“On Home” by Dawn West
We originally planned to write an editorial for Issue Zero–some small, brief note on what this issue is about, and why we’re here. Instead, we rather give someone else a voice. “On Home” was written by Dawn West. We believe in Dawn’s words. We stand by them.
-The Specter Editors
***
Like the co-founder of this shiny new literary venue, I am intimately aware of the primacy of white, upper class, typically male, typically straight narratives in American letters. I am, like many people of color, used to being a peripheral person. A token at times. A curiosity. Particularly a curiosity, considering my incredibly light skin. My melanin is a little loose. It likes space to feel the breeze. It defies immediate category. In person, people assume I’m biracial, and online, they assume I’m white.What are you? What are you? Inquiring minds want to know.
Is it an act of betrayal to identify more with biracial people than black people, considering that I am black? I would say no, but I’ve been challenged on this before. I just know what it is to carry a shithot ball of lonely around, of that envy of the cocoa-skinned girls, the girls who didn’t have to worry, they looked like their mommies, and the white girls, those brash little blondes, who could be Madonna for Halloween. Who could I be? Everyone on the playground said I’m not like them. Who’s like me?
“Sorry,” the patchouli-stinky girl told me, after handing fake IDs to my peers. “Nobody looks like you.” She said something about my skin being pretty, but by then I wasn’t really listening. I felt like shrinking, but I just stood there, and laughed it off.
I know the danger of a single story. Nothing is an easy fit, because no one is. Yet all of us hunt for similar aesthetics. We all want to feel at home, hence my hot childhood ball of lonely. When someone identifies as black, there is a certain set of expectations; a single story, as it were. We use bigoted, albeit popular shorthand to box up that person, and when they defy those cultural identifiers, we become curious, perhaps amused, perhaps hostile. We make that person an Other with a few flicks of our tongues.
Is it an act of betrayal to have no interest in being identified as a “black writer”? I would say no, but I’ve been challenged on this before. I’m anxious about having an author photo for the same reason. I don’t want to be identified as a “queer writer” either, even though I’m queer, or as a “woman writer,” even though I’m a woman.
I don’t want to be ghettoized. You know those little stickers on all the “African-American literature” at the library. Makes me cringe. I’m no fan of segregation. Do we have “men’s fiction” and “women’s fiction” sections in the library? No. So why are we dividing our literature by race? By country, sure, understandable, but race? No. There’s something pernicious about that. We make that writer an Other with a single press of sticker-to-spine.
Confession: Talking about race makes me uncomfortable. I don’t want it to seem like I’m the tragic mulatta torn up by the cruel, cruel world. I have certain privileges. There is a push and pull. We are all lonely, to varying degrees. And I am not my skin. But growing up outside of the standard physical and/or cultural expectations of your race (or your gender) is something that fundamentally alters your relationship to not only your own race (or gender), but society at large; even art.
You have a set of eyes shaped by want. You feel so singular, but everywhere, there are people who strain in similar ways. Your hearts will find each other. Maybe it’s your next lover, or the writer of the book you’re about to read. It’s happened to me.
Home is not one place for me. Home is people whose hearts have found mine. Home is my favorite book. Home is writing. I am aware that the prevailing Voice of American letters is often unlike mine, but that doesn’t mean I should quiet down. It means I should get loud, and I hope you will too.
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Dawn West (b. 1987) reads, writes, and eats falafel in Ohio.
Thanks for referencing Chimamanda Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” and reminding us why we write, why we all must fill in the gaps and why we need Specter.
Here’s Adichie’s TED talk:
I added a link to the video within the essay.
I’ve got 2 kids coming up biracial in very very rural Wyoming. I’m going to cut and paste this piece for when they’re older, and will understand. Thanks for writing.
This is an excellent and thoughtful piece. Great work, Dawn and Specter.
A beautiful and promising start to this literary magazine – I hope its tone continues to be one which embraces the idea that “home is writing”. Let’s get loud about unique voices and the way they word the world 🙂
This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius
Hey Noriko, thanks so much for bringing that to my attention. I totally missed linking to Chimamanda Adichie’s speech. Bad form on my part! Thanks for adding it, Mensah.
Aw, thank you so much Court. That makes me smile.
Thank you so much for reading and commenting, everyone! 🙂
It’s all good. Love this piece and as a Hapa who grew up lonely in rural Oregon I felt very much at home reading your work.
“Everyone on the playground said I’m not like them.”
Love the entire piece, but that line’s just incredible.
Greatness.
Gosh,I’m bummed you beat me to using that Adichie talk in a piece! And you did it spectatularly-well! Bittersweet day for me; marvelous day for you. But I’m happy to have simply read someone smart enough to have quoted it; we are all winners. In earnest, thanks for this piece. Signed- Jealous, But Kinda Happy at the Same Time.
I’m so happy you felt at home reading this. That is one of the major goals of writing anything, isn’t it? Such a wonderful feeling, so thank you Noriko.
Aww, thanks for reading and commenting Bradley!
Thanks so much Talisha! And please, feel free to reference Adichie’s talk. There are plenty of people besides myself who have done so, and I’m sure more will, with good reason.
As a white male I know exactly what you mean: I’ve never been subject to racism and most other ‘isms’, though I have been on the receiving end of all sorts of shit because of my life in children’s homes etc. So, although I know what prejudice smells like on a very local level, I’ve never had to endure what my companion’s whose parents were West Indian went through.
I don’t think you are wrong to be recognised for what you are and what you do rather than your skin colour or any other racial feature, in fact you are completely right. I think you are right to fight for your right to be recognised as a writer – someone who stands or falls by the quality of their work and nothing else.
Personally I don’t believe in borders and am lucky enough to live in the EU where we have very few borders and can move around pretty freely through over 20 countries. But there are those that would impose borders (mental and physical) on us. I wonder what they are afraid of, because I can see any other reason for it for such artificial disconnections.
The most important thing is that you are a human first; everything else is window dressing, acquired and adopted in your passage through life, and so is irrelevant to me. But it isn’t and can’t be irrelevant, because if someone’s been made to feel bad all their life because of their skin colour or their sexuality, then they have been affected by that, and I cannot ignore it.
The world is our home, not just the little bits that others have built walls around, and would have us kill our fellow human beings to defend and hide behind. The world of words is big enough for all our voices: it is not owned just by the publishing houses and current set of self- appointed taste-makers. Personally, I love your writing, keep shouting it out! 🙂
[…] Specter Magazine. Issue Zero (wait, what?) features Dawn West, J. Bradley and Rion […]
Thank you for this incredibly thoughtful comment, Mick. I love how you refer to everything else besides our humanity as “window dressing.” That’s a lovely (and accurate, when you think about it) way to describe us all.
i just caught this comment. it makes me feel all warm inside, Court.
that damn rollerfink
that damn rollerfink
Integrity is a bitch.honor is to be realized.character is the utilization of those criteria. Black, white, mulatto all comes out red. I am white looking in. I would be honored to know your mind. Little minds have little perspective. Thanks
Dawn, thanks! 🙂 That said, sometimes the window dressing can be spectacular and beautiful. I’ve always been a minimalist and see so much of what we think is necessary in life as something to be used and experienced, then put down and left behind. Sometimes we find that things are useful to us, sometimes not. Sometimes they do nothing more than show us why we shouldn’t invest energy in them; sometimes they drag us out of a hole or bring a sparkle to our lives. And there’s nothing wrong with sparkling while we spin across the universe is there? 🙂