Writing the "Other"

From Edward Said to Gayatri Spivak, there are a thousand reasons to fear writing the "Other", the person you're not, the culture you don't belong to, the language that isn't your first, the story that isn't your own.

And yet what great writer has not attempted it? Should Shakespeare not have dared to put words in Shylock's mouth? Should he have stayed out Othello's bed? Should Dickens have stuck to stories of his own class and left the poor of London to write about themselves? Should Ishiguro stop writing about the British aristocracy or about Nagasaki?

I can't accept that I must only write stories about "my own kind". What started as a plea to allow the historically silent their own authentic voices has ended up by silencing others. Was that the aim of the post-colonial theorists?

As a writer, I'm torn on this rock. I don't for a moment trivialize the damage that has been done historically, nor the trotting out of stereotypical ethnic characters that happens today in the name of popular culture or fiscal expediency. I know a stereotype when I see one, because I'm one myself. I get filed under the category of "Neurotic Jew".

Does that give me the right to write the "Other"? Because I am one and, hey, we "Others" should stick together? No.

I maintain that I have the right to write the "Other" because they are humans as I am a human and the thing that separates us is a thin veneer that has kept us apart for too long already. Because although we may come from different cultures, we all have culture and we are both nourished and starved, enlightened and blinded, freed and trapped by it - each and everyone of us. Our biologies both drive us and keep us from our dreams. Our relationships with others ground us, nurture us, betray us and make us whole.

Christianity may teach us that: "there but for the grace of god go I". I prefer a more Buddhist view on the matter: "there because of the grace of god go I." And going back to my roots, if I can commit the unforgivable sin of marrying a gentile, I sure as hell can write about them.

And what of the subaltern and the unnamed native informant? If there has been any justice in the world it is that most of us, regardless of origin have become that. If you aren't Bill Gates or the latest hot thing in Hollywood, you might as well have no name for all the possibility of anyone remembering it. If you're female and over forty, it's even worse. Not only do you have no name, but you become invisible. My mother warned me of this when I was thirty; I didn't believe her. I've spent the last 5 years apologizing.

And yet, and yet... how many main characters can one novel take? I realize this is a brutal question but it goes to the heart of the matter. The very structure of narrative as we know it requires that some characters be fully fleshed out and explored and others left to tell their stories another time. Should I just make sure all my minor characters are white?

In my novel, The Waiting Room, I have a subaltern. A hotel maid who is nameless and speechless, a witness to the excesses of a western couple travelling through Cambodia. I KNOW what she is, literarily. I wrote her exactly that way and I knew exactly what I was doing. Because in the eyes of westerner tourists who drift through the poor countries of Southeast Asia as if it were a funkier version of Disneyland, there *are* subalterns. And I want my readers to know this, and see it.

Does she have a name? Of course she does; her name is Reaksmey. And a life and love and dreams and hatreds? Yes. She has all these things. Does she deserve a book of her own? Hell yes, I've never met a human who didn't. But this was not her book, it belonged to someone else.

The best I can do is write what I write intentionally, fully cognizant of the sins I commit, and do it with the noblest motives I can muster.

(700 words /1,500 and counting)