Imagining the other: do you have the right?

[pegkerr]

Here's an intriguing story of the "literary fraud" of Rahila Khan. Those of you who know the story of James Tiptree, Jr. might find it interesting. I've heard this story before, although I have not read Down the Road, Worlds Away. Has anyone on this list read it?

I thought about this issue an awful lot while I was writing Swans. In fact, it made me wonder whether I should write the book at all. It was a part of my very serious consideration of the question of whether I should re-tell the story using the hemophilia angle or the gay angle. What could I, a (mostly) heterosexual chick from the suburbs bring to the story of a young urban gay man? Did I have the right to tell that story? Of course, I wasn't trying to pass myself off as a gay male writer, but hey, wouldn't it be more appropriate (let's admit the real issue: safer) to just write the book using the hemophilia angle instead?

I don't know why writing from the viewpoint of a gay man seemed to me so much more risky or inherently off-limits to me than imagining myself to be a prisoner on the moon, or a gemcutter capable of doing magic, or a young woman who had toads coming out of her mouth whenever she spoke, all characters I've successfully written. Maybe because it touched upon matters of human sexuality, which was scary for me anyway, descendent of Puritans that I am. Finally I decided not to worry about it. A number of conversations led to that decision: huladavid was one of my early consultants and urged me not to be afraid for that reason. Jenna Felice was another (dear Jenna, how we all miss you). I was speaking to her specifically not about the gay angle, but about whether I had the right to write about such a painful topic as AIDS when I hadn't been touched by it directly, certainly not as much as she had. I asked her seriously whether I had the right to write it instead of her, when she knew so much more about AIDS and had suffered so greatly from its horrors (Jenna lost close family members--her whole childhood, really--to the disease). And she pointed that out that she was too close to the story, so maybe I was the better person to write it.

So, with permission from Jenna and huladavid, I did it. And I'm glad I did (and I'm so glad that Jenna had a chance to read it and tell me she loved it before she died so tragically young.) Ironically, writing Elias turned out to be easier than writing Eliza, because I used limited third for Elias's viewpoint so I got more into his mind. He felt like more of a friend by the end of the book. Eliza, on the other hand, was written in omniscient (more remote). These fears were really irrational, and this thing that worried me so turned out not to really be an issue after all. I don't think I'll have quite that kind of fear again.

Of course, I have all sorts of different irrational fears that interfere with my writing the book I'm working on now: it's not like I'm going to be running out of irrational fears anytime soon. I seem to be a veritable fountain of them. What a pain to be such a neurotic writer. As I get back into the swing of the ice palace book, I'll tell you about some of them. And you'll get to tell me, just as huladavid and Jenna did, that I'm being silly.

Comments

[jbru.livejournal.com]

Very interesting article. I think it touches on what it means to be an author, an actor or some other sort of creative person. There is some element of putting one's self aside in so many creative endeavors to let some authentic other come through in the work.

(And we already know you are being silly with your fears about the ice palace book, witness you meetings with the architect.)

[em-h.livejournal.com]

I don't know why writing from the viewpoint of a gay man seemed to me so much more risky or inherently off-limits to me than imagining myself to be a prisoner on the moon, or a gemcutter capable of doing magic, or a young woman who had toads coming out of her mouth whenever she spoke, all characters I've successfully written.

I think it's because a prisoner on the moon is never going to turn to you in a cafe and say, "I'm angry at the way you falsified my lived experience." Whereas -- had you done it badly -- a gay man might.

I've had a lot of the same fears about writing characters who come from other cultures -- East Timorese, Bosnian. It's more worrying than the more fantastic scenarios exactly because there are real people around to judge against their real lives.

Like you, I went ahead and wrote, and have had nothing but positive feedback from the people who are actually from those cultural backgrounds. I think in a way it's good to be worried, though -- it makes us more aware of our responsibility to be accurate and respectful about other people's lives.

[vass]

Hear, hear.

There's an opposite risk, too. A prisoner on the moon is never going to turn to you in a cafe and say "I'm angry at how you ignored and invalidated my life experience." Which is a danger with *only* writing what you know, by a narrow interpretation. By which I mean, Peg, you didn't know Elias before, and now you do - because you wrote about him.

appropriate

[happygun.livejournal.com]

It's funny that you should write about this, as it is something we've bumped into and discussed pretty much every semester in school, something I haven't completely made my mind up about. Although, my past two profs (Susan Power, Sheila O' Connor) had some very smart solutions to the problem...which in summary maintains that it is in fact your imagination, and you cannot be guarded about where your imagination takes you. You should however, be prepared to answer whatever questions your work may raise in certain populations, and participate in an intelligent way in the dialogue you may instigate. Seems like a good solution.

I'm "happygun", by the way, nice to meet you.

So many yeses

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

It's certainly worthwhile to discuss this, and you've obviously gotten some good feedback. But if one does a total reductio ad absurdum on this, it looks more as though one can only write one's own autobiography. I've been pretty limited as a writer, writing about music because that's mostly when I know. But my characters include a former piano player who had lost three fingers (I play very limited piano and have all ten of mine), and a young runaway supporting himself by playing cittern in a park (I did very, very limited street singing at the age of 9 and 10, always coming home afterwards). So how dishonest am I being? And if you want to look at a really gender-bending book -- I was really impressed by LeGuin's *The Left Hand of Darkness*. But did LeGuin have to be totally androgenous in the way her characters were to write this at all? I'd say go for it, and don't let worries paralyze you. If there's any fallout at all, you can deal with it later -- while you're working on writing the book after this one.

Nate

Re: So many yeses

[jbru.livejournal.com]

Love the opening line of The Left Hand of Darkness, "The king was pregnant." Throws you head-first into the deep end of the setting without seeming too ridiculous.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

You know, considering the fact that I've had other people who have been abused as children tell me that what I've written of my experience can't be valid because theirs was different...suffice it to say that you will never be without the possibility of someone choosing to take offense at a character that may be even remotely similar to his/herself.

If we start limiting who can write what in order to be authentic, then the entire concept of imagination and that of universal truth and the human condition just go right into the crapper.

[aome.livejournal.com]

Doesn't almost any fiction writer do that, write about experiences different from themselves? More research is required, of course, to pull it off convincingly, but there are thousands of straight women writing slash fanfiction, authors writing for both male and female characters when they can, by necessity, only know one of them firsthand, people writing about life in other eras that they could not possibly have lived in, including the entire realm of SF/F which cannot be experienced in reality at all, although some of the characterisations potentially could. That is, to me, part of the joy and burden of all fiction writing - to step beyond yourself into something which has captured your interest, even if it does not necessarily represent your own personal life experiences. For you to write for a gay male character does not seem any more unreasonable than Tolkien to write about hobbits and dwarves, a seeing author to write about a blind character, or Stevermer/Wrede to write about young Regency girls. It doesn't feel like fraud to me. It sounds like creativity and a willingness to extend yourself.

[aerden.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that is why I decided not to enter a career in drug counseling--because I literally cannot even imagine being that hooked on a drug.. I've never bene an addict; don't even like taking medicine. I wouldn't know how to counsel people who were addicted. Writing about them, yes, I could do--but not attempt to treat them.

Chantal

[callunav.livejournal.com]

Counseling addicts when you've never been an addict is odd and difficult. I'm glad I did it for a while...but I'm also really glad I stopped doing it full time. But the opportunities for listening are extraordinary. I'm *way* better equipped to provide a supportive, intelligent response to someone I work with who has - or is courting - a substance abuse issue than I was a few years ago.

But yeah...it's weird.

[callunav.livejournal.com]

To me, it seems like there's a mix. Imagination is good for a lot....but there are some things only experience can really fill in.

Several years ago, I was working on a story in which my first person narrator suddenly began experiencing total blindness--but only some of the time. Now, no one I know of has had that experience; I'm not sure how it would happen outside of a fantasy context, though perhaps that's medical ignorance on my part. But as for the blindness itself, it was nervewracking, trying to feel like it was okay for me to try to write from the--eyes--of someone experiencing a disability I had never had, especially because it was really important to me to get it close enough to *right* that blind readers could feel interested and recognized if they were to read it.

I read what I could find of autobiographical writings from people who had lost their sight - The Seeing Glass was particularly good and useful. I had a moderately good friend at the time who was blind, but I felt shy about quizzing her. Instead, I talked with her in general and listened a lot, and finally nerved myself up to ask her whether she would read over things for me, at some point, and give me feedback about how well my imagination was doing, which she was very willing to do. I didn't do a lot of that, but what little I did (before the story stalled, I graduated, and I stopped having any interactions with her) were very helpful, informative, and overall reassuring.

I'm a great believer in research before writing. For one thing, it just makes me feel more secure. Nothing I write will match everyone's experience, because everyone's experience is different. The goal, I think, is just to write something which people who have had similar experiences could find plausible. I feel like imagination is powerful and important, but it does reach its limits: there isn't anyone who can tell you whether you've realy captured the most immediate and important aspects of having a live toad come out of your mouth when you try to speak, so a good imagination will do. But odds are, if it actually happened to you, you'd notice some things your imagination failed to fill in. (For instance, amphibians, when they're under stress, have a distressing tendency to urinate copiously. And they might find coming out of your mouth as stressful as you did. Or maybe they'd want to stay! Who knows. Since no one knows, the author's word goes.) And when it's something I haven't experienced, but other people who I can talk to, or who have written things about their lives that I can read, have, then I figure, why waste a resource? But once you've learned what you can....fiction is filling in the gaps to make it real.

[vass]

I am so glad you decided to write it from the gay angle.

It's a frequent reread for me, and I don't think I'd have even touched it in the first place if you'd taken the haemophilia path instead - certainly, I'd have been warier about it.

Um, also, I'm so glad you *did* write it and finish it and conquer your fears. I really do love that book.

[pegkerr.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[lcohen]

you're being silly. at least you are if the fear that you shouldn't have written the wild swans with the gay POV of elias is a representative sample of the types of fears you have.

it is an amazing book. i give copies to friends all the time.