For BIPOC Storytellers: Origin Story, Pt 1
Without role models and teachers whose backgrounds resembled my own, I floundered as a young writer
An earlier version of this article was originally published by womenwhosubmitlit.org , an organization which seeks to "empower women and nonbinary writers by creating physical and virtual spaces for sharing information, supporting and encouraging submissions to literary journals, and clarifying the submission and publication process." If you're looking to start your journey into publication, check them out.
Before leading writing and story workshops, I spent a few years facilitating personal growth workshops for affluent white women. These women had time and money to invest, but the contexts of race, difference, and economic inequality that mattered to me were mere blips in their consciousness. Even if I added DEI and social justice content to my curricula, I knew I was gonna get really bitter.
When I launched Represent! Story and Editorial, I decided to do something different and set out to work with Writers of Color aka Global Majority. I wanted to give my energy to writers whose perspectives aligned with my own and design the kind of creative environment I’d always wanted: one in which whiteness and white male aesthetics weren’t centered and in which conversations about gender equity weren’t limited to white feminism.
As a Puerto Rican/Jewish kid growing up in the Bronx, all but one of my teachers had been white. I was always looking for creative role models who looked and sounded like me but I was always disappointed. Teenage me dreamed of being a filmmaker and, with no one else to choose from, I idolized the mostly white men whose movies I loved.
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