Last night I attended a marvelous panel discussion on telling an 'ethnic' story, hosted by Boston's Grub Street creative writing center in downtown Boston, overlooking the Public Garden. It was a warm summer night, so the windows over Boylston Street were open. Amid the riveting discussion laced with many many laughs, we heard Mounted Police horses clip-clopping down the sidewalk, and motorcycles racing to catch the light before it changed.
The evening started with panelists Rakesh Satyal, Rishi Reddi, and Ru Freeman reading from their new books. Each reading and author commentary brought fresh perspectives to writing about their chosen worlds. Grub Street's Executive Director Christopher Castellani moderated the panel, asking great questions, prefacing it all noting that in a way, there is no such thing as 'ethnic writing' per se. Every story, ethnic or not, is set in a unique world, and we must deal with the craft of telling the story correctly in that world. His insightful questions helped pull together the wide-ranging and free-flowing discussion, and he artfully pulled things back to how we might want to consider the issues in our own work. The issues included nitty-gritty points like when to italicize foreign words, as well as over-arching concepts like the pressure on so-called ethnic writers to get trapped into believing their work has to represent their entire culture, rather than just telling the story they want to tell. I could only buy one book - and I chose Ru Freeman's, A Disobedient Girl.
I was deeply inspired by the panelists, the moderator, and Grub Street. How lucky we Bostonians are to have this institution!
Now, back to querying agents.
