Full disclosure here: I am female, cis/het, white (mostly), married, 53, educated, neurodiverse, middle class, and not beautiful according to Western standards. I tell you this not to present you with a set of labels to call me, but to hint at which social injustices I have faced in this society and which I have not.
I also am a member of the Religious Society of Friends (otherwise known as Quakers), and nowadays we've thrown off plain dress and plain speech (thee didn't know that?) but have retained our sense of social justice as something important to work toward.
I carry this sense of social justice into my writing. I carry it imperfectly, given that I have not experienced life as a lesbian, as a black person, as a Moslem, a transgendered person, or a person with visible disabilities. Why would that matter? Because I am an outsider to others' experiences. I do not experience the small insults others do every day -- nobody suggests rape as a solution to my gender preference, nobody calls store security on me while I'm shopping, nobody tells me my religion is satanic, nobody calls me a cripple. Most of us miss these aggressions; others experience these and worse daily.
I want a socially just world. I imagine the world as a banquet, and I want to see everyone at the banquet. I want to feast on gravlax and fufu with palaver sauce, and oh-my-G-d Middle Eastern desserts. I want everyone to feast and to talk to each other and to share. And those who are uncomfortable with the other, I want there to be counselors nearby who will talk to their wounded inner child and their not-okayness and prepare them to sit at our table instead of taking it all away from us.
Full disclosure: I was harassed as a child because I was "different" (i.e. neurodiverse), and female, and fat, and gifted. The harassment accelerated into violence. This could by why I want a socially just world. I don't want anyone else to suffer. It bothers me that I might not have noticed all the injustice if I had not experienced it.
I have to try the best I can to bring in the topic of social justice into my writing, hoping that I am doing so constructively rather than destructively. Here is what I have pledged myself to do:
1) Don't be timid about putting people who are not necessarily "dominant culture" in my writing. Admittedly one of my favorite characters is Gideon, an avant-garde Jewish architect who designed exquisite bridges when manic but could not hold down a job when depressed. Less like me, however, is Arminder Kaur, a fourteen-year-old Sikh who dreams of being a "saint-soldier" defending the oppressed.
2) Avoid stereotypes, but thoughtfully include cultural norms for other cultures. One of the sensitive places in writing in this regard are accents. If the only people who have accents are foreigners and African-Americans, you've written stereotypes. I can point out that the downstate New York accents I ran into when I taught out there had many interesting pronounciations -- "cawd", "SHU-ah", "Ant - AUCK - tica". Remember these if you're going to put in other accents.
3) Do not make white characters the "saviors" for people of other groups. People who are not white, straight, etc. will be allowed self-determination. Movies from Avatar to The Blind Side feature the "white savior" trope, and it's really insulting.
4) Dominant culture will not be the standard by which other cultures are judged. An overweight person will not be harassed into losing weight (as if that worked!), Guardsmen will be allowed in a pacifist ecocollective if they lock up their guns while on site.
I will offend someone. I will fall short, because I'm human and because I walk around with privilege others don't have. We all will offend each other at the banquet table because we're different. But my responsibility is to write for the world I'd like to see.
Every single person is uniquely different. From our skin tone, eye color, hair texture, facial features, personality quirks, and even our own handwriting.
ReplyDeleteIt is also human nature to notice differences. In my experience it is when one person has significantly more differences than the majority.
The majority consist of the people who have similar back ground, values, abilities and the same socio-economic class.
I am white but I do not attach privileged to my name. I grew up very poor. I am the second of six kids. This was a single income house hold. My mom did not work outside the house. My dad worked but did not make enough to allow for luxuries. For example it was considered an extravance to have a hot dog bun to eat with hot dogs the 3-4 times we had them for dinner each week. My parents did not believe in handouts. We did not receive any government supplements. No food stamps, welfare checks, government food commodities, state sponsored health insurance, or reduced lunches at school.
I was never the owner of fashionable clothes, glasses, hair styles, and we did not participate in any extra curricular activity. Extracurricular activities cost a lot of money. You have to buy specialized shoes, additional clothes, rent or purchase an instrument or equipment and all extracurricular activities required health insurance. My dad had personal health insurance through his job but it was too costly to to ensure 7 other people.
In addition to my poverty my facial features hinted that my ancestors were not all white. I have very full lips and a wide nose that did not fit in the very 100% white community that I grew up in. I had very large buck teeth. As a teen I had oily skin and terrible acne. I also had rosacea. The skin on my face was always pink or red where ever the ance was breaking out.
I was a social piriah. In grade school I treated as if I had a communical disease and anyone who was in a 10 foot distance would catch it. I can remember at recess if I decided to play on a piece of playground equipment every single kid who was touching it would run away leaving me there alone. People refused to voluntarily sit by me at lunch, or trade papers for in class grading. I always considered it a good day when no one spoke to me. When my peers did speak it was to jeer at my appearance or to ask innappropriate questions.
My parents did not provide any emotional support my teachers were indifferent to my abuse.
Here is what i gained from that experience:
I watched people from a removed lense. I became keenly aware of body language, facial expression, tone inflection of voice and patterned behavior. You can say one thing but body language and facial expression are not always congruent. The latter of the two are what the person is really saying. I listened to them talk to each other and noticed when the lied to each other and what side people took in a disagreement. I became very good at quickly assessing another person. I am very quiet and speak only when required. I watch astutely before offering my friendship.
I also became totally self suffient. I leaned on no one and understood that I was responsible for my own life. I was accepted at a four year college and I worked through out those years.
I have a professional job thay I got though my own personal merit. I work with people who have disabilities another classification of people who suffer social injustices their entire lives!
I have a comfortable life now. My husband still marvels at my personal gratitude for things he simply never considered; a reliable car, central heat and air,a dishwasher, and non tangible things like his love, support, empathy, my children.
I truly believe that any challenge that you face in life presents you with two choices:
1. To rise up and learn from the experience.
2. To wallow in your misery to never live past that experience.
I have tried to accept challenges, learn from them, and move on.
This is Lanetta.
This topic has provided me with a lot to say and struck a nerve. My first response seems more like a rant. I recognize that this is not what you are specifically looking for when read the responses. If you remove it I completely understand. I wanted to give you with a peripheral view of the way I grew up. Those experiences shaped and formed my view of other people and the world we live in. I had to fit the rest of my thoughts in a seperate comment box.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy reading about other cultures, social classes and learning about people who are different than me. One of my majors was Sociology the study of people in groups. It gives me joy to see and learn about diversity. I seldom endorse the popular opinion that is often forced by the majority. As a reader I appreciate that you are making a supreme effort to give the world a cast of characters who do not fall in the traditional norm.
This is Lanetta again.
Lanetta, I understand. We bring ourselves to whatever we read. As I stated, there were many ways in which I did not grow up dominant culture either, and you and I understand that those scars will likely be forever. A strong reaction means you engaged with the words, and that's the best compliment you could give me.
ReplyDeleteMy aim in writing for change is to find commonality with others who have been ostracized or bullied or assaulted for their differences and bring them into people's vision as fellow humans. It's challenging, as you might have noticed from the blog entry.
Writers bring themselves into what they write. Sometimes, I write to address my own hurts, which is why in my first book, a short, half-Asian man falls in love with an older, overweight woman. (Note: My husband is not short, nor 30 years younger, but I wanted to make people cringe about the differences in order to make them see differently.)
Again, we bring ourselves to whatever we read -- and whatever we write. Sometimes painful feelings come up, and sometimes readers try to provoke feelings. I'm sorry if I upset you.