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Feb. 12th, 2010 07:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatSome lovely person on my flist, took pity on me, and anonymously sent me a virtual bear hug. Thank you lovely person. Really needed it. That and the hilarious goose attacking experienced angler that ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
liz_marcs posted. Laughter and tears and hugs....are like the sun and the rain and the soft breath of air for the human soul, we need all three desperately.
Anywho...made it to the x-ray specialist and back without incident. And no, I don't know the results. Will have to wait until doc looks at x-rays on tuesday, which means I have to lug the damn things to work with me.
Had a rather interesting conversation with Momster about this book she is almost finished reading entitled The Help. I asked her if she liked it. She said it was better than expected...but, and there was a lengthy pause...it is written by a white woman about black maids. She said that she's read numerous books by black female and male authors. And this book rang a false note in comparison, it felt, she said, a little like when a man writes a book about a woman's experiences. I asked what was off about the book, having never read it myself, but knowing that it is quite popular, on the NY Best Seller List, etc...and she described it to me - stating it is about a white female journalist, who wants to be a writer and joint a prestigious publishing company, she's told to go get experience first - and write what she knows or is interested in. So she decides to interview black maids in the south. It's an interesting premise, Momster states, but...and she pauses again. So, I chime in... but it feels like someone with privilege is writing about those without? Not quite, she says, it's more...all the white women are made to look horrible, which is fine, it's just... And I try again: "white liberal guilt?" Momster states, "yes, White Southern Lady Liberal Guilt".
Ah. Yes. White Liberal Guilt. Hard to describe what this means...I think it means that someone who has had no experience being poor, or being without opportunities or is "under-privileged" - is overcompensating for the guilt about it, romanticizing those who are - to an extent in which the people they are talking about are no longer people but symbols for a cause - that they feel will somehow assuage their guilt. It's the problem with being motivated by guilt. You can fall into the trap, if you aren't careful of using others to assauge it, projecting your guilt onto them. Aiding them to atone, not to aid. Hard to articulate my feelings on this, since they are rather confused and go back to the 1980s, possibly further. Almost done reading The Unquiet Earth which discusses a similar topic, it is about Appalachian coal country and written by a woman who lived and struggled there. And it talks about a Vista volunteer who seeks the most dangerous place, the place that needs him the most - desperate to help the world, feeling he is the one to save and change things. He keeps saying they need me more over there or over here. And one character in the novel, a hard, union organizer and coal man who has lived in the area all his life - looks at the Vista organizer and states - "what makes you think they need YOU?"
The comment struck me as interesting. It's the ego - the white liberal guilt - is the ego, I'm important, I'm the one who can help you, make your story heard, change the world. It's, I want narcissistic, but that's not it...it is human, I think. We all want to feel important and good about ourselves. We all want to make a difference. And we all want recognition for it. Like some badge of honor. We want to be the hero or champion as the case may be. And there's nothing wrong with that...except if it is at the cost of the person or persons we've chosen to save or champion without their request or a by your leave. It's presumptuous I think. That's the word. Presumptuous.
liz_marcs posted. Laughter and tears and hugs....are like the sun and the rain and the soft breath of air for the human soul, we need all three desperately.Anywho...made it to the x-ray specialist and back without incident. And no, I don't know the results. Will have to wait until doc looks at x-rays on tuesday, which means I have to lug the damn things to work with me.
Had a rather interesting conversation with Momster about this book she is almost finished reading entitled The Help. I asked her if she liked it. She said it was better than expected...but, and there was a lengthy pause...it is written by a white woman about black maids. She said that she's read numerous books by black female and male authors. And this book rang a false note in comparison, it felt, she said, a little like when a man writes a book about a woman's experiences. I asked what was off about the book, having never read it myself, but knowing that it is quite popular, on the NY Best Seller List, etc...and she described it to me - stating it is about a white female journalist, who wants to be a writer and joint a prestigious publishing company, she's told to go get experience first - and write what she knows or is interested in. So she decides to interview black maids in the south. It's an interesting premise, Momster states, but...and she pauses again. So, I chime in... but it feels like someone with privilege is writing about those without? Not quite, she says, it's more...all the white women are made to look horrible, which is fine, it's just... And I try again: "white liberal guilt?" Momster states, "yes, White Southern Lady Liberal Guilt".
Ah. Yes. White Liberal Guilt. Hard to describe what this means...I think it means that someone who has had no experience being poor, or being without opportunities or is "under-privileged" - is overcompensating for the guilt about it, romanticizing those who are - to an extent in which the people they are talking about are no longer people but symbols for a cause - that they feel will somehow assuage their guilt. It's the problem with being motivated by guilt. You can fall into the trap, if you aren't careful of using others to assauge it, projecting your guilt onto them. Aiding them to atone, not to aid. Hard to articulate my feelings on this, since they are rather confused and go back to the 1980s, possibly further. Almost done reading The Unquiet Earth which discusses a similar topic, it is about Appalachian coal country and written by a woman who lived and struggled there. And it talks about a Vista volunteer who seeks the most dangerous place, the place that needs him the most - desperate to help the world, feeling he is the one to save and change things. He keeps saying they need me more over there or over here. And one character in the novel, a hard, union organizer and coal man who has lived in the area all his life - looks at the Vista organizer and states - "what makes you think they need YOU?"
The comment struck me as interesting. It's the ego - the white liberal guilt - is the ego, I'm important, I'm the one who can help you, make your story heard, change the world. It's, I want narcissistic, but that's not it...it is human, I think. We all want to feel important and good about ourselves. We all want to make a difference. And we all want recognition for it. Like some badge of honor. We want to be the hero or champion as the case may be. And there's nothing wrong with that...except if it is at the cost of the person or persons we've chosen to save or champion without their request or a by your leave. It's presumptuous I think. That's the word. Presumptuous.
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Date: 2010-02-13 01:50 am (UTC)but that is the problem w/writers writing outside their experience. If the writer cannot identify completely with the characters (all the characters) in their work then it is going to come off as false so some extent....
And I think you are so right, White Guilt is hard to ignore but I think it would be a huge barrier to identifying completely with the characters in the book. Of course I haven't read 'The Help'... I've loved a lot of books by African American writers....(I'm not sure where I was going w/that thought... lol). Anyway I think your Mom's insight is really right on the nose.
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Date: 2010-02-13 05:38 pm (UTC)Yes. That's it. While it is okay, I think, to write outside of your experience - to attempt to view it from another perspective different from your own - it is a very difficult thing to pull off and very few people can or have managed to do it effectively. Research can help, but not completely. Do you remember the non-fiction novel written by John Howard Griffin entitled Black Like Me? Griffin was a journalist who died his skin black and passed himself off as black in the Pre-Civil Rights South of the 1950s and early 60s. The novel was published in 1961.
He chronicled his experiences as a black man in the South.
Here's what wiki says about it: Black Like Me is a non-fiction book by journalist John Howard Griffin first published in 1961. Griffin was a white native of Mansfield, Texas and the book describes his six-week experience travelling on Greyhound buses (occasionally hitchhiking) throughout the racially segregated states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia passing as a black man. Sepia Magazine financed the project in exchange for the right to print the account first as a series of articles.
After the publication of the book, Griffin was vilified; he was hanged in effigy in his home town of Mansfield, Texas and threatened with death. However, the book earned him international respect as a human rights activist. After its publication, he became a leading advocate in the Civil Rights Movement and did much to promote awareness of racial situations.
I think the attempt to write outside your experience can be a risky one, but you have to move outside your comfort zone, actually try to climb inside that other person's shoes. And that isn't easy to do. I don't know many writers who have pulled it off without going to the lengths that Griffin did.
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Date: 2010-02-13 09:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-02-13 05:20 pm (UTC)