Who Are You Reading Now?
By Jeanne Kisacky | September 30, 2022 |
You read that right. Not what are you reading, but who. To me, that subtle change reveals an ongoing seismic shift in reading and, by extension, in writing.
Who an author is has come to matter intensely in what readers choose to read (or not to read). To be clear, this is not about a reader choosing a specific author’s books because of what they write—a preferred genre; a favorite topic or theme; a beloved story-telling style; the characters; the voice; the beauty of the writing. This is about a reader choosing a specific author’s books because of who that author is—their lived experiences, their personal characteristics, their opinions. Book selection based on an author’s identity has been the mainstay of non-fiction (particularly celebrity memoirs) for a long time, but it has been less of an influence in fiction. Until now. Readers now intentionally expand (or limit) their reading selections based on the perceived diversity or conformity of an author or on the perceived legitimacy of an author to write a specific story. In many cases, choosing who to read pulls readers out of their usual reading habits and boundaries. By altering reading patterns, this shift alters writing and publication patterns. It also alters the job of being a writer.
It means that who the writer is, as a person, determines what stories that specific writer can credibly tell. A writer with a good story and a compelling life story can be vaulted into the limelight. On the other hand, social media responses to any perceived mismatch between author identity and story can be (and have been) astonishingly cruel. But if who an author is limits the stories they are allowed to tell, however they choose to tell it, then the line between fiction and reality has been sundered. If the work of art—the story–is no longer seen as separate from the creator of the art, writing becomes a matter of self-presentation and self-awareness as much as putting words on the page.
This shift is not a bad thing. It is also not an unequivocally good thing.
- It can make new, once-silenced voices audible; but it can also limit what any one voice can say.
- It can break down barriers, encouraging readers to expand their author list, adding more diversity and variety. It also has the capacity to harden existing boundaries.
What is less obvious is exactly what this shift will mean for writers. Writing is no longer just a job, not what you do; it’s who you are. The emphasis on author identity makes writing, all writing, inherently political and inherently personal. And in this age of polarization, there is no middle ground. No anonymous author. Pen names are no protection in this world of outing and social media policing. Writers become public figures. Unable to hide behind the scenes.
I believe writers are aware of this shift, down to their very bones, and that it influences daily decisions about what to write, how to write it, and (consciously or subconsciously) how to defend it. Writing, while simultaneously trying to assess how your ‘authority’ to write any particular line, character decision, or story arc might be interpreted or misinterpreted by any number of interested social groups, is debilitating. Being proactive—writing intentionally to generate or provoke reactions—highlights the power of writing, but rarely plays out according to plan.
The consequence: writers either become self-aware and intentional about who they are in public and private and how that matches what they write or risk dismissal or misinterpretation. One clear example of how this works is the ongoing public push-pull debate over whether ‘un-diverse’ authors can write about ‘diverse’ characters or the reverse. Google the phrases ‘white authors writing black characters’ and ‘black authors writing white characters’ and thousands of pages of discussion and advice on how it should or shouldn’t be done are overwhelming.
If a writer is only able to write about personal experience, grounded in lived actuality, then are we left only with memoir? Or are all writers required to become scholars, exhaustively researching the ‘reality’ underlying their ability to tell a story? Is fiction dead?
I am writing this piece because I think writers need to acknowledge this shift is happening, face it head on, and chart a course through it with intentionality. I have no absolute answers, but I am deeply aware how powerfully it has influenced my writing. It has made me want to be more sensitive and inclusive in how and what I write. It has made me fearful to do so. I have a blog for my nonfiction work that is about old hospitals, but I haven’t posted anything new in years. Partly because, well, life. But also partly because in writing about hospitals, I have to write about diversity – how persons of color were housed and treated differently. How doctors and nurses interacted with each other in sexist ways. And putting that out there, at this point in time, as a writer not representative of the groups under study, is intimidating. How much research do I need to support my ability to tell someone else’s story? Did I get it right? Is there a way I could get it right?
But the bottom line remains: if I don’t tell the story, regardless of who says I can or can’t tell it, then it will remain untold. And that silence, that untelling, is not a writer’s choice.
I’m not here to say whether this shift is going to make writing (and reading) more or less equitable, inclusive, influential, or transformative. I simply want to start a conversation (or at least spark some awareness) about what it means to be a writer in this day and age. Can a writer be someone who sends their work out into the world while remaining safely behind the scenes? Or is a writer out there in the world, waving their ‘freak flag’ or ‘normal flag’ high, standing next to their works and ready for all the public scrutiny and debate?
And yes, that is a provocative and polarized contrast.
Who do you want to be as a writer? And who will be your readers? How do you handle the issue of writing about characters that do not share your personal characteristics or backgrounds or experiences?
Jeanne Kisacky trained to be an architect before going back to her first love–writing. She studied the history of architecture, has written and published nonfiction, and has taught college courses. She is the author of Rise of the Modern Hospital: An Architectural History of Health and Healing, 1870-1940.
[coffee]
Thank you for a most interesting piece, Jeanne. You put into well-organized sentences ideas that I’m sure bounce around so many writers’ heads on a daily basis, including mine. I write under a pen name and take great care not to allow (m)any of my political or social leanings to show in my writing or public presence for fear of alienating readers. I understand some of the justification behind the situation you described, and I hear it echoed loudly by my own very opinionated children and their cohorts. Yet I also seethe at the almost total media/critical black-out surrounding Robert Galbraith’s new mystery. Has anyone seen a review? An ad? It’s another amazing book (even though I’m only half-way through it) that committed readers are finding, buying, and enjoying, but there’s certainly no concerted movement to bring new readers into the series, and I find that truth sad. As for Jeanne’s final question: I’ve tried to learn patience and tolerance in accepting and loving FAMILY members that “do not share {my} personal characteristics or backgrounds or experiences,” so I try to extend the same courtesy to characters that occasionally find their way into my books.
What I always go back to with these very good questions you have presented together so eloquently is where do you (universal you) feel it? If decisions about what to write or not write resound deep in the belly as fear, as shame, as guilt, as worry, then an author can only go through her emotions directly to decide what is workable, unworkable, or tolerable externally.
If it scares us we surely want to know what is there though—don’t we? Can we not be a reader of ourselves and be brave enough to see where the plot goes? Can we write it and allow ourselves to grow during our drafts? Can we trust we will know, if we don’t know right now?
The DELETE key is always at the ready, but courage is staring down the shame car, the fear RV, the everybody-will-hate-me tractor-trailer currently headed your way. Maybe you’ll get bruised. Maybe it will be a miss. Maybe you’ll be rescued. Maybe a 13-pound chicken hawk will fly away with your toupee right before you get squashed. All I know is that if I could read Stephen King’s It as a child, I can be brave enough to look at my own life and decide what is possible for me to write as an author—right now.
Social media has wrecked havoc on a writer’s existence. Of course, I’m not saying anything you don’t already know. Oh, to be a writer prior to the Internet. Faulkner never had this problem. If you’re writing for a living, then God help you. It’s not just readers who throw stones. It’s agents, publishers, and anyone in the industry. The best way to avoid the pitfalls of all of this is to grow older. At some point, you just don’t give a damn who doesn’t like your work. I apologize for dumbing this down, but a writer must plow forward. Writer their heart. Even if some would rather put a stake in it.
Pamela, I agree. At 56, I’m starting to not give a damn, and it’s very liberating. I put my heart and soul into my writing to make it the best I can. In the end, that has to be enough…
I am what I write and I write what I am. I don’t preach, but I don’t edit inspiration. I draw from life experiences, some of them painful, because it’s honest. In the end, what’s most important is writing a good, entertaining story that maybe makes people thoughtful at the end. I spent half-a-lifetime in a shell before a catastrophic life event put an end to that. Now, I write for those who’ve traveled a similar path, but have no voice. If someone wants to analyze my fiction and compare they need look no farther than my blog.
Perhaps it’s easier for me given I write Otherworld Historical Fiction. Maybe not. I do know my worldbuilding flowed from the same place as my fiction, that it was created as a frame to best display my art. I can’t be much more honest than that. Most people will see that my creative and personal lives align. Haters, though, will hate. I don’t write for them. I’m also, at this point, too old to care. I’m more concerned with helping my audience, big or small, than I am with fame and fortune.
Hi Jeanne. With great precision, you have taken up what is for me a depressing reality.
A legitimate wish to end unfairness threatens or at least confines the meaning of imagination for fiction writers. The concept of credentials that legitimize what’s written doesn’t begin with the work, but with the attributes of the writer herself. She must pass various litmus tests to be acceptable.
If she doesn’t pass them, her writing will be subjected to a new level of scrutiny for evidence that confirms the bias against her. To borrow a popular new cliche of the moment, the work will be submitted to the micro-aggressions of critics in the employ of overt, intentional political censorship.
In my view, all the writer can do is to pursue her own lights, and remain silent before such criticism. It can’t be answered, and in all likelihood it won’t be listened to. But perhaps some kind of preemptive manifesto or disclaimer might be used at the beginning of books. It won’t de-fang the thought police, but it will take away their ability to claim having “discovered” what’s wrong.
Since I started writing the mainstream trilogy PC, which has, among others, a main character who is disabled and chronically ill, I have been firmly on this path: she isn’t that different from the physician she was before and can’t be now, but the entire world has classified her into a different group.
I want to tell a good story, but you also get to live, to see, as her (when the story is in her pov), and it doesn’t come with explanations or setup – but as she lives it, which is different from how other people live. The two other main characters are healthy and successful, and live their lives as ‘normals’ do, and the three lives become entwined in such a way that they will never be completely separate, and not all of them can be completely happy.
THIS is my contribution, those lives – in a shot of a few years’ time – partly created to develop empathy and understanding in a reader, but wholly because it is a good story, loaded with ethical conundrums and living out the consequences of your choices. Which are inescapable.
I am this as a person; I chose to use it rather than pretend I’m someone else. It has been terrifying as well as satisfying, and the many reviews which mention some of these themes tell me I’ve captured it. Just published the second book, can’t wait to finish the third.
I’ve had wonderful characters, a huge diversity infact, and some of those weren’t stereotypically expected.
In response to cancel culture and “stay in your lane” racist mud slinging and the label-gun not running out of ink anytime soon- ive scaled them all back- I mainly keep description of characters sketchy thanks to my readerly preference, but now, it will never include the skin deep labels. Never. Not even implied that they are this or that.
And thats what i find a shame. Genuinely, hate has bred hate where it wasn’t. And has killed characters that didn’t deserve anything. Ex: a member of a special group of people- saved the protagonist and what was the most striking feature? He had a smile that shone more brilliantly than his plantinum necklace in the streetlight.
This is what i loved about the character and wanted to write him in for- that smile. Possibly it came from a neighbour i had, or a dream. Cant remember.
Now id never hazard mentioning skin colour. Even though that description is my attempt to write something so gorgeous, im sure it will be shot to pieces. Hell that the character was present solely because of that angelic appearance and not possessing a significant role will probably be something i get flayed for. Im so tired of being told im racist by birth alone. It’s past hurting- the injustice of that makes me darn right disinterested in bothering trying. Ex: I dont even know if i want to write that character anymore. The love for that smile has gone away.
So my 2 cents: it HAS limited writers with self-censorship all the way to actual cancellation and hate campaigns. It HAS robbed the world of fantastic characters, and imprisoned others. It HAS set back the very things it claims to be on the side of. It HAS created a hate where- childlike- there wasnt any. Im even done with trying to describe and explain this factual truth- because there is always someone to come along and say youre wrong youre making it up. Live my experience and then say im lying about it.
Good post and very timely. Personally, if a story draws me in, I pay no attention to the author’s demographics. I just Do. Not. Care. As a writer, I painstakingly and respectfully want to get the details right of every character. Don’t we all? If we are not “given permission” to inhabit and illustrate a world different from ours, what a godawful, boring place the pages would be. Writing is freaking hard enough. Let’s throw in “experts” who’ve never put pen to paper in their whole nit-picky lives outside of scholarly journals, inform us as to what is to be “allowed.” NO. NO. NO.
Just a great, thought-provoking post. I’ve been seeing (and mulling) the same things you have, and as a lifelong raving liberal, I don’t resent the political climate, although I am well aware of the problems created by cancel culture and how they have impacted me, by default, as a white woman. Everyone has an opinion, and now those opinions are broadcasted 24/7 on thousands of different platforms. But who has a handle on quantifiable truth anymore.
I wrote about a variation of this issue here, if you care to read it. And thank you for your post.
https://open.substack.com/pub/cappuccino/p/is-the-inclusivity-thats-happening?r=kbmi7&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
This is an important topic–thank you for raising it, Jeanne! I’ll just chime in as a white writer who has been grappling with this issue in my own YA fiction. As I’ve watched this movement unfold and grow, particularly over the past few years, I wonder if we (and here I am referring to white writers in particular) are taking away the wrong message. Instead of believing that we must be limited in the stories we tell, we should commit to doing the difficult work of unlearning the implicit biases that unconsciously affect the way we write certain characters. This work is HARD and it often feels thankless, because you still might end up immersed in a Twitter storm despite your best efforts. However, an interesting thing can happen as you do this internal work: you start to better understand the boundaries between the stories that you can do justice to, and the ones that you cannot; you start to see how the criticism you may face–which feels like it is about you personally, and is often phrased that way–is actually not about you at all, but about challenging systems of oppression, and is giving you important information that you can learn and grow from; you learn how to reach out for feedback when you’re writing outside of your experience; and you begin to question how you can show up for and give back to marginalized communities you feature in your stories. While none of this is easy, it can have profound effects on our writing, and our selves.
This is a beautiful and eloquent response, to a post full of worthwhile questions. I wish I could “upvote” it more.
In addition to Alanna’s wise and gracious comment above, I just wanted to add this one thought (which I distilled out of a much longer and probably too blunt, too know-it-all commentary, lol):
The world and your imagination are infinite. Within what you are “allowed” to write, there are COUNTLESS stories, I promise.
In an unfortunate twist of fate, I lost control of my day to a family need and was unable to reply individually to all the wonderful comments. I am awed by the thoughtful replies and humbled by the depth of thought and consideration given so freely. Thank you all!
I tell my students, in creative writing classes, to write what they know. But then I explain that what they KNOW is EMOTION. We don’t know outer space, or wizards and dragons, but we know emotion. And that’s what connects the reader to the writer.
I’m reading Simone St. James right now, who always grabs me emotionally.
I think, as an overall guideline, writers should write whatever they want to write, they should write their own truth, otherwise why write? But don’t expect not to be criticized, whatever you write, whatever your values are. It’s part of being creative, of putting yourself out there, of evoking feelings and thoughts in others, of surprising or challenging your readers — who, of course, want to be surprised and challenged, or else they will criticize you for being so boring and predictable.