read up any recent Tom Clancy novel. As long as you DON’T write like Mr. Clancy, you’re probably going in the right direction.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 3:46 am ¶
Fiqah wrote:

@Matrix: While I understand your point with “The Wire” , I would argue that this really isn’t a good comparison. There are superficial parallels betwixt screenwriting and novel writing, but even a skimming, cursory analysis reveals why its problematic. A televised drama has actors (and damned fine ones), directors, and a whole host of other folks working together to craft an image; a novel has a reader’s mind to do all that. And, outside of the off-camera, “Voice of God” narration style that one sometimes sees on television and film, it’s the intra-character interaction/dialogue that frames AND tells the story.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 8:26 am ¶
atlasien wrote:

@Fiqah: I don’t think written literature has any kind of special ethical requirement that film doesn’t.

In fact, you could argue that film requires more responsibility. It’s a multisensory experience that leaves less to imagination than literature. Reading a book means the audience has to work a lot harder, fill in a lot more, than in a movie.

Again, I think the reader/consumer is the dynamic element that gets left out way too much in these discussions.

For example, I don’t care who is writing, producing or directing — in fact, they could be someone with the exact same background and experience of racism as me — but if they are tailoring their work for a narrowly defined white male audience, I’m probably going to hate it.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 8:56 am ¶
Persia wrote:

I know how to NOT show respect to other races and cultures through fiction – just read up any recent Tom Clancy novel. As long as you DON’T write like Mr. Clancy, you’re probably going in the right direction.

Or Michael Crichton. Or friggin’ Memoirs of a Geisha.

Ceri, your post really caught my eye– things that are ‘different’ than the accepted norms really have to fight harder to get heard, don’t they? And it doesn’t matter who the messenger is to a certain extent in that respect.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 9:12 am ¶
Fiqah wrote:

@atlasien:

I don’t think written literature has any kind of special ethical requirement that film doesn’t.

Neither do I. The point that I was making was that comparing these mediums – which rely upon vastly-different methods to weave a narrative – in order to illustrate what can happen when a (White) storyteller’s ego take’s a backseat for the sake of the (PoCs) character’s story is problematic. It’s like comparing apples, oranges, and grapes: we can all agree that they’re all fruit, but if you start telling me how one can make orange juice with grapes or apple pie with oranges, then I’m calling bullshit.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 9:27 am ¶
N wrote:

Interesting. I’ve read a few books by white authors with AA protagonists- Story of a Marriage and Ellington Street were the most recent. I did not have a problem with the treatment of them.

It is a tricky issue. If white authors never write POC for fear of criticism, then they will be criticized for excluding POC. When they do write them, they are often attacked for cultural appropriation or inauthenticty.

I have a friend, a white woman who writes non-white characters and often asks me for advice on AA or Latino characters. I try to steer her free of any glaringly obvious mistakes, but I tell her- No matter what you do, it will be “wrong”. If you make the character like everyone else but designate it as being of color, people will say that you write fake minorities who act white. If you add touches to make them seem culturally AA or Latina, they may be wrong or people may say it is stereotypical. If you address racism, there are those who will say you are patronizing and paternalistic. If you ignore it, people will say you are delusional and suffering white denial. If you don’t write any at all, people will say that you are like the writers of Friends and Seinfeld, if you want some there, people will call the characters tokens.
So I say if your real world has POC and you choose to create a world for your characters and have COC in that world, as the stars or background, go for it. Just realize you cant please everyone. Don’t even try.

I certainly hope no one would tell me I can never write a male or white character, I would simply have to write using whatever insight I have and hope it isn’t too horrible.

As far as the issue of whether white writers writing colored people helps colored writers or hinders them, I dont know.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 9:50 am ¶
RCHOUDH wrote:

I was browsing through Amazon’s YA section one day just to see their collection of books with female Muslim protagonists, which has proliferated somewhat especially after 9/11. I was astonished to find most of these books were written by nonMuslim female (presumably white) authors, with only a handful of them written by Muslim authors. Now normally I have an uneasy reaction to this type of phenomenon because it’s well known that Western literature about the Islamic world has historically portrayed Muslim lives and societies (both fictional and nonfictional) using stereotypical and outright false Orientalist assumptions and ideas. So for me I would never purchase books written about Muslims by non Muslims without checking it out for free first.
Of course I’m not saying all books by non Muslims have no merit. As long as they do their research and write without inserting any bigoted assumptions they may hold into the stories they write I don’t mind recommending their works to others. But it was still disturbing to find so many YA books about Muslims written by non Muslims. In that case I have to question how books get greenlighted; do publishers use the equivalent of “colorblind greenlighting” when deciding which authors works can get greenlit (the best author for the job gets it no matter the color similar to the best director getting to tell nonwhite stories no matter the color)? Somehow I doubt that is the case because there are some really crappy books out there. And if publishers use “colorblind greenlighting” do they apply it to POC authors as well? So far the only POC Muslim author I’ve found writing stories about characters who were not Muslim is Monica Ali. As for Ms. Meminger’s question about who I would want telling my life story, I would have to answer that it should be myself since I would know my story best of course! Now if only there were more publishers interested in greenlighting books about the experiences of female South Asian Muslim American’s lives…

Posted 21 May 2009 at 10:42 am ¶
madelinek wrote:

This is interesting…I do think there are people out there who do a good, meaningful job telling stories that aren’t their own experiences, whether it’s men writing female characters, white authors writing POC, straight authors writing queer people. I’ve got to get myself a copy of Laurie Halse Anderson’s book after reading all this. I think writing for some of us is one way we understand each other’s realities and understand how injustice affects us all and start to change stuff…but I think for every privileged person out there who manages to do what it sounds like Anderson has done, and really write from a standpoint of understanding and thinking about her own privilege, there’s a lot of crap. And as so many people have said, crap by privileged authors gets published.

@m., 2 of the most egregious examples of this that come to my mind are white authors writing Indigenous characters–Twilight and a book called Flight of the Goose I read a few years ago. Twilight for so many reasons, many of which I imagine have been picked apart here at some point. Flight of the Goose…I don’t know…you can go to Amazon and read people gushing about it in reviews, but to me it seemed like an example of a white author appropriating Indigenous culture and specifically spiritual traditions which I think given history is especially problematic. And I got the feeling the author thought she was doing the world and the people she was writing about a favor by writing it!!

I have read a ton of books about the WWII mass incarceration of the Nikkei community, mainly by Japanese American authors. I’ve read reviews of a couple books by white authors who apparently tell the history of those events from the perspective of white characters, which IMO would require a lot of work examining one’s privilege. Of course, there’s a way to write something totally patronizing and obnoxious there too (I *hated* snow falling on cedars). I’m particularly interested in tracking down something good from this perspective though as it’s my own history: daughter/granddaughter/etc of white west coast residents.

Flip side of this is that most of what I read is by straight authors and as a bi woman I do appreciate seeing myself in the books that I read…there are definitely straight authors who include queer characters who seem drawn from reality and from serious reflection on the authors part (then there are a lot of books with bi girls thrown in to be “edgy”…gah).

That was really long but this is something I think about a ton…thank you so much for bringing the topic up

Posted 21 May 2009 at 10:51 am ¶
atlasien wrote:

@N: My perspective on the issue is similar to yours. Yes, it’s a tricky situation for white writers — it’s a damned-if-you-and-damned-if-you-don’t situation. But there are all kinds of tricky situations in writing! Any choice you make as a writer is going to have potential consequences.

Many white writers have a blind spot in this area though… for this particular decision (characters of color), they’ll demand to have their hands held and all potential consequences worked out ahead for them.

I’m trying to think of a parallel… writing about your family, maybe. If you start mining your deep dark family secrets for literary gold, you’re going to start alienating some of those family members. Any choice about what to disclose involves ethical decisions and potential consequences.

The “how should I write characters of color” is not a unique dilemma nor is it uniquely limiting.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 11:09 am ¶
madelinek wrote:

@atlasien…I think the key is actually recognizing that it *is* a tricky situation, as you say. Some writers…*cough Twilight*…I think they just start writing, without considering the history or the implications of what they’re doing. Stories are available to them, so they take them, without thinking about why they are in a position to tell them. To me that’s appropriation…and I’m trying to decide what I think is “worse”…that or the “I’m-doing-you-a-favor-by-writing-about-you-so-don’t-question-me” thing. But maybe I’m being too harsh.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 11:36 am ¶
Charlotte wrote:

I recently started a book with several POC main characters and I’m encountering a lot of difficulty representing them accurately, I think in large part because I’m white. But when I started the book, I started it with a plan to include several POC characters and do things with them that didn’t rely solely on their POC-ness, because it had been brought to my attention that, in fiction, everybody is white. I want there to be fewer white heroes and especially heroines, but when issues of appropriation come up, I feel like I can’t help because no matter what I do, I’m going to end up being the white appropriator I love to criticize.

I’m not sure how I feel about this issue. I think in an ideal world, the best solution would be an influx of non-white writers writing non-white characters. Maybe if white authors began to represent POCs more often, proving that POCs do indeed READ, more authors of color would be contracted. But maybe all that would happen is it would become trendy to have an “ethnic” character, and all anyone would talk about in the critical world would be how wonderful and ethnic all these white writers’ books were. I don’t want the literary world to turn to the America’s Next Top Model method of representing difference, but I don’t want it to say in the ’50s either. As a white author, sometimes I feel like there’s little I can do, because I shouldn’t be writing about non-white people at all, but the publishing world won’t let anyone else write about them either.

I think I’m going to go ahead with writing my POC characters, but filter them through some POC critics. There must be some kind of middle gorund between white appropriation and white assistance in representation; I just hope I can find it.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 11:46 am ¶
atlasien wrote:

Oh, and one more angle…

“limits” in any kind of art aren’t necessarily “limiting”. Limits and creativity actually go hand in hand. Learning how to write starts with limits at the most basic level — letter formation, spelling — and continues on with limits at the most advanced level: believable characters do NOT behave in certain ways, heroes do not behave in certain ways or they stop being heroes, if no one falls in love or gets it on, it’s not a romance, and so on. Breaking the limits and playing with the line of the limit also would be impossible without the limit being there in the first place.

As an example of great novels, One Hundred Years of Solitude broke a lot of limits but followed a simple one: to begin where it ended.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 12:09 pm ¶
SarahNicole wrote:

Ursula Le Guin’s excellent article about this, from the perspective of a white sci fi/fantasy author who write POCs: http://www.slate.com/id/2111107/

Posted 21 May 2009 at 12:15 pm ¶
Liz wrote:

It seems to me that there are two heavily inter-related problems here: a) Western media (books, tv, movies) is a vast sea of white characters with hardly any characters of color who are not sidekicks, stereotypes, or killed before the final act; and b) not enough writers of color get published.

I don’t know that white writers writing books and producing films about PoC would help with the second problem — that it would help writers of color — but more characters of color, whomever they’re written by, might help readers/viewers of color. And white readers as well, though white people are not the important part here.

The worst case scenario is that the white writers do a horrible, fail-ridden job and actively make the problem worse, while taking a slot on the bookshelf away from a writer of color. The best case scenario is that they produce a thoughtful, well-researched book that manages to avoid misrepresenting people too badly and (if enough such books are written) hopefully helps erode the idea that only white people are interesting enough to be the hero/ine, and that only stories about white people (with white faces on the cover) will sell.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 3:43 pm ¶
NancyP wrote:

Polerin mentions Racefail ‘09. Apparently Wiscon (feminist science fiction convention, held yearly over Memorial Day weekend in Madison, Wisconsin) has had several appropriation issues panels in the past and is making appropriation and WrOC / COC issues the #1 theme this year. The panels eventually get published as transcripts or as expanded versions.

I am not a writer, merely a reader. “Write what you know” certainly sounds sensible for beginners who need to learn basics of the craft, and seems to be inevitable for the majority of first novels in the realistic mode (not for genre). I wouldn’t feel comfortable attempting to write about major characters who are POC. Minor characters – it depends. Scientists, engineers, medical professionals at work all share habits having origins in shared training and often share personality traits that draw them to the job in the first place. If you want to describe white American and Bengali and PRC Chinese graduate students in an American university department of biochemistry chit-chatting about the latest in proteomics, you need to know about science, scientists, and scientific culture, and less about the experience of growing up white American, Bengali, PRC Chinese. If you want to describe a cross-cultural sexual attraction, affair, romance, rejection, etc between two or all three of the above, you need to know background cultural info as well.

All that aside, as a reader, I want to see novels by WrOC about COC (and COC interaction with white characters, if present), in the hopes of “seeing from other eyes”. I tend to be bored by serious novels set in contemporary American white suburban or academic culture and would rather read outside my personal milieu, unless the work in question is truly extraordinary. (Exceptions are made – I can’t resist sendups of academia, either in mystery or comedic novels). I would rather read novels in translation, novels by English-speaking postcolonial WrOC, I am trying to read through a historical survey of African-American literature in some systematic fashion, and so on. I suppose the circle will close, and when I reach 60 or so I will be reading novels about white adolescents and young adults written by white young adults, simply because contemporary youth culture is getting to be as foreign to me as young-adult novels of the 1950s were to me in 1970 (Catcher in the Rye meant zip to me in high school).

Posted 21 May 2009 at 4:44 pm ¶
ulises farinas wrote:

Hm, as a writer/artist, i grew up in a cuban household, with a white stepmom, in a black neighborhood. In particular, i “pass” as white, or jewish most days. So i’ve always felt a bit camoflaged in life. But as a creator of artwork and stories, i’ve found that my main responsibility as an artist is to tell stories. Whether they are fictional, non-fictional, fantastical or somber metaphysical reflections, the story comes first, and all the characters are the pieces. So what i’m really worried about is what my human experience has to say about all human experiences, which i guess is a pretty roug way of describing what i think all artists seek to do; communicate something personal to the universal, and vice versa. Does that make sense?

Anywho, as far as race goes, i’m not sure where i stand as far as privilege goes, but i don’t think thats important. If i want to create a compelling piece of work, i’m sorta pretending the entire time to create that work. Even if its a biography, how much of your own memories are fictionalized dream-like entities? We can’t ever be sure.

I think any artist should be responsible with how he depicts any character, for nuance can be lost even on our own behaviors and our “own” race. None of us truly own the races that are attributed to us, and there’s a measure of responsibility in all artistic creation regardless of what point of view you decide to emulate.

When an artist forgets that, or never learns it, then the art suffers, the viewer suffers, and the creator suffers. Ultimately, all society is worse off, but that is the stem of all -ism wars. We forget to believe that there’s more shared between us all than different. We fail to see that an experience (of oppression, of hate, of love, of indifference) is shared by all.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 5:16 pm ¶
ChristineTB wrote:

Awesome article, Neesha. Very well stated and gives voice to concerns many of us have expressed over the years. Bravo!

Posted 21 May 2009 at 6:00 pm ¶
9jah wrote:

@N:
“It is a tricky issue. If white authors never write POC for fear of criticism, then they will be criticized for excluding POC. When they do write them, they are often attacked for cultural appropriation or inauthenticty.”

I agree, although I don’t think it is as much of a dilemma as it appears to be for many white authors. The way I think of it is:

- Don’t write about a cultural, racial, historical experience you’re not intimately familiar with.

You just will not represent it accurately. and fully. If it menas no PoC, fine – I think most PoC would appreciate (i would) if authors acknowledge not being sufficiently versed to incorporate a PoC character.

- Don’t highlight ethnicity unless the subject matter deals with race/ethnicity per se.

Let the experiences of the characters speak for themselves and let the audience, PoC or otherwise, read into that experience what they will. or else I don’t see how it would not be stereotypical…because seriously what exactly is the typical black, asian etc. experience?

- there are areas dealing with “human-ness” which we are (should be) all familiar with and can write about with equal authority whether character is white/PoC.

This is where I think it may make sense for the CSK award to be opened up to everyone. Does the scope of the award include understanding the contribution of the civil rights movement to today’s multicultural landscape? You don’t need to be black to understand this (in fact not understanding would be unfortunate). Is the scope narrower e.g fear of integration in the workplace as a result of race? This speaks more to a direct racial experience.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 7:00 pm ¶
Pheagan wrote:

This is the most important article I’ve read on here for me. I’m white, and I’m a writer. I write books and stories, but I write comics, too. And I write people of color, and it is something I struggle with all the time.

I remember being in a first year story-writing course, writing my first story with not one white person in it. It was about a little girl obsessed with dinosaurs who had lost her brother to a riptide, who becomes increasingly obsessed with a fictional world of dinosaurs to help her deal with her family breaking apart over this loss. And at one point they’re at dinner. And most of the details I had were from my family, what their jobs were, what they ate. I describe about five meals, and one of them was baked chicken and peas and mashed potatoes. And I remember writing it thinking, “Because I’m a white writer, can my black characters ever eat chicken?” I decided to leave it to see what the response would be. I was called out as a racist for the chicken, and because the boy had drowned– I was unfamiliar with the black people/swimming stereotype. It was a pretty horrible experience, but I said in class at the time, I would rather fuck up than have only white people in my work. I can learn from my mistakes. I guess my black characters can never eat chicken.

And the thing is, there are two viewpoints. There’s Sherman Alexie’s. And here’s another. I’m white. I can’t change that. I can pay attention and open my eyes and keep learning. And I can try to offer people characters that they relate to. Characters that aren’t stereotype, characters that happen to be of color, of cultures other than America. And what’s strange to me is, I and no other person had any problem with me writing men, or homosexual men or women. I’m a straight chick too.

The thing is, the alternative is this lack of representation of people of color that I believe is an honest to God problem. Or the fact that, yes, characters sometimes jump into your head, and sometimes they are just black American. Or Korean. Or Filipino.

And with comics, this becomes especially clear, because it is just sooooo white-dominated, and I am also an artist, and the comic industry is kind of famous for having artists that don’t know how to draw people of color. And I write things for younger readers, and the lack of representation becomes even more important. And even though I’m a white writer, I feel like I could be part of the solution. I could have the images of people of color out there.

This site had posted a lot about Avatar, but one of the things that hasn’t been talked about, except occasionally in the comments, is the fact that the creators are white. And despite this, I see so many people say it was such a moment when they saw themselves in an American cartoon, or their children finally had someone they could dress up as at Halloween.

So here’s my question: can I ever be part of the solution? Or will my whiteness always limit my ability to contribute? I don’t mean this in a selfish way, like I want to be a hero. As a storyteller, I’ve always thought of myself as invisible, genderless, omniscient. And what remains is the product. So, can the product be part of the solution? Or will it always be questioned? Like the people who say, whatever, Avatar was just written by a bunch of white dudes and voiced mostly by white actors so it doesn’t even matter anyways.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 7:01 pm ¶
Sabra wrote:

Great response on what appears to be a thorn in the side of some. Hope to read more of your words.

Posted 21 May 2009 at 8:39 pm ¶
Jess wrote:

As a journalist who aspires to write science fiction (and tries to include non-white characters) I can only say how I try to approach this: doing some research and consciously avoiding stereotypes.

And damned right I would ask the opinion of, say, a Native American if I were writing a story explicitly about Native people, if only to make sure I wasn’t missing anything obvious (to them). If a writer can’t take editorial criticism you shouldn’t be in the business. But maybe as a reporter getting yelled at by editors occasionally has inured me to that.

I know in one piece I did for a writers’ workshop (a science fiction group, shameless plug. http://www.critters.org) I found it interesting that so many people — much younger than I am, I bet — seem to miss the opportunity science fiction offers to bring forward non-whites, women, all that stuff. I mean, a load of white writers in the field manage to do it, plus the writers of color in the genre.

I also find it interesting that — as a few have mentioned– you don’t often know the ethnicity or even the sex (sometimes) of the writer. James Tiptree, Jr. was a woman (Alice Sheldon) and anyone who says “I knew that a person was X because Y showed up in the prose” is, IMO, fooling themselves. Cf. “The Education of Little Tree.”

(I think it interesting that Oprah, for instance, pulled it from her rec list after learning the truth about the author, and that smacks of hypocrisy to me. Not because the book should be above criticism, but because you should examine what drew you to it and admit you were fooled. You won’t learn a thing any other way, IMO).

But hey, I am sort of a literal-minded guy.

Posted 22 May 2009 at 8:00 am ¶
SnowdropExplodes wrote:

I’m a white male writer. My feeling on this is that if I, or someone like me, wants to write a CoC then the writer has to find a way to understand that character’s life from the character’s perspective. How else can this be done without listening to words, and more probably, reading the words written by people who are similar to that character’s background?

But how can you read the words of PoC unless there are published WroC? (Obviously, one answer is to use blogs – but that gives only a view of the subset of PoC who have regular internet access, which has class and location limitations)

So in one sense I kind of hope that if more Writers of Pallor want to write more authentic CoC then they will put pressure on publishing houses to publish more WroC, just so that they’ve got something to work from!

On the other hand, I am suspicious of anyone white who claims to be able to write a central CoC accurately, because there isn’t that much source material available for creating that character.

I think that seeing fictional representations of characters is important in terms of understanding motivations, because factual/non-fiction accounts do not go into characters’ desires and fears in anything like as much detail – they can tell you what happened, but not as much about why.

Posted 22 May 2009 at 10:19 am ¶
Rhonda Stapleton wrote:

This is an excellent, thought-provoking post. The comments are also insightful. I’ve greatly enjoyed reading them and seeing how others feel about this topic.

FYI, Neesha is a fellow 2009 Debutante with me. I have her book Shine, Coconut Moon and can’t wait to read it! She’s such a wonderful person, and I can’t wait to see her sell more books.

I’m a white female. Like many others who have posted on here, I enjoy reading books by PoC, about PoC. I love delving into cultures and people that are different than mine in some ways…but also finding those connections that show me how we ARE the same.

I think white people can write from the point of view of a PoC, just as a PoC can write from the POV of a white person. I also think it’s possible for a male to write a female character, and vice versa. But it takes effort, respect, authenticity, sensitivity, honesty, and a concerted effort to do your research.

Is it possible to be 100% “authentic” in that representation? Honestly, I’m not sure–I think I lean toward no. But does that mean we shouldn’t try? I lean toward no on that question, too.

Frankly, I don’t want to just write only about white females for the rest of my life. LOL. For me, there’s something almost magical about slipping into the skin, the thoughts, the emotions of someone else, regardless of culture, skin color, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

Taking the time to learn about someone other than yourself, to appreciate a culture or person who isn’t like you–to me, that’s ALWAYS a good thing. It keeps us understanding, empathetic, caring.

As a writer, as a mother, as a woman, I hope I can continue to foster that kind of growth in myself…and in my children…and in my readers…and in my friends…and everyone I know.

Thanks for letting me share my thoughts on the topic!

Rhonda

Posted 22 May 2009 at 11:17 am ¶
KatinPhilly wrote:

Bebe Moore Campbell’s “Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine” has one of the most moving, empathetic portrayals of a white woman character in any novel I have ever read.

Posted 22 May 2009 at 4:30 pm ¶
elle the elephant wrote:

This post really hit home to me, and the topic, of writers writing about characters who are of different ethnicity then themselves, I have been thinking about for quite a while. One of my favorite novelist right now are George Pelecanoes and Richard Price. Pelecanoes is a white Greek-American and Price a Jewish-American, that are both middle-aged. Both of this writers do neo-noir/detective fiction set in the inner-city. Both of this writers have at various times written Black or Latino characters as main characters in their book. Despite being middle-aged white men, their portrayal of Black and other-nonwhites are often successful, giving some of the most realistic and heart-felt pictures of life for non-white ever written. The non-white characters are non-stereotypical and come from all walks of life:middle class private detectives,powerful and rich lawyers, and struggling shoe salesmane all of them Black. Even the Black characters with stereotypical roles, like the drug dealers,pimps, or drug addicts, are given hidden depth that makes them look human and beyond the omnipotent boogieman portrayed in the media.
Why am I rambling on? Well, the point I’m trying to make is that Pelecanoes and Price are two examples of white writers who know how to write great non-white characters, and make them 3 dimensional human beings you want to care abou. Why do they succeed? Well reason #1: They are aware of the institutional racism in our society that causes many young Black men and women to make stupid decision, and they genuinely feel sympathy for the struggles people of color have to go through. Reason #2: They acknowledge their own white priviledge by having white characters come face to face with their covert racism. Reason #3: They actually research. the communities they write about,and know that the Black community is a complex and diverse people, were there is no single monolithic idea of “Blackness” and most of the characters are based on real people to an extant.
If your a young writer and want to write a character drastically different from your racial-ethnic background, you have to a.) Do some research! Interact with the group, know what they are like, not the media portrayal. b.) Acknowledge your own racial bias, get rid of them. c.) acknowledge what part society and the media play in constructing the stereotypes about the racial background of the character. Do this, and your half-way there. The other half is if your any good at writing!

Posted 22 May 2009 at 6:53 pm ¶
m. wrote:

@ madelinek:
I had never heard of ‘Flight of the Goose’ until now, but the way you describe it…yeah. On that note (white women writing about Eskimos), have you read or heard of the children’s novel ‘Julie of the Wolves’? If you were a young, impressionable kid and you read that book, you might just wind up with all sorts of bad thoughts supplanted in your head (Inupiat men = rapists, Inupiaq in general = miserable). It’s funny, because the year I moved to a city and transferred to a [non-Indian] public school, that damn book was my first taste of the good old required reading list. Other kids used to ask me if I was “raised by wolves” or in an “arranged marriage”. (By the way, I am not Inuit or Yupik, but that was obviously irrelevant to my classmates.) I’m thinking this is one of the many instances that informed my thoughts re: white authors writing Indigenous characters/stories…it’s dangerous! Hah.
While my mom flipped out over that (thankgodtemporary) school’s reading list, I imagine that many a concerned (for a very different reason) non-Native parent has read that book–as well as ‘Island of the Blue Dolphins’–and thought, “Wow, those people really don’t care about their kids!” However, since we are adults and this is Racialicious (not Reading Rainbow), I’m sure you can go look up those two titles, read the reviews (”Exceptional!” “A riveting tale!”) and get some sort of disgusted LOLz in like I did with the book you mentioned.

The only book penned by a white author I’ve read which was about another group of POCs was awful, too (’The Good Earth’). I am not attempting to speak for Asians or Asian Americans when it comes to the issue of ‘problematic literature’, but I know a lot of people do not like ‘Clay Walls’ or ‘The Joy Luck Club’ for a lot of the same reasons as ‘The Good Earth’…and the former were written by women of color. I bring this up because I mentioned required reading lists, and these seem to be some of the most celebrated novels in North America. I guess my point is that anyone can write a problematic story with stereotyped characters, just white authors need to be extra careful because they are treading unfamiliar territory.

Posted 23 May 2009 at 12:31 am ¶
m. wrote:

(This is my last comment, I swear.)

I made a HUGE mistake…well, *two* huge mistakes.

1.) In my first comment, though I mentioned my being openminded when it comes to filmmaking since it usually tends to be more of a collaborative effort than writing (it all depends), I *did not mean Hollywood*! Damn that machine and the garbage it spits out…

2.) This is my biggest mistake, and one that I feel very, very stupid for making since it involves me forgetting to mention what is *only* one of my favorite books: ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’ is an example of a white author telling a story from the perspective of an Indian. In my opinion, Ken Kesey not only did it right, but he did it well. He is likely to be one of the only outsiders I’ll ever make an exception for, and I’d recommend this novel to anyone on the street that asks and isn’t ready and willing to a) stray from what’s familiar to them–mainstream novels, white writers, et cetera–or b) take a chance on the many Indigenous writers who aren’t Sherman Alexie. (Nothing against Mr. Alexie, as he is hilarious and brilliant, but if you were to ask non-Native America what Indigenous authors they know of, it’s usually only him.) Kesey didn’t have to commit literary redface and pen a fake “memoir” to get ‘One Flew Over…’ published, either. Take that, Oprah.

Posted 23 May 2009 at 1:15 am ¶
Lynn Gazis-Sax wrote:

I have generally been trying to give my stories whatever mix of ethnicity feels natural for wherever I place the story – more POC if it’s in California, fewer if it’s in Maine (and so far I’ve been only writing stuff located in places where I’ve spent significant time).

On writing what I know or not, when it comes to my protagonist: It’s not, particularly, that I think it’s less interesting to have, say, a Greek-American woman who was raised in New York as my protagonist. I’m sure a good author could make a plenty interesting story starting with someone who was Greek-American, grew up in New York, grandfather died fighting the Axis in WWII, uncle lost a hand in the Greek Civil War that followed, father was a translator for US troops as a teenager, later came to the US on a Fulbright scholarship, then became a traffic scientist.

But I wouldn’t write that character, because I want to write fiction, not autobiography. So, if I had a protagonist who was Greek-American, she wouldn’t have my same father, or my same eight siblings; if I had a one-handed uncle of about the same generation, I might have him have lost the hand fighting as a guerilla in Yugoslavia instead of in Greece, and, sometimes, I might change things further than that. Partly because I want enough changes of some kind that people don’t think I’m actually writing myself, and partly because part of the pleasure of writing for me is mixing what I know with what I don’t know yet, but can maybe get perspective on by writing it.

The screenplay with a Latina protagonist has a protagonist who’s like me in that she’s a woman computer professional and has an immigrant father and an American-born father, but unlike me in that her father’s from El Salvador and her mother’s from Kentucky, while my father’s from Greece and my mother’s from Wisconsin. And she’s unlike me in other ways (younger, Catholic). The novel in progress has a protagonist who’s like me in being white, and like me in having a connection with the Episcopal church (I was raised in that church, he’s an Episcopal priest), but unlike me in that he’s male and grew up in a small town in Maine. And both of them have different points of view from me about certain things, and different strengths and weaknesses.

I wouldn’t write anything with an American Indian protagonist, for instance, because I just don’t know enough American Indians, and I like to have some relevant experience with people like my protagonists, even if I’m also filling in my gaps with research. I may still screw up my POC, but I think I’ll screw them up worse if I don’t even know people like the ones I’m writing.

Not satisfied enough with anything I’ve written, so far, to have tried to sell anything, so, totally amateur perspective here.

I don’t see the complaint about the CSK award as reasonable; I can write whatever I like, including writing stuff from the point of view of POC, but, even if I were trying to be a professional writer, there’s no reason to kvetch if there’s an award that’s POC author specific, since that’s just leveling the playing field. It’s not as if white authors lack for opportunities, whatever they write, relative to POC authors.

Posted 23 May 2009 at 2:07 am ¶
Jess wrote:

@m. — funny what you sad about Island of Blue Dolphins — I read that when I was rally young, and I didn’t come away thinking that the people of Catalina Island didn’t care about their kids at all.

At the time, I was thinking how sad it was that the ship captain wouldn’t go back or send a bloody dinghy out or something. I also came away thinking “Man, those folks sure knew how to teach their kids survival skills!” But I’d have to re-read it as it’s been a while.

I also, come to think of it, never thought of the people in the book as particularly “Native” but at that time I probably didn’t give stuff like that much thought at all anyway (hey, I was like, 10).

Posted 23 May 2009 at 6:43 pm ¶
S's mom wrote:

M~~You say that “The Good Earth” by Pearl S. Buck (a white woman) was awful and “I guess my point is that anyone can write a problematic story with stereotyped characters, just white authors need to be extra careful because they are treading unfamiliar territory.”

Pearl S. Buck lived in China for many, many years. (I think around 40 years.) She had a Chinese teacher. She was fluent in Chinese. Is it possible for her to be a white woman who DOES know what it is like to be Chinese because she actually lived there and knew the culture?

Posted 24 May 2009 at 3:32 am ¶
Kulvarnjit K. wrote:

To S’s mom –

No. It is NOT possible. She will not know what it is like to be Chinese, _ever_. She will know what it is like to be a white woman who speaks Chinese, has a Chinese teacher and lives in China.

She will never have a history of being Chinese. She will never have Chinese struggles and a legacy of whatever comes with having Chinese ancestors. She will never struggle with a beauty ideal that does not include Chinese features. And that is just for starters.

All of these things create subtle nuances that inform an experience, an experience that is _not_ hers, and all of them come through in the writing of a character and a story.

Posted 24 May 2009 at 1:27 pm ¶
S's mom wrote:

Then shall we not read “The Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro, his acclaimed novel about a British novel. Ishiguor was born in Japan. Is it true he will never have the history of being British? Is it true he will never have British struggles and a legacy of whatever comes with having British ancestors?

Is it possible that he will never understand the subtle nuances of being British?

Posted 24 May 2009 at 4:24 pm ¶
S's mom wrote:

“[Pearl S. Buck] will never struggle with a beauty ideal that does not include Chinese features.”

She grew up in China. She lived there much of her life. I don’t understand why you say she will never struggle with a beauty ideal that does not include Chinese features. She lived in a country where Chinese features were the norm.
Why would the beauty ideal not include Chinese features–in China itself?

Posted 24 May 2009 at 4:51 pm ¶
S's mom wrote:

#70 should read “his acclaimed novel about a British BUTLER.”
Excuse my mistype!

Posted 24 May 2009 at 10:09 pm ¶
m. wrote:

@ Jess:
Hey; you obviously had a good head on your shoulders, and that book isn’t all so horribleterrible the way I probably made it out to sound by bringing it up alongside ‘Julie…’ – I just wanted to use it as an example of a required text that inspired a lot of racist thoughts and some pointless, feel-good work at a school I went to when I was a kid. You know, rather than learning any history of California’s Indigenous peoples, we read a book written by an outsider who tells his version of the very real life of a very real woman who lost her people. It frustrates (and almost kind of terrifies me) that children “learn about” (or rather, get their ideas of) Indians from books and romanticized stories written by those who aren’t.

@ S’s mom:
I know about Pearl S. Buck’s life, however, I do disagree (Kulvarnjit K. shares my feelings and summed it all up very nicely). Of course, anyone can write about/from the perspective of any culture they so please, but I find it highly problematic when any outsider’s/Westerner’s/et cetera work is considered The Ultimate when it comes to reading about “the Chinese (or African, or Indigenous, or whatever) experience”. European and Euro-American people’s perspectives and writing should not be valued over the perspectives and writing of people of color. Unfortunately, most of the time it is, and I feel as though that is why ‘The Good Earth’ is STILL considered the foremost in fiction about China and some of it’s people. Not only that, China is so huge and ethnically diverse, no amount of studying and ‘immersion’ in just a fraction of it’s many cultures can give a non-Chinese person the knowledge that comes with being born into it.
I know nothing about the novel or author you mentioned (I’d never even heard that title until now), so I cannot comment on the writing. In response to the questions you posed, though, I’d say that…
1.) An ethnically Japanese man born in Japan won’t have the legacy of British ancestors because he doesn’t have any to begin with (unless, of course, he’s mixed race).
2.) If he is living in Britain, then that would make him British by nationality (unless he identifies otherwise). He will have his own life experience and unique struggles, which would be more similar to other Asians living in the UK.
3.) On the other hand, he *will* understand the many subtle nuances of being British, as one does not necessarily have to be English in order to be British.
Like Ishiguro, Buck does not share the same ancestry as those she writes about. I definitely do not think this is comparable to Buck’s experiences, though. What makes Buck’s experience (and therefore, writing) more superficial than that of a Japanese-British author is the fact that a lived experience of being Chinese is very much defined by heritage and cultural ties – two things which cannot be gained through residency in China.

Posted 25 May 2009 at 1:09 am ¶
atlasien wrote:

“The Good Earth” is irredeemably orientalist patronizing garbage. The only good thing I’ll say about it is that it’s a skillful tearjerker.

It’s not impossible for books like these to have redeeming value. For example, take Edward Said’s lengthy appreciation/critique of Rudyard Kipling’s “Kim”, a book which is colonialist but still rather complicated, ambiguous and fascinating.

The Good Earth is just painful, horrible crap.

S’Mom is creating a false equivalency. The experience of a minority immigrant in a white-dominated society is totally different from a white person living in a country with a history of white imperialism and colonialism.

Posted 25 May 2009 at 7:40 am ¶
S's mom wrote:

I don’t think it is a false equivalency at all. They both grew up in countries where they look different from the mainstream. They both know a lot about their adopted countries (respectively China and the U.K.) They both tried to write with respect about their subject matter.

Whether or not one likes “The Good Earth” is a matter of personal opinion. I do agree with M. that it should NOT be considered “foremost” in literature about China. There is definitely no reason for it to be be valued above other works, especially those by Chinese and Chinese expats.

Posted 25 May 2009 at 4:46 pm ¶
Kulvarnjit K. wrote:

re: #70 — I’ll let you figure out why it’s not the same thing. There’s plenty to read on the subject.

Posted 25 May 2009 at 9:19 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:

No, it’s a false equivalency that’s so wrong as to be insulting.

I’m not saying it’s impossible for a white person to truly immigrate and become a citizen of a non-white country, but it’s rare. And it certainly wasn’t the case with Pearl Buck. She never gave up her privileged status as a member of the old imperialist ruling class. When political turmoil came, she was able to leave China for America, which was where she lived most of the rest of her life, and where she died and was buried.

It’s not her fault she was born with so much privilege, but don’t compare her to 1.5gen immigrants like Ishiguro. When he was very young he had to give up the idea of a true cultural return to Japan. He sacrificed that to become an English citizen. Any return to Japan is… as a foreigner. And that was a practical decision more than anything else. Like Ishiguro, children of immigrants already have their choices made for them.

Buck never stopped being an American, and she was able to choose to take what she wanted from China without paying or suffering for it (unlike Chinese citizens or less privileged immigrants). But Ishiguro had to stop feeling Japanese as a young child in order to fully become English. He truly experienced both the positive and negative aspects of English identity. And on top of that, he faced occasional racism and “perpetual foreigner” treatment. He had to develop a deep understand of what an English identity meant — both white and non-white — because that understanding was crucial to his successful socialization and survival.

He paid his dues for his literary insights. Buck did not.

Why is it insulting? Well, it’s pretty close to asking “how come black people get BET and white people don’t get WET.” Different experiences. VERY different experiences.

Posted 26 May 2009 at 9:14 am ¶
Mac wrote:

So . . . what’s the issue? Is there an issue?
I think the issue is extremely, extremely financial. It is ridiculous that white writers, especially in genre fiction, should get more publicity and shelf space/shelf life than nonwhite writers doing the same topic. This is an industry issue that needs to be addressed, more than an individual writer’s issue, but in my more bitter moments it does make me wonder if we should go back to the days of pseudonyms and completely by-mail relationships with publishers. (I try not to have such moments. It’s hard.)

As a woman of color, I tend to be very “let it flow over me” when a white author writes of-color characters — I don’t expect them to really write it from an insider’s point of view and I’m not inclined to get mad if they don’t, but I am very appreciative of the skill if they do manage to pull it off — and some certainly can. However, the insiders’ point of view is important and necessary, and if we’re going to get it, more writers of color need to be encouraged, as per my first paragraph.

Posted 26 May 2009 at 10:32 am ¶
Joseph wrote:

I cosign atlasien (#74 & #77) re: Pearl Buck in particular and for her summary of the problems with the cultural equivalency argument (especially when there are systemic power disparities–like colonialism–in practice) in general.

But I want to raise a parallel thought:

Perhaps a laborious attempt to “inhabit” a culture you were not born into is not only inherently impossible… but also is not necessary to make art? In other words, who says that an insider’s cultural understanding is essential to create representations of people/places that are not your own? Perhaps arguing about who can/can’t know what it’s like to be_____ is beside the point here. Perhaps “knowing” is not a necessary element to make art.

Of course I am speaking here as an artist myself but I am also an Arab American and well aware of the nefarious uses of cultural representation to justify all sorts of systemic badness… I am just trying to put pressure on the idea that art gets made only under particular cultural circumstances, because I don’t think that is how it works.

I think art gets made no matter what.

And if the unequal power relations of the world are coded into it, then that is because art-making is something that happens IN the world–not in a bubble outside of it.

I think that:

a) Arguments that equate “authenticity” with “authority” are inherently reactionary and ultimately lead nowhere good. For artists or audiences.

and

b) It is entirely possible to create works as an outsider which speak to those within the culture you portray. I am not suggesting that such works should be insulated from rigorous critique–nothing should–but that is different from saying that they should not exist at all.

Me? I’d rather have it out on the table so it can be argued over than bubbling away in the consciousness of oppressive authority.

Posted 26 May 2009 at 11:43 am ¶
madelinek wrote:

@m. – probably too late for you to see this but i was on vacation and not reading posts for a few days. Yeah, I read Julie of the Wolves…yeah. Growing up in a very liberal and very white community the adults in my life pointed me to a lot of books about “other cultures” (pretty sure that’s how they were described). In a way this kind of thing is good and in a way this is so problematic. Yes, I believe it’s crucial for kids to learn about the world beyond what they know and their own experiences, and books about others’ experiences can be ways to clue ourselves in to our privilege and systems of inequality. But not all books offer the same thing, and I don’t think most (privileged) kids have the maturity and life experiences to ask the kinds of questions about what they’re reading that we ask here, as adults. Looking back, some books make me cringe (Julie of the Wolves, One More River) and some I’m like, yeah, I’m glad I read that though who knows what I’d think re-reading now (Chain of Fire by Beverly Naidoo about apartheid most notably, but I could come up with a list of others probably if I thought about it).

Posted 28 May 2009 at 3:21 pm ¶
ZWatson wrote:

i feel that the way this author’s feelings, thuoughts, and beliefs are being transmitted in an effective and believeable way.

what he talks about, that most ethnic books are being published by white authors, is, technically, true.

What he fails to mention is that that there are tremendos “fiction” books out there that do, loosely, translate the author’s own life real life experience’s and feelings at the time (Charles Bukowski and Luis Rodriguez), white or ethnically challenged.

there are so many author’s out there that really do write about their own real life experiences, it’s just a way of deciphering which books are more real, from the ones that aren’t.

the messed up thing about it all is that we can’t really tell which books are more real based from the aren’t until we actually sit down and read them.

though, i do in fact believe that white author’s writing their own ethnic experiences, does open the door for ethnic writer’s, producer’s, and actor’s. no one will be interested in it, if no one knows about it.

yeah, i do think it’s better when author’s write, specifically, about what they know, but i do, strongly, believe that when writer’s of any race expose culture’s beyond their own, they gateways for others to experience realm’s beyond their own.

Posted 06 Sep 2009 at 5:51 pm ¶
Michael Melchionda wrote:

This was a valuable reading exercise for me, because I wasn’t aware that there are more white writers being published than the writings of people of color out there. For one thing, years ago people of color (slaves) were not allowed to read or write, which probably held up their writings to get picked up by a publishing company The way I perceive this article is a group of writers giving their options on this issue. When writing fiction, the writer should be able to write about what ever and who every they want. If there where rules that you could only write about you own experience that would really limit your writing possibilities. I would like to think when people are reading fiction that they know that is not a true story. I think we should be able to write about anything we want to write about, even if it is about experiences that you did not go through. I also think you should be able to write fiction about different ethnic groups. Men should be able to write about women and visa versa.
The fact that we have freedom of speech in this country, would be in jeopardy, if we could not write what ever we want.
If people want to read authentic and true work, they should make sure that the author did the proper research on the subject or ethnic group. They should interview as many people from the ethnic group as they can. Of course these would not be fiction. Writers should have enough of a conscience not to give people the wrong information. The POC should have an organization that only publishes people of color’s writing. People would not have to search for books to read that are written by POC.

As far as drawings for books, I always imagine the characters much differently that the artist pictured them. I think it is actually better when there are no illustrations and you can picture the characters by the description the writer gives you.
One opinion I noticed was that we basically live in a a culture where white men rule the world and I think it is going to stay that way for a long time.

Posted 21 Sep 2009 at 7:25 pm ¶