The Difficulty of Intention & 'Death of the Author' by Bronwen Griffiths
An event occurred recently which caused me to reflect upon intention. A story of mine that’s been up on the Black Country Arts Foundry website for two years suddenly attracted attention – and not of the sort I initially welcomed. (The link to the story follows below this article). My story is loosely based on real life events and is told partly in the voice of a child. In the story I use the word ‘gypsy’. When I wrote the piece I was well aware that the word is now considered to be offensive. Happily it is not now in common parlance and we use the word ‘traveller’ instead. But when my brother and I were children, the word was widely used, including by my own mother, although I do not recall any particular prejudice on her part. However, my brother and I did hear from those around us, of the ‘bad’ things ‘gypsies’ did. My brother and I attended a local village school in the 1960’s. A small traveller community then lived in the village. I cannot remember exactly when it disa...