This week marks the second anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. You remember: neo-Nazis, torches, one fatality and a US President claiming “You also had some very fine people on both sides.”
Bullshit.
But that's not what this post is about. It's about labels, how we use them and, perhaps, how they use us. This is what I wrote on my own blog Shanghai Noir in the days following this horror show.
last week
I ran into an article by Lan Samantha Chang entitled Writers, Protect Your Inner Life. Sam’s day job is director of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. When school’s out, she gives writing workshops in Paris (2014) and Napa (2016).
At Napa, Sam gave a craft lecture on the interior life. She gave us a
handout called “Ways to Nurture Your Inner Life”. 3 of the 14 tips
involved getting off social media. I thought her article would cover the
same territory but I had missed the subtitle .
A Writing Life and a Writing Career Are Two Separate Things.
these past few months
Ever since the publication of The Dancing Girl and the Turtle,
I’ve been obsessed with social media. My own, of course. I’m looking
for a cool photo to post on Instagram. Trying to grab hold of the
merry-go-round called Twitter. Even this blog had become part of my
social media image.
This is not an experience unique to writers. As Sam so aptly notes, there is
considerable pressure in this [US] society to have a strong and well-defined outer
life. In New York, that might include real estate and private schools.
In Iowa, this might include regular family dinners made from personally
gathered, wild edibles. This pressure began way back with our country’s
founders, many of whom believed in the existence of the elect – in the
idea that some of us are predestined to salvation. This idea can be
logically extended to mean that some of us are not. Because we have no
way, when we’re alive, of knowing which of us is predestined, it is
important to behave as if.
For a writer, this pressure to groom our outer lives is sales-driven.
Our publishers, agents and peers tell us that we must talk about our
writing. We must expose ourselves. There is no other way to attract and
retain readers. Yet most writers struggle to do so. It’s like grasping
mercury with your bare hands: painful and ultimately impossible. Again,
Sam says it best:
the sincere reaction to
making meaningful art is often speechlessness. We make art about what we
cannot understand through any other method.
right now
Writing should be my priority, not winning the Miss Congeniality
award. All the blood should be going into my novel-in-progress. But just
as the creative process is near impossible to dissect, you can’t control
its ebb and flow either.
Thinking, fast and slow
was once a business school mantra. It’s also a great metaphor for the
act of writing. A novel contains a million moving parts, all of which
connect in ways known only to the author. But my mind can only hold so
much information. So I’m in a tearing rush to get it all on paper before
the words leak out my ears.
At the same time, I need to slow down. Let life seep into my novel
because it’s life that informs and deepens writing. By life, I don’t
mean autobiographical arcana. I want my novel to burst with living,
breathing human beings in all their wonder, beauty and horror. I’m
referring now to Charlottesville.
last night
Like most people, I’ve read numerous of eyewitness accounts of the
nightmare now known as #Charlottesville. Some called it a reversal of
the civil rights movement. Others saw the rise of the Third Reich. In
both cases, it’s unabashed violence against the helpless, merely because
they can be labelled as “other”.
Danica Bornstein
has written a powerful and painful exploration of her own reactions to
Charlottesville. She’s fully cognizant of the privileges her white skin
accords her. Yet, as a Jew, she is also deeply afraid. Nazis surround a
synagogue and the congregation hides the Torah for safekeeping. We’re
not talking about Nuremburg 1937 but Charlottesville 2017. Bornstein
reminds us that we’re not so removed from the Holocaust as we’d like to
think.
Every oppression is special
and unique and one of anti-Semitism’s key qualities is its rhythm. It
is not relentless; it is cyclical. During the good times everyone but us
starts to forget anti-Semitism and starts to think of it as a thing of
the past. […] But then something goes wrong in that place – the economy
crashes, unemployment rises, the wheels begin to fall off – and the
active phase of anti-Semitism begins.
When I was in my 20’s, I went to New York City with some girlfriends.
In those days, it was possible to jam a taxi full of giggling girls. I
was smooshed up against the cab driver, who proceeded to tell me his
life’s story.
While a student at the music conservatory in Vienna, he lost his
hearing. He needed surgery and the US was the only place he could get
it. And so he went, thus becoming the only member of his family to
survive the Holocaust. He remarried and raised a family. He was terribly
proud of his daughter the lawyer and his son the doctor.
At the end of the ride, this fellow offered me a piece of hard white
candy. Of course, my mother had taught me never to take candy from
strangers. But I knew that if I refused this gift, I would break this
gentle soul’s heart. Besides, I was with friends who could rush me to
the hospital. And so I took the candy, popped it into my mouth and lived
to tell the tale.
today
I don’t think I’d do the same today. Life feels so much more dangerous. There
are assholes and creeps everywhere it seems. Not to speak of the crazies
who come with semi-automatic weapons to Charlottesville. It’s getting
hard to know who to trust.
Our prehistoric forefathers had it easier. They could tell, just by
looking or smelling, whether safety or danger lay ahead. We’ve inherited
that same instinct for survival but have somehow lost our ability to
read the signs. We mistake skin color for intent, religion for
acceptability, clothing as a political statement. We like to
over-generalize, categorize, and label.
But our labels are all wrong. Should I fear every white man with a
shaved head and tattoos? Can I safely associate only with those people
who look and act and sound like me? When I cross the street at night, am
I being foolish, racist or both?
in retrospect
A month ago, I wrote an article for booksbywomen.org called We Are Not Labels.
I fulminated there about the various labels affixed to my forehead:
female, Asian, immigrant. But my conclusion was that, for a writer,
labels are a necessary evil. They’re how readers find you. I wrote:
Labels are shortcuts. They
function as signposts or runes for the initiated to discern the truth.
That’s all. No need to get our knickers in a twist.
I was wrong. Labels aren’t shortcuts; they’re pitfalls. They don’t
all wash off. Some of them can get you killed. As long as we navigate
through life using only labels, we don’t have to think. And in our
thoughtlessness, Charlottesville is doomed to recur.
Danica Bornstein reminds us that skin color cannot be the only
measure of friend or foe. That beneath whatever shade of dermis you
might have, lies a wealth of complexity.
Sam Chang teaches me not to worry about the outer life. Look instead
to the place inside that gives birth to your creativity. It’s the same
place that makes me, me and you, you.
Fascinating and edifying, Karen. Thank you. You've managed a broad sweep of very troubling, complex issues over a long period and kept the essentials clear and focused. I wish our 'leaders' could find and act on such clarity.
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By
Roz Morris aka @Roz_Morris . Blog: Nail Your Novel
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Readers of this blog will know how many fine authors choose to self-publish or are driven to it because they don’t fit a marketing niche. But when we go it alone, how do we build a brand? One important function that publishers used to perform was curation - taking the creme de la creme, producing it well, putting it out under an influential imprint. In the real world, that didn’t always count for much, but the reading public thinks it did - so to get credibility, indies have to replace it somehow. And here’s how we’re doing it. Publishing collectives Some indies band together to form an editorial board. Books aren’t published unless all members approve them. That takes a lot of trust and rigor, and all members have to be in tune with a particular type of reader. Perhaps not good for mavericks, but it’s the indie version of the niche publisher. The handpicked collection Some authors are gathering collections of writers whose work they admire. I was lucky enough to ca
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