I remember talking about this in my poetics class. It’s a tricky issue and I never really noticed it until recently. When I think “writer” I think “anything, anyone, anytime.” The limits are endless! I can write as a doctor, a dog, or a demon as long as I do my research. But there’s no amount of research I can do that will ever live up to the actual persona of a doctor, dog, or demon. It’s just not the same. So I now write by the motto, “write what you know.”
When we read, we usually read something so well-written that we don’t even realize the woman or colored character is seen/voiced through the mind of a white man. We’re invested and convinced, hardly questioning unless it’s analyzing the themes in our English class.
While I agree with a lot of the suggestions made in the advice column, the one that sticks out most for me is “to work toward good writing regardless of your subject matter…choosing complexity over obvious.” I think Anonymous should take the letter he wrote and turn it into a poem. Incidentally, he’s got himself a great writing and healing project. He sounds like he’s a wounded, hopeless writer from this new generation of activism and equality.
I read one poem from Jaded Magazine that paired really well with advice letter. It’s called “How Reflections Share One Voice” by Kamry Sharnay, and some lines really stuck out to me like “we unknowingly give that voice the permission to steal our identities” and “We forget who we are when we lose our voice.” The former clearly alludes to the issue at hand—white writers writing from the perspective of women, POC, or LGBT, while the latter also describes the writer that he loses his voice and sense of self by speaking for another. But this could also go vice verse.
No comments:
Post a Comment