Whose perspective am I writing from, anyway? Is it mine, the author, or some nameless third party? And if not mine, who is this person, anyway? I don't know if they're allowed to be hispanic, or asian, black, middle eastern, or indigenous. Maybe not female, or trans, queer or otherwise. But if I'm not allowed to speculate from the shoes of another person, what then? Write myself incessantly?
I think what I take issue with is incorrectly characterizing minorities. I think the horror that creeps my flesh is patronizing representations. I think that I'm mostly afraid of accidentally becoming the definitive voice for a person I will never be. As long as I'm careful to write humans, respectfully, quietly--what sin am I, to be someone I'm not?
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I think it depends a lot on how you do it. If you're doing research and communicating with people who have actually experienced what you want to write about, I think you're fine. To me, the trouble is assuming you understand something without putting in the work of empathy.
ReplyDeleteI think if your purpose is to learn and you're trying to be honest and humble about it, you're probably doing a good thing.
I saw a thing:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.indy100.com/article/bizarre-peeing-book-julia-carpenter-viral-tweet-adam-eve-mars-venus-7855351
Anyway, I think portraying minorities as humans who deal with different sorts of problems differently is essentially the way to go? Just humans. That's really it.
Anyway, I think you're generally right, and I hope also right about this, Janelle.
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