The right to write
Writers are often told, “write what you know”. Generally, this is good advice and meant encouragingly, as in, record your unique human experience so that others can share in and learn from it.
However, looked at from the opposite perspective, it could be taken as an enforced limitation, translating to, “stick to your lane.” This is another thing writers are sometimes told, particularly in the social media world, when a writer of romance dips into racial issues for example, or a thriller writer uses their platform to speak out about their personal political views.
The novel Yellowface by R.F. Kuang, (don’t worry, no spoilers) tackles a lot of complicated themes, particularly those of race and creative ownership, when the unfinished manuscript of a young Asian woman is appropriated by a friend of hers who happens to be white. The theft aside, the protagonist receives a lot of negative feedback for being a white woman discussing the history of Chinese labourers during WW1. She is accused of not only representing something she has no right to, but also of exploitation and profiting from the suffering of the people she is writing about.
Challenged during the Q&A after a reading, the protagonist argues: “I think it’s very dangerous to start censoring what authors should and shouldn’t write … I’d hate to live in a world where we tell people what they should and shouldn’t write based on the colour of their skin. I mean, turn what you’re saying around and see how it sounds. Can a black writer not write a novel with a white protagonist? What about everyone who has written a novel about WWII, and never lived through it? You can critique a work on the grounds of literary quality, and its representations of history – sure. But I see no reason I shouldn’t tackle this subject if I’m willing to do the work … I think writing is fundamentally an exercise in empathy. Reading lets us live in someone else’s shoes. Literature builds bridges; it makes our world larger, not smaller. And as for the question of profit – I mean, should every writer who writes about dark things feel guilty about it? Should creatives not be paid for their work?”
Having made this impassioned speech, the same character then goes on to talk about the time she witnessed her friend making notes at a museum exhibition on a particular atrocity and being sickened by the way she turned those notes into an award-winning story. But isn’t that exactly what she’s just proposed she herself should be allowed to do?
It got me thinking. It’s not often I find myself in full agreement with a bad guy’s monologue either in real life or fiction and it didn’t sit well. I also disagreed with her judgement of her friend at the exhibition and using what she’d learned to create art, making me wonder what that says about me and my own goals as a writer of both fiction and creative non-fiction. What gives any of us the right to write anything? Even autobiographical work inevitably showcases other people and not always in a kind light. Fiction inevitably paints fact with an artistic brush, or is a complete fabrication. Is it ever possible to write anything that we are totally qualified and within our rights to? If yes, what? If not, what does that mean?
Jodi Picoult is a great example. She’s an author I greatly admire and hope to emulate in some respects. It seems she essentially chooses a topic she wants to explore and does so by turning it into a work of fiction for which she meticulously researches and explores the issue from every angle. Abortion, school shootings and having a “saviour child” in order to harvest healthy blood or tissue for an ailing sibling are but a few. It is highly unlikely that Jodi has experienced all her themes personally or even come into contact with them all through the people she knows. It is equally likely that hundreds if not thousands of people who are touched personally by her themes, feel she is unqualified to write about and profit from them. Perhaps they’re right. How then is she so successful and admired? Why do I wish to become the sort of writer who could consider her a peer?
For me, it is exactly the topics she discusses and the complex and emotive ways she explores them that inspire me. As the character in Yellowface argues, writing is an exercise in empathy. In order to tell a story well, any story, we have to understand it. We have to know our characters as deeply as we know ourselves, understanding their motivations. Whether entirely made up or based on an historical figure, our characters have to be as flawed and complex as we are in order to make them believable and relatable. Perhaps that is what’s at the heart of this argument. Perhaps literature, particularly fiction, is and always has been inherently flawed because its authors are. If so, it always will be, and no amount of research or empathy will fully counteract it. Perhaps that’s the beauty of it.
The reason I love libraries, particularly old libraries, is that they are essentially a collection pot of human experience. Places like the library at Trinity College, Dublin or the British Library contain more sorrow, joy, discovery, fact and questions than any one human could contain. Each contribution to these places has been poured out onto papyrus, paper or a computer screen by a writer compelled to get them down and share them with the world. Some of these are, were or will be incredibly successful in their lifetime, many were not, but all were inspired to the same act. The best of these were meticulously researched and required the full passion and dedication of their authors. That’s what makes them relatable and that’s what inspires me and the writers I know, to make contributions of our own. It isn’t a premeditated theft of someone else’s story, but the deep-rooted desire to understand them and to be understood ourselves.
Naturally there is an opportunity here for the kind of exploitative behaviour the Yellowface character is accused of, and it probably does happen. But a writer with authentic intentions will also write as authentically as they are able, often putting years into their research before they ever put pen to paper. They will read widely, visit relevant museums and locations, interview people who did live through the experience or are experts in the field. They may insert fictional characters or events to help move the story along or bolster the message they are trying to send, but they will not bend the facts to better suit their own agendas. These writers, like Jodi Picoult, bring issues to the attention of people who may not otherwise have encountered or thought about them, they throw the door to shared human experience wide open. They educate and challenge as well as entertain. They are brave enough to tell stories that others can’t or won’t. If they’re willing to put themselves through this process with no guarantee of success or positive reception, doesn’t this make them as qualified as anyone else? Doesn’t their willingness to learn, discuss and be corrected pave the way for everyone to have their voices heard and for everyone to do and be better? As for the idea of profiting from the suffering or experience of others. the writers I know or admire don’t do their work for profit. It’s a nice touch of course, allowing them to dedicate more time to their craft among other things, but it’s not why they write, and it doesn’t dictate how they choose their topics. Inspiration can and does strike in strange and seemingly random ways, but it is precisely that inspiration that provides the space for often difficult stories to be told well.
As for me, I’m currently working on a creative non-fiction book about immigration and North America and a novel about an autistic Dutchmen who finds himself on the island of Java during a conflict. Needless to say, these are not based on personal experience, but I am more than willing to put the work into the research and writing and have little hope of either recognition or profit! I simply feel compelled to add my voice to the collection of human experience and to better understand the others who exist alongside me or have come before.
I’m glad this debate landed on my lap while reading Yellowface as it has made me look the responsibility of writing square in the face and explore and reconcile how I feel about that aspect of the thing I love most. Ironically, R.F. Kuang’s novel has done exactly what I’ve argued good literature should do by challenging me, educating me and making me better. For better or worse the cycle continues and I, for one, feel the human experience would be much thinner, poorer and lonelier without it.