What is it like to write a pastiche memoir when you are worried about both offending and boring people? The worst way it could go is this: the people closest to me read it and hate whatever references I make - or don’t make - to them. No-one else reads it or feels validated by my words. A whole lot of unnecessary drama with no benefits.
“I’m not trying to be good or great, I'm trying to be honest.” Actor Daniel Kaluuya on co-writing his first film “The Kitchen” is quoted in The London Writers Salon on Monday, 18th March 2024 at 8am. This is my second attempt to co-write with a group of writers; my first was yesterday with an online group called Shut Up and Write, where the host started off by telling us that they were going to be looking for apartments (and doing something else so mundane that I’ve already forgotten) instead of writing, which right away deflated all my expectations. I got my 500 words in - my hourly goal, upped from 300 because that was just too easy - but I didn’t stay until the end. At The London Writers Salon, things feel much more purposeful. There are 167 of us here instead of 7 yesterday, and the hosts start us off with the afore-quoted inspiring message.
Five short minutes of checking in via chat are over, and we, all of us, are - allegedly - writing. I notice with dismay that there’s an overwhelming number of white women on camera. Or should I say, people that resemble white women, as don’t I blend in perfectly with all of them? Only my voluntarily shared pronouns hint at something different.1
“I understand, it’s more internal with me”, I reassure a colleague who’s struggling to gender me correctly based on my appearance. What did I just say? I walk away wondering if she thought I meant that I have some male internal organs (I don’t), or that I’m missing some female ones (I am, but it’s not exactly relevant2), when all I meant was that I feel my non-binariness in my mind rather than my body.
I scroll through 10 screens of bobbing faces and get to the back where the faces are perfectly still, fixing a moment in time that the participant chose to represent themselves with as they kept their camera off. There I see more diversity, and I can’t help but wonder: do white women just really love seeing themselves on camera?3 I keep my camera on as I ponder this, and write these words.
“The multiplicity of gender constructions, at the outset, looked to me like something rich white New England college kids had invented to make themselves more marginalized than poor kids, and Brown kids, and the myriad other underrepresented kids.” Shayla Lawson, 2024 “On Them”, from their book “How to live free in a dangerous world: a decolonial memoir” (p.160)
Or is it? More on that another day.
Yes, this is an obvious nod to Sex and the City - the quintessential “white women like to see themselves on camera” TV show. Wouldn’t it have been funny if they were just a tiny bit more self-aware?
Might have alienated the vast majority of my burgeoning (not really!) readership with this post, but at least there is nowhere to go but up?
I had to look up the meaning of pastiche...fell in love with this piece after that. You write openly and honestly...at least it seems that way :) I've enjoyed your perspective, looking forward to more!