Tag: humanity

Decentering Whiteness in my Writing

 I read an important tip on Twitter last night that’s transforming my writing: If you’re going to describe skin tone on people of color, you need to do the same for white characters.

It’s a simple, but revolutionary thing — I have been making the assumption that I don’t have to describe white people because it’s assumed that white is the default. I didn’t even do this consciously.

One could rationalize making white the default through statistics — Most Americans are white, therefore. But that’s doing a disservice to people of color, who still make a significant number of people in the world.

Worse, specifying skin tone for non-whites — Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans — while ignoring it for whites signals that minorities are “other”, not of the group, something to be stared at.

So I’m making a point to go back into my writing and add descriptors of white skin. It has felt very strange, which is part of why I should be doing it. 

I have gone through one of my finished books and today I will do the other two. And then I will feel like I have done the right thing by my readers.

Day 38 Reflection: Art

Art marks us as human. Its purposes hark back to human needs.

Art engages. It pulls us out of our reverie and asks us to pay attention to it.  Sometimes it asks subtly; sometimes it demands. We study the piece, its angles and contours, its shading and hues. We ponder the meaning. We decide we like it or we don’t, and we find ways to describe why or why not.

Art speaks. Art expresses emotions, emotions we feel uncomfortable talking about, and evokes emotions in the viewer. We feel emotions we may have buried or forgotten. We identify with a work of art because of its ability to evoke emotions.

Art transcends. Art comes to mean more than the idea, the skill, the sweat that goes into creation. It becomes an ideal, an inspiration, a door into the unexplainable. It puts us in touch with something bigger than us, if only for a moment, before our minds ground us on earth again.

Art expresses both the creativity and desires of our humanness and our inexplicable tie with divinity.

 (Note: I just discovered that Lent has more than 40 days, or else I don’t know how to count. Easter Sunday is on the 21st, and today’s the 12th, and I’m on day 38. Apparently, this is because the Sundays are not counted. Who knew?)