::Imperial/Racial Privilege And Workshops::

There was a time today when I was angry. It wasn't a personal sort of anger, but anger which emerges from the helplessness of someone who is trying in her own way to be a better writer. Now, I will record the same questions I was asking myself this afternoon:

a. Am I responsible as a writer for my readers' lack of sociological knowledge?

b. I am not writing an ethnography of my neighborhood in Kolkata. I am writing stories--damn it. So, no, I am not going to explain the "social and cultural differences." Yes, someone said that in my fucking workshop-- Explain the social and cultural differences! I am pissed, because I read around 50 books every year. Almost 60% of them are on contexts into which I wasn't born. No, I don't expect any of the writers to "explain" to me the "social and cultural differences." When I feel like I don't know the history, I do the work. Period. So, this very assumption that it is the responsibility of the non-American writer to explain to the American reader what's going on, the "social and the cultural differences", clearly reeks of an imperial, white privilege. There isn't any other way to think about it.

c. A lot of the feedback I get from the workshops want me to do the work for my readers. They want me to fill in the gaps in their sociological/historical/anthropological knowledge. So, I have to do a lot of separating the wheat from the chaff, if I still want to get some benefits from the workshopping.

d. This makes me mad because the white and/or American writers can throw in a story to the group, sit back and not have to ever think of how "social and cultural differences" are working within their stories.

e. I don't bring up these issues inside the workshops. Why? Because I know none of these people are being deliberately racist and/or imperialist. More importantly, none of them wants to think of himself/herself as such. So my pointing these things out will cause them to have a knee-jerk reaction, they will stop commenting on my stories frequently. I don't want that to happen. The thing is, I have signed up for these workshops so that I can learn. I am not yet in a space as a writer to take up these issues. (Yet, I am, no? Otherwise, I wouldn't be writing this post.But I am not ready to take them up publicly yet.)

f. One would think, after the work of Gloria Anzaldua et al., this country, especially those who want to write, will have a better awareness of these kinds of representational/cultural politics. Nope! No such luck! Seems like every one of us colored folks will have to launch and plunge through our individual struggle!

Now that I have vented, and written this post, I need to go back to the actual work: writing my poems and stories. Maybe some day I will be able to talk about these things more explicitly. But now is not the time! Inshallah!