WRITE WHAT YOU KNOW: LIMITING OR AUTHENTIC? Blog post at Racialicious, by Neesha Meminger

I want to talk about this excellent, thought-provoking Racialicious guest post, by Neesha Meminger, when I'm not so tired. Here are a few excerpts:

Is it cool for white people to write from the perspective of people of color? How about [...] for men to write from the perspective of women? [Etc, right?]

[...] 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.

[...] 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.” [...]

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?

Meanwhile, go read the rest of it, and check out the discussion over at Racialicious. What do you think?