5 ms·

Personally I blame the entire Iowa Writers' Workshop for this. The publishing game for a long time now has been you go to Iowa and get a six-figure advance from

Personally I blame the entire Iowa Writers' Workshop for this. The publishing game for a long time now has been you go to Iowa and get a six-figure advance from a major publisher, putting out a technically solid and utterly boring work of literature. Then a bunch of those graduates go and teach at all the MFA programs and here we are. I'm always reminded of Toni Morrison: "I tell my students; I tell everybody this. When I begin a creative writing class I say, 'I know you've heard all your life, "Write what you know." Well I am here to tell you, "You don't know nothing". So do not write what you know. Think up something else. Write about a young Mexican woman working in a restaurant and can't speak English. Or write about a famous mistress in Paris who's down on her luck."

NikolaeVarius 5y ago
Isn't this the opposite of the modern zeitgeist on this topic
- browningstreet 5y ago
  Maybe the noisiest current of our zeitgeist is on the wrong foot.
  - NikolaeVarius 5y ago
    I happen to agree with you. I think alot of modern zeitgeist is encouraging closing your mind off from the world.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago
> Write about a young Mexican woman working in a restaurant and can't speak English Sounds like a great way to get cancelled for cultural appropriation.
- bitexploder 5y ago
  I mean that has happened, a book that got critical acclaim was then basically cancelled. American Dirt is by all rights a fine novel and story, but all the contention around the publishers handling of it and cries of cultural appropriation gained critical mass and made a mess of things.
  - nineplay 5y ago
    I think some of it was sincere criticism of a unpleasantly stereotypical main character. The novel was initially popular among mostly-white female book clubs, then as the Latino population started to read it there was a collective WTF. Disclosure, I am a white female who occasionally participates in book clubs. I don't want this to sound like a cheap-shot, it's just that by their nature they tend to have a common reaction. I could say the same thing about articles targeted to mostly-male engineers which tend to get uniform feedback.
    - jfengel 5y ago
      I found Morrison's quote a little odd, since she herself wrote almost exclusively about black women. Not about herself, but about her ancestors, or people who could have been her ancestors, in a culture that she knew a lot about. Following her advice just from that one sentence would almost certainly lead to cultural appropriation and unpleasant stereotypes. Taking the advice to be imaginative is good. Writing stereotypes isn't imagination; it's lazy.
- jfengel 5y ago
  Precisely. As Morrison said elsewhere, “Making a little life for oneself by scavenging other people’s lives is a big question, and it does have moral and ethical implications.” Despite her advice, Morrison primarily wrote about black women. She often wrote about the past, but was able to build characters from knowing the circumstances extensively. She didn't appropriate cultures she didn't know. She wrote about cultures the reader didn't know, with a depth and humanity that readers felt they could know them, and that's what got her books such wide acclaim. I haven't been able to find the full context of her quote, and I'd be curious to know if she drilled down into it to explain the difference. It really isn't a good idea to write about being a Mexican dishwasher who doesn't speak English when there is a world full of non-English-speaking dishwashers who will know when your book feels false. What you need to be successful is to write the truth. That doesn't have to mean only writing about yourself, but it does mean not writing about real people in false ways. If you really do want to write about Mexican dishwashers you'd better learn a hell of a lot about Mexico and dishwashing.
  - mtalantikite 5y ago
    I've heard her say some form of it in various interviews, but here is one I just found: https://youtu.be/82AiU5ZGXf4?t=32 https://youtu.be/82AiU5ZGXf4?t=32 > She wrote about cultures the reader didn't know I'm not sure that's true, although it ended up being the case for many of her readers. She always was very explicit in saying that she wrote for Black people, without thinking of the white gaze. I think the problem is largely that people of color don't get to tell the stories in the first place. Or if they do, they end up writing about white people or have to write their ancestral traumas in order to get published. The outrage comes because some white guy got $500k for that story of a Mexican waitress, when actual Latinx people aren't getting published, not the actual "writing what you don't know". Although yes, of course, you better do your research if you're doing that. I recently read Tar Baby, one of the few of her books I hadn't gotten to, and I was never mad at her for embodying the white characters the way she did. My partner is a writer here in NYC, a woman of color, on a "major label", and it's devastating to see white editors just say things like "I didn't know how to connect to these characters" because they've literally never thought about a Bangladeshi person before. There's a lot that needs to change, but from a purely artistic point of view I find nothing wrong with writing what you don't know.

NikolaeVarius 5y ago

Isn't this the opposite of the modern zeitgeist on this topic

browningstreet 5y ago
Maybe the noisiest current of our zeitgeist is on the wrong foot.
- NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  I happen to agree with you. I think alot of modern zeitgeist is encouraging closing your mind off from the world.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 5y ago

> Write about a young Mexican woman working in a restaurant and can't speak English Sounds like a great way to get cancelled for cultural appropriation.

bitexploder 5y ago
I mean that has happened, a book that got critical acclaim was then basically cancelled. American Dirt is by all rights a fine novel and story, but all the contention around the publishers handling of it and cries of cultural appropriation gained critical mass and made a mess of things.
- nineplay 5y ago
  I think some of it was sincere criticism of a unpleasantly stereotypical main character. The novel was initially popular among mostly-white female book clubs, then as the Latino population started to read it there was a collective WTF. Disclosure, I am a white female who occasionally participates in book clubs. I don't want this to sound like a cheap-shot, it's just that by their nature they tend to have a common reaction. I could say the same thing about articles targeted to mostly-male engineers which tend to get uniform feedback.
  - jfengel 5y ago
    I found Morrison's quote a little odd, since she herself wrote almost exclusively about black women. Not about herself, but about her ancestors, or people who could have been her ancestors, in a culture that she knew a lot about. Following her advice just from that one sentence would almost certainly lead to cultural appropriation and unpleasant stereotypes. Taking the advice to be imaginative is good. Writing stereotypes isn't imagination; it's lazy.
jfengel 5y ago
Precisely. As Morrison said elsewhere, “Making a little life for oneself by scavenging other people’s lives is a big question, and it does have moral and ethical implications.” Despite her advice, Morrison primarily wrote about black women. She often wrote about the past, but was able to build characters from knowing the circumstances extensively. She didn't appropriate cultures she didn't know. She wrote about cultures the reader didn't know, with a depth and humanity that readers felt they could know them, and that's what got her books such wide acclaim. I haven't been able to find the full context of her quote, and I'd be curious to know if she drilled down into it to explain the difference. It really isn't a good idea to write about being a Mexican dishwasher who doesn't speak English when there is a world full of non-English-speaking dishwashers who will know when your book feels false. What you need to be successful is to write the truth. That doesn't have to mean only writing about yourself, but it does mean not writing about real people in false ways. If you really do want to write about Mexican dishwashers you'd better learn a hell of a lot about Mexico and dishwashing.
- mtalantikite 5y ago
  I've heard her say some form of it in various interviews, but here is one I just found: https://youtu.be/82AiU5ZGXf4?t=32 https://youtu.be/82AiU5ZGXf4?t=32 > She wrote about cultures the reader didn't know I'm not sure that's true, although it ended up being the case for many of her readers. She always was very explicit in saying that she wrote for Black people, without thinking of the white gaze. I think the problem is largely that people of color don't get to tell the stories in the first place. Or if they do, they end up writing about white people or have to write their ancestral traumas in order to get published. The outrage comes because some white guy got $500k for that story of a Mexican waitress, when actual Latinx people aren't getting published, not the actual "writing what you don't know". Although yes, of course, you better do your research if you're doing that. I recently read Tar Baby, one of the few of her books I hadn't gotten to, and I was never mad at her for embodying the white characters the way she did. My partner is a writer here in NYC, a woman of color, on a "major label", and it's devastating to see white editors just say things like "I didn't know how to connect to these characters" because they've literally never thought about a Bangladeshi person before. There's a lot that needs to change, but from a purely artistic point of view I find nothing wrong with writing what you don't know.