HOW TO STOP WORRYING ABOUT AUTHENTICITY, PUBLISHERS, MFAs AND OTHER WILDNESS

Let the Book Precede the Verdict

art by Chiara Fucà.

Before we jump in, a huge thank you to everyone who joined us here in StoryWorld over the last few weeks.  I appreciate all your support, feedback, and dialogue immensely - and also your patience as I figure out this new form.

Had a question from our Coro that I wanted to answer, which I reproduce in part below. A question that re-occurs often in various guises.

Q: I was born to a Puerto Rican father and French Canadian mother, but then promptly adopted and raised in a white family, with a white name, in northern Idaho. I didn't even know the specifics of this heritage until I was in college (outside of being adopted, which they were always honest about).

Part of me wants to explore and connect with these cultures -- maybe dance with them in writing.

But I worry that this would be appropriative. I wasn't raised with these cultures, so I'm inherently an outsider. Even if I am also an outsider to the culture I was raised with (a queer guy who moved to Seattle and very much is no longer Mormon), at least that background is one I understand intimately and can claim some ownership of. If someone criticized me for writing stories that were too harsh on North Idaho Mormons, or delved too intimately into thorny issues very specific to it, I'd feel like, hey, I've earned the right to write about that stuff, even if I did a poor or hacky job! ... If I wanted to write about that, I could avoid this whole question.

Is there a proper way to write about cultures or backgrounds that aren't your own?

Are there different rules for ones that are next-door (Puerto Rican, French Canadian), and ones that you have no personal connection to, and you're just fascinated by?

Thank you for your question.  Sorry it took me a minute to respond but I had to think on this one for a bit. 

Best to begin with some context.  

First: these are promising times for writers of color, for writers from non-hegemonic backgrounds.  While we are far from where we should be, diversity-equity-inclusion in publishing has increased.  Writers who would have struggled in the mid-90s, when I debuted, are not only being published at the top of the game, they are winning awards, international acclaim, and serious readerships.  Still a whole lot of whiteness in publishing and a whole lot of privilege – but for those of us not from privilege or whiteness, there’s momentum and, for the moment, opportunity.

That’s the plus.

On the minus side, literary culture has become another front in our seemingly inexhaustible culture war – the partisans on all sides taking shots at each other every chance they get.  Book borders – lines drawn up against a particular kind of book or a particular kind of writer – are everywhere.  And in a hyper-partisan hyper-reactive climate like ours, there can be real consequences for any writer who transgresses these borders, willingly or not.  Consequences you wouldn’t wish on a stranger, much less on yourself.

So I grok why there seems to be a current of trepidation in your query. Given how wild shit has gotten, what writer trying to navigate these book borders wouldn’t want a coyote map to help them?   

Now to your question: Is there a proper way to write about cultures or backgrounds that aren't your own?

Depends on who you ask.  I’ve been on literary panels where panel members and audience members have both insisted that no one should ever write about cultures/backgrounds not their own.  I’ve also been on literary panels where panel members and audience members have both insisted that anyone should be able to write whatever the fuck they want about any culture. 

Closed borders, open borders, and some nuanced shades in between.

You would think after having worked within these book borders for so long I would have a concise set of directions for you — but I don’t.  I’m still thinking all this through, so I’m not going to confuse you with my confusion.

I will say that if there is a proper way to write about cultures or backgrounds that aren’t our own, the first commandment surely would be to understand that there are entire archives of harmful tropes that should be avoided (and entire representational traditions to be aware of) if one doesn’t want to regurgitate the dreary oppressive formulas of our white supremacist hegemons¹.   

Beyond that I cannot say for certain -- for now. 

But in spite of not having a clear answer on this sensitive matter, I do want to approach your question from a different angle in the hopes that it might resonate with you and with other questions I’ve received in the past.

The way I see it, whether we’re talking about a) proper representation in a book we haven’t written yet, or b) the fear that the MFA programs we haven’t yet been accepted into will turn us into cookie-cutter writers -- or c) surviving the white publishing world as a person of color in spite of not yet being published -- I’m struck by a common thread in all these questions:

How often we worry pre-emptively about what might go wrong—how often we focus on proleptic negatives when we consider something that clearly matters to us.

Which is weird when you think about it.

I mean, we all know it’s normal to weigh the pros and cons when deliberating on a course of action.  But when it comes to a book that we’re considering writing, how much does it benefit you to worry about what the book might do wrong if you haven’t even written it yet?  Books, after all, are future objects par excellence, which is to say they are utterly fantastically unpredictable.  They never turn out as you expected.  Like kids.  Like the future. 

Never.

Therefore, shouldn’t you first write the book before lining up proleptic objections?

Might it not be wiser, in other words, to let the book precede the verdict?    

Look, I know I cannot speak for anyone else, but from my own experience when I’m making a decision about a possibility that’s clearly got its hooks in me – a book or a job or a move -- and I lead with the negative, with no sign of the positive, that usually means that my fear and uncertainty are pushing me to rationalize in a manner that will lead me away from the source of fear and uncertainty.  In other words -- away from the dream.

And it ain’t just me.  Turns out a lot more people bind their courageous impulses with dis-courageous counterstrikes.

You get an urge to write a book about a knotty topic that resonates at the deepest level with your fractured identity?  But the identity knottiness and our book bordering scares the shit out of you?  Here come all the reasons you shouldn’t go for it.   

You’re considering an MFA in creative writing, programs that produce writers pretty consistently?  But you know as well that these programs demand a lot of time and often a lot of money and also produce plenty of non-writers pretty consistently and that scares you shitless?  Here come the objections, a phalanx, locking together like hoplite shields in the 7^th century BCE. 

You are writing your first book and you want to see it published mainstream, but that’s a scary proposition? Here come the high-level concerns about how a writer from such-and-such background can survive the publishing industry’s straight-affluent-non-immigrant-non-indigenous-whiteness. 

(I sometimes wonder if proleptic strikes are a sign that the "improper book", the "risky MFA", are more likely than not exactly what you want to do but for whatever complicated personal reasons exactly what you want to do tends to scare the shit out of you.)

Whatever their roots, proleptic defense tactics are a writer’s worse habit and if you find this shit coming out of your mouth or popping into your head with any regularity you need to stop.  This “dark fire will not avail you.”² 

How could it?  Proleptic defense tactics are profoundly demotivational to the task at hand.   Hard to write when you’re sitting around abacus-clicking all the ways this writing could go wrong without exploring, without exhilarating, on what could go right.

Over the long term, proleptic defenses will imperil your work in a more fundamentally debilitating way: by conditioning you away from risk. 

No doubt about it: deploy proleptic defenses often enough and you will condition yourself to argue against the provocative transgressive risk-taking part of you, and ultimately suppress it.

Which is fine, I guess, if you’re looking to live a square’s life.  But if you wish to be a writer, a for-real writer, then you’re going to need risk, provocation, transgression – in other words you’re going to need play to make it.  Even if you ain’t aiming to be a “serious” writer you’ll need play to write your best.  And play without risk, provocation, transgression, is not play – it’s bullshit. 

No question you can write bullshit books and get well-remunerated and even receive prizes in the process -- but why?  Why go the bullshit route when you can write non-bullshit books and still get well-remunerated and receive prizes, too?  Why go the bullshit route when writing with play is so much easier and so much more fun, too. More fun to write and, crucially, more fun to read.  

As I've said before, writers who play not only write better books, they help create better readers.

So yeah, you could keep searching for the proper way to write about cultures and backgrounds that aren’t your own and end up spending the next few years trapped with your fears and the larger culture’s promise of punishment. 

Or you could put aside the proleptic defenses, put aside the concerns about what is proper and right -- put aside the objections — and write the book. 

(Worried about the whiteness of publishing? My advice is the same: put aside the proleptic defenses and write the book.)

Write the book that you fear might not be proper, write the book you feel you don’t have a right to write and when you finish you’ll not only have a book and all the experiences and skills and habits a finished book teaches its writer --

-- you’ll also have an answer to your question: is there a proper way to write about cultures or backgrounds that aren't your own?

The book will be an answer, one way or the other.  

And who knows, right?  The book might in its unfolding offer up a better question, less fearful, less punitive, that honors the courageous audacity that brought you to the arts in the first place.

Whatever may be true, only the book itself will tell.  

1. When it comes to Latine representation here are some texts I’ve used in classes: Charles Ramírez Berg’s A Crash Course on Hollywood’s Latino Imagery. https://human115.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/ramirez-berg-a-crash-course-on-hollywoods-latino-imagery.pdf ; Reel Latinxs: Representation in U.S. Film and TV by Frederick Luis Aldama and Christopher González; Latin Looks--Images of Latinas and Latinos in the U.S. Media," by Clara E. Rodríguez; Latino TV A History by Mary Beltrán

2. "'You cannot pass,' he said. The orcs stood still, and a dead silence fell. "I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the flame of Anor. You cannot pass. The dark fire will not avail you, flame of Udûn. Go back to the Shadow! You cannot pass."

—The Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring, Book II, Chapter V: "The Bridge of Khazad-dûm"