Voice lessons from a hybrid ambassador

HYBRID AMBASSADORS: a blog-ring project of Dialogue2010
You met our multinational cultural innovators this spring in a roundtable discussion of hybrid life at expat+HAREM. Now in these interconnected blog posts they share reactions to a recent polarizing book promotion at SheWrites. Join the discussion on Twitter using #HybridAmbassadors or #Dialogue2010

Every day, from my Twitter stream to my blog reader, there’s a controversial topic that captures my attention. Poised on the edge of typing in a heated response or writing a blog post in reaction, my surety wavers. I’m at a precipice, knowing that if I chose to go further, I commit publicly to an idea or a belief that is part of a larger mosaic of my online identity.

I acknowledge that my words could leave a trail of anger and resentment or a digital footprint of critical thinking, empathy, and support.

Can I admit that sometimes I don't know when to jump in or when to watch from the sidelines? That insecurity surfaces when I feel my voice isn't loud enough? Or would be silenced before it is given a chance to be heard?

Case in point a Countdown to Publication post on SheWrites by author Lori L. Tharps. The platform gives Lori, and other selected writers, an audience of 10,000 plus women with whom to share their progress marketing and publishing their books. In Wanted: White Ambassadors to Help Me Cross Over, Lori appeals to white women to promote her book because of the publishing industry's failure to market their writers of color to white audiences. Segregated bookshelves are a reality. SheWrites Advisory Board member and author Tayari Jones writes about 'The Colored Section' in a guest post on Maud Newton, part of a reader-led discussion.

The problem was the how, not why, though there are so many resources for authors promoting their work through platform building that I was surprised by the entreaty. Like this on artistic revolution, this on writers of the future, and this on interactions being personal, not business. Not surprising is that people read Lori's post and reacted personally. 

When some people spoke up about the awkward, jocular tone of the post, their reaction was interpreted as being an attempt to humiliate the author, an unwillingness to support her, and a reluctance to engage in a discussion on race. Others pointed out they wanted to help Lori, but were critical of her casual conclusion that 'if you're white and you like these authors, you might like my book, and if you do, your other white friends might like it, too.' Those critics were seen as infringing on Lori's right to free speech. Only those who heartily agreed to tell their white friends about the book were applauded. Anyone who brought up alternative ways to spread the word about her work was called a 'detractor' and told to keep their thoughts to themselves. The comment section was rife with disquiet. 

Featured homepage content, like Countdown to Publication, is considered proprietary to SheWrites. "White Ambassadors" is on its Facebook Wall and was included in its newsletter. Lori's post is endorsed by SheWrites at the same time that their second credo is "community has the power to nurture and sustain creativity."

What if what is perceived as a negative comment is actually a call to action by people who want to support you? Why the slap on the wrist by other commenters to the people who wanted to bring in a perspective they felt was missing from the post?

***

Lori L. Tharps's forthcoming novel Substitute Me is about two women with lives that are in contrast - in other words, rich/poor, black/white, though it's claimed neither to be a 'black' or 'white' story, but a story about women. She describes it as a tale of "modern-day motherhood" that "all women can relate to." 

There's no way all mothers everywhere get along and have the same ideas of motherhood. And if the book's about womanhood, why the outdated idea that women and babies always go together in the same sentence? For a writer who's steeped in the nuances of being outside the dominant majority, has traveled the world, married a Spaniard, is raising biracial kids, wrote the acclaimed Kinky Gazpacho and co-authored Hair Story: Untangling the Roots of Black Hair in America, the generalizations about who her readers might be are surprising. As Chimamanda Adichie says, the problem with stereotypes is not that they aren't true, but that they are "half the story," and the single story "emphasizes how we are different, rather than how we are similar."

I didn't comment. Fear of being lambasted by other SheWrites members stopped me. One contrarian was called "uncivil" for objecting to the breezy, cheeky feel of the post. It could have been an enlightening dialogue on publishing and 'culture collide,' like on Lori's interesting and contemplative blog, but instead it was on upholding polarity as a life and work model.  The publishing industry has changed and it means more authors can take matters into their own hands instead of relying on traditional publishing models. Being resigned to "the way things are" is a sign of not believing in your own power.  If you want word of mouth promotion, you need your readers to love your voice and not feel alienated by it.

Hybrids know what it is like to not fit in anywhere, or to have a delicate sense of fitting in at any one time.

Maybe that's why the White Ambassadors post stings so much - it makes the worn out conjecture that everyone subscribes to a binary way of life. It is a bleak reminder that assumption about inclusion in a group based on the color of one's skin is still the elephant in the room. 

At the Women and Work conference held in March in Turin, Italy, on the anniversary of the first women's conference in 1910, I joined more than twenty women bloggers from emerging nations to talk about ways to bridge our differences through social media. Rather than deepen divisions, we mapped new territory with excitement and first-hand experience that unifying can lead to change and growth. Which is why I'm speaking up. This is in my own neighborhood, after all. I'm using my voice to draw attention to what I think was a missed opportunity to garner wide-ranging perspectives and to forge one's own path instead of doing the expected. 

I'm sorry, Lori, I didn't do what you asked. I went out and told all of my friends about your book. 

More thoughts on this subject from fellow HYBRID AMBASSADORS:
Catherine Yiğit's Special-ism
Anastasia Ashman's Great White People Book Club
Sezin Koehler's Whites Only?
Tara Lutman Ağaçayak's Circles
Catherine Bayar's Thicker Skin
Judith van Praag's We Write History Today
Elmira Bayraslı's The Color of Writing
Jocelyn Eikenburg's The Problem with "Chinese Food"

Eat, Pray, Love - and Leave

What does leaving home to 'find oneself' mean if you don't go back home? 


I was captivated reading Eat, Pray, Love. I'm eager to see the movie starring Julia Roberts if and when it comes to Turkey because I love a good story of transformation. It's akin to the feeling I get when reading coming of age novels - a sense of cheering for the neophyte when life lessons are learned and the world feels a little bit bigger and better. 


The book Everything is Going to Be Great by Rachel Shukert came to my attention after reading her essay in the Wall Street Journal on her memoir of her time in Europe. The fact she references and criticizes Eat, Pray, Love makes me think it'll be the not-so-feel-good version of EPL. There is another similarity between the books, though, beyond two women setting off on an adventure of self-discovery abroad.  


Both writers eventually go back home.  


Rachel Shukert's website describes the book as being about "reality-adjusting culture shock that every twentysomething faces when sent off to negotiate "the real world"—whatever that may be." Culture shock. Sending off to negotiate the real world. Those are familiar concepts to me. But rather than "whatever that may be" what about "wherever" that may be? It could be an internal shift, a change in how one looks at the world that is untethered to location.  


Do stories of self-finding and transformation only resonate with us if the protagonist goes back home?  


What if Elizabeth Gilbert had decided to stay in Bali indefinitely, no traipsing back and forth to the US except for holidays? Would we have loved her story as much? Would the transformation ring as true? Why can't I shake the notion that leaving the places you "discovered" yourself in is akin to shaking off a too-needy lover? Get what you want and then leave? The flip side of that question would be why would you stay if the feeling is gone? I admit it leaves me wondering.  


I explore transformation in my post 5 Years in Turkey and 5 Insights. Anastasia Ashman talks about creatives surviving and thriving abroad. Catherine Yigit in Mercury Brief explores being an expat mother in a legendary historical town without an expat community. Tara Lutman Agacayak lists the ten (more) things she learned living in Turkey. There are turning points and transformation stories that have nothing to do with crossing the finish line of returning home.  


What's yours?


Thanks to My Dog Ate My Blog, this post at Love, Rose was mentioned in a discussion on the perpetual pursuit of happiness. 

Five years in Turkey and Five Insights

Vanity, Rose Deniz 2010

This post was originally going to be tips for traveling light - a global citizen mama carries a lot of stuff across the world, but there are other ways to travel light - starting with disrobing definition and adopting changes in perspective.

Here are five insights that stem directly from uprooting myself and moving to Turkey.

1. I like to be slightly off the beaten path. I don't live in Istanbul, and I'm none the worse for it. Sometimes I get too hermit-y, but I need less stimulation in my daily life, not more, to do my creative work. Are you the kind of creative person that needs to live off the beaten track, too?

2. Saying the right thing is overrated. Observation, sharing, smiles, kind looks, accepting and offering food and drink, all help me to be expressive in Turkish. The persona I thought I adopted as a survival instinct to manage living abroad was not a veneer - it was an unused muscle, an un-actualized part of myself that had been dormant.

3. Raising kids abroad anchors me to Turkey in unexpected ways. I have to be present. My kids say and do things that put me at ease because they don't think about being half Turkish, half American. I'm learning to ignore parenting disparities and find commonalities.

4. Creativity doesn't need a rigid set of tools. I trade canvas for textile, fabric for pen and ink, then drawing tools for words depending on the space I am in. I've learned to slip in creative moments where I would have thought there was no time. Parenting brings out my creativity rather than prohibits it.

5. Words like foreigner and expat don't fit. I prefer global citizen, and being hybrid resonates with me in terms of being one of many places, with many impulses.

What have you learned about yourself from the place you are in? 

Process-oriented

From 2002-2004, whenever I went into my studio to paint, I read books. I started nearly each and every day with an hour or more of reading and note-taking, checking for new books in our tiny but well-stocked art library. My MFA in Painting thesis had more poetry than painting in it with 'titles as tenets as they related to various ideas and influences' (directly excerpted title). I was hot for Emily Dickinson, James Merrill, and appendixes. I included two, and the second appendix had endnotes for the endnotes.

Appendix II mentioned:

XII. Dutch coffee, which sometimes I miss to distraction
XIV. The color pink
XVII. Deep discounts

And a list of all the vehicles I had driven until 2004.

While I read and wrote, I smelled oil paint in our studios because we had poor ventilation. My professor listened to Eminem while peeling backing off of sticky vinyl to apply to her metal canvases. I did make paintings, big explosive ones that had volcanos, nuclear bombs, and sexy squiggles that I called map symbols. Later, I switched to paper because my work seemed better-suited to the hand-drawn and immediate, magnetized by words.

How does a hybrid of two-or-more comparable things: reader/note-taker, painter/writer, mother/expat, traveler/homebody, for example, allow something previously undiscovered to emerge?

The alchemical mixture of science lab-slash-library in my studio allowed for process-oriented discovery, and six years later the language of color and paint continues to transform.

Verbal footprints

Home prints / photo by Rose Deniz

Sezin described us as 'intimate strangers,' Anastasia a 'carillon,' each person's comments creating a verbal percussion. The nine women who gathered on Sunday to participate in Dialogue2010 astounded me with their clarity of vision, their engagement with creativity, their willingness to bend and flex through identity and language challenges, and their alignment with their core. A year or two ago, I created my vision statement, or what Gwen Bell would describe as a 'personal manifesto,' and these three words have shaped the work I've done since: manifest creative potential. In starting Art is Dialogue and moderating this discussion, I felt that come to life. I felt synchronicty with people I've yet to meet in real life, bonded through a willingness to live a meaningful life at the crossroads. 

How do you manifest your creative potential?

The blog responses to the dialogue have left me speechless. I invite you to dip into the syncopated words of the women who made it happen. As more posts and feedback become available, I'll post updates.

Being grounded is overrated -- Furthering the Worldwide Cultural Conversation

What determines your present orbit, and how does it change your self-view?

Conversational Crossroads -- Love, Rose

Mapping my hybrid life on a personal, passion level involves drawings, notations, and novel writing.

What is a Turquoise Poppy? -- Tara Lutman Agacayak

Turquoise Poppy is about allowing your circumstances to guide your path while staying true to your inner compass.
Fear of Flying -- Sezin.org

My fear of flying signals my time to stay put, my time to understand how it feels to have wings while remaining grounded.
Path finder -- Love, Rose
What language do you use to describe your trajectory?
Ring my bell -- Furthering the Worldwide Cultural Conversation
What comes first, the hybrid self or the hybrid life? Are our most resonant peers made or born?
Talking Point -- Skaian Gates
I found myself asking through the day were we sharing our hybrid lives because of our creativity or because of our experience of being expats.
A Thousand Ways -- Tales from Turkey
I've connected with 9 women with crazy, joyful, challenging hybrid lives so like my own. Lives that seem to hinge on one particular characteristic we all share - creativity.
Intimate Strangers -- Sezin.org
Dialogue 2010 was a meeting of kindreds, as women, as hybrids, as artists, as dreamers, believers.
Mapping My Worldview -- Skaian Gates
Two snapshots placed side-by-side to show how my worldview has changed.
What an Expat Leaves Behind - Judith van Praag
The expat hybrid lifestyle forms an audible cloud

Podcast availability will be made public this spring. In the meantime, join the discussion on Twitter using #dialogue2010, visit this Squidoo lens for up to the minute information, and join the Dialogue2010 Facebook page for future event information.