Writing the White Elephant Through Fiction
There I've said it, or rather, there I've written about it-and...
it plays a role in my novel.
In it are certain subjects some people say shouldn't be written about.
I refer to such as the White Elephant(s).
Sometimes there is more than one.
Some critics say, Oh no not another novel about incest, or oh no, not another novel about mental illness, or oh no, not another novel about teenage drug use, and of course the character must not be white.
Well I say, maybe these subjects are white elephants, that which we know exist, as they sit in the room taking up all our breathing space...
but we just don't want to read or hear about them.
After all it is so...
so trite.
Well, maybe my novel isn't really just about those issues, but maybe...
just maybe, those issues play some major or minor part in the characters' lives I write about.
And thus the white elephant becomes less white, less black, more gray or even brown.
What does that mean, exactly? My narrator is a woman of color, but considering that she has functioned in a white world for so long, it does not occur to her that her hybridity is a stumbling block, or any block to anything at all.
She just happens to know more than one language and that language is mostly shared with her aged mother.
In addition, the women in the novel struggle with the challenge of being seen as sexual objects by those who should not see them as such.
An old story, one that nobody cares to hear about anymore, right?! All I can think of is when I was sending out my novel to agents and publishers for over a year, some of them were very interested in seeing more of it than just the basic query letter, but there were a few who just did not want to read anything that included incest or the word molestation.
OMG excuuuse me.
I guess then these kinds of challenges in people's lives should just be ignored or not talked about, or not written about.
Are they over done? Have we read too much about such things? Maybe we should just pretend that those things don't really happen.
I mean if they do, why should we care? I guess it's the old argument that only when things hit close to home, do we care about them.
Sound a little trite.
But it's true...
none of us really understand what it's like to feel the anguish of a loss or a weeping wound that won't stop unless that kind of white elephant has emerged from closeted darkness and demanded attention in the very center our kitchens, bedrooms, or living rooms and choked the life out of us so acutely that we have forgotten how to feel the warmth of the sun on our faces.
And by the same token should we just not write or read about such agony, because, goodness, we might bore the reader or viewer? I wonder as I sit and stare at a white elephant staring back at me.
it plays a role in my novel.
In it are certain subjects some people say shouldn't be written about.
I refer to such as the White Elephant(s).
Sometimes there is more than one.
Some critics say, Oh no not another novel about incest, or oh no, not another novel about mental illness, or oh no, not another novel about teenage drug use, and of course the character must not be white.
Well I say, maybe these subjects are white elephants, that which we know exist, as they sit in the room taking up all our breathing space...
but we just don't want to read or hear about them.
After all it is so...
so trite.
Well, maybe my novel isn't really just about those issues, but maybe...
just maybe, those issues play some major or minor part in the characters' lives I write about.
And thus the white elephant becomes less white, less black, more gray or even brown.
What does that mean, exactly? My narrator is a woman of color, but considering that she has functioned in a white world for so long, it does not occur to her that her hybridity is a stumbling block, or any block to anything at all.
She just happens to know more than one language and that language is mostly shared with her aged mother.
In addition, the women in the novel struggle with the challenge of being seen as sexual objects by those who should not see them as such.
An old story, one that nobody cares to hear about anymore, right?! All I can think of is when I was sending out my novel to agents and publishers for over a year, some of them were very interested in seeing more of it than just the basic query letter, but there were a few who just did not want to read anything that included incest or the word molestation.
OMG excuuuse me.
I guess then these kinds of challenges in people's lives should just be ignored or not talked about, or not written about.
Are they over done? Have we read too much about such things? Maybe we should just pretend that those things don't really happen.
I mean if they do, why should we care? I guess it's the old argument that only when things hit close to home, do we care about them.
Sound a little trite.
But it's true...
none of us really understand what it's like to feel the anguish of a loss or a weeping wound that won't stop unless that kind of white elephant has emerged from closeted darkness and demanded attention in the very center our kitchens, bedrooms, or living rooms and choked the life out of us so acutely that we have forgotten how to feel the warmth of the sun on our faces.
And by the same token should we just not write or read about such agony, because, goodness, we might bore the reader or viewer? I wonder as I sit and stare at a white elephant staring back at me.
Source...