Thursday, August 2, 2018

Writing Other

Would you be angry if I wrote about you? 

What if I write only bad things? Change the way people look at you?

What if I wrote only good things about you, can I use you then? Take your voice and make it my own?

Let’s forget good and bad for a minute and focus on if it’s truthful or untruthful. Let’s forget that even and get down to the bare authenticity.

Would you be angry if you had a story to tell and I told it for you, but some of the details weren’t right, and I didn’t really understand you? Your motives, feelings, and actions unclear to me, yet still I write you, and people read you.

Would you be angry if I my voice was louder and clearer than yours, but not as honest, and people listened to me? If I became you, but not a real you, a one-dimensional figment of imitation with no real guts inside me?

Let’s start again, with those questions in mind.

Who can write whom? Speaking quite plainly, anyone can. But just because one can do something, doesn’t mean it should be done. Writing culture ethically comes with a set of moral complexities that one must discern before touching ink to paper.

Writing ‘other’ comes in a loop. This loop consists of:
à I want more ‘other’ culture in literature (PoC, LGBT+, disabled, customarily alien)
àIn order for there to be more ‘other’ culture in literature, I must write it
à I am not ‘other’ so I don’t know how it works.
à I want more ‘other’ culture in literature.

So on so forth.

Naturally, writing ‘other’ means knowing ‘other’ to the best of one’s capabilities. Getting as close to ‘other’ as is culturally acceptable. Don’t just study how ‘other’ sits in place and space, understand the nuances that ‘other’ has, what led them to where they are, and where they are headed.  Breathe it in for a long time.

If you aren’t prepared to do that work, then don’t even touch ‘other’. For you, stick to what you know best because the only thing worse than having no literature is having misconceiving, superficial, and implausible literature. People are fragile, the land is fragile, and history is fragile, prone to scattering itself to the wind away from you if you don’t handle with care.

Second, no matter how much you know, if the ‘other’ wishes to speak, then you must do nothing else but listen. Your voice may enable for the other to have a pedestal to shine on, but it is ultimately not yours. If you are not indigenous to the land, disposition or state of being, you have no business in speaking over the top of someone who is, unless you are giving them a platform to showcase their story. Buy the books, read the stories, listen to the authors. Always be mindful of supporting and appreciating the native literature alongside the alternative.


And if it is your culture? If you are the ‘other’?  Still, take these morals in your stride, but let your genuine experience guide the way. There is never an end to learning.





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