Tayari's Blog: Terry Mac again, sort of
Posted by TayariJones on June 30, 2005 07:57 AM
Filed under
Writing
I want to post again about the Terry Mac saga. I don't think that there is anything wrong with using your real-life to come up with a plot for fiction. People do it all the time.. some better than others.
For example, Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin, is very largely authobiographical. I don't think that there is any compomise in a person's art for this. For one thing, I don't think it is any easier to do this. There are all manner of challenges that pop up with you try to mix reall ife with fiction. When your characters are people you know and now people you made up.
ANYWAY, my point about the MacMillan situation is that hers is an example of the way that authors are ENCOURAGED and APPLAUDED for linking their lives with their fiction. I have blogged again and again about how unnerving this is for me, when people want me to talk about where is the "me" in one of my novels or short story.
I don't think they know what an intensely personal question that is. The Untelling, for example, involves illness, betrayal, disappointment, envy.. all sorts of intense emotion. So, while I haven't been involved in the exact situations of my character, Aria, I do know a thing or two about betrayal and despair. I drew on my well of experienced emotions to get those scenes to feel true. So when people say, "How much of this is autobiopgraphy?" They *think* they are asking me to say that I was once engaged or that I was once in a car accident, or to reference some other PLOT point in the book. But the truth is more like, I have been hurt, betrayed, disappointed... etc. Seriously personal stuff.
So back to the situation with Terry MacMillan, I just feel really bad for her. I cringe thinking of the questions she will have to answer over and over on her book tour. And should she choose to make this the topic of her next novel... she'll have to come up with a public version of her life that she can tell again and again-- something like an infomercial.
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There are 4 comments on "Terry Mac again, sort of". If you'd like to leave a comment, click here to jump down to the comments entry form.
Comment #1, by Lawrence Ross
I'm a little mixed about my feelings on the subject. I think this is the risk you take when your fiction is really just thinly veiled non-fiction. People begin to identify you as the main character, rather than looking at the character as a composite. I would bet that TM will use this as the plot for her next book, because her readers will continue to associate her personal life with her characters. And it will sell very well.
July 1, 2005 05:10 PM
Comment #2, by XENIA RUIZ
Just recently at my first book signing in Detroit, I was inevitably asked the question, "How much of Eva (the female protag) is you?" I knew the gentleman who asked this question asked because I had read an excerpt of Eva's (who is Latina) stating that she had always been attracted to Black men. Also, Eva is a celibate woman who eventually becomes attracted to an African American man who makes her question her vow of celibacy. Since I had anticipated this question, I was ready with my answer. I replied that other than the fact that I had been married at age 19 and had two college-aged children before I was 40 (like Eva), the book was fiction. Whether that is true or not, HE will never know. He will never know whether I am or ever have been celibate, nor will he ever know if I truly am attracted to Black men. No one, not even my own family knows my inner thoughts or desires, even if they have witnessed SOME of my experiences. And that's the bottom line: you just got to know when to shut up. Writing, like life, without a little mystery, becomes mundane.
p.s. When I first heard about TM's younger man, I knew it wouldn't last, not only because of the age factor, but because of the circumstances surrounding their courtship. While the DL issue never entered my mind, I have always believed you just don't bring men you meet on vacation back home & marry them (especially from other countries), just like you don't take men home from bars. Had she kept quiet, no one but her immediate friends/family would have been none the wiser. So yes, I feel sorry for her, too. Very sorry.
July 1, 2005 11:59 PM
Comment #3, by Siren
I don't feel sorry for anyone, least of all TM. I adore her, as a matter of fact. I love her novels and the delightful way she has of telling a story. I've met her on several of her booksigning tours, and I've even had the pleasure and privilege of meeting her sister, RM.
The way I see it: that was her episode to experience. She learned a great deal about herself, her ex, life, love, etc., as a result of that experience. I am not judging any aspect of the chapter; it simply is what it is. Nothing lasts outside of the mistress that is Change. If TM should ever write about that chapter of her life--and I hope she does, for you can rest assured I will be kicked back somewhere falling deeper into the throes of the humorous way she has of viewing the world--I will be the first in line to have her sign and share that magnificent M smile with me. TM is just fine, even if she doesn't realize it now. When I was tipping through emotional and financial minefields recently, I'm certain some judged me and my situation as pitiful, probably said that I was a loser, that they thought my 20-plus year marriage seemed unshakable, my career a fortress. But everything happened for a reason. My Higher Soul knew that reason(s) as I held onto the the bannisters de mi vida to stay afloat of sanity...while the storm was raging. Yet now that I look back on everything in that chapter of my life, I realize I'd never left Paradise (I later learned we all live in Paradise, in which we DON'T ever have to FIGHT), all was well then, like it is now. I have learned to lay judgment down, like a useless sword, and when, in the course of life, I find I've reached down and lifted it to judge myself and others, I gently return it to a place beneath my feet...again.
Se la vie!
July 13, 2005 01:44 PM
Comment #4, by Jackie
Every one has comments and feelings about Terry's situation and I can understand her reaction to it all, she thought she met the love of her life and to find that he is gay it can really do a number on a womans ego. But this divorce is really going to get ugly and the damage from this may never be repaired. Terry should fight for her dignity and her pride but not in the press a man endangering a womans life to point that he might have exposed her to all kinds of dieases my prayer is that he walks away and not try to make her pay for the comforts for him and his lover
August 11, 2005 11:12 AM