Read on Twitter
Outside of the fact that I agree white writers shouldn't be writing books from the perspective of POC because the shitty reality is that there's a limited amount of spaces for POC books and those should go to the authors of color...it's also okay to just admit you CAN'T.
I'm white and didn't have to think about race for most of my life. No amount of having non-white friends or reading books by POC or fighting white supremacy will magically mean I have the experience and range to write about the experience of being a person of color.
I just don't. I'm super aware that even though I've been learning and working, I still have a really 101-level understanding of race and how it interacts with all the intersections of someone's life. I can't write those stories. And that's okay. I'm not needed there.
My voice isn't needed in that arena even a little a bit. The well-meaning but likely shallow version I could attempt to tell of those stories isn't needed. What's needed is for me to read them and boost them.
And I don't just mean "oh I can't write about the experience of racism", though, true, I mean...all of it. There's always going to be things you don't know you don't know. Histories. Inside jokes. Little, everyday experiences.
I've had plenty of books that I've read with a female protagonist where it was fine, but something would hit me as off and I'd go "...was this written by a dude?"
You can TELL. And trust me, that's true for white people writing about POC, too.
You can TELL. And trust me, that's true for white people writing about POC, too.
