Letters to a Writer of Color - Deepa Anappara & Taymour Soomro - ★★★★

EDITORS: Deepa Anappara & Taymour Soomro

GENRE: Nonfiction, Writing.

RATING: 3.9 Stars.

In a Nutshell: This should be called ‘Letters from a writer of colour.’ Has many thought-provoking points for writers and readers of all colours, including white. A relevant read in today’s world. Ought to be present in every library and added to literary courses.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that the world of fiction is extremely white-dominated. As the book also tells us, “the publishing industry is mostly white, straight, and abled.” But times are a-changing, finally.

In the last few years, there has been a riot of colour and a rainbow of gender in the fictional world. Today, we get to see books by writers of various ethnic, national and gender backgrounds. We live in times where the "whiteness" of English language fiction has slowly started turning multi-hued.  However, does this point to a change in dominant voice? Are things now smooth for PoC writers? You already know the answer to that.

This book is a compilation of seventeen essays by published PoC writers from various countries – Phillipines, Cambodia, India, Nigeria, China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Virgin Islands, … even the USA. A couple are by writers who identify as members of the LGBTQ+ community. This is diversity in the truest sense of the word, and it brings to the book an honesty and an authenticity you rarely get to see. 

(It warmed my heart to see the editors’ backgrounds. The collection is edited by two writers – one Indian and one Pakistani, and if you know the historical background of these countries, you will realise how magical and unusual that combination is.)

I'm not a writer and have no plans of becoming one, ever. But as a reader of colour, I'm aware of how underrepresented and incorrectly represented we are in contemporary fiction, and not just by white writers. Moreover, many readers from "developed" countries jump to generalised conclusions based on the limited PoC fiction they read. Further, they want PoC fiction to cater to THEIR assumptions about the country. For instance, if it is an Indian book, they want only an exotic picture of the nation, with elephants and snakes and peacocks, whether true or not. 

If you think that these are problems of the past, you are wrong. An Indian-origin acquaintance of mine, whose Mumbai-based crime-thriller was recently released in the USA, was forced to change the spellings of Indian words in her work to make it ‘accessible’ to US readers. Some of the reviews of her book are scathing, with the reasons for the one-star rating being as asinine as “Too many long Indian names.” Even an established author such as Murakami has had his novels altered during translation to make them more suitable to US audiences. (https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2020/09/haruki-murakami-translators-david-karashima-review/616210/) Books like Terry Hayes' ‘I Am Pilgrim’ are lauded and frequently part of Best Books lists, regardless of how they are stereotypical about any character not from a Caucasian background. White supremacy is so endemic in contemporary publishing that we don’t even recognise such behavioural patterns as being fundamentally flawed.

So you see why such a book is needed?

I rarely quote lines from ARCs, not just because we aren't supposed to share quotes from such copies without publishers' approvals, but also because I'm too lazy to type them out. But I'm making an exception this once, and I hope the publisher won't mind, because this sentence in the editor's note is the essence of the book, the reason why it exists and needs to be read:

"Readers and reviewers often shelved our fiction under such curious categories as 'cultural interest' or 'Asia', as if we were not novelists but ethnographers or anthropologists. We were asked more questions about the state of our nations than our writing. A single character's experience was often conflated with the experiences of an entire nationality or community."

The title indicates that these are letters written to writers of colour. However, as the editorial note also points out, the content will suit discerning readers as well, especially those who want to explore fiction beyond their own country and skin colour. The essays cover a range of topics, covering character development, translation, conforming to the Western ideal of writing standards, optimal writing conditions, drawing the line between fictional and personal, and a lot more. Some essays are better suited to writers as they focus more on the writing process than on the experience of being a PoC writer. But the book is not a ‘how to’ manual for writers; rather, a sharing of knowledge gained from personal experiences. Hence it should have been titled ‘Letters by a Writer of Color’, which would have further opened up its target readership.

My favourite essays were mostly ones that spoke better to the reader in me. Thus, ‘On Origin Stories’ by Taymour Soomro (Pakistan, Queer), ‘On Humor’ by Tahmima Anam (Bangladesh), ‘On Telling and Showing’ by Jamil Jan Kochai (Afghanistan), ‘On the Inactive Protagonist’ by Vida Cruz-Borja (Philippines), ‘On Art and Activism’ by Myriam Gurba (Mexico), ‘On the Second Person’ by Kiese Laymon (USA), and ‘On Political Fiction and Fictional Politics’ by Mohammed Hanif (Pakistan) were my top favourites, with 4.5 stars or more.

The content proceeds at a slow pace in most instances, but has enough of thought-provoking learnings to merit a patient reading. Each essay ends with a list of ‘Reading Suggestions’ by the contributing author. This was easily my favourite part of the book, and it is going to do a lot of damage to my reading list for sure, making it even more vibrant and colourful than it already is. 

The only main change I would have made to this collection would have been to include the writer bios at the end of their respective essay than at the end of the book. Oh, and maybe I would have modified the colours on the cover as well. Such dull shades to denote writings by persons of colour? All non-white cultures are "colourful" [pun intended], so I'd have loved for the cover to appear as vivid in tone.

With the world today being more global than national, the way ahead is for writers, publishers, and readers also to be more catholic in their acceptance of cultural writing. This book will hopefully help us see beyond white and glimpse the glory of colour in fiction that springs from an OwnVoices soul.

3.9 stars, based on the average of my ratings for each of the essays. 

My thanks to Random House Publishing Group - Random House and NetGalley for the DRC of “Letters to a Writer of Color”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book.

As a parting gift, please allow me to leave you with the brilliant Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie talking about the danger of a single story. Watch. Listen. Learn. Imbibe.

https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story/c