662 words so far today — my intention is to write more, but I also promised the gf I would help her set up her classroom today. Manuscript total: 76,314. Building this novel out, one brick at a time.
10:16am update — up to 3,413 words, 79,065 total. The number is a little misleading; about a thousand of those words were copied and pasted from my original draft. Still!
Yesterday, I wrote an entire, separate blog post about this New Yorker article my gf sent me about Atticus Finch, the attorney who represents the falsely accused African American man, Tom Robinson, in To Kill a Mockingbird. I am so frustrated that I wrote the entire damn thing, complete with grappling with my own worries over whether or not I accidentally made Kasey a “white savior” in my novel Eastside / Westside / Love, despite trying so hard not to, and quoting a long chunk of Professor Eddie Glaude’s interview with CNN, and then my computer crashed and I lost the whole thing.
I didn’t come to a conclusion about whether or not Eastside / Westside / Love succeeded in its attempt to do something different in the conversation about race and class in America, or whether it’s just one more example of the tradition of white authors trying to alleviate their white guilt. After reflecting on the novel, I’ve decided I don’t think I’ll tackle the subject of race again, because the potential for me screwing it up and getting it wrong is just too high. I believe in taking risks as an author and writing things with a distant goal of making the world a better place in mind, but I also think that white people should probably shut up about race and do what we should’ve done a long time ago, which is to spend a helluva lot more time listening than talking.
Speaking of listening… I just saw that Season 3 of one of my favorite shows, Dear White People, just dropped on Netflix. Sign me up! Super excited to learn more about the secret society…
2 Comments
Maddy Avena · August 10, 2019 at 3:42 pm
I’m sad to hear that your inclination is to stop writing about race in your stories and books. I think you did a pretty good job in Eastside/Westside. There were teachable moments in the book and as white people we are on a spectrum of woke/not woke. I feel like what you did take on made a difference, made a ripple in the pond.
My pagan friend in community T. Thorn Coyle, a white woman, wrote a whole magical retelling of the Black Panthers’ story in The Panther Chronicles. I’d love it if you had time to read them and share your thoughts. I thought she did a tremendous job. And in the afterward, she does speak to being a white woman writing a Black woman’s story.
It’s risky and fraught with peril, but it’s OUR job as white people to educate other white people and we are going to stumble along the way. Please reconsider. I know you are courageous and willing to make mistakes and learn from them.
The Real Person!
Hmmm. My emotions and thoughts to your comment are mixed, Maddy. While I hear your point, I also wrestle with the extent to which I recreated tropes rather than breaking them down. I don’t think silence on the issue of race is appropriate or helpful, but I’m not convinced it was wise or appropriate of me to attempt to estimate the black experience in E / W / L. The jury is out.