I dont like Vaguebooking, and this little controversy has still been bothering me today, so Im going to share the original piece and give my thoughts and leave it at that. The picture of a Nebula Weekend panel below, including the commentary attached to the photo, was posted by Sunil Patel. Everything else is mine. I arrived at this panel, which I honestly believed was about Writing Other Cultures in a general sense, which in our field includes past cultures and speculative cultures, to discover that the men and women on the panel were all (roughly) white. This was a surprise to all of us panelists. We spent a great deal of the time in the earliest stages of the panel talking about how carefully and respectfully we must write about other current cultures (because we never got to exo-cultures or past cultures). Nancy Kress did say she feared PC-blowback, and had received it for writing non-white-female characters, something I have never particularly experienced. I honestly dont remember being faulted by a commentator for my portrayal of someone who wasnt like me, a straight white male, but I would never reject such a comment, and would listen carefully. However, Nancys opening comment did set a certain defensive tone for the panel. At one point, both Chaz Brenchley and I said something to the effect of, We writers are going to write what we want to write, and that includes characters not like ourselves. My statement was part of a larger point I made here and have made elsewhere, namely that I grew up reading about white military men saving the universe, but I want to write something that better reflects my view of the world and what I think will be a much more culturally diverse future. Unfortunately, Mr. Patel and many others seemed to take this to mean, roughly, Screw you, we dont care what anyone else thinks, which is nowhere near the truth. What it really meant, which I thought was pretty clear, was that we were not going to limit ourselves only to writing about white males just because we were white males. I certainly wouldnt expect female writers only to write about women, or transgendered writers only to write about other transgender people, or Latino writers only to write about other Latinos. Most of the panel was spent trying to talk about specific ways to write other cultures better -- directions and sources of research, specifically -- but we often got yanked back to the question of white people writing non-white people as a disrespectful or dangerous thing. I tried several times to push the panel back to specifics of writing and learning about the other rather than explaining over and over again how respectful we were trying to be, since I thought wed made that pretty clear and I thought people would want to hear how we actually tried to accomplish that instead of generalities. Chaz mentioned living several years in Taiwan to make sure he felt comfortable writing about Taiwanese people. Several other writers voiced similar opinions as to how we could best learn about people different than ourselves. Mr. Patel has added a PS to the original commentary I read (Im not sure when) to incorporate things he has learned about Mr. Brenchley, and to separate my statement from his reaction to being criticized for writing a gay serial killer -- a bad gay. (I appreciate Mr. Patel doing that, by the way.) My only example comment was what I thought was a sweet story about a woman who had written to me saying that since she was a Greco-Australian lesbian police detective she didnt usually feel represented in her SF reading, so she was very pleased by Calliope Skouros in the Otherland books, who is all of those things. My initial reaction to Mr. Patels comment and various comments on the comment, where it was shared on my friend Jed Hartmans Facebook page, was irritation at being told by Mr. Patel, Dont write in a vacuum and dont dismiss criticism from offended individuals. Since I dont believe I have ever done any of those things, and in fact have worked hard to do the opposite, I was bothered by this. Because it also contained a misrepresentation of what I actually said, I tried to clarify this as well. I was not in a good mood, but I tried to be polite. I was taken to task over and over by what I do not doubt were well-meaning people, but as far as I could tell they had taken this sweeping simplification of what was said at the panel, and an outright misreading of what I said myself, and were accepting it as gospel, thereby rendering any attempt on my part to say Not really fair as a White guy, not getting it. I wholeheartedly embrace Mr. Patels right to express his opinion. Im glad he has tried to correct the errors and misunderstandings in his original piece and I thank him for that. Im sorry for my own anger, but as I said here yesterday, I dont like being condescended to by people who have not read my work, and are accepting the words of someone else about what I believe without reference to what I actually write, or say, or have said numerous other times in numerous other public settings. I have tried to put this summation together without undue anger, since I have been taken to task for that as well. I think what some users of social media dont understand is that an entire lifetime or lifes work can be reduced to meme-fodder in a moment by careless spreading of unchecked, highly personalized opinions masquerading as facts. Why didnt I just ignore this? Because I am saddened that several thousand people in my own field, if they did not know me or my work before, will now know me only as another white guy who didnt get it -- who writes in a vacuum, who doesnt listen to other peoples voices. That means something to me, and my reputation means something to me, because that guy is who I have been working my entire life NOT to be.
Posted on: Thu, 29 May 2014 20:51:45 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015