As regular readers here know, I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to write outside my culture. Thank you to Valerie Geary for pointing me to this article at The New York Times.
These two quotes especially spoke to me:
We’re doing what fiction writers have always done: trying to investigate the world, explore human experience, render precisely what it means to be alive. We’re trying to give voice to everyone on the planet. And who has the right to do that? Do I have the right to write my version of your story?
A writer is like a tuning fork: We respond when we’re struck by something. The thing is to pay attention, to be ready for radical empathy. If we empty ourselves of ourselves we’ll be able to vibrate in synchrony with something deep and powerful.
— “The Right to Write,” Roxana Robinson
Read the full article here.
Oh, I loved this piece. Thanks for sharing it here. Brings up so many interesting thoughts and questions. I particularly loved this one: Who owns the story, the person who lives it or the person who writes it?
Thanks for sharing. I read this when it originally appeared and reading it again this morning (with almost 200 comments!) is perfect timing. I hope we’ve laid this mis-conception to rest, as many of the commenters pointed out.
So many great quotes to take away from her piece. Thanks again.
Thanks for sharing this. I am writing about a bi-racial girl and her friend who is black. I’ve only had one person tell me I didn’t have the right to write this and unfortunately, I had to let that friendship go. I know that it is not good for me to keep people in my life who do not support me. I struggle with this every time I sit down to write, but the words come anyway. I love that I can now think of myself as a tuning fork through which the music will come.
I wrote A DIAMOND IN THE DESERT, which was outside my own culture, but with each draft, I was able to send it to the main character, who went through it to make sure I didn’t have any mistakes. Thank you for linking to this article, Caroline.
So glad this has resonated with so many.