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Nikki Giovanni, Flannery O’Connor, The Dalai Lama, James Baldwin, and Me by Nora Raleigh Baskin
This is the speech Nora gave as a Key Note Speaker at The Wamogo Oratory Invitational on March 22, 2019.
“Writers don’t write from experience, though many are resistant to admit they don’t. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience you’d get maybe one book maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”
I love this quote from the poet, Nikki Giovanni. She tells us we can write our story, in our own voice, directly from our life, though that will be limited. And artists are not limited.
The author Flannery O’Connor said:
“Anyone who has survived childhood has enough material to write for the rest of his life.”
These may seem like two contradictory sayings, two opposing philosophies.
But they are not.
When we write as someone else, or about someone else, we are at the same time discovering ourselves on the page. We are all different, so different that our similarities are that much more relevant and profound.
Another quote, this time the Dalai Lama in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech:
“…we are all basically alike: we are all human beings. Maybe we have different clothes, our skin is of a different colour, or we speak different languages. That is on the surface. But basically, we are the same human beings. That is what binds us to each other. That is what makes it possible for us to understand each other and to develop friendship and closeness.”
The Dalai Lama wasn’t talking about books, or literature, or writing, but about life itself, about living on this earth with the other seven billion, seven hundred million, five hundred thousand, nine hundred and twenty-three people. But he might well have been.
Other than actually living another’s life, there is no better way to find compassion for those outside your own experience, perhaps those that make you uncomfortable, maybe even those you are not particularly fond of, than to read fiction. And by extension, to write it.
The great goal of any fiction writer is to create characters and stories with the depth and reality of an actual individual life. Fiction that reads as deep and real as memoir.
Why has the story of Anne Frank has endured, transcended all language, and stands as a symbol of the holocaust?
Because most of us find it easier to feel the acute pain of one person, and are overwhelmed to the point of apathy for six million. Why do Nelson Mandela’s words and his memory, speak more to the horrors of institutionalized apartheid than do forty-six years of numbers and statistics?
Because we care about people when we realize they are like us. Maybe it shouldn’t be that way, but it is.
So if you want to see with the eyes, hear with the ears, feel with the heart of someone who is not you, you have to read. And if you want create the voice, imagine a scene, evoke emotion in someone else, you should write.
Well.
And that takes study, research, interviews, sometimes travel, but always listening, always keeping your heart and your mind open to whatever emotion may wash over you. Being willing to go wherever the story takes you. The writer changes during this process, so that the reader can as well.
When I wrote 9/10: A September 11 Story I created four different characters, boy to girl, black to white, Jewish to Muslim to Christian, California to New York. If I couldn’t become all of them, if they hadn’t come alive to me, I couldn’t have written the book. If I hadn’t been able to shed the external and slide inside the internal, I couldn’t have written the book. And if I hadn’t fallen deeply love with each of them, I wouldn’t have written that book.
Then, of course, it is up the reader to decide if it is a success or failure. Not based on present day dogma, reductive generalizations, or stereotypes of what you think and believe about who or what, that character should be, or whether it fits or adheres to your opinion, but rather whether that character becomes real in your mind and reaches deep inside your heart. The measure of a good fictional story is when it takes you outside of yourself, when it allows you to feel like you are someone else, and awakens empathy in an emotionally resonant way.
Writing is not complete until it is read.
Until the images are created in the mind of someone else and interpreted through their experience where that story can take root and bloom.
How many times have you talked to someone about a book you loved and they saw it in a completely different way? Had a very different reaction?
That is what is supposed to happen.
Good writing does not preach, or teach a lesson, or force an opinion. Literature does not have an agenda, which is not to say that a writer’s values and perspectives do not enter the book. Of course they do, but that is the dialogue between writer and reader. That is what makes literature, art.
So write from passion.
Write from fear.
Heck, write from vengeance.
Then put it away, then take it out and write it again. From clarity.
Good writing makes you think. It might make you uncomfortable. It might make you angry. It might reduce you to weeping. It might illuminate something you knew nothing about, validate something you did, or articulate something you never before realized you felt too.
I will end with, what else? Another quote from one of the greatest thinkers, writers, and activist of our time, James Baldwin.
“Any event, any event, any person occurring in time is the property of any novelist ..my provenance for example, speaking of myself, is the provenance of all human life, and no one can tell a writer what he can or cannot write.”
Thank you.
Nora Raleigh Baskin is the award winning author of thirteen novels for middle grade and young adult readers.You can find her at Norabaskin.com /@noraraleighb
Video this talk is available on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk6kUm4banc&t=6s
Nerdy Book Club 
Wonderful
Brava, Nora! The students were lucky to hear your speech, and now we can all appreciate it!
Oh my lord, what a fabulous speech in this cramped time of “own voice!” Thank you, Nora Raleigh Baskin!!!!!
Thank you for your courage and your heart, your clear words, that encourages us to listen, talk, respect each other’s thoughts and feelings about “own voice.” I agree, thank you, Nora Raleigh Baskin, for encouraging us to tell the stories we need to tell as best and honest as we can.
Well said. Well felt. Your words resonate and ring with integrity.
Generally speaking, I am usually curious to know more about a quote used in support of an argument. In this case I was most interested in the Baldwin quote. I asked for help finding it and learned that the quote Baskin uses is from a radio broadcast. The description is as follows:
“1968 conversation between Pulitzer Prize winning author William Styron, actor Ossie Davis and writer James Baldwin on Styron’s attempt to make his novel Confessions of Nat Turner into a film.”
“On the Heels of Nate Parker’s 2016 Sundance Film Festival success with his film Birth of a Nation, chronicling the life of Nat Turner, the iconic man who led the 1831 Slave Rebellion in Virginia, we thought this was the perfect moment to tell the story of the Nat Turner film that was almost made in 1968.”
“At stake, one of the hero’s of the African American struggle for Freedom in America was told from a “White” perspective. Included in this fictional characterization of Nat Turner created by Styron was Nat Turner’s thoughts of rape and other harm to the White community which enslaved him. To hear the incredible polemics used by Ossie Davis to push back on this project is priceless.”
—–
I listened to it once and plan to listen to it again as soon as I can.
Baldwin did say that “no one can tell a writer what he can or cannot write” but he also said “Ossie is right” that if the book were made into a movie, it would be dangerous for African Americans because of Styron’s depictions of Nat Turner lusting after a young white woman.
The larger context for the Baldwin quote is striking because it is a 60s version of the debates we’re having today about who can write what.
I think a lot of people believe that I don’t want white writers to create Native or characters of color. That isn’t the case. I want them to be aware of the larger contexts in which they’re writing these characters. Their words can cause damage and destruction to the very people they’re trying to depict.
Do listen to the entire recording if you can. Ossie Davis’s remarks are exceptionally moving.
Styron’s book was very controversial. Beacon published “William Styron’s Nat Turner: Ten Black Writers Respond” in 1968.
Before hitting “Post Comment” here, I’ll note that when Baskin did a Ted Talk, I was tagged on a tweet that asked me to respond to it. I did and that spiraled into some unpleasant conversations.
Love this! Such a powerful post. Thank you, Nora.
Nora’s keynote isn’t about white writers and to continually couch it as such seems to indicate one’s own narrow bias and/or agenda — a viewing of the world through a specific lens. Nora speaks of all writers and, more importantly, about the very nature of art. I’m glad fear hasn’t stopped her from speaking out strongly about the importance of artistic freedom.
It’s a nice talk. I read it but I would like to hear so I’m going to do. Differentiating writer and reader from seeing, hearing, feeling and creating, imaging, evoking are really helpful to become a writer and a reader. I agree that out of empathy only we write many, as I did some Tamil poems. But in my experience I am a participant, in empathizing I’m an observer.
It is striking to me that Nora’s entirely humanistic and compassionate comments, in which she merely reiterates a view of artistic expression as open to all people, could be viewed as oppressive. In fact, writers and artists of all backgrounds, races, religions, and genders have repeatedly stated the same faith in the power of empathy. Apparently, this idea is threatening to some self-styled protectors of readers, who are actually attacking the most basic principles of intellectual freedom.
It is interesting that a White writer has begun to imagine herself the victim in publishing. I understand that anytime unearned privilege is called out (Whiteness, straightness, able-ness (that’s prob not the word), male-ness, class) there is a recoil from those that hold that/those privileges. Dr. Robin DiAngelo coined the term White Fragility to name it in race conversations.
I agree with Nora R Baskin that all writers should write with passion. I also agree that they can and should write anything they want, feel called to, or desire. I’m 100% freedom of expression sort of liberal.
But, let’s not pretend that writing is sacred and should be free from criticism. When Baskin claims literature should be evaluated “Not based on present day dogma, reductive generalizations, or stereotypes of what you think and believe about who or what, that character should be, or whether it fits or adheres to your opinion, but rather whether that character becomes real in your mind and reaches deep inside your heart.” she is right. That is one kind of reading.
And, that kind of reading and praise repeats and supports the society we have today … and have had since the moment the Europeans started colonizing these stolen lands. But, what if we want a different kind of America? What if we want a society that does not accept Whiteness as the coin of the realm?
That is why we call it The Work. Because we are working to disrupt and change. And that can be frightening for those who have always experienced literature as the comfort of normative, praise-only, free of criticism Whiteness.
Sarah Lamstein refers to the “cramped time” of #OwnVoices. I wonder if she, and others, realize that in 2017 only 7% of the children’s and YA books published in the US were #OwnVoices.
So, yes. For those who have only experiences unfettered praise, critique must be a harsh surprise.
By the way, I went to the youtube link and noticed that the talk took place at a high school with a stereotypical mascot. I hope that Nora Raleigh Baskin talked with people there about that.