Over It: One Editor's Brush With Ignorance

by Catherine Chambers

“That's what is always fascinating about racism - how it is allowed, if not encouraged, to flourish freely in public spaces, the way racism and bigotry are so often unquestioned.” – Roxane Gay

Like any self-respecting literary type, I do a great deal of my work in coffee shops. It gets me out of the house, shakes up my scenery, and I can stay steadily caffeinated until whatever I’m working on is finished. On a recent trip home to Texas, I was working in one such establishment when an elderly man asked me what I was working on, typing away like that.

I love this part of conversations. I love telling people about Duende’s mission, about the act of handing a literary microphone to those who may not normally get one, about the hard work of the volunteer editing staff to diversify the literary landscape. If you saw me or any other Duende staff member at AWP, you can attest to how excited we are about the work we are doing. It never occurred to me that someone might not be excited about the prospect of diversity.

When I explained Duende’s mission to this man, an older white man whom we will call Bob, he frowned at me. “So you wouldn’t publish my writing,” he said curtly.

“Not necessarily,” I said, still feeling good-natured. In the past, Duende has published some amazing work from cisgendered straight white males.  “We publish quality work, always, but we are working towards diversifying indie lit. There are lots of other places you could have your work published. For some people, like incarcerated writers or undergraduates, it might be much harder."

It was as if Bob didn't hear me. “So if I was a dyke,” he barreled on, now having exited my good graces, “And I sent in a shit poem, you’d publish it.”

I took a deep breath. “That’s not what I said.”

“You’re discriminating me,” he said, louder now, pointing a finger at me from the armchair where he sat.

“Excuse me?” I asked, my heart rate picking up. I have self-diagnosed white knight syndrome combined with a temper, but I was trying to maintain my calm. Maybe he just didn’t understand. Hadn’t he seen the VIDA count?! Did he really think that he, as a white male, was being harmed by my publication choosing to address the work of underrepresented writers?

“Sweetheart, you’re very pretty, but you’re a bigot and a racist,” Bob informed me.

I realized this man couldn’t be reasoned with, so I simply shut my laptop and packed up my bag without another word to him. I stormed out to choruses of, Oh sweetheart, don’t be like that, and I was only kidding. I made it to my car before I burst into tears. 

I am a bi-racial female with skin privilege, so people sometimes raise an eyebrow when I tell them how important diversifying the literary world is to me. I am also a woman of small stature with big eyes and long hair. Men, especially older men, will write off my opinions, especially if they are strong. I am constantly called sweetheart, beautiful, darlin’, by men I don’t know.

You know what? I am over it. Like the people we are trying to give a voice with Duende, I am often unheard even though I am smart and I work hard. The world has cut me breaks, and it has not cut me breaks. So, Bob, you will not be getting one from me. What I will be doing is spreading our message no matter what you think, and continuing to work hard alongside a talented staff of editors to make Issue 3 a megaphone for writers from all over the world, writers of color, LGBTQ writers, student writers, incarcerated writers, and anyone else who gets as angry as I do that the world cuts men like Bob a break. 

Striving Towards Empathy: Why Diversity in Lit Matters

By Amy Sterne

A few weeks ago I finished reading The Empathy Exams, a recently released collection of essays by Leslie Jamison.  Like most great books, certain portions of it kept popping into my head long after I had sadly soaked up the last sentence.  In the opening essay that bears the same name as the collection, Jamison recalls her experiences working as a medical actor.  In her position, she acts as a patient and evaluates the level of empathy of the medical students while they pretend to treat her.  While this is simply the premise for Jamison’s deeper exploration into physical and emotional pain and the ways that we share that pain with others, I couldn’t help thinking, would I pass an empathy exam?
    
Scientific studies show that many of the same areas in our brain that are active when we are in pain are also active when someone we care about is in pain. Being empathetic towards those that we love comes naturally to us. We see a close friend or family member emotionally wrecked, or physically suffering, or over-the-moon joyful and we share those feelings.  However, when we witness the suffering of someone that we don’t already love, that we don’t know, that perhaps we feel we don’t even understand, empathy becomes more difficult.  I think as imperfect people, it is normal for us to err on the side of apathy rather than empathy. Apathy is the easier of the two actions, but certainly not the most helpful.
    
I started thinking about how we can fight those apathetic tendencies and engender empathy in ourselves and others, particularly when it is the most difficult. How can we use empathy to grow? I think one of the answers lies in diversity.  When we expose ourselves to unique and interesting voices, we hear people who on the surface seem completely different from us. Sometimes these stories challenge and overcome our prejudices. Sometimes these stories give us a context for someone’s actions that give us a deeper understanding of a whole situation. The more we listen to these stories, the more we understand the individual pain and our shared humanity. Stories connect us, and those connections become the building blocks for empathy. Roslyn Bresnick-Perry, the author of Leaving for America, said, “It’s hard to hate someone whose story you know.”  Sharing stories, telling ours and listening to others, not only creates empathy but also diminishes hate.
    
I like to think that while Duende’s mission statement is to give a voice to underrepresented groups in today’s literary scene, what we are really doing is helping to spread empathy around to those that need it most. This is not to say that certain people deserve more empathy than others, but that the stories that come from groups that are underrepresented in the literary community simply are not seen. Their voices are valuable, they have the ability to bring depth and breadth and texture to our ever-expanding understanding of what it means to be human. Without a platform those voices can only reach so far.
    
I think the other way that we can create empathy is by pushing ourselves in the direction of it. Jamison says it more eloquently than I could near the end of The Empathy Exams, "Empathy [is] a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves. It's made of exertion, that dowdier cousin of impulse . . .The act of choosing simply means we've committed ourselves to a set of behaviors greater than the sum of our individual inclinations. . .

This confession of effort chafes against the notion that empathy should always rise unbidden, that genuine means the same thing as unwilled, that intentionality is the enemy of love. But I believe in intention and I believe in work. I believe in waking up in the middle of the night and packing our bags and leaving our worst selves for our better ones."
    
Let’s make it our intention to self-evaluate and strive in the direction of empathy instead of apathy. Let’s be grateful for the diverse stories in the world today, learn as much as we can from them, and allow them to move us to celebrate our similarities rather than our differences.
    
    
   

No Silent Night

By Jørn Earl Otte

The holidays, however you may define them, will soon be upon us, and for too many in America, they will be spending those holidays in the shadows of grief and loss. Where I live, in the heart of Appalachia, while the tree-covered mountains have long since lost the robust colors of autumn, the houses throughout my neighborhood are covered in glittering lights, and as the old song says, “in the air, there’s a feeling of Christmas.”

Like many writers that I respect and admire, for me, there is a feeling in the air that has very little to do with the so-called joy of the season. Depression encroaches upon the heart of the melancholic writer as much as the eggnog, and turkey, and gift-giving seem to do. For those who suffer through this dark time, the anxiety, sadness, and grief they must deal with comes from a variety of places – memories of loved ones who died too soon, struggles with illnesses, divorce, financial difficulty, or a myriad of other issues. I have experienced depression through the holidays for many of those reasons, and in other years I have celebrated, and enjoyed the positive feelings synonymous with this time of year.

This year, however, I am faced with a depression that comes from a different place. It comes from a growing anger, sadness, frustration, and bewilderment I have at the way my country is treating its own citizens of color. As a white male who is perfectly aware that I come from a place of privilege, I feel the need to speak up, and acknowledge that my country is sick, and I am sick with it, and I don’t know the cure.

The written word is what I know, and it is all that I know, and it has brought me comfort before during the darkest times. So what to do? Some of the people who are near and dear to my heart don’t have the same kinds of conversations with their children as I have with mine. I have a 15-year-old daughter and a nearly 10-year-old son. Never once have I had to tell them how to behave if confronted by an armed police officer. But people I love have to coach their children in ways that I can’t imagine, and then they have to pray every single day that their child will make it home alive.  

So again I ask, what to do? At times, I feel helpless, but I also know that I am privileged to have the opportunity to make a choice – I can either speak up, or I can be silent. Thankfully, I am both a writer, and an editor on the staff of a progressive literary magazine so I can speak up in multiple ways.

Writer and blogger Nancy Arroyo Ruffin wrote on her website recently that “Everyone agrees that there is injustice going on, and while some protest or burn down businesses to release their rage— as an artist, as a writer, I do the only thing I know how. I write. I read. I try and educate myself and others and then I write some more. My art is the only weapon I have. My words are how I fight back because in the end my words are all I have.”

I have suffered some of the worst that depression can bring – I have drowned the thoughts in alcohol, I have laughed in the eye of the storm, I have wrestled with the Almighty, and I have stared down the demons who wished me to end it all. In the end, I have found the most solace in the written word – both my own, and the works of others. Ruffin is spot-on. I can only use words to fight this battle. Whether they are the words of others (William Styron’s Darkness Visible, which chronicles his descent into the darkest worlds of depression, helped me come to a greater understanding of my own battle) or my own words, words are all I have.

Being a part of the staff of Duende during this time of year, I have found another weapon in this battle, and that is the wonderful opportunity to read amazing works from writers spanning the globe and representing such beauty and diversity that I can scarcely take it all in. But I will take it in, and then I will share it with the world in the virtual pages of Duende. For I have taken a solemn vow around a table of my peers in a small building in a remote college campus – to help make a literary magazine that reflects “the true beauty and diversity of the U.S. literary ecosystem.”

I am reminded of the words of the German Protestant pastor and anti-Nazi activist Martin Niemöller, who wrote, “In Germany, they came first for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist; And then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist; And then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew; And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.”

So as an editor and writer, I speak. I hope that my words and my choices can make some small millimeter of awareness and change in this violent American landscape. I hope that my fellow privileged white brothers and sisters will take a moment to reflect upon what is happening to our black and brown countrymen, and then, on the Holy Silent Night, lift up a silent prayer to whomever they believe hears such things, and then raise a loud voice to the people in power who can enact meaningful change.

Despite my growing frustration and anger at the country I live in, despite my sadness and fear for my brothers and sisters who have more melanin in their skin than I do, and despite the depression that has constantly and consistently for multiple reasons afflicted me each and every winter – dammit, I still love Christmas. And perhaps what I love about it most of all is the fact that it reminds me, at the most basic level, that we are to love one another. As a father, I love my children and can help them to be better members of society by raising them to love people of all colors, creeds, sexual orientations, religions, and so forth. As a writer, I can speak out about atrocities that are a disease in my country. As an editor, I can make a conscious effort to showcase the talents of people who are otherwise marginalized in the literary landscape. As a human being, I can give hugs, I can share food, and I can shout for joy and shout in protest. What I cannot do, what I must never do, is be silent, no matter how holy the occasion.