The emotional labor of being brown & queer in the U.S. poetry community
April 25, 2016 10:14 AM Subscribe
Jennifer Tamayo describes the cost of confronting white supremacy in the U.S. poetry communities, pointing to the emotional, economic, and temporal wages it exacts: "The handling of this poison — the labour to spot and deconstruct instances of capitalist white supremacist cis-hetero-patriarchy at work — is particularly venomous because it performs both personally and systemically."
Tamayo's essay is in dialogue with a number of recent challenges to white supremacy in the poetry world (linked within her text too), some of which have been discussed here on the blue:
Jenny Zhang's response to Michael Derrick Hudson's masquerade as "Yi-Fen Chou" [Previously on MF re: anthologization and scandal]
Joey DeJesus on Kenneth Goldsmith and the commodification of Michael Brown's body.
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram on Goldsmith
The Mongrel Coalition Against Gringpo [Previously]
Tamayo's essay lays bare the "unpaid and unseen" work that goes into the everyday resistances--the emails, FB exchanges, and decision-making of the literary intellectual. "What I find difficult about these e-mails is the performance it asks of me — at times civil, or charming, or pleased, or excited, or careful — I am never myself. I am your social justice doll come to life. I distrust the invisibility of this kind of private conversation and what it demands of me."
Tamayo's essay is in dialogue with a number of recent challenges to white supremacy in the poetry world (linked within her text too), some of which have been discussed here on the blue:
Jenny Zhang's response to Michael Derrick Hudson's masquerade as "Yi-Fen Chou" [Previously on MF re: anthologization and scandal]
Joey DeJesus on Kenneth Goldsmith and the commodification of Michael Brown's body.
Lillian-Yvonne Bertram on Goldsmith
The Mongrel Coalition Against Gringpo [Previously]
Tamayo's essay lays bare the "unpaid and unseen" work that goes into the everyday resistances--the emails, FB exchanges, and decision-making of the literary intellectual. "What I find difficult about these e-mails is the performance it asks of me — at times civil, or charming, or pleased, or excited, or careful — I am never myself. I am your social justice doll come to life. I distrust the invisibility of this kind of private conversation and what it demands of me."
I can imagine how frustrating it is to write from the Queer PoC perspective, mostly because you have to confront the system that grants you access, and how do you maintain access and protect yourself while critiquing the guards at the gate and the signs in the garden that remind you that you are only tacitly welcome in their space and even then only on their continually-expiring and re-granted terms?
It's gotta be totally exhausting. And this bit:
"To feel liberated is to no longer have to make your home into a toxic space"
I *get* that. I spend a lot of time bringing things into my home that I wish I could leave outside. She gets all my hugs.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:44 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
It's gotta be totally exhausting. And this bit:
"To feel liberated is to no longer have to make your home into a toxic space"
I *get* that. I spend a lot of time bringing things into my home that I wish I could leave outside. She gets all my hugs.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:44 AM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
This:
Essays of this kind are written with the body. If I track the progress of writing, my body becomes the compass. While I write, these become the guiding procedural questions: do you feel anxiety ill, like a constant-vomiting sensation? Do you feel afraid in your lungs? Can you feel the heat coming off those publishing and professional bridges you are burning? Have you said what has needed saying & is the language like wood-chips in your mouth, awkward against your gums? Will your corpse be satisfied with what you have written?
The essay is complete when I feel a satisfactory hollow in my gut. When my partner refuses to read any more drafts because they’ve read nine variations. When I dream abstractly of it and for at least a few days and I refuse to shower wanting to keep the anger on my skin. I sleep with my laptop at the edge of my bed just in case. The essay is ready when I’ve bitten my cuticles down to a pink and fleshy layer and the deadline was weeks ago. The essay is tracked by the body.
posted by emjaybee at 10:49 AM on April 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
Essays of this kind are written with the body. If I track the progress of writing, my body becomes the compass. While I write, these become the guiding procedural questions: do you feel anxiety ill, like a constant-vomiting sensation? Do you feel afraid in your lungs? Can you feel the heat coming off those publishing and professional bridges you are burning? Have you said what has needed saying & is the language like wood-chips in your mouth, awkward against your gums? Will your corpse be satisfied with what you have written?
The essay is complete when I feel a satisfactory hollow in my gut. When my partner refuses to read any more drafts because they’ve read nine variations. When I dream abstractly of it and for at least a few days and I refuse to shower wanting to keep the anger on my skin. I sleep with my laptop at the edge of my bed just in case. The essay is ready when I’ve bitten my cuticles down to a pink and fleshy layer and the deadline was weeks ago. The essay is tracked by the body.
posted by emjaybee at 10:49 AM on April 25, 2016 [3 favorites]
And as far as writing about the queer experience for free: In 2015 I wrote a thing that was so difficult to write I literally cried for three days while writing it. I performed it publicly twice, each time for 200+ people. It was subsequently chosen to be published in book that will be released in May. I didn't get paid a dime for any of that effort. I have been asked to be interviewed twice, I decided to be interviewed once, I was published in a feminist quarterly, I have been paid exactly zero dollars for any of that as well.
I know that writing in general does not pay, but for as hard as white cis hetero people have getting paid, it just gets harder the less hetero and white you get.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:53 AM on April 25, 2016 [14 favorites]
I know that writing in general does not pay, but for as hard as white cis hetero people have getting paid, it just gets harder the less hetero and white you get.
posted by Annika Cicada at 10:53 AM on April 25, 2016 [14 favorites]
A person calling me “unintelligent” on Facebook is personal. It hurts me, personally. It offends me, personally. A white editor, however, of a prestigious poetry press publicly calling me, a brown woman, unintelligent in a public conversation about race — to which said poetry editor was not invited — is systemic racism. It hurts widely, historically. It offends, widely, historically. It contains inside itself, like a holding chamber, every instance of racism you’ve experienced. It reminds other brown and black people in the large and public room of Facebook that white gatekeepers are not invested in hearing you, especially when they don’t agree. Their alleged support of anti-racism is a performance, and the truth comes out in the slippage. If this is the dynamic that is happening publicly, imagine the one behind closed doors when books and money and jobs are at stake.Part of what makes this extra toxic in the poetry scene (and any creative scene, perhaps), is that the white people in power are so used to thinking of themselves as "outsiders" that they are uniquely vicious when you suggest that they are part of the problem. They are very eager to convince themselves that they couldn't possibly be racist, they just happen to have the exact same conflicts with any and all PoC students/professors who they meet.
Also, I really appreciated the excerpts of her emails-- it shows the sort of "hey we're all on the same side here :) :) thanks in advance!!!!!" type pre-apologies that you often have to craft from a position of no power. You can't just be angry, and right. You have to be sweet about it, and offer them justifications in advance ("maybe I misunderstood") and create multiple cul-de-sacs of plausible deniability ("I'm not on the listserv, maybe this has been discussed there?") in order for these people to even consider that your viewpoint might possibly be valid.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 10:56 AM on April 25, 2016 [19 favorites]
the white people in power are so used to thinking of themselves as "outsiders" that they are uniquely vicious when you suggest that they are part of the problem
This is a good comment and something I've been running into a lot with a project I'm currently working on. People seem to think putting time in the social justice trenches, or being marginalized in one way but not another, is a blanket approval for everything else they want to do. And if you point out that their own outsider status is using a definition of outsider from the 1960s, they get very, very angry.
posted by cell divide at 10:58 AM on April 25, 2016 [8 favorites]
This is a good comment and something I've been running into a lot with a project I'm currently working on. People seem to think putting time in the social justice trenches, or being marginalized in one way but not another, is a blanket approval for everything else they want to do. And if you point out that their own outsider status is using a definition of outsider from the 1960s, they get very, very angry.
posted by cell divide at 10:58 AM on April 25, 2016 [8 favorites]
And if you point out that their own outsider status is using a definition of outsider from the 1960s, they get very, very angry.
BOY DO THEY. Like, the way that identifying with Bukowski has switched as a taste signifier from "rebel taking on The Establishment!!!!" to "literally the exact same Establishment, but carrying a moleskine" is a transition that a LOT of them are taking very, very badly.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 11:09 AM on April 25, 2016 [21 favorites]
BOY DO THEY. Like, the way that identifying with Bukowski has switched as a taste signifier from "rebel taking on The Establishment!!!!" to "literally the exact same Establishment, but carrying a moleskine" is a transition that a LOT of them are taking very, very badly.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 11:09 AM on April 25, 2016 [21 favorites]
Wow, this essay is dense and difficult and very, very good and thought-provoking. Worth powering through to the end.
Writing poetry, when I do it right and when I let it, brings me pleasure and, at times, joy. Writing these essays asks me to grow and take risks.
These e-mails bring me nothing.
These emails make me a teachable-moment, an after-school special.
This is what I want to say sometimes in certain online conversations, the ones where people with privilege demand education. It's a tough thing for me because, unlike in the essay where the writer must participate in these email exchanges to be a part of the poetry community, I do want to educate. That's why I seek those conversations out and add my voice to them as a person of color. But I want to do it on my terms, I want to speak my truth and talk about what I want to talk about so that people coming from a different perspective can listen and learn (or not, it's a free country). Answering questions, demands, for 101-level clarification, brings me nothing. Sometimes it feels like the people making the demands are under the impression that it does bring me something - that me answering those questions somehow helps fight racism in a way that ultimately benefits me. It doesn't. It's like emptying the ocean out with a teaspoon, and there's no guarantee that the person asking me questions is in a place to really absorb the answers (in fact the aggressive questioning is often a sign that they are not), so even on an individual level, I don't feel it brings greater understanding. I think this is hard for some people to understand.
Also, I really appreciated the excerpts of her emails-- it shows the sort of "hey we're all on the same side here :) :) thanks in advance!!!!!" type pre-apologies that you often have to craft from a position of no power
Yes, this. The essay (and the email excerpts in particular) got me thinking about the strategies I use when I talk about these things at work (although again, I work for a company. I think we will make a better product if I speak up about diversity and I feel a personal desire to do so, but I will draw a paycheck either way, so it's not the same as the essay-writer's situation). One is excessive cheerfulness, so much that it almost comes off as fake. Another is extreme depersonalization. I talk about people of color as an abstract good to be served. I advocate for the good of the group. I say the book will sell better with diverse characters. I rarely get more concrete or personal than that. I wrote a post for our blog talking about my experience as an Asian American kid looking for books with characters that looked like me, and even that made my stomach churn. The other week a team member sent an email that mentioned that a particular children's book had "3.5 characters of color out of 12, or almost 25 percent" (and yes, her math was wrong). I am not half a person. I am not half a person... but even a quick "Actually, that's 4 characters of color, which makes 33 percent! :)" felt like I'd be as good as acknowledging that reading that email made me feel small, so I let it go.
posted by sunset in snow country at 11:14 AM on April 25, 2016 [10 favorites]
Writing poetry, when I do it right and when I let it, brings me pleasure and, at times, joy. Writing these essays asks me to grow and take risks.
These e-mails bring me nothing.
These emails make me a teachable-moment, an after-school special.
This is what I want to say sometimes in certain online conversations, the ones where people with privilege demand education. It's a tough thing for me because, unlike in the essay where the writer must participate in these email exchanges to be a part of the poetry community, I do want to educate. That's why I seek those conversations out and add my voice to them as a person of color. But I want to do it on my terms, I want to speak my truth and talk about what I want to talk about so that people coming from a different perspective can listen and learn (or not, it's a free country). Answering questions, demands, for 101-level clarification, brings me nothing. Sometimes it feels like the people making the demands are under the impression that it does bring me something - that me answering those questions somehow helps fight racism in a way that ultimately benefits me. It doesn't. It's like emptying the ocean out with a teaspoon, and there's no guarantee that the person asking me questions is in a place to really absorb the answers (in fact the aggressive questioning is often a sign that they are not), so even on an individual level, I don't feel it brings greater understanding. I think this is hard for some people to understand.
Also, I really appreciated the excerpts of her emails-- it shows the sort of "hey we're all on the same side here :) :) thanks in advance!!!!!" type pre-apologies that you often have to craft from a position of no power
Yes, this. The essay (and the email excerpts in particular) got me thinking about the strategies I use when I talk about these things at work (although again, I work for a company. I think we will make a better product if I speak up about diversity and I feel a personal desire to do so, but I will draw a paycheck either way, so it's not the same as the essay-writer's situation). One is excessive cheerfulness, so much that it almost comes off as fake. Another is extreme depersonalization. I talk about people of color as an abstract good to be served. I advocate for the good of the group. I say the book will sell better with diverse characters. I rarely get more concrete or personal than that. I wrote a post for our blog talking about my experience as an Asian American kid looking for books with characters that looked like me, and even that made my stomach churn. The other week a team member sent an email that mentioned that a particular children's book had "3.5 characters of color out of 12, or almost 25 percent" (and yes, her math was wrong). I am not half a person. I am not half a person... but even a quick "Actually, that's 4 characters of color, which makes 33 percent! :)" felt like I'd be as good as acknowledging that reading that email made me feel small, so I let it go.
posted by sunset in snow country at 11:14 AM on April 25, 2016 [10 favorites]
You can't just be angry, and right. You have to be sweet about it, and offer them justifications in advance ("maybe I misunderstood") and create multiple cul-de-sacs of plausible deniability ("I'm not on the listserv, maybe this has been discussed there?") in order for these people to even consider that your viewpoint might possibly be valid.
Yes, when I have to do this as a woman at work in certain narrow specific channels, it's exhausting. Imagining having to do it every step of the professional way makes me want to hide under a blanket forever. And I would imagine (from what I've observed from the outside) that roughly 65% of the time the framing doesn't do any good, and then you get blamed for not framing more. I don't know how anyone in the author's position manages to get any of her own work done!
posted by praemunire at 11:30 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
Yes, when I have to do this as a woman at work in certain narrow specific channels, it's exhausting. Imagining having to do it every step of the professional way makes me want to hide under a blanket forever. And I would imagine (from what I've observed from the outside) that roughly 65% of the time the framing doesn't do any good, and then you get blamed for not framing more. I don't know how anyone in the author's position manages to get any of her own work done!
posted by praemunire at 11:30 AM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
Oh, hm. My sister is the "white editor" in the second part of the first link; I have no special knowledge about the events discussed there and now here, but my impression at the time was that she blundered into a well-deserved public shaming of some soi-disant transgressive poets whom she had previously published, mistook it for a place in which the perspective of a self-aware oppressor was relevant or wanted or welcome, and then tried to engage in defensive dialectic when she got called out, instead of taking her lumps and retreating to the poets-with-privilege part of Facebook where she is well loved. I love her too, but like Dad and me she thinks she can argue her way out of anything. Case in point: am I doing the same thing here? Am I intruding uninvited on a discussion among women of color to speculate as to why another white person I know might have said something blithely offensive in some other public forum? Is MetaFilter different from Facebook? And now, am I making this about me? At least I hope I know when to stop.
posted by nicwolff at 1:13 PM on April 25, 2016 [5 favorites]
posted by nicwolff at 1:13 PM on April 25, 2016 [5 favorites]
the white people in power are so used to thinking of themselves as "outsiders" that they are uniquely vicious when you suggest that they are part of the problem. They are very eager to convince themselves that they couldn't possibly be racist, they just happen to have the exact same conflicts with any and all PoC students/professors who they meet.
This is the same thing that happens with non-progressive nerdy guys who think that because a jock beat them up in school, it is impossible for anything they do to oppress others.
Her emails made me cringe, too, when I think of how expensive and hard it is to either maintain that cheery (and slightly ditzy) front of "politeness" demanded of women or to let fly and have people decide you're a dangerous and probably insane person.
posted by emjaybee at 1:23 PM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
This is the same thing that happens with non-progressive nerdy guys who think that because a jock beat them up in school, it is impossible for anything they do to oppress others.
Her emails made me cringe, too, when I think of how expensive and hard it is to either maintain that cheery (and slightly ditzy) front of "politeness" demanded of women or to let fly and have people decide you're a dangerous and probably insane person.
posted by emjaybee at 1:23 PM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
JT didn't post the whole of her exchange with WE on fb. WE had posted that she felt sorry for the poets being shamed and thought that their drug use had played a part in their bad behavior. She did NOT say that she condoned their actions. JT claimed that WE "was bending over backwards to defend and excuse this work" to which WE's response was "...that's not a very intelligent perspective". WE did NOT say that JT herself was unintelligent; I think she meant that the misinterpretation of the comment was.
posted by brujita at 1:44 PM on April 25, 2016
posted by brujita at 1:44 PM on April 25, 2016
I appreciate the additional context; I was interested in that part of the essay but didn't comment on it because it was not at all clear to me from the screenshot who the editor was actually replying to (if I had seen it posted without context I would have assumed that she meant the drunk guy outside the bar that the first person is talking about, as "Me so horny; fucky-sucky?" is, indeed, not a very intelligent perspective).
There is a difference, I guess, between calling a person unintelligent and calling their perspective unintelligent. But the difference is no more than that between calling a person racist and calling their behavior racist. This is exactly the emotional labor she's talking about: needing to be very aware of the former difference and take extreme care with your words when pointing out why a white person's response to you was problematic, when the latter two things are regularly conflated no matter how careful you are to differentiate them, and gently pointing out racism is taken as calling for blood.
posted by sunset in snow country at 2:06 PM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
There is a difference, I guess, between calling a person unintelligent and calling their perspective unintelligent. But the difference is no more than that between calling a person racist and calling their behavior racist. This is exactly the emotional labor she's talking about: needing to be very aware of the former difference and take extreme care with your words when pointing out why a white person's response to you was problematic, when the latter two things are regularly conflated no matter how careful you are to differentiate them, and gently pointing out racism is taken as calling for blood.
posted by sunset in snow country at 2:06 PM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
I'm feeling the problem of costs this week, and I was at a table with allies.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:00 PM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 4:00 PM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
WE said things I will summarize as "Well, I feel sorry for the specific people making racist jokes, because drugs probably affected their judgment, and additionally they are very talented people", and then over the course of many comments in a FB thread remained confused why this would seem to anyone like she was trying to defend the specific people telling racist jokes.
That's gross.
One of my ex husband's finest moments was very early in the marriage when my dad began telling him racist jokes and he said something like "Mr. MyMaidenName, I don't appreciate that kind of humor." My dad never told my husband another racist joke. He also never told me another racist joke, for which I was eternally grateful to my husband.
posted by Michele in California at 4:14 PM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
That's gross.
One of my ex husband's finest moments was very early in the marriage when my dad began telling him racist jokes and he said something like "Mr. MyMaidenName, I don't appreciate that kind of humor." My dad never told my husband another racist joke. He also never told me another racist joke, for which I was eternally grateful to my husband.
posted by Michele in California at 4:14 PM on April 25, 2016 [2 favorites]
This discussion goes well with the cultural appropriation discussion happening over at Metatalk.
And oh boy those emails...she is way more gracious than I am. Grateful for this piece, grateful for this discussion going the way it is right now.
posted by divabat at 9:38 PM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
And oh boy those emails...she is way more gracious than I am. Grateful for this piece, grateful for this discussion going the way it is right now.
posted by divabat at 9:38 PM on April 25, 2016 [1 favorite]
So, yes I should have specifically named the poets' actions. So far consequences have been that the female half has had a publisher scrap a manuscript of hers that they were planning to bring out this year...and I think that they did the right thing. I hope that similar will be done with her SO.
posted by brujita at 7:43 AM on April 26, 2016
posted by brujita at 7:43 AM on April 26, 2016
Me too, divabat! Although a small part of me wished it would strike the same chord that the other emotional labor piece did with everyone and we would get that kind of amazing discussion... I can dream, right?
Actually I was thinking about that thread, and how although a lot of it was about coerced and/or wasted emotional labor, the things we have to do as women just to get by in the world and how men can suck all that labor up like it's their birthright without so much as a thank you, there was also a lively discussion of the perks and benefits of emotional labor - it builds community, brings joy when the recipient is appreciative, keeps you socially engaged so that you don't become suddenly isolated like so many non-emotional-laboring men do when their wife dies and it turns out she was their only connection to their social circle. So I was wondering - does that kind of upside exist to this kind of emotional labor, the kind that queer/POC people must do to uphold cis/straight/white supremacy?
I can't really think of a clear one, and that bums me out - this type of emotional labor seems to do nothing but protect white fragility. The one thing that does come to mind is kind of the flipside of that inability to advocate for myself when it feels personal - I advocate for others, because that doesn't feel personal, and I'm usually able to get somewhere with it (especially if I'm, e.g., raising trans issues within a group of cisgender Asian Americans who I've built up trust with). I've learned the language of raising these things in a nonthreatening way, and if it's not myself I'm talking about, I'm able to do it without going red and stammering and throwing in three extra "cul-de-sacs of plausible deniability" (sorry a fiendish thingy I just wanted to steal that amazing phrase) out of sheer terror. Maybe having each other's backs is one benefit? Also, the more of the first type of emotional labor (volunteering, celebrating birthdays, becoming a familiar face at events) I do to root myself in my local Japanese American community, the more empowered I feel to speak up when it comes to those issues, because suddenly it's not just me, I'm advocating on behalf of friends and mentors and colleagues.
posted by sunset in snow country at 7:45 AM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]
Actually I was thinking about that thread, and how although a lot of it was about coerced and/or wasted emotional labor, the things we have to do as women just to get by in the world and how men can suck all that labor up like it's their birthright without so much as a thank you, there was also a lively discussion of the perks and benefits of emotional labor - it builds community, brings joy when the recipient is appreciative, keeps you socially engaged so that you don't become suddenly isolated like so many non-emotional-laboring men do when their wife dies and it turns out she was their only connection to their social circle. So I was wondering - does that kind of upside exist to this kind of emotional labor, the kind that queer/POC people must do to uphold cis/straight/white supremacy?
I can't really think of a clear one, and that bums me out - this type of emotional labor seems to do nothing but protect white fragility. The one thing that does come to mind is kind of the flipside of that inability to advocate for myself when it feels personal - I advocate for others, because that doesn't feel personal, and I'm usually able to get somewhere with it (especially if I'm, e.g., raising trans issues within a group of cisgender Asian Americans who I've built up trust with). I've learned the language of raising these things in a nonthreatening way, and if it's not myself I'm talking about, I'm able to do it without going red and stammering and throwing in three extra "cul-de-sacs of plausible deniability" (sorry a fiendish thingy I just wanted to steal that amazing phrase) out of sheer terror. Maybe having each other's backs is one benefit? Also, the more of the first type of emotional labor (volunteering, celebrating birthdays, becoming a familiar face at events) I do to root myself in my local Japanese American community, the more empowered I feel to speak up when it comes to those issues, because suddenly it's not just me, I'm advocating on behalf of friends and mentors and colleagues.
posted by sunset in snow country at 7:45 AM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]
sunset in snow country: I felt like that behemoth emotional labour thread was very White - most of my experiences with unwanted emotional labor, asides from family stuff, have come from White women (and occasionally non-binary folk) more than from men of whatever race. White women feel like, because I too seem to be a woman, I should automatically be on their side...and then expect me to do all the labor of educating them about race or whatever. And when I refuse suddenly I'm not feminist enough or whatever.
posted by divabat at 9:26 AM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by divabat at 9:26 AM on April 26, 2016 [2 favorites]
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