your story my story

My mother Judy, walking on the headlands with her dog Gerty in Sausalito.

Who am I? And how may I become myself? Paul Beatty poses these questions in his novel The Sellout,  a biting satire on 'post-racial' America. The narrator, raised by his father on a farm as a kind of racial/social experiment, decides to reinstate  the boundaries of a disappeared black township called Dickens, and later enslaves Hominy Jenkins, the last remaining survivor of the Little Rascals television series. Hominy is a national embarrassment, who belongs in the category of things to be eradicated -  "stricken from the racial record, like the hambone, Amos n Andy, Dave Chappelle's meltdown and people who say 'Valentimes Day.'"

I read the first third of The Sellout on the plane from Sydney to San Francisco.  The acerbic commentary just pours out in an endless stream. "The difference between most oppressed peoples of the world and American Blacks," Beatty writes, "is that they vow never to forget and we want everything expunged from our record, sealed and filed away for eternity."  As I read, I felt there was much I wasn't fully getting. So I couldn't stop jotting down notes.

My sister  Stephanie and I arrived in San Francisco several hours before we had left Sydney.  Also, it was spring in Sydney, summer in San Francisco, and soon I'd be back in autumnal Virginia.  But for the next several nights, I slept in my nephew Emmett's room.  He has a suit of medieval armor displayed on a mannequin in front of the window.  It was the first thing impinging on my consciousness when I woke up in the middle of the night.  That, and Noel Coward, Stephanie's  mangy old cat who had decided to sleep on my bed.   Jet lagged, I read a bit more of The Sellout  and when I got up to pee, mangy Noel escorted me down to the bathroom, waited, and followed me back to bed.

Stephanie's home is lively and colorful and not a corner of space there is wasted. It's decorated with masks and plumes, shawls, lanterns, cushions. Her husband Dylan and sons Oliver and Emmett all share the space, along with several animals.

Oh, didn't I mention the guinea pig in Emmett's bedroom, the cat with paralyzed back legs named Clara, or Nessa the pit bull? Jazz plays in the background while Stephanie, dressed in a gorgeous Sarah Bernhardt outfit  - usually hand dyed and adorned with fringe, produces an amazing meal out of her tiny kitchen. There's no counter space. Dishes pile in the sink.  

 Our friend Walter flew in the night we arrived, having just finished a production of Shakespeare in Love at the Fugard Theater in Capetown.  His partner Anthony, a violinist, was arriving a few days after us, to play a concert series.  Meeting them here had all been part of the plan.  I could write more - and probably will at some stage - about my mother's Shakespeare group and all the other animals and family members I have in San Francisco.  But for now let's stay in Stephanie's living room where Walter and my mother are talking about theater with Stephie and me chiming in.  (Actually, I'm combining things here, to make the writing more interesting.  In real life,  some of this conversation took place at a harborside restaurant in Sausalito.)

The topic was interracial and cross-gender casting, now standard practice in the British theater. But does it make sense for Laertes to be black when Ophelia is white? Does it  really matter?  Will a white actor ever get to play a part in A Raisin in the Sun?  Should not actors of all races and genders get a crack at the greatest roles in the literary canon? What about suspension of disbelief? What about consistency?

In The Sellout. Beatty does this hilarious write up of Hominy Jenkins' theatrical bio - listing his uncredited roles as busboy, shoeshine boy, toy boy,  and so forth.  I laughed out loud when I read it, but at the same time, felt a bit like the white characters towards the end of the novel, at a black comedy show. They are finally shooed from the theater : "Get out. This is our thing!"

The overarching question here seems to be what is my story and what is your story?

Walter sits on the sofa and mangy Noel Coward jumps onto his lap. At some stage Noel became so matted that Steph decided she was going to trim his fur– but unfortunately it never grew back so his coat now has these huge bald spots.  His thin pink body is visible in places, underneath the oily coat. Also, he scratches people. Walter pushes him back to the floor. "Sorry darling, but I loathe you."

I'm interested in the question of appropriation. A year ago, I finished writing a novel which features an important transgender character.  I did a lot of research - gleaning a lot of wonderful material from generous transgender people which informed my character.  The novel has done the rounds but has now been shelved by one agent and rejected by several others.  I doubt it will see the light of day, any time soon, not because it isn't good, but because I, the author, am not transgender.  There's the notion of "own story" afoot in the literary world these days.  If publishers are going to publish, let's say, one novel with a transgender main character, it will probably be a book written by a transgender author.

Then Stephanie told us about Scarlett Johansson, cast to play a trans male. She ultimately withdrew from the production after public outcry.  Why had not a trans male been cast instead of a cis female?

It all gets so complicated. And as a culture,  I believe we are working our way as sincerely as we can through thickets of identity.  In the end, we need to express empathy in our work- because that is what writing and performing is all about.  And we need as performers and writers to have the opportunity of range.  There again, aren't some of the most memorable female characters in classic literature written by white men?  Rosalind, Isabel Archer,  Emma Bovary, Anna Karenina. We cannot now dismiss them.

While I've been writing this, I've realized that the most enjoyable part was writing about my family and their animals.  I'm going to keep doing that.  In fact, while I was in San Francisco my daughter Rozzie called from Paris: "When are you going to start your memoir, Mama," she asked.  "My Animals and other Family?"

So yes, I've been writing it.  That is what I've been writing, apart from this blog.

I'm back on the east coast now.  We've had our book club discussion on Paul Beatty and touched on  many issues I raised here.  Bottom line: we recommend you read it.

Also I'm now back at work. Last night, at Politics and Prose, Lisa Halliday read from her novel Asymmetry - a book whose first half I thoroughly enjoyed. Second half, not so much.  It was interesting to hear her thoughts on cultural appropriation, though.  Readers have assumed the first part of Asymmetry is purely autobiographical, she said, while the second part, concerning an Iraqi American family, they assume to be fictional.  In fact, both story lines in the novel have truths as well as fiction woven through them.  If not for the ability to put ourselves as writers and creative artists into the shoes of others,  Halliday pointed out, the only available material would be autobiography. And surely that's far too limiting.