In his essay “The Storyteller” (1936), cultural critic Walter Benjamin mourns the death of oral and communal storytelling, taken over in modern history by the novel, the “birthplace of the solitary reader,” and information technology with a rise in capitalism. To find answers, I turned toward contemporary writers of color and a narrative form with deeper roots in my (or any) cultural history-the short story. Likewise, in the cacophony of womanizing jerks clogging our literary canon-God damn-I would hear Junot Díaz’s Yunior from miles away.Īs I processed a dominant Euro-American writing pedagogy from the perspective of an aspiring fiction writer and an immigrant critic of color, I couldn’t stop wondering: are we, in 21st-century America, overvaluing a sight-based approach to storytelling? And could this be another case of cultural particularity masquerading itself as universal taste? In other words, amid the enormous cast of characters that crowd my literary memory, I’m certain of not confusing Salman Rushdie’s Amina Sinai whatsitsname with John Cheever’s Pommeroy matriarch who enjoys a fabulous time by the East Coast, sipping Martinis. Instead, what I tend to remember first about most of my favorite characters is what they say or sound like. And when I moved away from the objective “facts” of our cinematic and digital age to the more subjective terrain of memory, I found that I hardly remembered what my favorite characters or their surroundings looked like in stories. Yet, while perusing my drafts for strategies of revision, the aspiring fiction writer in me often wondered if “painting a picture” would be a most effective artistic move, especially in an age where verbal or textual storytelling competes constantly with visual and virtual storytelling. After all, which storyteller worth her salt can afford to ignore the Chekhovian dictum today? “Don’t tell me the moon is shining show me the glint of light on broken glass.” This counsel to “paint a picture” feels even more relevant in a 21st century whose readers, including myself, consume stories increasingly through images-be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Hollywood and Bollywood blockbusters. As I moved from one fledgling story draft to another, the comments I received most consistently as feedback in my workshop seemed to be the standard fare for most novice writers: “show, show, show,” “show, don’t tell,” “convert into scene,” “externalize,” “get rid of exposition” and “what does this place or character look like?” For this repeated advice, I remain indebted to my workshop readers. Recently, I transitioned from a world of transnational literary criticism into a predominantly white American creative writing workshop culture.
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