Thread by @itsmevichet

I am an #author and #POC that was educated in a system that, even within its creative and artistic spheres, taught a very specific voice and style that is in some ways useful, but whose dogma is mostly held up by whiteness.

So, I have some feelings about "own voices."

I think it's nice that society is waking up (my colonized self included) to the effort that POC put in every day to "fit in" and not have to have to struggle in public spaces for being themselves.

I remember as a kid how much I wish I had an American name because it would stop the other kids from making fun of me... as if it was about my name.

As someone who is trying to re-discover the Cambodian heritage that I was taught to leave behind to "fit in," fuck that.

This is a small example on a laundry list I'm not going into because there's plenty of excellent pieces about my experience out there if you're paying attention.

The way folks like me have had to pay attention and listen when we were handed bootstraps.

The story of my family's "success" in America is underpinned by how much of ourselves we were willing to give up in order to escape poverty.

I am illiterate in my parents language. I speak at the level of a first grader. This was a choice that was made for me so I could fit in.

I imagine it was harder for some of my cousins, whose grandparents are and were still alive, who had no way of communicating without a mediator.

So... now to the concept of "own voices" and the deep sadness and discomfort that I feel.

I was educated in this system that incentivized my family to distance ourselves from our own culture within public life, and grew up to be a writer that only realized two or three years ago that none of my characters that I was writing about looked like me or had my background.

Granted I write about orcs' day jobs and the cottage industry surrounding princess kidnappings, but still.

I write fantasy, and the advice - which is still useful in ways we can get into later - was to never describe characters in too much detail.

This is so readers could imagine themselves in the characters' roles to a certain extent.

And yet, in the vast majority of works I've read, including my own, my instinct has never been to see these characters as being a view that I could fully inhabit.

And not, strictly speaking, because I know that I myself am not a magical tree person.

Maybe it's the trauma of having always been on the outside looking in my whole life. Like, no Brendan, you're not fucking Harry Potter and neither am I, I'm Asian, and you're American.

Regardless, that brings me to "own voices."

"#OwnVoices" is a call for editors and publishers to seek out writers of color and other marginalized communities who are specifically and intentionally writing about their own experiences (trauma... and joy... and trauma).

If I'm mischaracterizing the spirit of the movement, tell me. But based on what I've seen, that's it in a nutshell.

TO BE CLEAR, I think this is at best a very good thing, and at worst a "much better than it was before" thing. Some people are more open with sharing deeply intimate, possibly painful/traumatic experiences, and those people should get PAID.

But here I am, uncomfortable as fuck.

Maybe it's because I spent my whole life crafting my voice under explicit instruction so I could fit in and be appealing to mainstream audiences.

Maybe it's me being shitty with "I went through it so others should have to" energy, and if I am, tell me to shut the fuck up.

But if I'm being honest, the whiplash between "let go of your past and do what you need to do to succeed" and "we want to hear about your trauma that you were taught to bottle up and not inconvenience us with" feels insulting.

I've been stewing with this subject for a year. I feel like an asshole for speaking about it now, because there's something that feels selfish about it. But here I am expressing myself like writers do when they can no longer divorce narrative from lived experience.

I love writing fantasy. I am actively decolonizing my own writing, consciously including the things I'd been told to leave out to be part of the set of experiences people want to hear and read about now.

But even before I started that, what is my work be if not my own voice?

I'm coming from decades of training that told me to do the opposite of that, only to be told readers want stories about me now. Like, me personally.

I might feel like an asshole about it, but I can't help but feel suspicious.

Do they know how much effort I have had to put in to exist and be taken seriously in public?

Is that effort being acknowledged and addressed?

Do PoC need to talk about their most painful experiences to put food on the table and a roof over their heads?

What are #POC's #ownvoices if not everything we write about at any given time?

Just trying to write about orcs' day jobs, and feeling like a selfish asshole for doing so.

tl;dr pay POC/marginalized artists regardless of whether they're art is primarily about their pain.

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