New PEN report - In Defence of Literary Imagination

[Melissa Louise]

https://pen.org/report/booklash/

I was very glad to read this today.

It's tangentially related to some of the issues discussed here regularly.

Extract:

Yet amid these necessary shifts, some readers, writers, and critics are pushing to draw new lines around what types of books, tropes, and narrative conventions should be seen as permissible and who has the legitimacy, authority, or “right” to write certain stories. At one extreme, some critics are calling for an identity-essentialist approach to literature, holding that writers can only responsibly tell the stories that relate to their own identity and experiences.³ This approach is incompatible with the freedom to imagine that is essential to the creation of literature, and it denies readers the opportunity to experience stories through the eyes of writers offering varied and distinctive lenses. 

The article goes on to re-endorse Freedom to Read principles - very much worth reading and considering.

It is in the public interest for publishers and librarians to make available the widest diversity of views and expressions, including those that are unorthodox, unpopular, or considered dangerous by the majority.

Publishers, librarians, and booksellers do not need to endorse every idea or presentation they make available. It would conflict with the public interest for them to establish their own political, moral, or aesthetic views as a standard for determining what should be published or circulated.

It is contrary to the public interest for publishers or librarians to bar access to writings on the basis of the personal history or political affiliations of the author.

There is no place in our society for efforts to coerce the taste of others, to confine adults to the reading matter deemed suitable for adolescents, or to inhibit the efforts of writers to achieve artistic expression.

It is not in the public interest to force a reader to accept the prejudgment of a label characterizing any expression or its author as subversive or dangerous.

It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians, as guardians of the people’s freedom to read, to contest encroachments upon that freedom by individuals or groups seeking to impose their own standards or tastes upon the community at large; and by the government whenever it seeks to reduce or deny public access to public information.

It is the responsibility of publishers and librarians to give full meaning to the freedom to read by providing books that enrich the quality and diversity of thought and expression. By the exercise of this affirmative responsibility, they can demonstrate that the answer to a “bad” book is a good one, the answer to a “bad” idea is a good one.

[kokotg]

Hmm. I don't think this is a new issue at all. I've been surprised a couple of times recently to see it framed as such. It's certainly as old as William Styron's The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967) at any rate. I did a tutorial on southern lit in grad school--a one on one thing with a professor where I'd read a book a week and go in and discuss it. That week I was all ready to talk about whether it was William Styron's story to tell or not, and the prof shut it down immediately by saying that all stories are any writer's story to tell. Which did not leave me with much to talk about that week, sadly. I continue to both think he was right and that it's more complicated than that. Which I imagine is why people are still talking about it. 

[Melissa Louise]

It's not new. 

The principles come from the 1950's. 

I agree all stories are a writer's to tell. 

A reader can critique how successfully a writer achieves the writer's own aims. 

They can have an opinion about whether or not a writer's background plays a role in the text's effectiveness and impact. 

[Heartstrings]

I don’t think I like the essentialism argument, although I think I’m sympathetic to the idea. Sometimes a person outside of an experience still has something to say about that experience.   A poor person has a perspective on rich people, the nerd has a perspective on the jock.  
 

I appreciate the idea, I think, that hearing about things from people about their own experience, or “own voices”  I don’t like the “stay in your lane” feel of it.  I definitely want to hear about the first generation immigrant experience from first generation immigrants, of course.  But if a first generation immigrant would rather  write a sci fi featuring a white British scientist then they should be able to. 

[Melissa Louise]

Just now, Heartstrings said:

I don’t think I like the essentialism argument, although I think I’m sympathetic to the idea. Sometimes a person outside of an experience still has something to say about that experience.   A poor person has a perspective on rich people, the nerd has a perspective on the jock.  
 

I appreciate the idea, I think, that hearing about things from people about their own experience, or “own voices”  I don’t like the “stay in your lane” feel of it.  I definitely want to hear about the first generation immigrant experience from first generation immigrants, of course.  But if a first generation immigrant would rather  write a sci fi featuring a white British scientist then they should be able to. 

My ex is an Indian novelist.

He often bemoaned being pigeon-holed into post-colonialism because of his skin, when what he wrote did not engage with post-colonialism but with French and Australian literary experimentation.

All the festival invites etc - can you be on this panel about race?  

All writers should be able to write about anything, and have their works judged on the text's own merits.

[ktgrok]

I choose "own voices" books for our homeschool, at least most of the time, because I am using them as an educational tool to explore various perspectives and therefore want the genuine perspective of the author.

But I'm less likely to be insistent on such a thing for say, a fun fast romance read. Partly because you can't write a book that has a diverse cast of characters AND still write a book that is only from your lived perspective/culture/race/ethnicity/gender/etc. 

So basically, if I want specifically to read a book to understand what  it is like to be a woman politician, I want a book written by a woman politician - not by a man or a baker. But if I want to read an escapist book about love or a suspense novel I'm not going to be as picky, especially as I love books with lots of fun secondary characters and appreciate when all those characters are not the same race/gender/etc etc. 

If I wa

[kokotg]

I followed the link they give as evidence that "some critics are calling for an identity-essentialist approach to literature, holding that writers can only responsibly tell the stories that relate to their own identity and experiences," and it doesn't actually link to a source calling for that. It links to a site that deals exclusively with childrens literature and a page that talks about the "own voices" movement. It does say that there's value in reading books written by people who share an identity with their protagonist (again, it's talking about childrens literature) and points out some potential problems when that's not the case, but it says, "If a book is specifically about the experience of a character who uses a wheelchair, we want the creators to look to how those in that community feel about the book. If a book is about Diwali, the creators must be looking at how the book resonates with those who celebrate in the South Asian community. If authors/illustrators don’t hold those identities they are representing, we expect them to listen to those who do." I.e. it's great to read books written by authors who can identify with their protagonists, but it's also okay if they don't, as long as they're respectful of those identities and work to get them right.

It's interesting, because I can certainly remember instances recently where writers have been criticized for how they've written about marginalized characters with whom they don't share an identity...but then there's, say, Geraldine Brooks, who mostly had a bunch of praise heaped on her when she wrote from the perspective of Black characters in Horse. I think there's tons of nuance here and a million different issues at play. It's interesting that we've never really taken issue with writers writing from the perspective of a character of a different gender the way we have with race. For example. Just one little example. There are lots of examples!  Going back to my first post, William Styron got a lot of crap, but he also won a Pulitzer. 

 

Edited August 8, 2023 by kokotg

[Melissa Louise]

Writers of fiction don't have to do anything, really. Other than write from the imagination.

Sort of the point of art. 

 

[kokotg]

1 minute ago, Melissa Louise said:

Writers of fiction don't have to do anything, really. Other than write from the imagination.

Sort of the point of art. 

 

I'm not sure what this is in response to? Obviously writers can write whatever they want. I would disagree that using one's imagination is the primary point of art, although it's certainly a necessary component of it. Art has had and continues to have a lot of purposes and those have never been separate from forces like politics, religion, the marketplace, etc. 

[Melissa Louise]

1 hour ago, kokotg said:

I'm not sure what this is in response to? Obviously writers can write whatever they want. I would disagree that using one's imagination is the primary point of art, although it's certainly a necessary component of it. Art has had and continues to have a lot of purposes and those have never been separate from forces like politics, religion, the marketplace, etc. 

Depends how you define art, I guess. 

 

[Pam in CT]

re essentialism - concur with pp that if a character reads as wooden / inauthentic / sparsely drawn or whatever, that's a critique on the caliber of the WORK rather than some rule that a writer with ___ identity dimensions ought only ever write characters with those same dimensions. Writers write genuine-presenting characters who are elves, demigods, trolls, dragons and sea monsters.  Surely a gifted woman writer is capable of writing a male character, a gay writer a CIS character, a black writer a white character and etc. 

(If I squint I suppose I can see an argument that the less-privileged category always has better visibliity into the mindset of the more-privileged category because forced adaptation to power is among the most salient lived experiences of being in a minority position. The servants ALWAYS know immensely more about the employers lives than vice versa.  Nonetheless, it is the writer's job to notice.)

If on the basis of the completed work a particular character reads as inauthentic, well, the effort failed.  The writer can give it another go and maybe do better next time; or alternatively hew closer to personal experience next time.

 

re wellspring of art - some writers write from imagination; others use their personal experience as their primary material. Great art stems from both.

 

I'm struck by how PEN links this moment to the McCarthy moment. That feels right.  (And alarming.)

[ktgrok]

34 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

re essentialism - concur with pp that if a character reads as wooden / inauthentic / sparsely drawn or whatever, that's a critique on the caliber of the WORK rather than some rule that a writer with ___ identity dimensions ought only ever write characters with those same dimensions. Writers write genuine-presenting characters who are elves, demigods, trolls, dragons and sea monsters.  Surely a gifted woman writer is capable of writing a male character, a gay writer a CIS character, a black writer a white character and etc. 

(If I squint I suppose I can see an argument that the less-privileged category always has better visibliity into the mindset of the more-privileged category because forced adaptation to power is among the most salient lived experiences of being in a minority position. The servants ALWAYS know immensely more about the employers lives than vice versa.  Nonetheless, it is the writer's job to notice.)

If on the basis of the completed work a particular character reads as inauthentic, well, the effort failed.  The writer can give it another go and maybe do better next time; or alternatively hew closer to personal experience next time.

 

re wellspring of art - some writers write from imagination; others use their personal experience as their primary material. Great art stems from both.

 

I'm struck by how PEN links this moment to the McCarthy moment. That feels right.  (And alarming.)

A writer writing about elves doesn’t have to worry they got the elf experience wrong. A writer writing about what it is like to grow up Hispanic in a border town might very well right an excellent book as far as plot/writing quality but really misrepresent what that experience is like because they have never experienced it. 
 

[Pam in CT]

re authenticity of an elf character cannot be evaluated by an actual elf the way the authenticity of a Latino living at the border can be

6 minutes ago, ktgrok said:

A writer writing about elves doesn’t have to worry they got the elf experience wrong. A writer writing about what it is like to grow up Hispanic in a border town might very well right an excellent book as far as plot/writing quality but really misrepresent what that experience is like because they have never experienced it. 
 

Yes of course. 

And even without such rigor there are plenty of elf characters in plenty of books that fall spectacularly short of the mark.  Legolas and Elrond, however, are fully drawn, complex figures with real character arcs, whose experiences within the story transform them; even though we are not ourselves elves we can unpack how they are different at the end than they were in the beginning. And they are secondary characters; how much more can we say about Frodo and Sam's character arcs, hobbits not white Christian men like their creator.

I concur (I think) with you that the authorial stakes are higher when a writer sets out to create a character whose authenticity can be tested by real people who actually have lived with a experiences only imagined by the author, whether that is miscarriage or job loss or the border indignities and cultural joys of the Latino at the border you posit.

But that is not a reason for an author not to TRY to imagine their way into experiences not their own.  It may turn out to be a bust!  It may come off wooden and stilted and dopey!  OK!  Many more books and characters miss the mark than hit.  Better to aim ambitious and fall short, than not try.

 

[kokotg]

I'm still kind of hung up about how PEN purports to link to evidence that there's a movement to stop people from writing about characters who don't relate to their own identity and experience and then does no such thing. I'm not saying such a movement doesn't exist, but they haven't presented any evidence for it. There's a HUGE difference between saying that there's value in seeking out, say, disabled authors writing children books about disability, et. al. (in a space that historically has not allowed a lot of room for diverse authors) and saying that no one else should be allowed to do so. The site they link to does the former (and, importantly, it's not a publisher, but a site that curates lists of children's books). It's simply not true that people aren't writing well-received, popular books about characters with different racial, ethnic, etc. identities from their own right now. 

I'm interested in and concerned about these issues, and I do think there's plenty to talk about...but I'd like to talk about actual examples (I think yours about your ex being expected to always sit on panels about post-colonialism is a good one, @Melissa Louise), and the only one they're giving says, "hey, probably if you want your kids to learn about Diwali, an author who grew up celebrating Diwali is more likely to get the details right!" Interestingly, it looks like the Own Voice movement is, in fact, backing away from the term and having its own discussions about limits and nuance and all that. 

[Heartstrings]

I haven't seen a huge movement towards authors writing outside of their experience, although I see a lot of harsh critiques when it goes wrong.  I have seen a lot more of this argument being made when it comes to TV and movies.  People complain about a neurotypical person being tasked with playing an autistic person, or an able bodied actor playing a disabled character.   

[kokotg]

8 minutes ago, Heartstrings said:

I haven't seen a huge movement towards authors writing outside of their experience, although I see a lot of harsh critiques when it goes wrong.  I have seen a lot more of this argument being made when it comes to TV and movies.  People complain about a neurotypical person being tasked with playing an autistic person, or an able bodied actor playing a disabled character.   

Yeah, although it still happens plenty. My perception is that the objection there is more about how if there's a role for a disabled person, a disabled person should get the role because there aren't a lot of roles like that to start with. As opposed to feeling like actors can't effectively portray someone with a different identity...which is an interesting difference (if my perceptions are even correct). And, of course, we're coming from a time when white actors played, say, Asian characters regularly and played them as terrible stereotypes. Have we gone too far the other way? 

[regentrude]

I have seen that with a White writer friend who was criticized for writing about a Native American experience by Native Americans and asked to tell his own story.

I can see both sides of the issue. On one hand, I can understand the frustration of a marginalized group when a person belonging to the dominant group  in power presumes to speak for them, tell their stories, pretend (because that is what creative writing does) to have lived their experience. Even more so when a person in the dominant group has better connections and a higher chance of getting his voice heard through publication than a person belonging to the underrepresented group.

On the other hand, I also see the freedom of the creative process, the value in using one's position of privilege to voice issues and perspectives, and, last but not least, the value of portraying a diverse cast of characters. Here I feel that political correctness is posing two conflicting demands: the authors should write from their own experience and not presume to have a protagonist belonging to a disadvantaged group - but also, the cast of characters should be diverse and include people of different skin color, sexual orientation, physical ability, and ethnicity. Which is impossible and can only result in tokenism.

In my opinion, writers should write and make art. Their responsibility is to tell the stories that move them to the best of their artistic ability. The judgment is up to the readers, the critics, the publishing industry... but nobody should censor what a writer can write.

Oh man, this make me glad I am not a fiction writer but just a poet.

 

[kokotg]

25 minutes ago, regentrude said:

 

In my opinion, writers should write and make art. Their responsibility is to tell the stories that move them to the best of their artistic ability. The judgment is up to the readers, the critics, the publishing industry... but nobody should censor what a writer can write.

 

 

Yes, and this gets at essential questions about what censorship is...like of course people can write whatever they want and no one's going to stop them (well, with some exceptions for things that are actually illegal). And they can give it to whoever they want to read and these days they can self-publish it and sell it on Amazon. But generally a wider audience requires a publisher as a go between (not always! The Martian!), and it's not censorship if a publisher chooses not to publish your book. 

[Pam in CT]

5 minutes ago, Heartstrings said:

I haven't seen a huge movement towards authors writing outside of their experience, although I see a lot of harsh critiques when it goes wrong.  I have seen a lot more of this argument being made when it comes to TV and movies.  People complain about a neurotypical person being tasked with playing an autistic person, or an able bodied actor playing a disabled character.   

(well, men write women characters and women write men characters all the time, and always have. Some more successfully than others.)

[Pam in CT]

re "censorship" vs "criticism"

4 minutes ago, kokotg said:

Yes, and this gets at essential questions about what censorship is...like of course people can write whatever they want and no one's going to stop them ... it's not censorship if a publisher chooses not to publish your book. 

right. Nor is it censorship if folks critique your book, or express a view that the character you created in your book doesn't register as authentic.

Or even express a view that white authors shouldn't create POC characters, or CIS authors LGBT characters or whatever.

Criticism isn't censorship.

 

 

[regentrude]

27 minutes ago, kokotg said:

it's not censorship if a publisher chooses not to publish your book. 

Completely agree.

[kokotg]

27 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

(well, men write women characters and women write men characters all the time, and always have. Some more successfully than others.)

Yeah..I mentioned that up in one my rambly posts...I wonder why that is? Maybe as simple as that it's been a convention for so long that we don't give it much thought. 

[Pam in CT]

34 minutes ago, kokotg said:

Yeah..I mentioned that up in one my rambly posts...I wonder why that is? Maybe as simple as that it's been a convention for so long that we don't give it much thought. 

maybe. 

But maybe also male writers were doing a not-very-authentic job with a whole lot of female characters for hundreds of years (see: DH Lawrence, Women in Love) and women weren't "calling it out" as inauthentic in real time because reasons.

which maybe is saying the same thing a different way.

 

There are some similarities between patriarchy and other forms of power.  But important differences also.

[ktgrok]

2 hours ago, Pam in CT said:

 

I concur (I think) with you that the authorial stakes are higher when a writer sets out to create a character whose authenticity can be tested by real people who actually have lived with a experiences only imagined by the author, whether that is miscarriage or job loss or the border indignities and cultural joys of the Latino at the border you posit.

But that is not a reason for an author not to TRY to imagine their way into experiences not their own.  It may turn out to be a bust!  It may come off wooden and stilted and dopey!  OK!  Many more books and characters miss the mark than hit.  Better to aim ambitious and fall short, than not try.

 

I agree, to the point where one of my own published novels has a person of Puerto Rican heritage as a main character! BUT, the point of the book was not to show what life is like as a person of mixed heritage. That was secondary to the plot. 

I think in books where their person's culture/heritage/gender/etc is the main point, it is better for that to be written by someone who actually has experience. I totally can empathize with say, Native American's being angry when books supposedly about the Native experience but written by non Native people get things very wrong. And truly, not sure you CAN get it all right if you are not from that culture/gender. 

Now, again, if the person's gender/culture/ethnicity is secondary to the plot, and not the whole point of the book, I think it is way less of a big deal. But if I'm picking out a novel to help my student understand more and empathize more with the experience of growing up Black in America, it makes way more sense to pick a book by someone who actually DID grow up Black in America. Otherwise, too much is pure speculation on the point of the author. Now, if I'm picking a fun mystery novel that happens to have a Black character, I'm less concerned about the author not being Black. 

Same with gender. If it is a novel ABOUT say, going through puberty and getting your period for the first time, I want it written by a woman who had that experience, not a man who has never had a cramp or had to buy a bra. But if it is crime fiction or police procedural and the focus is on finding the serial killer not dealing with gender politics in the criminal justice system, I'm find with a male author writing a female character. 

So, it depends? When choosing books for educational merit I want the author to be an expert, basically. And you can't be an expert on the lived experience of a particular culture if you are not from that culture. 

And ANYONE writing about the lived experience of another culture/gender/etc would be wise to seek out feedback from someone who is of that culture, preferably multiple people, and then take their critique seriously. 

Edited August 8, 2023 by ktgrok

[kokotg]

Just now, Pam in CT said:

maybe. 

But maybe also male writers were doing a not-very-authentic job with a whole lot of female characters for hundreds of years (see: DH Lawrence, Women in Love) and women weren't "calling it out" as inauthentic in real time because reasons.

which maybe is saying the same thing a different way.

 

There are some similarities between patriarchy and other forms of power.  But important differences also.

Yeah. Lots of groups, including women, were historically shut out of the publishing world or given very limited access to it. But then you couldn't really write about, say, every day life in Victorian England without women characters the way you could leave out Black characters without anyone thinking that was weird. 

I remember reading something years ago where Anne Tyler was criticized or at least questioned for not having Black characters in her books and her answer was something about how she didn't feel like she could write Black characters well because that wasn't her experience. But that is the danger...a fictional Baltimore where everyone is white that looks nothing like the real Baltimore. For example. Oh! Handmaid's Tale, too! People talked about this when the show first came out...in the book, Atwood literally ships all the Black people off to camps in the midwest somewhere so she doesn't have to deal with them. But then the show addresses the problem by creating a weirdly post racial, colorblind dystopia, which doesn't seem better really (disclaimer: I've only watched the first season...maybe it's different later). But I remember one of the show runners being like, "what was the alternative? an all white cast?" And...yeah. I don't know! 

[kokotg]

And then there's also how rarely we even ask the question the other way: https://www.theroot.com/should-a-black-writer-write-white-characters-1790875261

(I know there's more to this than white authors/Black characters and vice versa; that's just where my brain is going at the moment)

Edited August 8, 2023 by kokotg

[ktgrok]

29 minutes ago, kokotg said:

Yeah. Lots of groups, including women, were historically shut out of the publishing world or given very limited access to it. But then you couldn't really write about, say, every day life in Victorian England without women characters the way you could leave out Black characters without anyone thinking that was weird. 

I remember reading something years ago where Anne Tyler was criticized or at least questioned for not having Black characters in her books and her answer was something about how she didn't feel like she could write Black characters well because that wasn't her experience. But that is the danger...a fictional Baltimore where everyone is white that looks nothing like the real Baltimore. For example. Oh! Handmaid's Tale, too! People talked about this when the show first came out...in the book, Atwood literally ships all the Black people off to camps in the midwest somewhere so she doesn't have to deal with them. But then the show addresses the problem by creating a weirdly post racial, colorblind dystopia, which doesn't seem better really (disclaimer: I've only watched the first season...maybe it's different later). But I remember one of the show runners being like, "what was the alternative? an all white cast?" And...yeah. I don't know! 

This is why I think there is a difference between writing secondary characters and writing a book mainly about a certain experience. 

[Pam in CT]

I fully agree about secondary v primary characters, and incidental v plot-central storylines.

And I think a gifted writer with indirect but intimate fellow-traveler experience (a spouse who's nursed the love of their lives through cancer, a parent of a beloved child with severe autism, a sibling of a parent whose child died) can credibly imagine their way into such experiences.  In the YA world, for example, John Green does a credible job of imagining his way into plot-central experiences that could not have all been his own.

And I also do think there's a difference between imagining UP the power differential (ie black writers writing white characters, gay writers writing cis characters etc) vs white male Christian writers imagining DOWN those same differences.  The very nature of being power-disadvantaged is that it is a matter of survival to understand the nature of the powerful. The reverse is not true.  

[Melissa Louise]

I really disagree.

The nature of the writer is to take on multiple perspectives, and - as a matter of art - to understand the nature of both the powerful and the powerless.

I guess I am thinking of literary writers here, more than I am commercial.

 

[Melissa Louise]

5 hours ago, kokotg said:

Yes, and this gets at essential questions about what censorship is...like of course people can write whatever they want and no one's going to stop them (well, with some exceptions for things that are actually illegal). And they can give it to whoever they want to read and these days they can self-publish it and sell it on Amazon. But generally a wider audience requires a publisher as a go between (not always! The Martian!), and it's not censorship if a publisher chooses not to publish your book. 

I think what PEN is concerned about is pressure being put on publishers not to publish books they would otherwise (or have already!) choose or have chosen. Especially when the pressure comes from employees within a publishing house, or those outside it, who do not understand that many publishers hold to the principles above.

Of course, publishers can reject a book for any reason.

I see the intervention of PEN (not widely known as a conservative body) as an indication there's some trouble in understanding the principles, and it's worth reaffirming them. 

 

[Pam in CT]

re distinction between taking on multiple perspectives and writing from vantage point of different identity dimensions

12 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

I really disagree.

The nature of the writer is to take on multiple perspectives, and - as a matter of art - to understand the nature of both the powerful and the powerless.

I guess I am thinking of literary writers here, more than I am commercial.

 

I agree with the bolded, but don't see it as quite the same as creation of characters with particular identity dimensions.

For example, two of America's most gifted writers are William Faulkner and Toni Morrison; both had glorious command of their craft; both wrote powerfully about the nature of the powerful and the powerless (generally) and of race (specifically).  Virtually all of Faultkern's fully drawn characters are white, however; and virtually all of Morrison's fully drawn characters are black.  Both were gifted enough (and, as it happened, well-read enough as well) to write anything they wanted.  But both chose to create their (fully drawn) characters from within their respective "side" of the power dimension they were exploring.

(Not saying at all that authors shouldn't be "allowed" -- whatever that even means -- to write what they feel moved to try, certainly including characters outside their personal lane of personal experience.  If it works awesome, and if it falters or flops that's OK too  More that I do believe it is possible to explore the nature of the powerless from vantage points other than inside characters.)

[Melissa Louise]

This is more for Pam - there's something I want to nut out in my own head about the way that 'authenticity' becomes privileged over 'art', and that it's short-sighted because great (or even good!) art is one of the most powerful ways we have to empathize with the other as human.

[Pam in CT]

1 minute ago, Melissa Louise said:

This is more for Pam - there's something I want to nut out in my own head about the way that 'authenticity' becomes privileged over 'art', and that it's short-sighted because great (or even good!) art is one of the most powerful ways we have to empathize with the other as human.

+1000.

[Melissa Louise]

Just now, Pam in CT said:

re distinction between taking on multiple perspectives and writing from vantage point of different identity dimensions

I agree with the bolded, but don't see it as quite the same as creation of characters with particular identity dimensions.

For example, two of America's most gifted writers are William Faulkner and Toni Morrison; both had glorious command of their craft; both wrote powerfully about the nature of the powerful and the powerless (generally) and of race (specifically).  Virtually all of Faultkern's fully drawn characters are white, however; and virtually all of Morrison's fully drawn characters are black.  Both were gifted enough (and, as it happened, well-read enough as well) to write anything they wanted.  But both chose to create their (fully drawn) characters from within their respective "side" of the power dimension they were exploring.

(Not saying at all that authors shouldn't be "allowed" -- whatever that even means -- to write what they feel moved to try, certainly including characters outside their personal lane of personal experience.  If it works awesome, and if it falters or flops that's OK too  More that I do believe it is possible to explore the nature of the powerless from vantage points other than inside characters.)

I guess I don't really understand the idea that we should 'write outside our personal lane' or inside it, really! 

All of life, including the life inside my mind, is my personal lane.

I am likewise glad I only write poetry/prose poetry, though I've recently begun a hybrid piece that focuses on a young autistic girl and a Russian poet- survivor of the labour camps - and not for one moment have I stopped to think about whether either is in my lane (one is, one isn't).

The primary responsibility of the author is, imo, to the work, rather than to social ideas about what my lane is. 

This conversation is reminding me of the one thing my ex and I never argued about, lol

 

 

[Rosie_0801]

I read an article on Aeon back in the day saying how badly written autistic characters feel like cultural appropriation to autistic readers. I agreed with that, but they were the beginning of the genre. Graeme Simsion's trilogy showed what is possible when you *do your research.* It is very obvious that book three took into account the criticism for not having done the research that he hadn't realised was there to be done.

[kokotg]

5 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

I think what PEN is concerned about is pressure being put on publishers not to publish books they would otherwise (or have already!) choose or have chosen. Especially when the pressure comes from employees within a publishing house, or those outside it, who do not understand that many publishers hold to the principles above.

Of course, publishers can reject a book for any reason.

I see the intervention of PEN (not widely known as a conservative body) as an indication there's some trouble in understanding the principles, and it's worth reaffirming them. 

 

I guess, again, I'm just curious about what specific examples this post is reacting to. And I say that as someone who does feel like there's less room than there should be for thoughtful disagreement and multiple perspectives these days and that that probably does spill over into what writers feel comfortable putting out there. I'm not uninterested in those issues or unsympathetic to PEN's concerns. The recent example that comes to mind is American Dirt (which I haven't read)...so book about Mexican migrants criticized because it was written by a white woman. But then when you look at that story closely, it's more complicated than that. Like, for one thing, it did get published, and it got a ton of advance publicity, and THEN some people were like, "but hold up..." From Vox's explainer on that whole thing: https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/1/22/21075629/american-dirt-controversy-explained-jeanine-cummins-oprah-flatiron

Quote

The aesthetic question is more complicated than it might initially appear. People sometimes flatten critiques like the one American Dirt is facing into a pat declaration that no one is allowed to write about groups of which they are not a member, which opponents can then declare to be nothing but rank censorship and an existential threat to fiction: “If we have permission to write only about our own personal experience,” Lionel Shriver declared in the New York Times in 2016, “there is no fiction, but only memoir.” But the most prominent voices in this debate have tended to say that it is entirely possible to write about a particular group without belonging to it. You just have to do it well — and part of doing it well involves treating your characters as human beings, and not luxuriating in and fetishizing their trauma.

 So I question whether there really is a big movement saying no one can write about characters with identities that aren't their own, or if we're just critiquing the ways in which they do so more and/or differently than we did in the past. Which I think is entirely fair. Because, again, there ARE plenty of books like that getting published and not getting that same pushback, even when they become popular. 

[Melissa Louise]

5 minutes ago, kokotg said:

I guess, again, I'm just curious about what specific examples this post is reacting to. And I say that as someone who does feel like there's less room than there should be for thoughtful disagreement and multiple perspectives these days and that that probably does spill over into what writers feel comfortable putting out there. I'm not uninterested in those issues or unsympathetic to PEN's concerns. The recent example that comes to mind is American Dirt (which I haven't read)...so book about Mexican migrants criticized because it was written by a white woman. But then when you look at that story closely, it's more complicated than that. Like, for one thing, it did get published, and it got a ton of advance publicity, and THEN some people were like, "but hold up..." From Vox's explainer on that whole thing: https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/1/22/21075629/american-dirt-controversy-explained-jeanine-cummins-oprah-flatiron

 So I question whether there really is a big movement saying no one can write about characters with identities that aren't their own, or if we're just critiquing the ways in which they do so more and/or differently than we did in the past. Which I think is entirely fair. Because, again, there ARE plenty of books like that getting published and not getting that same pushback, even when they become popular. 

My understanding of critique is that it doesn't involve pressure on publishing houses not to publish, nor does it involve pressure on writers to withdraw manuscripts.

My understanding of critique is that it takes the form of a text in response to a text - but does not have, as a role, any pressure on anyone but the consumer. 

[Pam in CT]

re "lanes"

4 minutes ago, Melissa Louise said:

I guess I don't really understand the idea that we should 'write outside our personal lane' or inside it, really! 

All of life, including the life inside my mind, is my personal lane.

I am likewise glad I only write poetry/prose poetry, though I've recently begun a hybrid piece that focuses on a young autistic girl and a Russian poet- survivor of the labour camps - and not for one moment have I stopped to think about whether either is in my lane (one is, one isn't).

The primary responsibility of the author is, imo, to the work, rather than to social ideas about what my lane is. 

This conversation is reminding me of the one thing my ex and I never argued about, lol

 

 

It is AWESOME that all of life, including all the life of your mind/ imagination, is your lane. And you ABSOLUTELY can and should write from everything you experience within life / your life / your imagination and d@mn the torpedoes and critiques and social ideas about your "qualifications" to write whatever you want from whatever perspective you wish.  On all of that I fully concur with the PEN statement and what I think you're saying here. 

And I hope you DO launch the hybrid with the autistic girl and Russian labor camp survivor. And that work will speak for itself. If it registers and resonates that is awesome and if it stumbles a bit that is OK too... live and learn, learn and polish, polish and refine the craft (and to Rosie's point, the research), brush yourself off and start the next one.

 

I read American Dirt.  She did do the research. And while I can't speak, personally, to how authentically Mexican her writing presents.... I can say, personally, she did pretty well with the experiences of trauma, and motherhood, and dissociation, and walking wounded; all of which were, also, plot-central. I wouldn't categorize it with Faulkner or Morrison but the idea that she wasn't "qualified" to write it  is.... silly.

 

[Melissa Louise]

10 minutes ago, Rosie_0801 said:

I read an article on Aeon back in the day saying how badly written autistic characters feel like cultural appropriation to autistic readers. I agreed with that, but they were the beginning of the genre. Graeme Simsion's trilogy showed what is possible when you *do your research.* It is very obvious that book three took into account the criticism for not having done the research that he hadn't realised was there to be done.

It's interesting.

My introduction to Aboriginal culture back in the day (and longstanding support for Aboriginal land rights) came through Patricia Wrightson's children's novels.  She has been accused of appropriation more recently by post-modern academics, although she was, IMO (and that of editors and writers, both Anglo and not) very respectful in her time for the inclusion of Aboriginal mythology, and her attempts to create an Australian mythology that centered it.

Inclusion (whether by one of the same lane or not) can be a radical, and positive act.

 

[Melissa Louise]

7 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

re "lanes"

It is AWESOME that all of life, including all the life of your mind/ imagination, is your lane. And you ABSOLUTELY can and should write from everything you experience within life / your life / your imagination and d@mn the torpedoes and critiques and social ideas about your "qualifications" to write whatever you want from whatever perspective you wish.  On all of that I fully concur with the PEN statement and what I think you're saying here. 

And I hope you DO launch the hybrid with the autistic girl and Russian labor camp survivor. And that work will speak for itself. If it registers and resonates that is awesome and if it stumbles a bit that is OK too... live and learn, learn and polish, polish and refine the craft (and to Rosie's point, the research), brush yourself off and start the next one.

 

I read American Dirt.  She did do the research. And while I can't speak, personally, to how authentically Mexican her writing presents.... I can say, personally, she did pretty well with the experiences of trauma, and motherhood, and dissociation, and walking wounded; all of which were, also, plot-central. I wouldn't categorize it with Faulkner or Morrison but the idea that she wasn't "qualified" to write it  is.... silly.

 

Oh, I am pretty accepting of the stumbles, lol

I think PEN is concerned, not that work stumbles, but that regardless of whether or not it stumbles, there is pressure applied to publish or not publish based on author characteristics. Not on what is inherent in the text.

Edited August 8, 2023 by Melissa Louise

[kokotg]

Is the PEN link showing the same thing it showed last night or is there a longer thing up there now? I swear I didn't see the whole thing last night. Which does not, of course, mean it wasn't there 😂

[kokotg]

25 minutes ago, Pam in CT said:

 

 

I read American Dirt.  She did do the research. And while I can't speak, personally, to how authentically Mexican her writing presents.... I can say, personally, she did pretty well with the experiences of trauma, and motherhood, and dissociation, and walking wounded; all of which were, also, plot-central. I wouldn't categorize it with Faulkner or Morrison but the idea that she wasn't "qualified" to write it  is.... silly.

 

It looks like it's sold 3 million copies, so in this particular case at any rate the backlash only helped commercially. Whether she'd rather have sold fewer copies in exchange for not having to go through all the controversy or not, I have no idea of course. It doesn't sound fun. 

[Melissa Louise]

15 minutes ago, kokotg said:

Is the PEN link showing the same thing it showed last night or is there a longer thing up there now? I swear I didn't see the whole thing last night. Which does not, of course, mean it wasn't there 😂

It was there. 

[ktgrok]

1 hour ago, Melissa Louise said:

This is more for Pam - there's something I want to nut out in my own head about the way that 'authenticity' becomes privileged over 'art', and that it's short-sighted because great (or even good!) art is one of the most powerful ways we have to empathize with the other as human.

I agree, but I also see the issue with someone empathizing with the "other" only to later realize that the "other" is not at anything like it was depicted in the book. At that point, the art is perpetuating sterotypes, which is something people are rightly concerned about. 

There is also the concern that some novels/books may venture into a literary version of blackface. 

[Melissa Louise]

Just now, ktgrok said:

I agree, but I also see the issue with someone empathizing with the "other" only to later realize that the "other" is not at anything like it was depicted in the book. At that point, the art is perpetuating sterotypes, which is something people are rightly concerned about. 

There is also the concern that some novels/books may venture into a literary version of blackface. 

I kinda think that empathy leads to fewer, not greater, stereotypes. And I'm not sure that artistic empathy is the same thing as everyday empathy, either. 

Can you explain more about your second point? I'm not sure I completely understand it.

I think my underlying issue with own voices as a dominant mode (which it isn't, yet, although YA is getting there) rather than as a segment of the list meeting particular reading needs, be they universal or specific, is that it seems to involve a rejection of the principles of humanism, and the idea that we are more alike than we are different. 

But I would have to flesh that out more in my own mind.  

 

 

[Rosie_0801]

10 minutes ago, ktgrok said:

I agree, but I also see the issue with someone empathizing with the "other" only to later realize that the "other" is not at anything like it was depicted in the book. At that point, the art is perpetuating sterotypes, which is something people are rightly concerned about. 

There is also the concern that some novels/books may venture into a literary version of blackface. 

Yes. That is exactly how I feel when I see NT people recommending 'The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time' to other NT people on how to understand we autistics. I value it as basically the beginning of the genre, but it is a very bad book to learn from and it bothers me when I see it on lists of classics because people don't yet understand that it is a very bad book to learn from. We haven't got to the part of history where everyone says "Oh yeah, it's dreadful bigoted stuff, but a good example of how people thought back then." I hope, when we get to that part of history, the author isn't pilloried for not knowing what he didn't know, because he doesn't deserve that.

[Melissa Louise]

Just now, Rosie_0801 said:

Yes. That is exactly how I feel when I see NT people recommending 'The Curious Case of the Dog in the Night-Time' to other NT people on how to understand we autistics. I value it as basically the beginning of the genre, but it is a very bad book to learn from and it bothers me when I see it on lists of classics because people don't yet understand that it is a very bad book to learn from.

It's widely taught, and in all the HSC lesson plans I've seen, there is an emphasis on the fact that this character does not represent 'autism'. Most students come to it primed with a critique of this aspect. 

Its taught because it's short, easy to comprehend yet technically accomplished, and appeals to boys. 

Do you have a suggestion for something I could use as a related text? I don't teach it myself but I tutor kids who study it.

[Rosie_0801]

Just now, Melissa Louise said:

It's widely taught, and in all the HSC lesson plans I've seen, there is an emphasis on the fact that this character does not represent 'autism'. Most students come to it primed with a critique of this aspect. 

Its taught because it's short, easy to comprehend yet technically accomplished, and appeals to boys. 

Do you have a suggestion for something I could use as a related text? I don't teach it myself but I tutor kids who study it.

Lots of crappy quality books are taught in schools. *shrug*

The rest of the reading population, too old to have studied it in school, do *not* know this.

I'm glad you told me this though. This explains why it pops up on so many modern classics lists.

A book that would appeal to both boys and schools? No. 'The State of Grace' is kind of 'Looking for Alibrandi'-ish, but it wouldn't appeal to boys. I don't know if they haven't been written yet, or if I haven't found them because I don't go looking for boy books, or whether they kind of can't be written because humanising autistic people requires too much emotional stuff to be considered appealing to boys. 'The Reason I Jump' is good, but not fiction, so perhaps schools won't want it?

[Melissa Louise]

Just now, Rosie_0801 said:

Lots of crappy quality books are taught in schools. *shrug*

The rest of the reading population, too old to have studied it in school, do *not* know this.

I'm glad you told me this though. This explains why it pops up on so many modern classics lists.

A book that would appeal to both boys and schools? No. 'The State of Grace' is kind of 'Looking for Alibrandi'-ish, but it wouldn't appeal to boys. I don't know if they haven't been written yet, or if I haven't found them because I don't go looking for boy books, or whether they kind of can't be written because humanising autistic people requires too much emotional stuff to be considered appealing to boys. 'The Reason I Jump' is good, but not fiction, so perhaps schools won't want it?

I don't actually know anyone who has read it who isn't in school! I'm sure some people do. 

I can use non fiction as a related text, so I'll check that last one out, thanks. 

 

[Melissa Louise]

@Rosie_0801

Film or book?