Brave or Lazy

Fall, 1986

Bravery is what made our nation. Brave acts. Brave deeds. Brave thoughts. Frontier people crossing unexplored lands. The first step on another planet. Thoughts springing from the page, inviting us to consider the uninvited.

Writing is a craft. A crafting of words, one on top of the other to create an illusion. Words crafted with painstaking precision, which can swirl you away to a distant planet or even opposing viewpoints.

In a writing class I attended, the instructor spoke of bravery in our writing. He encouraged us to write stories using the taboos that have been set up in the last ten or twenty years. Domestic violence. Sexual abuse. Stereotyping ethnic minorities.

I agree with the instructor. Writers need to be brave. Writer’s boldly go where no one has gone.

The instructor, Jewish, suggested that it was time for a story of a stereotypic Jew. Would the whole story be where the Jew, tight fisted, cunning and sharp, refuses to change and continues on in his stereotypic ways? Or could it be because of that one Jew’s concrete thinking, the young people around him set off to change their life, leaving him behind with his limited perspective. A story using the taboos but with it’s purpose firmly in view.

Could the story of a Jew, firm in his stereotypic mannerisms, be nothing more than a lazy writer refusing to research is? A writer working her/his story, which has never spoken to a Jew, or never read their literature, but needed the character? The writer pasted together a few scraps of information and mis information and presented his/her portrayal of a whole group. Of course, with a character named Saul or Abraham. Or with a Hispanic character named Paco or Pancho. Or with an African American character named Clyde. Or with a Native American character named Joe.

Is that bravery?

Or can bravery be as simple as changing the pronouns in a piece from him to her, shifting the hero from masculine to feminine, showing justice from her viewpoint as well as his.

I congratulate the instructor for daring to approach the untouchable. Good teachers stick out their chins in the hopes that their students will take a swing. Yet, caution, a word I dismiss often, demands to be included in the discussion.

Writer’s pens should always be the flowing kind and not the fenced in kind with a gatekeeper. Yet it is essential that knowledge and sensitivity be the incessant dinner and sleeping mates of each stroke. Researching has to be the sibling of each writer’s thought. A writer must be accountable for each word on the page.

This world has changed tremendously in the last ten or twenty years. Yet, a story of all highly educated, sophisticated, well dressed minorities, driving their BMW’s to the latest art gallery opening, would make us frown? But a story where minorities are all poor, all drug addicted and all violent does not raise a critic’s eyebrow.

Awareness and sensitivity to issues (women’s, minorities, environmental) has grown. But “awareness” is only a toddler, collapsing knees underneath and tightly clenched hands still hanging on to something sturdy to take a few steps forward. Too many people are still confused about what is real and what is contrived. Enough people so that a story about a humorous rape could be used as permission for someone’s behavior.

Bravery is one aspect of a writer’s make up. To craft one’s thoughts and present them to a finicky public is a fearful writer’s first hurdle. The second hurdle is the presenting of an unpopular side of the story. We yearn for those brave and wonderful writers. We also require informed, aware, and responsible craftpeople who acknowledge that the sending out of their written pieces is like bullets.

Gun safety is a big issue in America.

Word safety is a bigger issue.

Tags: Bravery