Six Great Books

Tickets to Fruitvale Station Please

In my life time I have been witness to men, women and
children being lynched, beaten, burned, attacked by dogs, assaulted with fire
hoses, stabbed, blown up by bombs, dragged behind pickup trucks, drowned, raped
with sticks, beaten with bats, infected with syphilis and riddled with bullets –
for just being Black. And every time one of these atrocities is committed, the
truth of it all must be told. That is why Director Ryan Coogler’s film, “Fruitvale
Station,” about the senseless death of young Oscar Grant III, is so important
and deserves our patronage and attention.

However, I will not be in the audience to see “Fruitvale
Station.” After six decades of bearing witness, I no longer have the capacity
to re-live on film the pain, suffering and loss that pierces more deeply every
time the reality of racism occurs.

Still, I purchased tickets to the film because I believe it
is important to support this young artist and his attempt to make us look when
it is so easy to turn away and forget. I will not forget but I must turn away. I
hope that by purchasing ticket to “Fruitvale Station” anyway, I show my support
for a work of art that that may help us understand that racism, in all of its
ignorance and brutality, consumes and destroys whenever it is allowed to
thrive.  

Gay Parents Belong in Our Communities--and in Our Stories

I live in Washington, DC, where same-sex marriage is legal.  I find it odd that as the Supreme Court weighs the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), DOMA’s defenders keep insisting on procreation as the purpose of marriage--as if there were no overlap between gay marriage and baby-making.  I had mixed feelings when I heard Elena Kagan countering such arguments with her comment that in marriages of heterosexuals over fifty-five, “there aren’t a lot of children coming out of those marriages.”  Her heart is in the right place and this eminently quotable comment, replayed over and over again on NPR, reminds us that the legal bond between two men or two women should be recognized by the federal government regardless of whether the partners intend to have children.  However, the truth is that many same-sex couples and gay single people do have children, whether through procreation or adoption.  It may be a little more challenging when procreation involves sperm donors, surrogates, or other “partners in procreation,” but in my opinion, that’s a good thing.

Does Race Authenticate Identity?

Interesting discussion on reddit.com about writing from the perspective of someone other than your own racial background. Specifically the writer asked, as a white woman, how does she authentically capture the persona of a black female character. My answer? Race is not a persona. You cannot authentically write about a black person based on the color of their skin any more than you can a white person. Experiences, exposure, economics, education, geography, love, pain, pleasure etc., in other words, life makes us who we are and how we are.

Like this young writer, the characters in my novel-in-progress, Provenance, similarly struggle to know each other and themselves without the convenient utility of race. Using art as a theme throughout the story, they ultimately discover that people, like art, have a provenance. As my character Dottie Lee Davis says,

“Folk wear their provenance on their faces and carry it in their hearts. Sometimes
they try to hide it but its all there. Where you were born, who you come from,
who you loved and who loves you. Who hurt you and who you’ve hurt, where you've been and sometimes where you’re going. Just don’t need a ten dollar word like provenance to describe it when a dollar word like history will do. History works just fine, for everyone and everything, art and people, all got history.”

So to the writer that posed the questions as a black woman and a writer I suggest you write about the glorious sum of all that a character has experienced. That is as authentic as you can make any character; black, white or indifferent.

Check the Reddit post and corresponding comments here.