This is going to be both longer and more heartfelt than I normally do on the internet, so I apologize in advance.Â
Yesterday, a reader asked me about a panel called âWriting the Otherâ that Iâd been asked to do at NerdCon this October. I answered here. In response, people posted things like this and this. I was horrified; Iâd clearly failed utterly to represent my feelings. I reached out to Justina Ireland, who listened as I poured out my heart to her, and then encouraged me to cut open a vein on the internet to make my position more clear. I should emphasize that all thoughts in this post are mine and donât reflect upon her at all; they are me, unfiltered, and you can easily find her to chat about her thoughts on all of this on twitter.Â
So about cutting that vein. I would rather be a closed, flippant asshole on the internet in order to protect my soft heart parts. Itâs ever so much easier to face a crowd when youâve got your performer smile on. Itâs a lot easier when someone judges you when theyâre only judging the chaff that you threw out to dazzle.Â
And I know that if I post my true thoughts here, itâs gonna be judged just as hard, only itâs going to be harder for me because Iâll know itâs my true self being parsed.Â
But I guess Iâm gonna do it. Catch my body, friends.Â
So here is what I told her, more or less. Now Iâm telling you.Â
I should say upfront: this past twelve months has been an incredibly challenging one for me on the internet. My internet presence grew far faster than my ability to understand all the ramifications of that enormous presence, and for the first time, Iâve found myself having to deal with online rumors and whispers. Before, people used to come straight to me if they heard something that sounded unpleasant, asking me to confirm or deny. Now, I am a Thing, a Behemoth, a Movement. Obviously it has its good points, as well. But only a few years ago I was published by a small press and my books didnât even make it to commercial bookstores. So itâs been a growing experience, and I slip and fall more than I like. Iâm not entirely sure I like being a celebrity, either. I miss being Maggie the human, seen truly, some days. All days. I know. Whine, whine, whine.Â
That doesnât actually affect what I need to change and do going forward, but itâs what we call backstory.Â
First, about the âWriting the Otherâ panel: Iâve emailed NerdCon. If the panelâs not about race, Iâd like the panel title changed. If it is, Iâve asked to be replaced as a panelist. I wish Iâd understood the ramifications of the phrase âWriting the Otherâ beforehand, so I could have known to ask the con more questions about who else was on the panel and what I was expected to bring to the table, but in my ignorance I honestly didnât think that they would pitch me a race panel without the word race or culture in the description and with only one POC person on it. I like to think that they didnât understand the title either, but I wonât know until they reply. Should I have been more instantly attentive? Probably. Yes, obliviousness, yes, privilege, yes, I was very eager to have a chance to finally talk about my own OCD/ suicide issues that I see misrepresented in fiction. Glorified or made silly. And yes, I know when I say that, every POC is saying: TRY LIVING MY LIFE.Â
Iâve said this on the internet before, but I had a very specific cultural childhood. I grew up in the Irish music world, which I know hasnât been repressed in a very long time, so itâs not relevant in a conversation on oppression. I mention it because itâs an extremely specific culture â I grew up with hours of Irish music practiced every day, bands, immigrants, fleadhs, bodhrans, mythology, food, clothing, a specific way of story-telling rooted in culture. When I imagine trying to teach someone else how to write that culture, I feel exhausted. How could I possibly explain to them ⊠a way of thinking? Even if they researched forever and got nothing actively wrong, how could they possibly do as good of a job at writing the tiny nuances, the colors of the art, the jokes about the language, the references to songs that hadnât been sung for two hundred years? The best person to tell that cultural story is someone who lived that cultural story.Â
Which brings me to fear and misgiving in writing stories with characters of color. Iâm not the real thing. Iâm super white and Celtic and neurotic and probably an asshole, and Iâm really only qualified to accurately write the narratives of white Celtic neurotic assholes. I had a massive crisis last night because several of the posts I read said that I had no place writing POC characters, that my voice wasnât welcome, that I shouldnât even try. My crisis? My next novel is supposed to be entirely centered on a big fractured Mexican American family. I knew I wasnât going to ever get it perfectly right, even with Mexican beta readers. I knew it was never going to be as nuanced and true as my big messy Irish-American family in the Raven Cycle, because one was mine, and one was studied. It would never be as valuable. I know that, infinitely. I believe it on a gut level. But I could do studied diversity, at least, instead of only super white Celtic neurotic asshole narratives for the rest of time.Â
But crisis: it hadnât occurred to me that my characters of color might not be welcome. I read the posts telling me to get back in my lane, and I read them again. I drafted an email to my agent, all ready to tell her to cancel it; I would veer back into my own lane if I wasnât welcome in the other, I wasnât going to force my point of view onto the shelf. I slept on it. I woke up. I found I was still having a crisis.Â
Crisis was complicated by interpretations of my blog post taking turns I had â again, obliviously? â never anticipated. Folks were saying I wanted to sweep in as a grand white savior. I donât want that â all I want is more specific stories from more POC writers, and for my own my books to be better reflections of the world. Thatâs it. I donât know how to say that I think itâs important that all of us hold ourselves to that standard, without being told that Iâm trying to get points. I donât need any points, because as every POC writer is well and sadly aware, white, easy books sell just fine. And as for doing it for the ego stroke and back pat â well, thereâs no ego stroke for me in finally starting to write the world as it really looks. Thereâs only shame that I havenât until now. I just want to be an ally, and a non-white-washing writer who happens to also appear on the bestseller list sometimes. I clearly donât know how to frame my words to get this across â I obviously failed yesterday, and I donât know how to do it right. I still fumble in this post.Â
Crisis was complicated yet further by the absolute worst takeaway from this weekend â a thing I simply canât handle. The internet took the quoted dialog from my previous post â a member of the industry referring to âunpopular racesâ â and attributed it widely to me. It broke my heart when a reader told me sheâd heard I said she was an unpopular race. She hadnât read my post, just a copy of a copy and the context was lost. It makes me freshly miserable â months ago I had this wonderful Saudi co-author with an absolutely incredible story, and to hear that I couldnât sell it because Saudis were a so-called âunpopular raceâ floored me. If even I canât convince the establishment that a Saudi YA with my name on it will be commercial, what then? In my blog post, I thought it was clear that it wasnât me rendering them âunpopular races,â and yet the internet was very, very eager to say that it was me. It was like opposite day. I was being told I was the very thing I thought I was fighting. Crisis time.Â
Justina asked me if I wanted to fix the system. Yes. The only answer is yes. Do people ever say no? Donât answer that. I know they do. But how? Iâm good at teaching writing. Right? Maybe. Thatâs what Iâve heard. But writing retreats/ workshops are incredibly limiting. In my trailer-park pre-published days, I sure would not have been able to afford them. There has to be a way to open these up â people have maybe seen me asking about teaching at alternative schools on Twitter. Just flailing. Trying to figure out what I could do from where I stand. Trying to figure out how to enable more diverse, specific voices in YA. Not my voice. But right now the only thing I specifically can control from my crisis-desk is adding characters of color to my novels while I try to stand by and look like Iâm ready to be useful if I can be. Not because the world needs me in particular to write POC. But because, as a popular bestseller, my voice is louder than others and if Iâm just writing white narratives, what does that say?Â
I asked Justina if it would help or hurt if I wrote a sprawling magical novel with POC in it. And she said: both.Â
Iâm going to try to do more of the former than the latter. I canât promise that it will succeed, only that I will try. And I know that anything I say can be taken out of context. Man, I know. I KNOW. Thatâs the risk we take â Iâm taking it again right now. I just hope that if you read this, and youâre upset, youâll come to me. Maggie, the person, not MaggieStiefvater.com the behemoth.
titsay
stormborns
gummygunk
