by bell hooks
In her nonfiction British writer Jeanette Winterson goes to great pains to disassociate herself from the label “lesbian writer.” Positively, she endeavors to lay claim again and again to that space of creativity where any committed artist is more concerned with the work than with identities sexual or otherwise. In “The Semiotics of Sex” she declares: “I am a writer who happens to love women. I am not a lesbian who happens to write.” However, while she goes to great pains to critique gay thinkers for acting as though sexual identity is important, she does not painstakingly critique hetero-sexist thinkers for refusing to approach work that focuses on differences in an unbiased manner. Sound and beautiful writing is not the only reason Jeanette Winterson’s work found both acclaim and a sustained audience. Were it not for the activism preceding the publication of work like hers challenging heterosexism, done by individuals who openly identify as gay and by their allies in struggle, there might not have been any mainstream audience, however large or small, capable of appreciating Winterson’s work. While she is right to castigate any individual who approaches her and the work concerned only with what she or any writer is doing sexually, she oversimplifies the issue when she implies that no mention should be made of homosexuality.
At no point does Winterson suggest that writers should not be required to speak about their sexuality. Such thinking would not curry favor with mainstream critics. No one would balk at a critical reader of the work of Henry Miller or Norman Mailer, both white heterosexual male writers, who made reference to their autobiographical comments about their sexuality. Indeed, these comments illuminate the work. At times it appears that Winterson objects to any mention of sexuality if a writer is gay. Any writer should resist any attempt to see their work solely as a reflection of one aspect of who they are.
Winterson is on target when she insists that “to continue to ask someone about their homosexuality, when the reason to talk is a book, a picture, a play, is harassment by the back door.” Yet at times it seems that she wishes to deny that sexual practice in any way influences work. Her comments are mere mimicry of the elitist tone of generations of white male writers and critics who though writing very specific and autobiographically based work insisted that it was always and only universal. In fact, really great writing is usually both specific and universal in its appeal. Winterson’s comments often seem to be oriented towards currying favor from a mainstream traditional critical public. With heavy-handed didactism she contends: “Art must resist autobiography if it hopes to cross boundaries of class, culture … and … sexuality. Literature is not a lecture delivered to a special interest group, it is a force that unites its audience. The sub-groups are broken down.” Does Winterson seriously believe that centuries of heterosexual writers never included openly gay characters in their fictions because they were resisting autobiography? The truth is heterosexuality was infinitely more familiar to them. To the extent that they were writing from a foundation of what they knew, they were writing autobiographically. It is utterly pretentious and false for any writer to act as though only gay writers, and writers from other marginal groups, have indulged in merely describing their reality. There is infinitely more autobiographically based bad writing published by heterosexual writers. The desire on the part of any writer from a marginalized group to emphasize the aspect of their reality that has previously been aggressively denied as a result of political repression is natural. And even though a consequence of this may be that the reading public is often offered writing from that group which is shallow, poorly crafted, or sensational, the breaking down of social barriers that once precluded the telling of such stories makes it all the more possible for great writing to emerge. When writers from marginalized groups do work that is truly marvelous, this writing is not seen by dominant audiences as personifying the group’s capabilities. Usually it is seen as a rare exception. Yet if there is a marvelous book by a straight white male writer and ten trashy books by the same, this group’s capability will be judged by the better work.
Ironically, the power of great writing by a writer from a marginalized group to inspire and influence the work of emerging writers from that group is diminished when such an individual disassociates their work from that of peers from similar circumstances. Concurrently, this disassociation tends to reinscribe the assumption, rooted in already existing biases, that this writing and the writer represents an exception. Individual writers from marginal groups often invest in the idea of their specialness. They may feel threatened when aspiring writers seek to do equally compelling work. Black writers often feel pitted against one another, especially for attention from white-dominated mass media. When planning the marketing of my most recent memoir, a white woman publicist commented that I might have difficulty getting reviews in publications because another black woman writer was publishing a memoir at the same time. My first response was to call attention to the fact that at least six white women writers had published memoirs at the same time and magazines had no trouble focusing on all of them, sometimes in articles that addressed their work individually and at other times collectively. She agreed that this had happened but that “it just does not work that way for black writers.” Again it is not the black writer seeking to ghettoize but rather the racial biases of mainstream white press that make it evident by such practices that only one of us at a time can expect to receive attention.
To counter racist agendas at both the editorial and public-relations level, I fantasize, as many writers do, of writing a book where no mention is made of my race or gender—where the work has to be considered on its own terms. To fantasize this is to imagine a publishing world that no longer exists, if it ever did. Now more than ever the persona of the writer is as much a feature of marketing strategy as is the work’s content. Doris Lessing exposed this when she tried several years ago to get a book published using a pseudonym. The manuscript deemed worthless and discarded when seen as written by a nobody was eagerly snapped up when Lessing revealed she was the writer. Whether the labels attached to writers and marketed are identifiers of race, sex, or some other characteristic that sets the individual apart from others, it is always limiting to be defined by one aspect of one’s identity.
The black and/or female writer who publishes work that specifically focuses on race or gender issues will often find that their writing on all other subjects will be ignored. To be labeled the “feminist” writer means one is likely to be excluded from any acknowledgment that you are someone capable of writing about topics that extend beyond this marker. Equally so, to approach feminist publishing with the desire to do work that does not “fit” with the prevailing tone and temper of the movement is to also be excluded. Even though we are living in a time when the rhetoric of the house embraces multiculturalism and diversity, writers who are not straight white males who resist confinement to any category or subject matter in their work often find themselves reinscribed into limiting confined spaces by mass media. Unfortunately, the language of mass media is not a rhetoric of complexity; the more complex the vision the harder it is to convey in a short interview, brief comment, or book review. When a writer has a body of work the critical reader may only have looked at the one book they are discussing but on the basis of this one text will assume that they fully comprehend the scope of the author’s concern. The more marginal one’s group status in the culture, the less likely work will be given serious attention by mainstream media. Often press who are hostile to feminism deny any woman writer with this label attached to her work quality time or attention. As a black woman professor and writer who writes about the politics of representation, I am well aware of the extent to which white women readers are seen by the mainstream media as the only meaningful audience for writing by and about women. As a consequence, if a black woman writer writes work that specifically addresses black female experience, the tacit assumption will be that the work has no appeal for white females. However, it is always assumed that books written by white females specifically about their experience
have universal appeal.
As a reader I find I am wholeheartedly able to identify with work by white women even when it does not address the experiences I am most familiar with. For example: Erica Jong’s witty autobiographical account of aging, Fear of Fifty, highlights growing up white and Jewish. Her personal stories delight me even though our backgrounds are in no way similar. The difficulty lies with mass media not realizing that white women readers are interested in work by black women. This is especially true of mass-market women’s magazines. Of course only white women writers can write about their specific experiences without ever having to describe themselves as white. When I first published my memoir, Bone Black, I kept describing it as a memoir about girlhood that emphasizes growing up black and southern, among other experiences. Again and again editors tried to describe it solely as a memoir about black girlhood. I resisted this so as not to imply that nonblack women could not relate to the experiences I recall. The large number of letters I received from white women readers who identified with the experiences I shared was yet another reminder of how empathy allows us to understand another’s differences.
If all writers consciously used identifying labels in ways that describe without defining we would be able to see the larger picture both in relation to an author’s vision and her personal story. In the case of Jeanette Winterson, I read her work before hearing any information about her person, her nationality, race, class background, or sexual practice. Later I was pleased to learn that she was from a rural working-class family that had difficulty accepting her love of reading because that is an experience akin to my own. No large numbers of successful writers come from working-class rural backgrounds. The extent to which that formative experience shapes a writer’s vision fascinates me. I can value this bit of information without allowing it to overdetermine my reading of her work.
In all my years of writing I have never heard any writer from a marginalized group insist that readers should only read gay writers if they are gay, black straight writers if they are black and straight. I do not know where to find writers who are so attached to labels. I hear about them most in the works of conservative thinkers who are condemning their narrowmindedness, their failure to understand that great literature transcends race and gender. In her collection of essays Skin: Talking About Sex, Class and Literature, Dorothy Allison shares again and again that her work as an activist for lesbian and feminist movement never led her to assume that she would write from a limited perspective. To her and fellow lesbians whose writing she admires, “literature was about refusing all categories.” Allison remembers one of her teachers, Bertha Harris, declaring: “There is no lesbian literature, she told us. The relevant word was literature, real literature that came out of an authentic lesbian culture.” Concurrently, there is no black literature, only literature that conveys our experience as black people. There is no feminist writer, only the writer who writes from a feminist perspective.
I and all the writers I know want to be respected first and foremost for our work; the root meaning of the word respect is “to look at.” Writing can be considered on its own terms and then it can also be looked at in relation to a writer’s background and personal history. My experience as a southern working-class black female from a religious family has shaped the way I see the world. Yet the specificity of that experience does not keep me from addressing universal concerns. It is not an either/or issue and never has been. Both in our past and present the tyranny of race, gender, and social biases has meant that disenfranchised writers have had to struggle for voice and recognition in ways that highlight identity. That struggle has not ended, as we must now resist the form recognition takes when these categories are then deployed to confine and restrict our voices. If long-standing structures of hierarchy and domination were not still in place and daily reinscribed, calling attention to a writer’s race, gender, class, or sexual practice would illuminate work, expand awareness and understanding. I am not a writer who happens to be black. I am a writer who is black and female. These aspects of my identity strengthen my creative gifts. They are neither burdens nor limitations. By fully embracing all the markers that situate and locate me, I know who I am. Writing the truth of what we know is the essence of all great and good literature.
writing to confess
When I was a girl obsessed with reading biographies and autobiographies more than twenty years ago, the vast majority of the works I read were by and about white males. The book that most influenced my consciousness of writing during my early teens was Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. This book entered the closed, racially segregated world of my upbringing by a very serendipitous and circuitous route. I had become involved with a racially integrated group of Christians who were actively involved in Campus Crusade for Christ. While my parents were religious and basically fundamentalist in their religious beliefs they were suspicious of overzealous participation in cult-like Christian groups. Not only did they try to limit my involvement with the well-meaning but “crazy” white folks who were leading this movement, they were vehemently opposed to progressive interpretations of Scriptures and the new biblical texts that they saw as blasphemous interpretations of the Word. And more than anything they mistrusted ecumenical approaches to religious worship. Hence their reluctance to let me attend a spiritual retreat in the hills of Tennessee. I remember my incessant crying and pleading, the intensity of their refusal, but I cannot recall their reasons for changing their minds. I do know that one of the good “crazy” folks had spoken with them and assured them that I would not be seduced away from the faith of my home church.
At this spiritual retreat I was seduced by the talks given by a progressive Catholic priest. For many of us lost and tormented souls he provided spiritual guidance. He listened to my dreams of wanting to be a writer, of feeling always like an outsider, a freak especially at home with family, and he comforted me. Sensing my despair with life, he sent to me one of the progressive young white women students who was part of his campus fellowship. I was sitting in a corner on the floor by a window that sunny day, looking out on the hills, feeling the heat as comfort and sanctuary. The sight brought to mind the passage “I will lift up my eyes unto the hills—from whence cometh my help.” When she joined me, this student of the priest, who was beautiful and ethereal in her presence, giving me a hug and talking in hushed tones about writing, she carried in her hand a parting gift. It was her worn, tattered copy of Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet. In the memoir of my girlhood, Bone Black, I say of this book: “Rilke gives meaning to the wilderness of spirit I am living in. His book is a world I enter and find myself. I read Letters to a Young Poet over and over again. I am drowning and it is the raft that takes me safely to the shore.”
When Rilke’s work entered my life it brought me joy and a vision of artistic freedom. His whiteness and maleness were not foregrounded, nor was his German identity. Of course I recognized these identity markers but I was engaged with the ideas he offered. I have never heard any critic belittling the confessional nature of these letters. Diverse readers seem to all agree that these letters have enriched our understanding of writing, of creative process. In recent years as women of all races/ethnicities and men of color embrace confessional writing as a way of coming to voice, whether through autobiographies, memoirs, letters, diaries, etc., mainstream critics aggressively devalue such writing. As an undergraduate student at Stanford University at the peak of contemporary feminist movement, it was thrilling to be in classrooms where critical interventions were being made that allowed for the reclamation of writing by women that had been lost because of patriarchal culture’s devaluation of women’s words. In those classrooms I and other students were not only taught that we should strive to be excellent thinkers and writers, we were taught to value good writing whether it was done by women or men. In recent years, antifeminist backlash constructs a monolithic feminist classroom where all students are taught to hate work by men, to have no aesthetic standards, no appreciation for “g
reat” literature. This was not my experience nor has it been the experience of most of my students.
Feminist insistence that “the personal is political” did encourage many women to engage in existential self-reflection about the meaning of life, especially in relation to sexism and male domination. That critical exploration created a renaissance in women’s autobiographical writing. Much of this writing was not exceptional. Yet its lack of literary merit was not due to the confessional dimension but rather lack of skills, etc. Not all the women who began writing for the first time as a consequence of engagement in feminist movement were engaged with the craft of writing. Many of these women did not want to be “writers,” but they did want to document their lives. The growing body of confessional writing by women coincided with the proliferation in mass culture of the talk show as a place for personal confession. Since these shows are designed to appeal to a predominately female market many of the topics for discussion are appropriated from cultural narratives that were initially validated only within feminist circles, narratives about child abuse, domestic violence, rape, sexual harassment, abortion, etc. Patriarchal mass media’s appropriation and popularization of these topics helped create a cultural context where the confessional narrative has been trivialized, made to appear solely a gesture that is self-serving and exhibitionist. This trivialization has led to an overall devaluation of any confessional narrative.