Permalink Submitted by Heather Rose Jones on Sat, 06/27/2020 - 12:00
I completely understand the frustration, but am wary of the feeling of "aren't I allowed to write anything at all?" because that response has been used by people who want to write other identities without consequences. And as long as there are publishers who tell authors, "Sorry, we already have a [specific identity] book in the line up, we aren't looking for more," (which is a thing that happens) then it's the unfortunate case that a privileged author writing marginalized identities *may* be unintentionally elbowing out own-voices authors.
But I'm also wary of the position that people shouldn't write characters of other identities at all, because that leads to white authors writing all-white casts, and surely that isn't what we're aiming for? My personal position is that I will not try to write stories *about* other people's marginalizations, but I'm going to continue to include marginalized characters in my ensemble casts because to do otherwise would be to say that either these people don't exist in the world I'm writing about or that they don't have interesting stories in that world. There will be people who feel I'm Doing It Wrong but there will also be readers who appreciate that I included them within my world. I'd rather take the consequences of someoe feeling I've trespassed than the consequences of people feeling invisible.
I completely understand the
I completely understand the frustration, but am wary of the feeling of "aren't I allowed to write anything at all?" because that response has been used by people who want to write other identities without consequences. And as long as there are publishers who tell authors, "Sorry, we already have a [specific identity] book in the line up, we aren't looking for more," (which is a thing that happens) then it's the unfortunate case that a privileged author writing marginalized identities *may* be unintentionally elbowing out own-voices authors.
But I'm also wary of the position that people shouldn't write characters of other identities at all, because that leads to white authors writing all-white casts, and surely that isn't what we're aiming for? My personal position is that I will not try to write stories *about* other people's marginalizations, but I'm going to continue to include marginalized characters in my ensemble casts because to do otherwise would be to say that either these people don't exist in the world I'm writing about or that they don't have interesting stories in that world. There will be people who feel I'm Doing It Wrong but there will also be readers who appreciate that I included them within my world. I'd rather take the consequences of someoe feeling I've trespassed than the consequences of people feeling invisible.