I’ve had a fair bit of discussion last year over the concept of “Own Voices,” particularly with regards to AoC in SFF, and I’ve seen the conversation quite often in Twitterspace the past couple of months, which inevitably means I start to form my own opinion about it. “Does own voices mean,” some people may think, “that white writers can’t write people of colour?”
I like the recent take about how this is the wrong question to ask. These sort of questions shift the focus away from a very important conversation towards one that will result in an arbitrary argument that leaves one party feeling smug and the other wanting to scream in frustration. (“Sure you can wear seven layers of clothes at the same time,” I once told my daughter, as she struggled to put on the last layer).
Let me make this really quick analogy. Let’s say we’re in a movie theatre, and I happen to find a seat first. Just as I’m getting comfortable, someone walks up to me and says, “Can I sit there instead?”
It is an uncomfortable conversation, given how publishing has been in the past, given our histories–of colonialism and slavery in all forms and everything in between. I don’t like picking fights. I don’t want to become yet another “angry minority.” And you know, given how I’ve grown up and the power dynamics and everything, chances are I’ll get up and hand that seat over to the person who asked. I’m used to taking the long way around. I’m used to taking the harder route. It’s not a big deal. I didn’t get to where I am by complaining. I’ll walk up those fucking steps and find another seat.
But that’s me. Having been around many other minority writers the past few years, it’s suddenly, deeply uncomfortable what we’re telling each other we have to do. “Somebody else took your seat. I’m sorry. You have to be a little better to get a chance at another.” Even if you felt that seat ought to have been marked with your name, because that was your story, something near and dear to your heart. No; instead, we shake our heads and tell each other to suck it up. The world isn’t going to get better for us. We have to get better for it instead. We feel like we’re supposed to do this thing called “setting an example” and “trying harder” in what I’m starting to see is a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom. We demand higher standards, shoot ourselves in the foot, and pass out during the race. We care, so we set ourselves up to fail.
I don’t want to tell someone what they can or can’t write. That is not the point of Own Voices. The point of Own Voices is to celebrate others like me, people who have struggled for years to get their voices heard. It is to pull the spotlight away from what one demographic wants to do and to put it on the demographic who hasn’t had a chance yet, to elevate them. There is room for everyone, right? We in our safe spaces can all agree on that one thing.
Except.
Except.
That’s not really the truth, is it?
Resources are finite.
It sucks when one knows that one’s demand to be seen and heard, to have one’s existence acknowledged, will be met with the defensive: an accusation (however subtle) of policing, of gatekeeping. “We want to see more of ourselves!” so people turn around and profit off diversity, while still ignoring that plea. When you spend so many moments of your waking life begging people to see you as another person, it whittles you down.
Authors are free to write whatever they want. But we all should understand that our choices come with consequences. No one can absolve you of your sins. Write from your heart, and accept the judgment that will come after. Depending on the current climate, that judgment may be uncomfortable.
“But I just want to write stories,” some people will say.
Well, so do we.
It doesn’t hurt to shift the focus once in a while.
