Often women of color writers get critiques that are unfair and do not take our work for it’s own merit but fixate on “tone,” “education,” and “politics.” I put these in quotations because they are coded words.
“Tone” — A reviewer takes issue with “tone” when what they really mean is that they feel implicated in what you have written. You should have broken it to them nicer, and because you didn’t everything you have said is invalid.
“Education” — A reviewer questions your education. In this context, “education” means a degree from a college or university. Obviously you have not had the requisite book learning to speak eloquently on the topic of your choice. This is especially true if the topic of your choice is your own life. How dare you write about your own life when you don’t even have a master’s degree in Arab American studies?
“Politics” — A reviewer thinks you should focus less on your politics and focus more on being a good writer. This is code for, “You colored people need to stop complaining and just get over it!”
Have you got any code words to add?
And I mean brilliant on a few levels, as this has to do with all the little (I mean very big and indefatigable) ways that oppression intersects with our art, our craft, the words we speak, how you must always demand your dignity and humanity in what you write and must always bring it the fuck on when someone attacks your dignity/humanity/life in the guise of attacking what you've written, that shit is the worst.
But also brilliant because of this commentary:
"What is up with this idea that we can have a productive conversation about race, but it’s all supposed to be conducted very politely???"
OK, so this piggybacked from the original brilliant post, but still worth consideration.
This is brilliant because it offers another take on what I've already mused on in a few posts, namely what the fuck is going on in all these workshops, how they seem to lurch from absolute full-on annoying civility to being very uncivil but in disrespectful and degrading ways to the participants (my latest take on the 'agitation'), and that's it in terms of possibility, no spectrum, no range of how to talk things out, just Workshop A or Workshop B, pick your poison, it's the same loss either way.
I think this is also brilliant because this is unfortunately reflective of how we are raised to discount the full reality of our lives and until we learn otherwise, or are taught otherwise, how to know and express and examine ourselves, until this happens, we will only know how to count ourselves out.
But really this is brilliant because it reminds me of another brilliant writer. (Side note: it is quite possibly one of the unique joys of a craft, especially this craft, where in the reading of one person's wonderful words you immediate think of another person's wonderful words. This does not imply imitation or flattery, mostly praise, but perhaps most of all, power.)
That brilliant writer is June Jordan, who wrote Some of Us Did NOT Die and Civil Wars, among other amazing works she completed before her death in the last decade. In the opening to Civil Wars, she recounts a common experience: a man and woman are reeling from the shocking violence that has killed their child. A news reporter asks them to speak about it. And they learn to say--they learn to say!--"Well, we're still in shock, we're devastated." Never mind that if they were actually in shock they wouldn't be able to speak, let alone form coherent sentences! Never mind that if they were actually devastated they'd be on the ground, or pitched up off the earth contorted, wailing, screaming, stone-cold and shut-down, swearing, getting violent, getting irrational, getting difficult to follow, getting hard to watch. There is something in this forced, unnatural 'civility' that makes the couple speak, and quietly, and correctly, and in doing so we watch and take it in and we think it's going to be OK, they're going to be OK, we learn that if people are still civil they're going to be OK (read: not allowed to be) and so we can move on, as if our knowledge and history is disposable, as if terror can be stifled. And June Jordan isn't arguing that we need to get rid of politeness and civility; she is arguing that the cultural pervasiveness of civility is not helping us one iota; and she is questioning how we got to this place, given the torridness of what we've seen and where we've been; and she is saying that if folks really want to build movements for change in our lives, out of our lives, out of the realities as we live them, then we better fucken learn how to be uncivil--that is, how to let go and be a bit more true.
Right on June and right on to everyone else and their brilliance.
And isn't it plum-awesome that the keeper of that blog, Nadia Abou-Karr, is in Detroit and is one of the organizers for the Allied Media Conference. I'll get to meet her provided I can get in her schedule...I know what the organizer's life is like.
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