A Rant

Odd time of year for a rant–odd time in my life for a rant, actually. I really have little to rant about right now. Given the state of the world, things are good for me, and I’m grateful.

In spite of that, my brain kept circling back around to a thing that happened the week before last. I didn’t really know why. I figured out, finally, that I was mad about it. This morning, when I woke up at 3:30 and had some time to think, a collection of other memories flooded into my head and I realized why I was mad about it. Thus, the rant.

Last week I had a reason to wait in line with a lot of other people. It was for a good thing, a beautiful fall day, and people were in a good mood generally. I struck up a conversation with the man behind me in line. He was in my age group, probably a couple years older. The conversation ranged and drifted as we inched our way up to the table. Finally, he mentioned that he was a writer. He’d spent several years in Columbia during the height of the cartel activity, and probably has a pretty good story to tell about it if he changes some names.

I told him I was a writer too, and I had a book coming out in March. By the way, I tell everyone this now. Even the dogs I meet when I’m out walking. “Hi! Who’s a good dog? You are! Yes you aarrrre. Who has a book coming out in March? I do! Yes I dooo!” He thought that was interesting. Maybe we could exchange work, he said. Maybe via Zoom. Personally I doubted there was enough overlap in our work to make that worthwhile, but I do have business cards, and I gave him one.

Two days later I got an email from him. In that time he had searched me up, as I would have expected. He probably found my reviews and columns on Fantasy Literature. He may have found my existing books on Amazon and Goodreads. I mean, I’m out there.

“You know so much about writing and publishing,” he said. “Maybe you could edit my book. I’d pay you of course.”

I laughed. I didn’t understand why I laughed at first–except that Let’s Miss the Point in a Big Way is always kind of funny. I sent a reply email politely explaining that I wasn’t an editor and referring him to someone I knew who was.

But the story stayed in my mind. And slowly I realized it bugged me. It was funny, but underneath the funny, something was making me mad.

At 3:30 in the morning, other memories swirled in.

In the late 1990s, I attended a writing workshop. Its name now is Community of Writers–at that time it was the Squaw Valley Writers Conference. It was a residential conference with workshops in the morning and lecture events in the afternoon. I’ll state right up front that about 85% of my anti-creative-writing-MFA bias probably burst into life at this conference. One afternoon–probably the final day–the conference put on a buffet meal for all the participants. I ended up at a part of the long narrow table surrounded by people I didn’t know. I did what I do best in that situation; said nothing and listened.

Across from me sat two young white men. From their conversation, they were MFA students or recent grads. They were mocking a woman they’d seen at last year’s conference. The woman presenter was older than them, clearly, probably in her late thirties. She may have even been forty. There were two sources for their hilarity. Apparently she wore some kind of clothing that, as an American-Chinese person, honored her heritage, and she carried a tote bag that held her Yorkshire terrier. When she sat down, she put the bag by her feet and the dog peeked out. (I can’t remember when this was, but plainly it was before Paris Hilton made carrying a small dog in a purse stylish.)

I’ll ignore for a minute the practical aspects of carrying a small, energetic and assertive dog in a tote bag, instead of dealing with a loose Yorkshire terrier or the trip-hazard of one on a leash in a crowd of humans. I will say that this woman they were laughing at, with her dog and her “ethnic” clothing, this figure of fun, was someone the Squaw Valley Conference thought highly of. Others did too. You may have heard of her. Her name is Amy Tan.

I wanted to lean across the table and say, “How many New York Times-reviewed books do you boys have?” but I didn’t. I just ate my lasagna.

One time I flew up to Washington State to visit my parents. I took a paper manuscript of a story to revise. A young man sat next to me. Seeing me lining things out and writing in the margins, he asked if I was a teacher. I said I was a writer. He said he was too. I asked what he wrote. He gave me a detailed explanation of the idea he had for a multi-book series based on this video game he really liked. He hadn’t written any of it yet, of course.

And decades before that, when I was nineteen, I took a sociology class at the local junior college. This class was a pre-req, and was a big group. The second class session, the teacher was unavailable so she sent in a teaching assistant who had us put our chairs in a big open circle. (It was the late 1970s, we did stuff like that.) He went around the circle and we were to say our first name and “what we were.” This was to make a point about society. When he got to me, my voice warbled, but I said, “Marion. I’m a writer.”

He nodded. “A mother,” he said, and started to move on.

I spoke louder. “A writer.”

He furrowed his brow. “A… rider?”

Across the circle, a woman yelled, “She said WRY-ter!”

“Oh,” he said, and moved on.

For years, when I told that story, I ended it with, “I should have spoken more clearly.” Because this attempt to erase my answer was my fault, right? Even though a person farther away from me than he was understood me, this still must somehow be on me.

These events are separated by state lines and decades. They look random, but there are common threads. One common thread: the speakers are male, in my case every one a white male. Another thread–women who say they are writers are ignored, misunderstood or ridiculed.

Two spoiled white boys, fresh out of a college system that feeds their privilege, look at a writer whose work actually changed mainstream fiction in this country, who told stories we hadn’t heard before, and feel comfortable articulating their envy in the form of mockery. How dare she, not only a woman, but an American-Chinese woman, dare to succeed before they publish their brilliant (if mostly so far imaginary) works?

A teaching assistant in a junior college class literally can’t hear a woman say she is a writer.

So I laughed at some random guy from a line–laughed and got mad. Because his take-away of my talent and hard work was, “Wow, she might be good, she must exist solely to help me.”

Here is the take-away. “Dude, I’m a writer. More than a writer, I’m a fucking author.”

You may not choose to hear it, or you may not want to remember it, but that’s okay. I will. I’m a fucking author, and I won’t forget. And you know what, men*? You’re going to be hearing that from me a lot now.

And that’s my rant.


*Not all men. Plenty of men have encouraged and supported and yada yada yada.