Wistar expands on the assumptions we make about culture and literature:
Under the gun, we all have to admit that our culture informs who we are and how we write. The ethnic, national, and religious environments in which we were raised give distinct form to our thoughts. Even in America! Even in a barren wasteland! Even in an ant colony! But we can still define ourselves outside of our cultural trappings. We can still challenge ourselves to move beyond the unquestioned boundaries of our youth. If a novel is only about specific circumstances, it’s a throwaway. If a novel is about life which happens to take place in specific circumstances, or even within narrow, insulated parameters, it’s worth reading.
MyLife is always worth reading.
Wistar and Selvi are warning about viewing our own experience as “normal” and that of others (Jews, Irish, African Americans, Indians) as “exotic.”
In contrast, I want to bring in a comment — really, an impassioned plea — made by Daniel Cassidy at last night’s session, In Search of Irish America. There are two things, he said, that I insist no one ever call me: “dude” (in Irish, “duid,” a foolish-looking fellow), and “white.” He rejected the term “white,” if I understand him correctly, as an ethnic designation, because it really isn’t one. “White” is generally understood to mean “anyone who is not of color.” It stands for absence. It stands above the need to understand oneself.
Cassidy urged each member of the audience to dig into their past, into their “roots.” He was asking us to speak from our particular heritage rather than assuming that it’s the job of the “other” to bring something exotic and amusing to the literary table.
Filed under: VABook08, authors, charlottesville, virginia | Tagged: VABook08, Virginia Festival of the Book
Daniel Cassidy’s plea interests me because I am one of those American mutts. I claim no one heritage as my own. As I did digging into my past, branches of my family have inhabited these shores since close to the beginning of the European conquest of North America. From there, English, Scottish, German, Cherokee, French, and who knows what else have combined to make me. Can I make a simple statement that I am American, letting that guide the listener?
What does it mean to be simply American, though? We all come from a particular time and place. My America (born in 1961, grew up in southern Indiana, family from southwest Virginia, now living in central Virginia) is not the same as Cassidy’s America or your America.
Similarly, I think to say that a writer is a “Jewish writer” or a “black writer” or an “Indian writer” or an “African writer” is to obscure a lot of distinctions that are rich and important.
I don’t know, I’m kind of groping here, thinking out loud. I wonder if I had been at the same Book Festival session as Selvi and Wistar, if I would have had the same impression of the question they found controversial. They’ve got me to thinking.
I feel sort of bad for picking on that question guy. I hope he doesn’t read our blogs. He should be pleased that he started such a great blogversation though. We blogged the hell out of him.
Sounds like you all are having a great time; wish I was there. Elizabeth, you’re right about the need to differentiate what kind of American “mutt” one is. Quite obviously, the sort you are will mean, for example, that you can’t write Sarabeth’s stories any more than she can write yours, and so on. Shining the light on, or bringing into one’s own awareness of what informs one’s world view is, at minimum, one more tool for the writer’s toolbox. Some argue the most important one, actually. Can you *really* get to what is universal with any real depth if you don’t understand differences, or at least have a sense of your own?
It’s been a great festival, bella, and the weather has been nearly perfect.
Wistar, Question Guy is welcome to come here and defend himself! Let’s have it out with him!
““White” is generally understood to mean “anyone who is not of color.” It stands for absence. It stands above the need to understand oneself.”
I think that in America, the use of the term “white” only as absence or as one w/no need for self-understanding is ignoring our history. While the norm is white (male), and others are identified against that norm, whiteness has meant so much more to our country since the first Europeans arrived. I’d encourage people not only to explore their “other” roots, but to consider what it has meant to be white in America over the last 400 years.