Reading William Styron’s obit last week reminded me of a literary symposium I attended a while back.Writing what you don’t know was the clever umbrella topic, but the moderator suggested the real issue had to do with writing outside one’s own experience—in this case, the “experience” being queerness.Notable was the response of one woman who vehemently resented the idea that a male author (gay or straight—for once, no distinction was drawn) would presume to write from a woman’s point of view–let alone attempt a depiction of a lesbian relationship.
Christopher Lehman-Haupt’s NYT Times obit reminded readers that Styron also suffered criticism for engaging subjects divergent from his white Southern origins: the Holocaust (Sophie’s Choice) and slave insurrections (The Confessions of Nat Turner).I suppose those naysayers preferred he stay in his own backyard of experience rather than poke his nose in lives better suited to a black writer’s telling (for who better knows suffering and oppression) or a Jewish one (again, who better knows suffering and oppression).
This debate—who’s better suited to tell a particular story—should have grown tedious by now.Is the fact of Hitler’s Germany rendered more authentic because a Jew’s telling the story?History tells us Nat Turner and his followers absolutely massacred a few slaveholders and their families—but will a black writer provide more palpable “realness” than one who isn’t?
It all brings back the 80s and the ascendance of The Bill Cosby Show. That sitcom’s cleaned up depictions of black lives encouraged activists to cry foul when Hollywood continued to perpetrate negative stereotypes.Not that those images weren’t true (yes, many blacks are still poor, commit crime and some smoke crack) but rather than acknowledge our trouble-plagued inner cities, those pundits sought to sweep such ignominy under the rug, lest it distract from the cleaned-up versions of blackness they desired.
Oh the shame—apparently it matters who holds the mirror up to our natures.As the woman at the symposium made clear, certain groups are still wound too tight over issues of race, gender and sexuality to let the other side see our dirty drawers.Too bad: writers like Styron (and Michael Cunningham, Christopher Bram and countless others) cracked enough to write outside their “experience” aren’t being exploitative or disrespectful.By taking on the incendiary, artists re-affirm how these issues matter (or should) to all of us.Let’s encourage a range of response to our various conditions—and let’s discourage misguided monopolizations of humanity.
(photo of Whoopi Goldberg by Annie Leibowitz)