There is something I have wanted to write more in depth, but have been hesitant, because I want my writing to be separate from my personal and professional life, and I want my privacy to be respected. It puts me in a difficult place when the political climate directly impacts my current work, and people might question me or misrepresent or misconstrue me in ways which are hard not to refute without refering to those elements of my life. Please respect my privacy as I refer to anecdotes in those realms of my life to discuss my voice. I have survived a lifetime of emotional abuse where I was not taught to use my voice, and an emotionally abusive relationship with people (my family included) created a false narrative that thousands of people believed instead of my voice.
I was listening to an author speak about his works, and he answered a question about writing in voices that are not our personal experiece, and he responded much as the people around me in my support network have responded to my concerns in the past month. Concerns, I find women often take more seriously, and that sometimes opens us up to more impact from situations with people being loud questioning our intentions, particularly as "shut up Karen" ran rampant across the internet. I want to say that if I was not contientious and aware of circumstances, this book would not have come out the way it has. Someone behaved once as though I was stealing anyone else's story, which I am not. One comment I have seen in the past month is listening to people you want to help, but like any group of people, what they say is not homogeneous. So I want to say I have had readers and people involved in my creative process who are not like me, and I have listened to people who enter my creative process and discuss my concerns with me. The author's words, which were the same as those in my support network were "just be very careful (and there are resources for this that existed before the current dynamic) to ask why you are telling this story, and do it well." A friend said that this is the story on my heart, and that I have done the best with it that I can. No one who has been involved has ever said anything other than glowing responses to the representation of diversity and how it is addressed in my book, because it comes from my experiences and represents what I have to say. Which is why the book came about the way it did.
My professional life has been involved in a lot of high level fights, which have targeted me in ways that do not involve tear gas, water canons or rubber bullets, for over five years. That have been disruptive, and came immediately after the death of my mother. The current fight I am not part of, and it is not my fight, because my fight is in a different capacity, and has not started this summer. This summer, I have spoken up, as it evidenced in previous posts, for diversity in publishing, and I have offered support and specific guidance to POC, one who signed with an agent after specifically expressing her concerns that no agents would be interested in her voice.
When I joined the online writing community in the Spring, there was a panel at a writing convention of white men discussing how to write strong women characters, even though one of the panelists writes very misogynistic work. A woman's response was that panels should be only women discussing the topic. I reacted negatively to this extreme in March, and sadly someone I thought was nice, blocked me. The author I mentioned above said his first book was a working class woman in NYC in the 1930s, and he was none of those things. However, he said writing characters outside of his experience help him realize truths he does not see through his own experience, and help him voice those things within the context of the world he has created. I certainly found that to be true of my writing.
In the online blowout of the past month, I have been told my voice was invalid, when I tried to mention some of my personal experiences to provide context. It reminds me of a fight six years ago, where I was involved in high level solutions to help people, and the people I was trying to help and engage and listen to reacted to me like I was the enemy. Purely because of my background, where race was not in the equation. Because I came from a privileged background and had influence, which I tried to use to further their interests and cause, I was called "one of the Elites" the people they saw as the enemy. I have come to terms a long time ago that people have different abilities and levels of influence and skillsets, and that is ok and does not need to diminish the efforts of anyone on those different tiers.
Though my skin is a light complexion, and I had advantages, I also had advantages because I was a woman in science. That helped me be competitive in competing for "elite" opportunities. My mother was the only woman in her PhD program in Mathematics in Alabama. My mother taught at a mostly minority student body University in a major metropolitan area for most of her career, helping advise students coming from poor preparation background what career opportunities might be good, and realistic fits, for their abilities. Her grandfather had his business destroyed by the KKK in Alabama because he was not racist and served minority communities. My father's uncle married the widow of MLK Jr.'s only white advisor, who had grandchildren the same age as myself and my brother. These are the people who were at our holiday meals and camping with us in the mountains. These are the experiences I heard discussed around the dinner table. I have written previous posts about the diversity of the people in my life, as well as my involvement in leadership development camps for at risk youth. I have hired black interns who wanted to go into finance and set them up with fellow alumni to help them gain extra experience for the interview process, and shredded their underwritten c.v. which would not stand a chance to be competitive in the field of finance. There is nothing disingenuous about my life or the words on the page. When I try to tell people that this is my background and my experience, that is extremely painful - my grandfather was put out of business and died poor and alone because he could never recover from that, and was a victim of racism, despite the color of his skin. My father's step-cousin who grew up in a house of the inner circle of the civil rights movement experienced unimaginable trauma as a child and has had to seek years of counseling. These are scars my family bears. I do find it disingenuous to try to lessen that experience, or tell me that telling my story is superficial and "name dropping." When someone asks me why I am concerned about how the current climate migh effect the reception of my book, as if I am not allowed?, because I wrote my book FOR A PURPOSE born out of all of this pain and my experiences, and I do not want the purpose for which I wrote my book to be lost because suddenly I am lumped together with authors who are white women who have grown up in a bubble and do not bring ANY of this experience to their writing.
I mentioned that currently my fight has not involved police brutality as a protestor, first of all because I am thousands of miles away from the fight, and secondly, because my contributions are trying to solve the problems (and that includes solving the language and rhetoric problems) that are the reasons there are these political problems. I have been doing this for a long time, and I often work in a support and advisory role thousands of miles away successfully because I am not in the midst of bullets flying and can see the big picture more clearly. I do listen, not only to what the debate is about, but also how to improve the dialogue to translate two sides who do not understand each other. When I encounter a discussion with someone triggered by any constructive debate, it does hurt when they use a strange definition of what they perceive an "ally" to be, as if I fall outside that perview. As if trying to use my position to solve the actual root of the problem, and trying to think critically about how to improve the debate is a skillset that is not appreciated, though the people involved at those levels listen to me and hear what I say and help take steps to implement my contributions. I only get those answers by talking to people and trying to understand where the debate falls flat, so it feels like a double edged sword when I am doing "market research" and am attacked as if my contributions are wasted. I realize these descriptions are vague, purposely, and this is where my efforts to retain privacy and discuss my experiences without being too specific fall short. These are the experiences that are behind my voice, and my hope is they will not be thrown out with the bathwater.
My hope is that when my work is polished and presented to the publishing industry, this .voice is understood within the context of these strange times. That out of the material which could be produced by white authors, mine contributes to the conversation, and is my own original and unique voice that does not fall in categories, and is the kind that should be published during these uncertain times. It is my hope that these times will become less chaotic in the near future, by the time my book would reach print, and I work every day on the level of influence I am able, to contribute to that goal as well.
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