“The most important thing any writer can do is take themselves seriously.” -Roxane Gay
Last week I had the opportunity to attend Boston University’s Power of Narrative Conference. The conference, although focused heavily on journalism, provided workshops focused on powerful storytelling. It was no wonder that the headliner for the conference was Roxane Gay, a writer of comic books, fiction and non-fiction. A writer humble, confident and genuinely funny. She was a joy to experience, to say the least.
The most inspiring part of her talk was the Q&A section where students and younger writers, like myself, took the opportunity to get advice about their own writing journeys. I ended up asking her about mentorship, especially as a black woman. I told her about being accepted into MFA programs with the plan of attending one in the fall, and about my fears about the often white literary infrastructure I am writing in and against. To this, Roxane Gay mentioned how sometimes old white men can be our mentors and to be open to that. She also talked about the possibility that my writing cohort won’t understand the blackness I exhibit in myself and my writing. She noted that with that understanding (for myself), I could learn to negotiate my craft and the stories I am telling with the feedback I might get in the workshop setting.
Roxane Gay also mentioned that as black women we should seek mentorship outside of academia as well. Find writers and ask them politely to mentor us and understand that sometimes the answer could be “no.” But, know that black women writers should mentor other black women and that seeking that out can make the writing journey less exhausting.
Besides Roxane Gay’s advice, I was inspired by her ability to not only call herself a writer but to state that she is a good writer, with confidence. That is something I am hoping to carry in my life as a writer. She talked about how as a black woman writer, she had to write exponentially more than white men to be recognized. In doing that she knows that she has grown as a writer and is indeed good at what she does. This is the idea of “taking yourself seriously as a writer” in practice. It’s projecting the version of the writer you know you are and want to be, publicly, even if you’re not sure about that projection on the inside. Often times that’s what we have to do as black women: exhibit ourselves with the same regal intensity that we know we have within us, when the world often views us much, much less.
-Tatiana M.R. Johnson, 2018 WROB Gish Jen Fellow
