Yale is a bellwether of sorts. Four years ago faculty and students made international headlines complaining about how White, Male – and of course Dead – all the poets in “Major English Poets” were, not to mention in the English Department as a whole. Time to “de-colonize.” Now they’re doing the same, more or less, with their ubiquitous Art History “survey” course.
So today, what to my wondering eyes should appear? An L.A. Times article proving that even having the normally magical girly-genitalia (plus endorsements from even more magical Brown ladies named Oprah and Salma) wasn’t enough to immunize the White gal who wrote “American Dirt.”
It wasn’t that many years ago when White authors were chastised for their stories’ lack of…
Female
Black
Brown
Asian
and Gay characters and cultural dilemmas -slash-settings.
Soon thereafter we were further whipped for our lack of…
L
B
T
Q
and XYZ folk within our pages for the same reasons. How dare we?
But what happened when Whites (including that “American Dirt” author) did bend the literary knee to all those gas-lighters? They did what gas-lighters always do.
They came up a new pejorative (cultural/racial “Appropriator”) to slap on you as they further damn you for doing what they said they wanted you to do. See, the problem is you did it while still wearing the wrong skin-color or sitting on the wrong genitalia!
Today, all that Progressive “gas” has so filled the room White writers are finally between the old rock-and-a-hard-place. If they haven’t broken free already, giving up on “fame and fortune” in the big city to return to earth and do-the-publishing themselves, they need to GROK quick that their future is going to be like that whirling cartoon dervish. They will be compelled by contracts, advances, and fear of public shaming to continue to ricochet here and there, spinning to the ever-changing tune called by progressively more Progressive book-publishers and the same flavored Big Media that promotes the fictional-fare “well-paid” writers (including themselves at that point) hack up.
Ask yourself, What Would Will Do? How about first opening the window to let the gas out? Then try ignoring the gasbags and get back to your…
out-of-touch,
culturally insensitive,
“colonial” White writing.
Besides, before you know it no college will even teach Will Shakespeare’s scribblings because of his insufficient-use-of plus stereotyping-of “minorities.”
The good news for us still-living White writers is we will soon be in very good “spiritual company” when forced into the segregated creative-ghettos seemingly right around the corner. That said, let’s end on a positive note, shall we?
Sure I’m puncturing your already deflated dreams of snagging an NYC literary-agent and hitting publishing’s Big Time. And sure there’s also all sorts of de-platforming of traditional/heritage-Americans – including self-pubbed books being banned from Amazon – as the frosting on top. But the hard to see silver lining is you can STILL SELF-PUB. Pick up an antique MIMEOGRAPH machine for cheap and learn how to use it.
I jest now, but who knows how far Progressives will go this time to reach their Utopia…
http://www.ebay.com/b/Antique-Mimeographs/163093/bn_99106321
