Open letters + The City We Became + Maya Angelou

And still, I rise...

Dear Reader, 

Rumour has it there are seven emotional stages to life in lockdown. Some say there are five. There doesn’t seem to be consensus on the order in which these stages will manifest themselves, but there is general agreement that at various points of time and in relatively quick succession, you will feel cheerful, depressed and angry (not necessarily in that order). We can only speculate about which of these emotions inspired the open letter, signed by some 150 public figures, including some heavyweights like Martin Amis, Margaret Atwood, Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Eugenides, Malcolm Gladwell, Steven Pinker, JK Rowling, Salman Rushdie and Gloria Steinem. 

(I don’t know why Harper’s was the chosen platform, but it’s a sad parallel that while the American edition of the magazine appears to remain somewhat relevant, the Indian Harper’s Bazaar is rumoured to have collapsed.)  

Titled “A Letter on Justice and Open Debate”, the open letter commits a cardinal sin of writing — the damned thing feels too long within about 20 words. Is it a manifesto? Is it a complaint? Is it a petition? Honestly, what it really feels like is a bit of a temper tantrum. 

This bit in particular caught my eye: 

“Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes.” 

I can’t remember a book being withdrawn for “alleged inauthenticity” and to say journalists are “barred from writing on certain topics” is a ridiculous interpretation of activists and readers demanding more diversity so that white men (and others from dominant social groups) aren’t the only ones writing about everything and everyone. The bit about editors being fired is probably a reference to the opinion editor of the New York Times resigning in June after the American internet raged against the NYT for carrying an opinion piece that recommended unleashing military forces on anti-racism protestors.

And I’m sure it’s a complete coincidence that some of those signatories have been mocked on social media for airing opinions that range from laughable to offensive. Like Rushdie, who had a moment on Twitter when he said critic Parul Sehgal was Iago (which would mean Rushdie is Othello and Quichotte is Desdemona...?). Or Rowling, who has on multiple occasions done the social media equivalent of smashing an ugly cake on her own face. The most recent was when she exhibited a woeful lack of sensitivity to transgender identity. (Has this led to Harry Potter being “cancelled”? No. Should Harry Potter be cancelled? No.) (Obviously this is just my opinion, but nothing and no one should be cancelled, no matter how offensive it or they are, but more on that later.)

The open letter in Harper’s seems to be a bunch of writers disgruntled with the negative feedback they’ve got from some people online. It’s like they miss the good ole days when they could just focus on adoring fans and ignore those who didn’t like their work. (One moment’s silence for all those writers who don’t have an audience despite writing as well/ badly as the famous ones.) I’d just like to say that as a reader, I much prefer the good ole days too. If it’s a choice between this whinge of a letter and a punch-up between Mario Vargas Llosa and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, I’ll take Llosa and Marquez any damn day.

That’s Llosa as a young man, with Patricia. Sigh.

The saddest part about this open letter is that it’s badly written. Welcome to 2020, when it’s too much to expect that a letter ostensibly written by authors and journalists, will read well. In contrast, is this opinion piece, in the Sydney Morning Herald, signed by a group of Australian cultural figures: 

“Something is dangerously askew in the way that we are talking about race in the arts in this country, and we feel that it is time we spoke up. In particular, the Indigenous filmmakers and people of colour are alarmed that so much is being claimed on our behalf without our consent. ... The current focus on public shaming and ‘burning down’ the industry is misguided and ahistorical. Even if it started as an attempt at genuine critique, in the divisive and polarising world of social media, it has quickly descended into online bullying. ... We recognise there is always a lot more work to be done, and that we can never rest on our laurels. However, we believe in constructively changing the system, rather than ‘burning it down’. We believe in having strategies and policies, informed and researched targets, open and safe debate. Let's keep talking about systemic racism, cultural misappropriation, unconscious bias, access and inclusion.” 

It’s making the same point that the open letter wants to make, but without sounding defensive. While the open letter feels like a potshot taken by some grumpy members of a crabby elite — who, incidentally, are hugely influential and not even slightly in danger of being ‘cancelled’ — the SMH article comes across as a considered statement that is courageous because it asks for introspection.   

What I found interesting about the open letter in Harper’s was that the signatories demanded the right to make mistakes without acknowledging that the natural corollary to making mistakes is apologising for doing so. There’s not one sentence to suggest people should be held accountable for what they say and write. It’s almost as though the signatories would like to hold forth, and the rest of us may please just shut up and listen. If you ever need an example of privilege, that’s it. 

There’s a lot that’s being said about “cancel culture”, which basically looks to remove certain works and artists from public discourse for political or ethical reasons. It may seem like cancelling is a 21st-century, internet phenomenon, but that’s hardly accurate. In every culture and every era, one group has exercised its socio-cultural muscle to keep certain groups on the periphery. Arguably, most of the cancelling in the present has more sound reasoning than what passed for justification to keep out the Indigenous, those associated with low castes, people of colour, intersex people, and women, for example. If anything, the cultural space is more open and diverse today than it has been for a very long time. 

Sure, it’s also more of a contest because of social media. In some ways, social media has amped up our herd mentality. So many pipe up with regurgitated two bits simply because a topic is trending and not because they have any valuable insight or original perspective to share. Social media has also turned the competitive among us into something like the gladiators in classical Rome. Everyone’s looking to lash out at an opponent to get the crowd on their side. When sometimes the roar from the crowd is for one’s blood rather than to cheer them on, it can be disconcerting. 

Yet for all its flaws and toxicity, social media has done so much to encourage conversations that continue to be timely and essential. It has helped amplify a lot of voices and ideas that champion diversity, nuance and progressive thought. It has shone the spotlight of attention to those whom the establishment and mainstream ignored (often to its own peril).

Like I mentioned earlier, I neither have the influence nor inclination to cancel anything or anyone. Cancel culture makes no sense to me. I don’t want someone else deciding for me what art I am allowed to access. I don’t want someone telling me what is ‘good’ or ‘bad’. I would like to figure these things out for myself.

What the SMH opinion piece astutely points out is that criticism needs to be well-reasoned and it has its own set of responsibilities. It also stresses the importance of conversation. The more difficult the topic, the more essential it is that we talk about it. To quote James Baldwin, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”   

Speaking of topics that feel uncomfortable, That Night , written by Bijal Vachharajani and illustrated by Shrujana Sridhar, is kiddie fiction about a riot. Here’s a page from this very special book:

A riot is not exactly a kid-friendly subject, but That Night is a powerful reminder that no matter how much parents may try to shelter the young, children are witnesses. Just like adults, they need to understand and process the violence that happens around them. Nothing is as good at the business of processing as stories. (The violence in fairy tales is not a coincidence. These stories are old ways of making the unpleasantness of life more digestible.) There are a lot of spaces and silences that Bijal’s kept in the storytelling. For instance, you don’t know the identities of those unleashing hell upon one another. You don’t know where the father in the story is going or what he did. You just see the flames and feel the dread. Bijal leaves it to the child and the accompanying adult to fill in these blanks as they work through whatever That Night inspires in them. To me my mind, this is not just powerful storytelling but also respecting the reader. Ultimately, a work is completed in the reader’s imagination. That Night is keenly aware of this. 

And yes, Bijal is a dear friend. It’s a relief to have talented friends whose work I can recommend wholeheartedly because they are so damn good. 

Next: NK Jemisin’s new book, The City We Became . If New York City was a rollercoaster ride, it would be The City We Became. Jemisin flits in and out of different boroughs, soars above the city’s spiky skyline and goes underground to find its heart (with a little help from King Kong). But I’m getting ahead of myself. 

In a pre-pandemic world, on an unremarkable day, a terrible villain spreads its tentacles across New York City just as the city comes to life. This birth is not about people waking up and heading to work, but a more elemental miracle that transforms a scattered set of people into avatars. Each borough of New York City gets its own human embodiment. These chosen people draw particular, peculiar strength from an odd combination of their personal traits and the borough’s culture and architecture. Leading the tribe is Bronca, an Indigenous woman who runs an art centre in the Bronx. Manhattan consumes an ambitious young student so that he turns his back on his past and rechristens himself Manny. Brooklyn is a former rapper and currently a real estate broker and councilwoman. Queens is a Tamil immigrant named Padmini Prakash, who happens to be a mathematical wizard. Aislyn, with her insecurities and love-hate relationship to the city, is Staten Island.

There’s no shortage of stereotypes or tropes in this novel, which follows a rather classic fantasy structure of a fellowship forming as humanity’s last stand against an otherworldly evil. It’s to Jemisin’s credit that her storytelling skills infuse vitality into what could so easily have been a tired repetition. These characters, for instance, are very stereotypical on paper, but Jemisin fills (most of) them with energy and nuance. The most charismatic are Manny and Bronca. (Padmini gets a bit short-changed, much like so many immigrants in America.)

There are few things on each avatar’s to-do list once New York City is born: 

1. Gather with the other avatars.

2. Together, they must find the sixth avatar, who is the heart of the city and the most powerful of them all.

3. Defeat the evil Woman in White, who is going around infecting citizens and carrying out sinister plans to obliterate NYC.

I haven’t read any HP Lovecraft, but thanks to the references that Jemisin has sprinkled throughout The City We Became and Google, I realised the villain’s name (R’lyeh) is actually from one of Lovecraft’s stories. R’lyeh is a sunken city that is also a prison for cosmic entity who is known by many names (one of them is Cthulhu. And you thought Deepanjana was hard to pronounce). Jemisin brings back Lovecraft’s creation, with the dearly-departed author’s hatred of Jews, immigrants and people of colour pumping life into the villain’s pale whiteness. Jemisin also finds different ways to underscore just how easily most people are swayed towards bigotry, which is probably a sly nod to the fantasy fiction world revering Lovecraft as one of its founding fathers. If the avatars of New York City’s boroughs are resilient, then the enemy is persuasive. If the avatars are strong, the Woman in White is subtle. It’s not an easy battle by a long shot, but you know who wins. 

Through The City We Became and presumably the rest of the trilogy, Jemisin is reclaiming this fictional territory from Lovecraft. And she does it with grace, wit and quicksilver rage.

The City We Became is much lighter and breezier than the Broken Earth series. It’s dealing with weighty issues (like urban utopias and gentrification), but there’s lightness to Jemisin’s prose that makes this book a smooth and gripping read. My major quibble with it is that while it lays the ground beautifully as a first book, I don’t think it works as a standalone. Particularly in the later chapters, you can see Jemisin is trying to simultaneously tie up the story of part one while sowing the seeds for a sequel. I would be a lot less grumpy about this detail if I could get my paws on book two.

Incidentally, if you’re interested in writing fantasy, look up the episode of The Ezra Klein Show (it’s a podcast), in which she does a masterclass on world-building. Super fun.

Before I sign off, I want to share with you a performance by Maya Angelou. To say Angelou had an eventful life is to put it mildly. She worked with Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. She was friends with James Baldwin. She danced with Alvin Ailey. She famously ran a brothel for a while. And that’s not even scratching the surface of her remarkable life. The richness of her lived experience made Angelou mesmerising on stage. In this spoken word performance, Angelou talks about love, poetry, self-love and racism. Her incredible voice turns the simplest of words into song; the most throwaway phrases became lyrics. Spend these 37 minutes with Maya Angelou. Let her remind you that we, with our imagination and our art, can shape the reality around us. That despite all the misfortunes that find us and the cruelties we heap upon ourselves and others, we remain capable of incredible grace.  

Take care, stay well and Dear Reader will be back soon.