Whenever I hear about this topic, where white cishet men, particularly young white cishet men, don’t feel like they’re welcome in the literary world, I wonder about the metrics being used to measure this phenomena.
According to research conducted by The New York Times in 2020, 95% of books published in the United States are published by white authors. Exactly who do white cishet male writers think is taking away their literary spots?
From elementary school to high school, my school reading curriculum was exclusively white cishet male authors. If there was a prize to be won, it was won by a white cishet male author and when anyone other than a white cishet male author won a prize, it’s was BIG NEWS because of how rare it was.
The complaint I’m hearing sounds, to me, a lot like white cishet male writers saying: “Why are we no longer the only ones who matter in the literary landscape like we have been the only ones who mattered for centuries, like literally since the Bible days?” It sounds to me like they’re angry and bewildered as to why they are no longer considered the center, the default, the standard in an art form where they have forever been considered the center, the default, and the standard.
It used to be that white cishet men got to write about the world and the world had no choice but to view itself through the eyes/minds of white cishet men, which helped white cishet men believe that the world was not only shaped by them, but made in their own image and created solely to service their every whim. It has to feel terrible for them to now witness the world recognize the danger of that narrow vision of itself and seek to broaden it such that the white cishet male view is no longer singular and no longer central, but is simply one of many. As the old adage goes: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
James Baldwin said something to the effect of there being a kind of terror involved when white cishet male writers have to contend with the fact that those they have written about, almost always scandalously, now have the ability to speak for themselves and write about them. The terror stems from a truth being revealed; a truth that white cishet men have spent a good amount of time, effort, and resources trying to prevent from being heard: that they are not special; they are not unique; they are not above anyone else; that any advantages they have come not through intelligence, but malevolence; that it is John Wayne—not the Native Americans—who is the villain of the story.
And for readers, most of us have spent decades being forced to read white cishet men’s works to the exclusion of every other demographic that now that we are out of school and free to read whatever we want, most of us don’t want to read white cishet men’s work anymore because we have had so much of it and had to endure as they wrote about us in ways that were false, dangerous, stereotypical, and demonizing. Now we want to read the works that academia denied our access to, the perspectives that mainstream literature marginalized.
Some of us have felt traumatized by the ways white cishet men, literary or not, have long represented us—as inferior, as savage, as rapeable, as killable (which has had a tangible effect on how we’re regarded in real life)—that we’re afraid to go back to their works and be reminded of how they see us; of how their rage—their juvenile obsession with being the benchmark for anything genius, their believing that they’re really the only human beings on the planet, their thinking that God, Himself, put them in charge of the planet—leads them to forfeiting their own humanity in the effort to disprove ours.
Frankly, I don’t read white cishet male authors anymore because after reading them for over half my life (I’m 54), I already know what they have to say; they’ve been saying some version of it, in one way or another, for millennia now: “The throne belongs to me. Thus, bow down.” And also, I have a lot of catching up to do with the myriad of perspectives that were intentionally kept from me.
I have no problem with white cishet men authors being able to write. But I have the sneaky suspicion that they don’t just want to write. They want to dominate. They want a crown bestowed. They want us to regard them as brilliant even when they’re mediocre because that’s the entire point of whiteness and that’s what they have been promised.
What is it exactly that young white cishet male writers want to say that they’re not able to, At the heart of their pissed-offness, it seems that they’re angry that they don’t have the uninterrupted right to write about others in the way of their forefathers—without accountability, responsibility, or consequence. They are stunned that the world is largely no longer on board with them doing so. They feel stifled that they can’t, for example, use the N-word or make rape a masculine rite of passage like in the olden days; and they define their freedom precisely by how much harm they’re allowed to bring to others.
But as sad as that is, they just might get all of that again now that the worst of unchecked white cishet male pathology in the form of Trump/Vance/Musk has once again ascended.
Thank you for this bro. I'm honored I could inspire some thoughts in you as well. You hit it on the nose right here: "I have no problem with white cishet men authors being able to write. But I have the sneaky suspicion that they don’t just want to write. They want to dominate. They want a crown bestowed." I just wish people would be more honest about that shit.
This part was especially poignant : I have no problem with white cishet men authors being able to write. But I have the sneaky suspicion that they don’t just want to write. They want to dominate. They want a crown bestowed. They want us to regard them as brilliant even when they’re mediocre because that’s the entire point of whiteness and that’s what they have been promised.
I really appreciated this comment and how it articulated things that have been right on the edge of my consciousness. I also wanted to share, confessionally, that I see ripples of myself in this dynamic of domination and crown bestowal that you name in the second last paragraph. To me this entitlement exists as both a function of whiteness *and* of the patriarchy, and while I see it represented most nakedly in white cishet men, I don't think we, as men of colour, are beyond reproach. I am not insinuating that this is an argument you are making, just adding context which felt important to me. In any case, I already feel, through the men of colour I read and follow, that many of us are navigating this industry in a less dominating and competitive way, which encourages me.
"Frankly, I don’t read white cishet male authors anymore because after reading them for over half my life (I’m 54), I already know what they have to say; they’ve been saying some version of it, in one way or another, for millennia now: “The throne belongs to me. Thus, bow down.” And also, I have a lot of catching up to do with the myriad of perspectives that were intentionally kept from me.
I have no problem with white cishet men authors being able to write. But I have the sneaky suspicion that they don’t just want to write. They want to dominate. They want a crown bestowed. They want us to regard them as brilliant even when they’re mediocre because that’s the entire point of whiteness and that’s what they have been promised."
I feel very much this way about reading more white cishet male authors. I've read a lot of them, once in a great while will read another, but generally, I'm interested in different perspectives these days.
As well, if social media is anything to go by, I think that perhaps white cishet male authors aren't super interested in current literary fiction, seems sci-fic/fantasy and "great books" (aka, books from a time when white cishet male dominance was not at all questioned), are more popular in that demographic.
You are gracious to even use your time and swag replying to this inane essay. White males born before 1984? How is being published in the New Yorker by ones 40s a reasonable aspiration for anyone?? Tony Morrison was in her 60s and had won the frigging NOBEL PRIZE for literature before she started contributing to the New Yorker. The whole platitude of quality feeling like oppression for people with unearned privilege seems viable here. But you demonstrate great warmth here by side stepping such finger-wagging to simply remind writers per se that taking risks is on them, and they are welcome to do so.
Bold, necessary, and cutthroat honest—this joint reminds every writer that courage, not complexion, determines who gets to speak truth. The rest is up to you.
This is a deliberate misreading of the article -- you changed “free to write” to “let” in this headline, and just riffed from there. This is a giant straw man. Half the article was about how white male millennial authors are constitutionally incapable of taking the sort of risks you did with "Victim". A nominal white male millennial novelist should try to write as freely as you do!
“If you’re scared to write what you want to write, that’s fine. But don’t blame me.”
“Blame you?” Who are you even addressing here? I was complimenting you! I’m neither a novelist nor an aspiring novelist, and, believe it or not, I’m so not scared of writing what I want to write that I actually wrote a piece about this very thing.
I would have thought you incisive enough to see that the responses below -- strange cope about how white men are actually just into podcasts or video games (are non-white men not into these things? ), angry posts about how white men just want accolades without doing the work, sad white literary guys with no swag nervously complimenting your swag -- basically prove my point.
Spare me the pearl-clutching, even if your simps in the comments eat it up. You’re better than that.
I didn’t set out to misrepresent your article. My headline reflects the implication I took from your piece and particularly this part: "While Andrew Boryga (Victim) and Tony Tulathimutte are free to skewer identity pieties, white male millennials are still unable to speak directly to their own condition.”
The word “free” is doing a lot of work there. I think you and I can both admit that. I’m also not sure how I was being complimented if I’m being framed as an exception to prove a broader point about others’ suppression. That’s not really a compliment—that’s positioning.
But I'm not looking for compliments. And to be honest, this isn’t even really about you. As I said, it’s about a broader sentiment I keep encountering and that I’m tired of: this idea that white guys “aren’t allowed” to write certain things, and therefore they have to sit on their hands. That excuse is getting old man. What I push back on most is being used as an example to prop that up—as if I had it easier, as if I was granted some kind of special access. That’s BS. It overlooks my work and, like I said in the piece, it’s a cowardly way of framing the issue.
All this being said, I meant what I wrote—I don’t have no beef with you. And good on you for not being afraid to write what you want to write. That’s precisely my point.
I read your essay yesterday; there is no reasonable world in which your characterization of Boryga’s and Tulathimutte’s fiction could be considered a ‘compliment’. It was of a kind with the same backhanded patronizing ‘praise’ attended upon Ralph Ellison when Invisible Man came out in ‘52. You’re engaging in the same victim-industrial-complex thinking you would surely decry in others, which makes you sound whiny, and weak. Black writers and other non-white writers have had to write honestly— without getting permission from publishing elites —for the whole of American literary history. Welcome to the club. Or do you truly expect contemporary readers to stand up and applaud any work by your vanishingly narrow category of ‘White-millennial-American-male Big Splashy Everything Novels’, regardless of the quality? Just because of the identity and politics of the author? Smells like affirmative action to me.
You’re right, you did write that— just as a foil to still suggest that something is very rotten in Denmark. Again, something IS rotten; just not what you’re attempting to sniff out.
However— I will say that if you are really neither a novelist nor an aspiring one, I applaud you for writing about publishing at all. One thing I can’t fault you for is a lack of care about the state of American fiction.
Would love for you to direct me to where — in a piece devoted to criticizing white male writers — I demand they be praised “regardless of quality.” Guess you came in with your priors and left with your priors, not much I can do about that.
Just saw this, and I’ll leave it here— that’s why I wrote ‘vanishingly narrow category’. They don’t seem to count as the right ‘kind’ of white-male-American-millennial-writer in your assessment. But getting into an argument about semantics and “priors” rather than principles and aesthetic priorities— meaning what kind of fiction America needs right now— is uninteresting to me.
That very specific kind of novel, exemplified by Franzen’s third and fourth, were criminally overrated, and any novel in their tradition will have to compete in a much more crowded literary field. They won’t automatically become the darling of the publishing world.
I can count on one hand the number of men I know who even read at all. It's so depressing. And the ones I know that do read read mostly genre fiction or strictly non-fiction.
Man, there are like a hundred things I want to say about this masterful excoriation, but I’ll settle for two:
1. I love that these fundamentally unserious people incessantly decry the inequity of the “victim industrial complex” while painting themselves as victims at every possible turn. Perhaps the next Great White Millennial Male Writer will publish a novel titled “Irony.”
White male demand for their own perspective is really not reflected as demand for literature. Most guys I know look to podcasts to scratch this itch, and it would be silly for publishers to go after a market that isn’t really there. I don’t think it means people shouldn’t try, but you can’t blame other people for not wanting what you have to offer.
Thanks for sharing that! The advice around targeting your own audience and not forcing others to accept your view is extremely relevant for me rn, and I doubt I’d have discovered it myself.
This is the way. I struggled to publish for a long time, but it wasn't because I'm a white dude. It was because the writing wasn't all the way there yet. It would be nice if the folks who like to complain about this shit would channel even half of that complaining into being bolder, better, and truer to both themselves and to the world (instead of their own grievances) on the page.
Thank you for writing this! So many people are getting caught up in their own myopia that they're not taking the temperature and asking if they're brave, bold, or even good enough to be writing what they want to be. The default of we have it easy because we're Brown is bullshit, especially coming from where WE come from. It's asinine and disrespectful and honestly shameful.
Congrats on a courageous, real, and powerful call out. This guy is a piece of shit and someone needed to write this.
Go AB! Love all this. It made me think of that scene in Straight Outta Compton when Jerry Heller is trying to coach up E on how they should respond to No Vaseline. We all have our ways. I’m here for this. And then some. 👊
I do want to go read the compact article more carefully. When I read about articles like this, with which I’m likely to disagree, for this sort of smoke, I tend to run to the fire. Not because I don’t trust the messenger but I like to feel the heat for myself. (I live in LA, our mayor doesn’t exactly stick the landing on fire warnings).
That said, I went and read the part referenced in the compact article and I questioned how closely Savage read Victim, if he read it at all. I’m about a fifth of the way through the book (love what I’ve read thus far) and his comments in the subsequent paragraph are topics that Victim seems to cover, in spades. If that was his intent, I’m not sure why he didn’t hold up Victim as an example of what could be. Was like he chose backhanded shade over a compliment that could inspire authors of all colors and backgrounds. Crime shame to see an open layup like that missed. Keep bringing the goods, here and in your books.
Thanks to Andrew Sullivan's column pointing me in this direction. While I think Boryga glosses over just a little the real disadvantages white men have today, his overall argument rings true, moral, and wise. And the last two paragraphs are pure gold. I am going to print those out and put them in a frame in my office.
Andrew, thanks for helping this young boomer to continue a passion project as he nears retirement. I write out of a need to process my youth, those formative events and experiences that made me who I am today. What does it all mean? What was the point? Getting it on the page for me is not the end, but the means to the end of understanding—and expressing gratitude. Thanks again.
Thank you for writing this, Brother.
Whenever I hear about this topic, where white cishet men, particularly young white cishet men, don’t feel like they’re welcome in the literary world, I wonder about the metrics being used to measure this phenomena.
According to research conducted by The New York Times in 2020, 95% of books published in the United States are published by white authors. Exactly who do white cishet male writers think is taking away their literary spots?
From elementary school to high school, my school reading curriculum was exclusively white cishet male authors. If there was a prize to be won, it was won by a white cishet male author and when anyone other than a white cishet male author won a prize, it’s was BIG NEWS because of how rare it was.
The complaint I’m hearing sounds, to me, a lot like white cishet male writers saying: “Why are we no longer the only ones who matter in the literary landscape like we have been the only ones who mattered for centuries, like literally since the Bible days?” It sounds to me like they’re angry and bewildered as to why they are no longer considered the center, the default, the standard in an art form where they have forever been considered the center, the default, and the standard.
It used to be that white cishet men got to write about the world and the world had no choice but to view itself through the eyes/minds of white cishet men, which helped white cishet men believe that the world was not only shaped by them, but made in their own image and created solely to service their every whim. It has to feel terrible for them to now witness the world recognize the danger of that narrow vision of itself and seek to broaden it such that the white cishet male view is no longer singular and no longer central, but is simply one of many. As the old adage goes: “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.”
James Baldwin said something to the effect of there being a kind of terror involved when white cishet male writers have to contend with the fact that those they have written about, almost always scandalously, now have the ability to speak for themselves and write about them. The terror stems from a truth being revealed; a truth that white cishet men have spent a good amount of time, effort, and resources trying to prevent from being heard: that they are not special; they are not unique; they are not above anyone else; that any advantages they have come not through intelligence, but malevolence; that it is John Wayne—not the Native Americans—who is the villain of the story.
And for readers, most of us have spent decades being forced to read white cishet men’s works to the exclusion of every other demographic that now that we are out of school and free to read whatever we want, most of us don’t want to read white cishet men’s work anymore because we have had so much of it and had to endure as they wrote about us in ways that were false, dangerous, stereotypical, and demonizing. Now we want to read the works that academia denied our access to, the perspectives that mainstream literature marginalized.
Some of us have felt traumatized by the ways white cishet men, literary or not, have long represented us—as inferior, as savage, as rapeable, as killable (which has had a tangible effect on how we’re regarded in real life)—that we’re afraid to go back to their works and be reminded of how they see us; of how their rage—their juvenile obsession with being the benchmark for anything genius, their believing that they’re really the only human beings on the planet, their thinking that God, Himself, put them in charge of the planet—leads them to forfeiting their own humanity in the effort to disprove ours.
Frankly, I don’t read white cishet male authors anymore because after reading them for over half my life (I’m 54), I already know what they have to say; they’ve been saying some version of it, in one way or another, for millennia now: “The throne belongs to me. Thus, bow down.” And also, I have a lot of catching up to do with the myriad of perspectives that were intentionally kept from me.
I have no problem with white cishet men authors being able to write. But I have the sneaky suspicion that they don’t just want to write. They want to dominate. They want a crown bestowed. They want us to regard them as brilliant even when they’re mediocre because that’s the entire point of whiteness and that’s what they have been promised.
What is it exactly that young white cishet male writers want to say that they’re not able to, At the heart of their pissed-offness, it seems that they’re angry that they don’t have the uninterrupted right to write about others in the way of their forefathers—without accountability, responsibility, or consequence. They are stunned that the world is largely no longer on board with them doing so. They feel stifled that they can’t, for example, use the N-word or make rape a masculine rite of passage like in the olden days; and they define their freedom precisely by how much harm they’re allowed to bring to others.
But as sad as that is, they just might get all of that again now that the worst of unchecked white cishet male pathology in the form of Trump/Vance/Musk has once again ascended.
SOME SOURCES:
https://boingboing.net/2020/12/21/number-crunching-the-overwhelming-whiteness-of-the-book-publishing-industry.html
https://bookriot.com/diversity-in-the-publishing-industry-2023/
Thank you for this bro. I'm honored I could inspire some thoughts in you as well. You hit it on the nose right here: "I have no problem with white cishet men authors being able to write. But I have the sneaky suspicion that they don’t just want to write. They want to dominate. They want a crown bestowed." I just wish people would be more honest about that shit.
Excellent 💥
This part was especially poignant : I have no problem with white cishet men authors being able to write. But I have the sneaky suspicion that they don’t just want to write. They want to dominate. They want a crown bestowed. They want us to regard them as brilliant even when they’re mediocre because that’s the entire point of whiteness and that’s what they have been promised.
I really appreciated this comment and how it articulated things that have been right on the edge of my consciousness. I also wanted to share, confessionally, that I see ripples of myself in this dynamic of domination and crown bestowal that you name in the second last paragraph. To me this entitlement exists as both a function of whiteness *and* of the patriarchy, and while I see it represented most nakedly in white cishet men, I don't think we, as men of colour, are beyond reproach. I am not insinuating that this is an argument you are making, just adding context which felt important to me. In any case, I already feel, through the men of colour I read and follow, that many of us are navigating this industry in a less dominating and competitive way, which encourages me.
I love this:
"Frankly, I don’t read white cishet male authors anymore because after reading them for over half my life (I’m 54), I already know what they have to say; they’ve been saying some version of it, in one way or another, for millennia now: “The throne belongs to me. Thus, bow down.” And also, I have a lot of catching up to do with the myriad of perspectives that were intentionally kept from me.
I have no problem with white cishet men authors being able to write. But I have the sneaky suspicion that they don’t just want to write. They want to dominate. They want a crown bestowed. They want us to regard them as brilliant even when they’re mediocre because that’s the entire point of whiteness and that’s what they have been promised."
I feel very much this way about reading more white cishet male authors. I've read a lot of them, once in a great while will read another, but generally, I'm interested in different perspectives these days.
As well, if social media is anything to go by, I think that perhaps white cishet male authors aren't super interested in current literary fiction, seems sci-fic/fantasy and "great books" (aka, books from a time when white cishet male dominance was not at all questioned), are more popular in that demographic.
You are gracious to even use your time and swag replying to this inane essay. White males born before 1984? How is being published in the New Yorker by ones 40s a reasonable aspiration for anyone?? Tony Morrison was in her 60s and had won the frigging NOBEL PRIZE for literature before she started contributing to the New Yorker. The whole platitude of quality feeling like oppression for people with unearned privilege seems viable here. But you demonstrate great warmth here by side stepping such finger-wagging to simply remind writers per se that taking risks is on them, and they are welcome to do so.
Thank you, Rebecca!
Thank you....for modeling a more decent and constructive approach to whiny nonsense than my own sneering default. Notes taken.
Bold, necessary, and cutthroat honest—this joint reminds every writer that courage, not complexion, determines who gets to speak truth. The rest is up to you.
Amen. Step into the arena. Too much bitching on the sidelines.
This is a deliberate misreading of the article -- you changed “free to write” to “let” in this headline, and just riffed from there. This is a giant straw man. Half the article was about how white male millennial authors are constitutionally incapable of taking the sort of risks you did with "Victim". A nominal white male millennial novelist should try to write as freely as you do!
“If you’re scared to write what you want to write, that’s fine. But don’t blame me.”
“Blame you?” Who are you even addressing here? I was complimenting you! I’m neither a novelist nor an aspiring novelist, and, believe it or not, I’m so not scared of writing what I want to write that I actually wrote a piece about this very thing.
I would have thought you incisive enough to see that the responses below -- strange cope about how white men are actually just into podcasts or video games (are non-white men not into these things? ), angry posts about how white men just want accolades without doing the work, sad white literary guys with no swag nervously complimenting your swag -- basically prove my point.
Spare me the pearl-clutching, even if your simps in the comments eat it up. You’re better than that.
Jacob,
I didn’t set out to misrepresent your article. My headline reflects the implication I took from your piece and particularly this part: "While Andrew Boryga (Victim) and Tony Tulathimutte are free to skewer identity pieties, white male millennials are still unable to speak directly to their own condition.”
The word “free” is doing a lot of work there. I think you and I can both admit that. I’m also not sure how I was being complimented if I’m being framed as an exception to prove a broader point about others’ suppression. That’s not really a compliment—that’s positioning.
But I'm not looking for compliments. And to be honest, this isn’t even really about you. As I said, it’s about a broader sentiment I keep encountering and that I’m tired of: this idea that white guys “aren’t allowed” to write certain things, and therefore they have to sit on their hands. That excuse is getting old man. What I push back on most is being used as an example to prop that up—as if I had it easier, as if I was granted some kind of special access. That’s BS. It overlooks my work and, like I said in the piece, it’s a cowardly way of framing the issue.
All this being said, I meant what I wrote—I don’t have no beef with you. And good on you for not being afraid to write what you want to write. That’s precisely my point.
You’re being way too soft with this guy. Imo publishing talk needs more NYC borough honesty (coming from the BX).
Jacob,
I read your essay yesterday; there is no reasonable world in which your characterization of Boryga’s and Tulathimutte’s fiction could be considered a ‘compliment’. It was of a kind with the same backhanded patronizing ‘praise’ attended upon Ralph Ellison when Invisible Man came out in ‘52. You’re engaging in the same victim-industrial-complex thinking you would surely decry in others, which makes you sound whiny, and weak. Black writers and other non-white writers have had to write honestly— without getting permission from publishing elites —for the whole of American literary history. Welcome to the club. Or do you truly expect contemporary readers to stand up and applaud any work by your vanishingly narrow category of ‘White-millennial-American-male Big Splashy Everything Novels’, regardless of the quality? Just because of the identity and politics of the author? Smells like affirmative action to me.
A Reader and Writer
Did you read the previous paragraph in which I said Tulathimutte's novel was by far the best of 2024? Or is that... inconvenient?
You’re right, you did write that— just as a foil to still suggest that something is very rotten in Denmark. Again, something IS rotten; just not what you’re attempting to sniff out.
However— I will say that if you are really neither a novelist nor an aspiring one, I applaud you for writing about publishing at all. One thing I can’t fault you for is a lack of care about the state of American fiction.
Would love for you to direct me to where — in a piece devoted to criticizing white male writers — I demand they be praised “regardless of quality.” Guess you came in with your priors and left with your priors, not much I can do about that.
Just saw this, and I’ll leave it here— that’s why I wrote ‘vanishingly narrow category’. They don’t seem to count as the right ‘kind’ of white-male-American-millennial-writer in your assessment. But getting into an argument about semantics and “priors” rather than principles and aesthetic priorities— meaning what kind of fiction America needs right now— is uninteresting to me.
That very specific kind of novel, exemplified by Franzen’s third and fourth, were criminally overrated, and any novel in their tradition will have to compete in a much more crowded literary field. They won’t automatically become the darling of the publishing world.
Have a good night, brother.
forreal! all these ppl complaining nobody would want their novels IF they wrote em… it’s just an excuse for not writing…
Bro, I would have been the center fielder for the Mets, if only...
Excellent response to, in all honesty, an essay I have very little interest in reading.
Appreciate you, Inigo. You're a wise man for skipping it.
I can count on one hand the number of men I know who even read at all. It's so depressing. And the ones I know that do read read mostly genre fiction or strictly non-fiction.
Man, there are like a hundred things I want to say about this masterful excoriation, but I’ll settle for two:
1. I love that these fundamentally unserious people incessantly decry the inequity of the “victim industrial complex” while painting themselves as victims at every possible turn. Perhaps the next Great White Millennial Male Writer will publish a novel titled “Irony.”
2. Headshot. +500 XP.
pew pew pew
White male demand for their own perspective is really not reflected as demand for literature. Most guys I know look to podcasts to scratch this itch, and it would be silly for publishers to go after a market that isn’t really there. I don’t think it means people shouldn’t try, but you can’t blame other people for not wanting what you have to offer.
Thanks, Josh. This is a great piece that gets at some of this: https://www.woman-of-letters.com/p/a-writers-career-can-be-rooted-in
Thanks for sharing that! The advice around targeting your own audience and not forcing others to accept your view is extremely relevant for me rn, and I doubt I’d have discovered it myself.
This is the way. I struggled to publish for a long time, but it wasn't because I'm a white dude. It was because the writing wasn't all the way there yet. It would be nice if the folks who like to complain about this shit would channel even half of that complaining into being bolder, better, and truer to both themselves and to the world (instead of their own grievances) on the page.
Thank you for writing this! So many people are getting caught up in their own myopia that they're not taking the temperature and asking if they're brave, bold, or even good enough to be writing what they want to be. The default of we have it easy because we're Brown is bullshit, especially coming from where WE come from. It's asinine and disrespectful and honestly shameful.
Congrats on a courageous, real, and powerful call out. This guy is a piece of shit and someone needed to write this.
Go AB! Love all this. It made me think of that scene in Straight Outta Compton when Jerry Heller is trying to coach up E on how they should respond to No Vaseline. We all have our ways. I’m here for this. And then some. 👊
I do want to go read the compact article more carefully. When I read about articles like this, with which I’m likely to disagree, for this sort of smoke, I tend to run to the fire. Not because I don’t trust the messenger but I like to feel the heat for myself. (I live in LA, our mayor doesn’t exactly stick the landing on fire warnings).
That said, I went and read the part referenced in the compact article and I questioned how closely Savage read Victim, if he read it at all. I’m about a fifth of the way through the book (love what I’ve read thus far) and his comments in the subsequent paragraph are topics that Victim seems to cover, in spades. If that was his intent, I’m not sure why he didn’t hold up Victim as an example of what could be. Was like he chose backhanded shade over a compliment that could inspire authors of all colors and backgrounds. Crime shame to see an open layup like that missed. Keep bringing the goods, here and in your books.
a very generous response— an invitation to stand up and get in the game. love it.
Thank you, Kathleen!
You inspire me, Andrew. As a writer and as someone who understands and respects what it takes to be brave. And own the hell out of one's own swag.
Thank you very much, Allison. I appreciate those words, and you reading
Thanks to Andrew Sullivan's column pointing me in this direction. While I think Boryga glosses over just a little the real disadvantages white men have today, his overall argument rings true, moral, and wise. And the last two paragraphs are pure gold. I am going to print those out and put them in a frame in my office.
Andrew, thanks for helping this young boomer to continue a passion project as he nears retirement. I write out of a need to process my youth, those formative events and experiences that made me who I am today. What does it all mean? What was the point? Getting it on the page for me is not the end, but the means to the end of understanding—and expressing gratitude. Thanks again.