The Impossible Task: My Rights, Privileges, and Responsibilities as a Writer

Who has a right to tell what stories? Perhaps we writers have such difficulty with our own craft, with getting the words down, because every word carries with it centuries of context, relates to the experiences of many humans, has passed, like water, through the minds of so many, in so many languages, and with so many meanings. Being a writer is daunting. You’d think we feel entitled to it, to the task of it. I feel no entitlement. Only deep, heavy, thick responsibility that weighs me down deep. 

I do not write to tell stories. I don’t have much interest in stories. You can tell by my lack of plot, perhaps. My interest is in sharing experiences, creating connection, illuminating the dark corners of the human experience for readers. My lane is mental illness, and I’ve learned, moderate-severity mental illness at that. So when not writing my own stories, I tend to stick to my lane of writing stories that I hope will bridge understanding and break down walls. But I cannot write mental illness fiction with a cast of white characters only using my own white experiences. And I cannot write characters from other backgrounds, marginalized characters, with mental illnesses, through the white lens. I must write from their own perspectives. But of course, that is somewhat impossible. I must do what is hard, what is most hard in fact, because it is right.

I have never felt entitled to anything in my life. A chronic self-loather, I deeply believe the only thing different between me and a person without housing is luck; the only thing different between me and anyone is luck. I don’t have any rights at all, only privileges which I must not take for granted. I feel insecure about my lot in life as I don’t feel like I deserve anything I have, not love, not financial security, not a home, not even my cat or the clothes on my back. Other people have these rights, to be sure. Just not me. It’s taken years of therapy to believe otherwise, and I’m still not comfortable declaring that I have a right to anything at all.

I definitely don’t have an entitlement, let alone a right, to tell the story of a mixed-race person, even if my son is mixed-race. I don’t even have the right to tell my own story. Billions of people cannot tell their own stories due to various systemic barriers. If you’re a writer, think about all the pieces of the puzzle that must be in place for you to write, or better, to publish, or better yet, to make a living from your stories and experiences. If you’re not a writer, well, you’re all too familiar with the privileges we writers have to be able to tell stories. My ability to tell my own story is a privilege the majority of people don’t have. 

I do, however, have many responsibilities because I have that privilege. Because I have the capabilities of telling my story—literacy, time, technology, technique, freedom, courage—I have the responsibility to include characters like my son, like your children and parents, like you, like reality. I have a responsibility to write the world as it is. 

My world is beautiful. My world contains a vast array of difference, of unique pains and joys. It is my responsibility to do right by my world with the privilege I have. I will represent the pain of others to the best of my abilities. I will forever, until my last breath, be on a journey of understanding, a journey that can never end for any human. I am forever a student of humanity, of the nature of being. I have no entitlement to write fiction, to borrow from the stories of real humans to make up stories about fake ones. But I do have a responsibility to represent the world, with all its pain, with all its systemic failures, as it is. I cannot write a character of colour, for example, without representing the full experience of what it is like to be that person in the real world. If I were to erase the experience of systemic racism for that character, it would be upholding the white supremacy I benefit from, it would be erasing them. I do have a responsibility to get it right. And that is the hardest part. I have yet to get it right. I am young on my journey of understanding what it is like to be another human being, a being of different experience. The responsibility of telling the stories of myself and the interconnected world I live in is great enough. The responsibilities of telling the stories of others, real or made up, are daunting beyond words. 

Empathy is sometimes defined as the ability to walk in another’s shoes. I used to be a fan; I am not anymore. I believe not in feeling what it’s like to be me in another’s life but to be them in their own lives. True understanding of the other doesn’t ask us to guess how we’d feel to live the life of another, but how they feel in their life. True compassion in writing includes asking myself what the depths of experience this character I am writing may feel, especially those experiences thrust upon them by my own white, cishet, privileged peers.  To erase what white heteronormativity does to the lives of the marginalized because I cannot imagine that pain (true) is to erase their pain altogether. I will never get it 100% right. But I will try. And I ask you to let me try, try again, keep trying, keep learning. That is my responsibility, it is my privilege as a writer to be able to be a life-long learner. Heck, maybe learning is even my right. If I am to be a writer, I must write, and I must keep writing until I get it right. That is my privilege, but never my right. To write only my own stories, my own perspectives, would be like a rich person who does not share the wealth. I must do what I can with my abilities to write the stories of humanity, not just the privileged, white, cishet experiences of myself. 

Empathy is a flawed concept indeed. Its components essentially are understanding and compassion. Sometimes one is necessary and not the other. Sometimes one is possible and not the other. Understanding is harder than compassion, I believe. To truly understand the perspective of another is impossible because we are not them. To say, “I understand your experience” is an entitled lie. All we can do is try. 

There are lots of invisible traumas that are marginalized, yet we write about them freely. Being raped, having had a miscarriage, an abortion, are all marginalized traumas. Yet many writers write characters who have experienced these events, often without talking to invisible survivors. There is an entitlement to their stories, which further marginalizes them and prevents them from telling their own stories. We tell others not to write visible marginalization, such as race, gender, and some disabilities, saying they couldn’t possibly understand. Yet, we allow writers to continue to marginalize the invisible traumas of life. If I cannot write a person of colour’s experience of racism, even if I do the (never-ending) work of trying to understand it, why can another writer write a character who has had a miscarriage when the writer has not? I have. I talk openly about my miscarriage because I have a lot of privilege. Most people who experience them don’t. In some states and countries, they risk jail time if they do. 

This is all to say all of my writing—fiction, poetry, non-fiction alike—is informed by race, gender, marginalization, and privilege. And so is all art, whether it’s about robots or dragons or sentence structure or jokes. I will never claim own voice on any experience different from my own. I will, however, uphold and support and add chairs to the table for own voice artists, choose a Black story written by a Black writer over one written by a white writer, choose an Indigenous film directed by an authentically Indigenous director over one that is not, always. Cultural appropriation is a real threat to marginalized cultures and individuals. Writing the other is a delicate thing, one that requires consenting consultation with communities. Communities are more diverse within themselves than between them. So while I can have fifty sensitivity readers read a piece of my writing, they do not represent all the millions of experiences of their respective communities. Art cannot please everyone. That’s an impossible task. But we can teach and uplift, rather than tearing down, every artist. 

Alicia Elliot wrote that to write the experiences of others, one must not do so from a place of empathy but from a place of love. I am passionate about doing the right thing in life, obsessive even. I love the words; I love the characters I create with my words. But most of all, I love the people I represent with my words. I write about people of other races, health statuses, abilities, genders, sexualities, not because I am entitled to, but because they are my literal family and friends, they are the experiences of people I love. And to ignore them in my writing, well, that is not my right.