You’ll have to excuse me for being on a bit of a short fuse. It’s been a rough week, and we’re only halfway in. Multiple things have left me feeling raw. When this happens, I do what I do best: I write things. Keeping them contained only leads to worse outcomes.
Anyway, this post was sparked by an odd exchange involving a conversation about #OwnVoices and researching identities different from our own. Or, in this case, researching how to write our own identities.
I have never once, not in the nearly five years I’ve been a published author, researched how to write my own identity.
In a previous post, I mentioned how natural it was to shift to writing primarily characters who share most or all of my queerness and/or medical diagnoses. It comes as easily as breathing. My life experiences don’t need a Google search; I can just write them.
Anyone who has been around a while knows that I’m a pretty strong advocate for #OwnVoices, but they might not have any idea why nor why I think that still has limitations.
I’m not against writing about someone or something outside your experience. We all bring something in with us. My own kids have asked if I’ll write books with characters like them, even though we don’t share all our identities. No one person is going to share one hundred percent of everything with a character, unless they are writing an autobiography.
What I’m against is creating a culture where:
- authors primarily or exclusively write about a specific identity they don’t share
- an entire community then develops around books about that identity
- people who don’t share that identity are allowed to have a significant degree of control within the community, including deciding which books are good representation
- that community and its books are prioritized over all similar/related identities
- all books with similar/related identities are measured against the one prioritized
- authors who don’t share that identity are considered authorities, experts, or spokespeople
- authors who do share that identity are held to a higher standard
Not that people can’t figure out what I mean, but I’m not naming names here for a reason. It happens in more than one type of writing.
This isn’t about one author writing one book or even one author writing many books. It’s not about authors who write a broad range. It’s the collective of multiple authors over many years writing numerous books entirely about a specific something they have no firsthand experience with and often no secondhand experience either.
The problem is that because of these types of communities, where outsiders exclusively want to write about or speak about insiders, the ripple effect is large. It leads to insiders feeling we must “research” our own identities to get it “right.” It means we have to yell twice as loud to be heard, but when we do, we’re told to tone it down and not be so angry. It means if we write crappy books, outsiders can point at us and say, “See? They aren’t any better! At least MY book is good!” or “Sure, there are bad books by outsiders, but even insiders write crap!”
It means we no longer have the flexibility to write anything but perfectly-constructed #OwnVoices books.
I don’t know what the answer is because of a number of factors. It would likely take a collective effort on the part of multiple people to make change. What I do know is that I’ve felt the need to distance myself both from those communities and from people who make rules about what I’m “allowed” to write. Both sides often feel like they don’t especially care about those of us who might get caught in the crossfire.
There are 10 days left of NaNoWriMo, and I am really far behind on a novel that hits many of my identities but not all and some I don’t share. Back to writing, with the hope that I’ll at least get something right.
