Response to Race
“How does race (as a concept, an issue, or a part of your identity) affect your writing — how you write and what you write about? If you find that you never think about your race as a factor in your writing, what does that suggest to you, e.g. about your own racial identity, about race as a social category, about how you’ve learned to write… [and so the possibilities go]?”
The thought has never occurred in my mind that race is a factor that affects my writings. I grew up in a predominately white community, so it is possible that as I grew up my writing was influenced by the white community. Now my community is still mostly white, but with a lot of Hispanics in the community. Before, I never had to worry about learning to speak, read, or write Spanish because it was not important back then. Now in probably every school Spanish is becoming more important for students to take because of increase in Hispanics. I have never taken Spanish so I do not know how to write in Spanish or learned much of the Spanish culture as others have.
Last year I took an African-American Literature course and that opened my eyes to African-American Literature. I never thought that African-American authors would have their own separate category of literature than white authors and taking this course allowed me to look at these writers closer. I did presentations and essays about African-American activists and writers, just noticing the topics these authors covered in their books. Overall, when I write for fun, I feel like there could almost be an absence of race in my writings, but really I think it is more that my writing is focused on white topics because that is what I know and have grown up used to. Just taking one course of an African-American Literature class is not going to change what I have learned and what has been drilled in my head as a little girl in what to write and how to write. I write what I know and I write what I’ve been taught and I write what I need to write for my classes. Who I am is what I put down in my writings.
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