Tayari's Blog: What Not To Do

Comment #1, by Joy Castro

It's so funny that you would write about #24, because I read this list of short-story don'ts this morning and was completely mystified by that one. I could not parse what the writer was trying to say. I was wondering--trying to interpret #24 sympathetically--if the implication was that they receive a lot of stories that try to exoticize/eroticize Indian or African life from an Other-izing Eurocentric perspective. The ankles/kisses/feisty girls references made me think this.

I've thought about this before in terms of some Latino/a-Caribbean writing in which it's de rigueur that every female character not only bend and sway like a palm tree but also have juice from a succulent, freshly bitten mango trickling down her jaw, etc.--where the motifs become clichéd and you feel like the author's just going through the predictable motions, like the island is just one more hot mami to diddle for the delectation of white readers. I guess that sexualizing the Other is one strategy for getting the piece/book accepted in a predominantly white-controlled publishing industry: capitulation via titillation.

Anyway, if the list of don'ts is protesting against this kind of automatic exoticization/commodification, then that makes sense, and I agree. I only wish they'd articulated it more clearly.

But your take on it makes me wonder. If these contest-judgers are generalizing about the stories based only upon their non-Euro locales, then this is *really* problematic. The "(to me) strange" phrase bugged me, too--although, trying to understand the item, I wanted to rationalize by trying it on for size, as in, "Well, New York and London are (to me) strange places." But I was probably cutting the author way too much slack, and I like your more critical take on the phrase.

Anyway, thanks!

Comment #2, by Kirk

#24 becomes especially problematic -- to me, at least -- when the comments regarding Pastiche (#27) are considered.

Especially:
"When I was a kid I used to sing myself to sleep at night. One Sunday I went to see The Jolson Story (I think I saw parts 1 and 2) at the Casino cinema in Finglas and memorised [sic] some of the songs. That night I began to sing them in bed, and trying to sound like Al Jolson. Lying back in the dark, after a while I asked my Grandad, who slept on the other side of the room, if he liked my new voice. I'll always remember his answer because it said so much. He said, 'I prefer your own voice.'"

Not so strange, just somebody trying to mimic a movie star, right? Only thing is, Mr Moran picked the pseudo-biographical "The Al Jolson Story" and Al Jolson to mimic.
Al Jolson is famous for being the first voice in film (The Jazz Singer was the first "talkie" that featured talking & singing instead of just sound effects and grunts).

He performed in blackface, his Jazz Singer was the first human voice on film, it was also the first time "black music"* was appropriated by a white voice on film.

*The quotes are there not to belittle the term, but because I think it's silly to marginalize/compartmentalize any ethnicity's contribution to something as amorphous and inter-generative and pliable as music).

There have been arguments made to suggest -- since he was Jewish (and so popular?) -- his blackface can be interpreted as a sort of subversion of racist considerations or something. I don't think they hold much water.
Whether or not they do, however, is unimportant.

The real question is: "Why did Mr. Moran choose THAT example?"

It seems like bad smells coming up from the pipes.

Maybe not.

-Kirk

Comment #3, by Willesden Herald

Hello. I thought I should respond to the comments, albeit belatedly, as they contain some damaging aspersions. I can't respond to everything that's been posted everywhere about the result of this year's competition, it would be impossible and ridiculous to even try. However, this one is worth answering, I think.

Kirk asks why I chose to recount my little story about mimicking Al Jolson. It just happened to be the truth, and it is the way I always think about the question of "voice" in writing. My Grandad had it dead right, and as succinct as could be: "I prefer your own voice." In my opinion, it would be hard to come up with a better insight into the importance of finding your own voice, in such a wonderfully brief and direct way. All credit to my grandfather for that. The problem with much writing is that it comes across as trying to mimic somebody else's style or some generic style, just like British pop singers who try to sound American or vice-versa. I can't help the fact that I went to see the Jolson Story and that it has some questionable racial background - I was only about 9, ffs.

Now to the question of my comment about "Ankles in Asia". Firstly, the whole article and the whole blog is meant to be in a satirical and humorous vein, though it often misses the mark, no doubt. What I ended up saying was that I thought it was probably something to be encouraged, and to celebrate, and that I wasn't sure it was a problem at all. I can't help being an urbanite Dubliner/Londoner who finds things from India and Africa strange - surely this is just normal. Is nothing strange, can nothing be strange, is nothing allowed to be strange to anybody? Is it forbidden to mention that something seems strange "to me". By adding "(to me)" I seem to have bothered some people, but I don't think that is at all fair.

I didn't want to explicitly quote from stories received, because they were sufficiently few in number that somebody might have identified themselves or their friends' efforts as being under some slight criticism. So I tried to keep it vague. What I was alluding to was the frankly (and can I even say this without criticism?) charming way that human attraction still manifests itself in more restrained cultures, compared with the (again frankly) overblown and at times a little disgusting manner in the local culture where I live.

There was no actual instance of some professor besotted with some woman's ankles, I made that up, but there were somewhat analogous images and threads in stories. Where the typical New York writer might aver to a desire for rough sex, the typical New Delhi writer might think more along the lines of, as I mentioned, butterfly kisses. (Something to do with eyelashes - no? I certainly hope so.)

We did have, again just a few, stories from Africa as well, which ranged from campus to battlezone to small village life, and were all really excellent I thought. (I don't want to get into the debate about why there was no winner, that's been done - got the teeshirt etc.) If the tone was condescending, I'm sorry and that was a flaw that ran all through the article, but I don't think that I am any kind of racist. It's more a case me being a pompous twit. I'll confess to that readily.

If anybody knew my family situation, I don't think they would call me a racist, but that proves nothing. I'm sorry for any flaws in the article, truly. Thank you.