Let’s not build walls, let’s build bridges

I was going through my Twitter feed a couple of days ago, when this post jumped at me. My heart sank as I read it, again, and again. And then, I scrolled down, read the comments, and was further crushed by the reactions which felt so… unmeditated, powered more by the on-going atmosphere of a politically correct standpoint than by any reasoned thinking. So, here is the tweet: “me texting friends who don’t read about this phenomenon of white women authors marrying men of color, taking their last names, and writing from the POV of POC characters under a non-white name because their kids will be multiracial.”

Anyone who knows me a little knows that I check most of these boxes.

_ I am a white woman. Will it get to the point when I need to apologize for that? Why does the necessary, far too long in coming uplifting of a totally worthy cause have to mean the trampling and destruction of other people not belonging to that particular group? I loathe what was done (and continues to be done in too many places) to minorities throughout History. But how does accusing people like me of what is stated in that tweet help the cause of minorities? What does it achieve, except to perpetuate anger and resentment and, actually, become a form of reverse racism?

_ I’m an author (even though I became an author of fiction AFTER I married, and actually in parts THANKS to the encouragement and nudge of my Haitian and black husband who believed in me before I did – and these are the very words I used in my dedication to him in my first book).

_ I did add my husband’s name to my last name, actually mostly to please him, because I knew it meant a lot to him that I would carry his name, and also because I didn’t want to have a completely different name than our children.

_ Finally, I do write from the POVs of white AND POC characters, and yes, our children are multiracial.

Now, before I helplessly and irremediably paint myself into a corner (and in these days of fast and easy social media bashing, it doesn’t seem to take very much, which is why I usually stay carefully out of any types of debates online, but I can’t keep my mouth shut anymore), I would like to remind anyone who wanders on this blog that I believe in and wholeheartedly support the need for diversity, simply because books and culture should be representative of the world we live in, and the world we live in is composed of people of all types, backgrounds, and colors, and isn’t that glorious? I also recognize the reality of white privilege and the need to think deeply about it and to work consciously and constructively at fighting racism in all its manifestations. And no one is happier to see the many books coming out now with diverse characters. I only wish this had happened earlier, so I could have found more books portraying children like mine when they were at the age when I read for them. The theme that I have passionately lived my life by is one of building bridges to connect us all, with our common traits AND our differences and particularities. One only has to read my blogs (started in 2008) to have a confirmation of that. I believe racism and bigotry to be the natural children of fear and ignorance. (I won’t enter into the subject of financial interests at the heart of so many of our human history’s worst horrors and crimes. One recent book that touches upon this is the marvelous and indispensable novel of Rita Williams-Garcia, ‘A Sitting in St. James.”) I believe that if and when we know one another, when we know our common frailties and strengths, it is much harder to belittle, abuse or discriminate. Also, I may be naïve, but writing is such an arduous and intimate-pour-your-guts-out process that I find it difficult to believe that anyone would bring to their work the kind of calculated and perversely single-minded approach depicted in that tweet. No matter, let’s use it for the sake of argument and discussion.

If I understand it well, it basically accuses some white women of entering the state of marriage with the mid to long term view of using an exotic sounding name and the progeny born from that union for publication! Honestly! Is it not possible that an author fell in love, married, and was inspired, quite naturally, whether it was conscious or not, to feed her work with her life? Multiracial children? Yes, their experiences can differ from those of white children, especially in the US. I need to say that I do not feel at all that our daughters, of French, Haitian and Spanish heritage, biracial and born in the US but brought up in Nigeria, India, Bangladesh, Serbia and Madagascar, with most of their summers spent in France but also Haiti, approach or think of race in the same way as multiracial children born and bred in the US seem to (I happen to have very close friends with multiracial children who live in NYC).

My girls were lucky to attend international schools where welcoming new people from all over the world is the norm. During their first years, they lived in countries where their white mother was actually part of the minority. When we moved to Serbia, our first posting to a VERY white country, I did wonder briefly how it would go, but there were no issues other than our teenage girl being easily spotted if she happened to skip classes to go to McDonald. If you ask our daughters where they have their best memories, both will tell you Serbia.

So, why would anyone find it abnormal or even unconscionable, as the tweet and the comments it elicited seem to imply, that the mother of multiracial children, whether she’s white or not, would use her life experience in her books? I don’t get it. If her story is sincere, authentic, that any necessary research is done with care and thoroughness, that she is respectful and avoids the white savior trap, then, shouldn’t we focus on the literary qualities of the work, rather than the color of its author? In this day and age, it seems not. And what on earth is a “non-white name?”

I recently had an exchange with a writer/author friend who had an expatriate life, like mine, and her agent had submitted her novel with a protagonist who arrives in Brazil as a foreigner and shares her first impressions about this new country. The publisher rejected it and sermoned the author because she “shouldn’t be writing from a place she’s not a native of.” What type of hogwash is this? First of all, that statement effectively forbids all migrants to write about anything but the country in which they were born. With this kind of mindset, we’d never have had authors like Pearl Buck, Paul Bowles, Louis Bromfield… these are the first names that pop into my mind, but of course, there’ll be many others. Madison Smartt Bell (a white American man) would not have written his magnificent trilogy about the Haitian Revolution for instance. What of Laurie Halse Anderson’s trilogy, “The Seeds of America” (“Chains” was a National Book Award finalist and received the 2009 Scott O’Dell award for historical fiction)? Or M.T Anderson’s two-volume-masterpiece “The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation” (winner of the National Book Award and Michael Printz Honor books)? Or is historical fiction exempt from these new rules? What about science-fiction writers? My mother is not a native of France where she migrated to flee the Franco regime when she was 25. So, could she not write about France, even though she’s lived there ever since? What happens to imagination? Creativity? Aren’t there as many stories as there are people on this earth? Any story that I write (again, with authenticity, respect and proper research when and wherever necessary) will be unique, the same way I am unique. Let the best story win, regardless of the color, genre, nationality, and age of its author.

Why not build bridges, to use this metaphor I love so much, rather than erect barriers and separations? What do these dictates achieve apart from stifling creativity (well, and let’s not forget allowing a person a brief moment of stardom on social media? That tweet was actually a screenshot from a tiktok video posted by a young woman. Do we realize, as a society, the perversity of the need to constantly create online content? But that’s another debate.) I can understand the need to vent frustration. The publishing process is currently so slow as to feel tortoiselike (for months and months and months, I’ve been waiting to hear back from editors and agents). It’s tough out there, I know. More than ever. But I don’t believe that disparaging authors, especially in such a sweeping generalist way, whatever their background may be, is the solution. Again, let the best stories win! Isn’t this, ultimately, the reason we write? Because we love and want to share good stories?

Remembering Scribbly

Well, fumbling notwithstanding, I’ve returned to the Scribbly image for blog number two’s title. I like it. It has an assiduous and industrious flavor, and a childlike quality that appeals to me. It also reminds me of a little witch character I created, some years ago. Her name was Scribbly, and she wanted to write a perfect novel more than anything else in the world. Any similarity with this blog’s author is, of course, totally fortuitous – not. Scribbly was one of my very first characters, born about the same time as Ifeanyi Amadi, in fact. But she had a flaw. She took too much after her creator. Or rather, her creator poured far too much of herself into this little witch. She didn’t let her be. I was very new at this creative writing business. I didn’t know we have to listen to our characters. They know what will make them vibrant and alive. Several years later, hundreds, thousands of pages later, I STILL find it hard to let my stories and my characters be, at times. The concept of letting go is not something I have organically integrated, in spite of all the psycho-soul searching-book reading-etc. But I work on it. In a way that’s both me (disorganized, scattered, and plagued with procrastination and lots, and lots of fumbling) and Scribbly (eager, hard-working, determined and persevering.) Who knows, maybe, one day, I’ll take that manuscript out of the drawer where it’s been sleeping all these years, and something will come out of it. Or, Scribbly will remain a character whose sole purpose was to help me on my writer’s long, and bumpy journey.