What a week we had together!
Brittany Allen wrote this excellent essay about her work as a Black writer and her decision to write an “urban romance” at the request of her (white, male) publisher:
I often do have fun while writing my Urban romance. The fun surprises me. It arrives in the language I put in my characters’ mouths, which doesn’t feel disingenuous to write. I simply let my people speak like My People, in the voices of Allens at family reunions and in their inner sanctums. My characters crack wise about things I can’t explain to white friends; my characters have divisive opinions about The Help and The Best Man movies. I ache a little realizing what I’ve been made to lose in the muddle of my obsessive, is-this-ethical inquiry: the fact that I do love being Black, and believe there is something special and worth capturing of even this broadest definition of my experience. …
But as soon as the manuscript is done, my demons return. I am suddenly loath to give my story away, as if once the document leaves my desktop it will become an instrument of oppression, all its good intentions and sly inside jokes warped in white-editing translation.
Nicole on the order in which she would have killed people off in Christie’s classic And Then There Were None
Is Itt Feminist?, definitively asked and answered by Jaya.
Children’s Stories Made Horrific: Frog and Toad Are Friends:
“This is why people don’t like helping you,” Toad said.
“People don’t like helping me?” Frog asked.
“They do not,” Toad said. “That is why you are so lucky to have me.”
“I didn’t know that,” Frog said.
“You’re lucky I am here to tell you these things,” Toad said.
And Frog thought, How lucky I am that Toad puts up with me, since no one else wants to.
Léonicka sent this Star Wars: The Force Awakens piece to us with the subject line Finn feels, and that is exactly what it is, in addition to perfect.
“The Jane Austen Centre’s Darcy is the Darcy from really bad fanfiction, the kind that only gets a few pity kudos on AO3 because it’s so out of character.”
I loved this beautiful short story by Julia Phillips and I would really like you all to read it, so do.
How to Decorate Your Dream Library *slow clap*
This week, as you may know, I wrote about trying to respond to racial microaggressions in otherwise polite company, because someone made a comment to me at a holiday party and I wasn’t happy with my reaction (TL;DR thinking of what to say in the moment is really damn difficult). At first I had no intention of writing about it, but later as I was reflecting on what happened and how I felt, I thought it might be an illuminating exercise to just go ahead and catalogue every calculation that shot through my mind in the few seconds I had to come up with a response. (It doesn’t matter how many times these things happen; I always seem to remember them in painstaking detail and obsess over retorts I wish I’d made.) I knew a lot of people would relate, and maybe others would then be able to understand how that sort of thing feels in the moment.
When I wrote up my party postmortem I expected it would be read by Toasties, mostly, and get perhaps 100 or so shares, and that would be the end of it. It’s been out there for a few days now, and it has been shared a LOT. I have to admit, I’ve been really surprised and overwhelmed by its reach. I think we all write things we hope other people will read, relate to, maybe even love. But, as I was telling Nicole yesterday, it’s still kind of shocking to have something like this go viral. I obviously wrote the piece and thought hard before hitting Publish and understood that it would be [gestures, vaguely] OUT THERE, and I’m truly grateful for the response (for the most part. I could have done without some of the several-paragraphs-long emails from white men and all the “get a life” deleted comments and also maybe that one dude who was basically like “I Google-image-searched to find out if you really do look like everyone on Fresh Off the Boat and you were right, you don’t!!”). It just feels a bit strange to know that some people now associate me with a somewhat mortifying race-related incident. Out of everything I’ve ever written, it’s this that blew up, and I can’t help but find that interesting.
Anyway. Ever since the party, even though it’s a bit silly, I’ve been thinking about a line from the West Wing first-season episode “Let Bartlet Be Bartlet,” which I happened to re-watch just over the holidays with my in-laws. In the episode, a past memo by a White House staffer criticizing the Bartlet administration leaks; CJ, the press secretary, says the memo doesn’t make anyone in the building look good: “We don’t look like rocket scientists. But then again, we’re not rocket scientists.” That’s exactly how I feel about what happened at that dinner party, from the comment itself to my response to everyone else’s silence — I don’t think I came out of it looking great, and neither did the person who questioned me, but the more I think about it the more I’m convinced that there was nothing shocking about anything anyone said or didn’t say that night. It was just us, honestly, as we are. We’re not people who always say the right thing. We’re not people who always have the “best” response. Of course, we’re far more than the unfortunate things we say, or the snappy things we wish we had said, but what actually comes out — the cold hard sometimes ugly reality — that is part of us, too, and we all have to figure out how to face it and deal with it and do and be better.
If you read my piece this week and thought about it at all, or said something kind or thoughtful to me about it, thank you. I realize comments and tweets and shares don’t necessarily have anything to do with my skill as a writer or the importance of the incident itself. But when something like that happens and no one else appears to notice, you can start to feel a little uncertain, even a little unhinged — did you imagine it, did you just make a mountain out of a molehill, do you have any right to feel anything at all about such a tiny and insignificant thing? Every genuine, solidarity-expressing comment you left really did mean something to me, so I just wanted to tell you that, and say again how much I appreciate this community and all of you.
WE LOVE YOU TOO
💙🍞
That post has really stayed with me, and I have reread it once or twice already, and I am nearly certain I will return to it again. I think because it is so personal yet so clearly examined it is immensely valuable. I see how it must be strange for you to see it becoming so public and I would feel terribly exposed in your situation. But because people are rarely so brave, it is important that it is out there. I was about to say it has stiffened my resolve to speak up, but it would be more accurate to say it has created that resolve.
Thank you for reading it! I’m glad you found it worthwhile.
I certainly don’t mean to sound, like, naive or ungrateful that it’s gotten attention, but as Nicole said it’s one thing to KNOW that intellectually and another thing to have it happen on a piece like this (which, for some reason, I really did picture staying a very small, mostly-read-in-this-community thing) (okay, now I DO sound naive! I am an EDITOR). I am glad I wrote it, I thought long and hard before hitting Publish, but I don’t think I really could have been prepared for the reception no matter what I did, because I never imagined it’d be so huge.
Sometimes I’ll ask people submitting personal essays if they’re prepared for the thing to be Out There, and read widely, and seen by people they know — and while I try to phrase this in a non-condescending way, I still worry it’ll come across that way sometimes. I’m going to stop worrying about that, because it is a VERY IMPORTANT QUESTION.
Naive or ungrateful, what?? You never sounded either of these things. One magical side-note is that now more people will be reading a bunch of things you put Out There, right? This never did and never will define you.
Thank you for saying that. Honestly just hoping next week will necessitate fewer deleted comments and Twitter blocks.
WE LOVE YOU NIKKI
<3 <3 <3
(I try so hard not to have all the feelings while rewatching the first four canonical seasons of The West Wing, but it just GETS TO ME IDK)
As far as I’m concerned, there are ONLY four seasons of TWW. And even the fourth gets side-eye from me.
I admit, I do sometimes watch the seventh season, for Election Dramz
Uh, I might be doing that right now. Ohhh TWW is the greatest of all tv shows! It makes everything so much better!
I am too afraid. 🙁 Because it’s not right without Toby and Leo.
Leo is in most of it! And Toby comes in again toward the end of season 7, to be condescending (as usual) to CJ.
Gah. This picture prompted me to think, “Park Shin-Hye, you are so adorable and you have been 16 for like 10 years.” And then I looked up how old she is. She’s going to be 16 for at least another 5 years before she starts playing adults, isn’t she?
I will watch anything PSH is in. She is adorbs.
I don’t love her. She’s so cute, but I don’t find her interesting to watch. (And her kissing is so bad.) Someone here recommended I try Pinocchio with her, so that’s on my list when I’m ready to try again.
Right now, I’m watching Oh My Venus with Shin Mina and So Ji Sub.
Nikki I felt every word of your essay and thought “Something similar has happened to me and I never know what to say either.” Women especially are trained to not make a fuss.
It’s my Toast friends who validated my feelings when I shared on Twitter and here how uncomfortable I felt about being disabled in public, and how people make me feel weird or “other”.
The Toast Community is a wonderful place.
It really is the most consistently wonderful, affirming place. I am so glad you’re here too.
I keep thinking I don’t have walking pneumonia & this cough will taper off eventually, and then I read “I Google-image-searched to find out if you really do look like everyone on Fresh Off the Boat and you were right, you don’t!!” and dissolve into such a racking, aghast, extensive coughing fit that I think my chest wall is peeling itself off my ribcage. (not an anatomist.)
Maybe my husband (who told me all the great things about the article, as if it was news to me, days after it was posted – he saw it one of the many places it was shared) is right & I should see a doctor. I don’t have the fortitude to be this appalled by humanity.
MEL GO TO THE DOCTOR MAKE SURE YOUR LUNGS ARE CLEAR
I was not in any way expecting the thing to be read/shared so widely, nor attract so many dang trolls, but as it has I am incredibly grateful that I published it HERE (I thought, for a while, about sending it to sites abroad) because we could moderate the comments at least. My tolerance for “advice,” btw, esp. from white males, dropped every day that it was out there, so things that maybe would have gotten approved the first day were sent directly to the trash on Day 3. IIIIII’m not sorryyy
I love everything Nikki writes but this one especially I thought really captured the exact issue perfectly. I was talking to my husband about it and how great it was and he was like, “Oh yeah, is that that thing that’s all over Facebook?” I had no idea that other people were reading it.
And that’s the story of how out of touch with social media I am.
Thank you so much! yeah, it’s got a huge number of FB shares now, which still perplexes me tbh; I keep thinking it’s OKAY, but it’s not like Pitch Meeting for Wishbone-levels of great
HOLY SHIT I FORGOT ABOUT WISHBONE
HOW COULD YOU
SUIT #2: How does the dog read?
VISIONARY: The same way you do, Dave. With an open heart and ready mind.
(nikki your piece was phenomenal thank you for writing it)
I reread the Wishbone piece once a month or so, no lie, as a gift from past editor self. I love it so very much.
(thank you <3 )
That haircut is just making me really, really happy. Maybe that’s a weird thing to say but I recently got a very similar cut and I can never get it to look that good ever. So I will just be happy knowing *someone* can pull it off.
It’s cute, isn’t it? I might try it, since I look just like everyone on all the kdramas
I feel like a good bob looks good on *everyone*.
Different topic and perhaps nobody’s interest. Headline:
North Dakota Man Arrested After Saying He Planned to Abduct Obama Dog Bo
All I could think of was FDR’s 1944 speech where he said this:
‘These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don’t resent attacks, and my family don’t resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I’d left him behind on an Aleutian island and had sent a destroyer back to find him—at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars—his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself … But I think I have a right to resent, to object, to libelous statements about my dog.’
Hey, press and kidnappers, the dog is off limits
Bonus points for a little oldtimey racism that Scots are cheap and stingy. (Hence the name of Scotch tape.)
I don’t know why I know these things, but I do…
Point taken. I’ve just always thought this response was clever. It was 1944. I know that the excuse goes ‘in other times…’ FDR was a patrician product of his time who seems to have needed to be almost kicked into doing the right thing sometimes and who definitely reflected his incredibly privileged background. He also seems to have loved his little Scottie dog and to have had a workable relationship with the press. The emphasis was on setting limits.
No, I also think it’s a clever response, despite what it leans on! (and at any rate, “doesn’t like spending money” is a far cry from what other non-white and not-white/English-enough folks have been saddled with…)
It was a great piece, and made me think about people who aren’t kick-the-table-over-and-fire-racists-into-the-sun personalities, and yet want to refute awful comments. So sorry you got sucker-punched, and am thinking about how to be more of an ally.
Also <3
<3
That piece whirred around in my brain like so much wet salad greens & is still doing so, in part because despite having some experience as a schlemazel having my poverty or queerness or bad teeth poured in my lap by people who are surprised I don’t find it funny, I have likely more often been an unintentional schlemiel and done the same to others. No easy fix, but I am always trying to do better, and failing, and then vowing to at least fail less obviously.
Oh my God. What a wonderful thing to say.
Yes, thank you Nikki for sharing such a personal thing with us. There are so many times I wish I could render a scathing cut direct to bigoted conversations – here’s hoping I can be louder & braver in the future.
A while ago Mallory gave an interview about the business side of the website. It was really interesting and informative. I have (nerdy) follow up questions!
I see ads. They are pretty unobtrusive, I sometimes don’t even notice them. Does the toast make more money if I click through an ad? If I read each post one day does the toast net a few cents or a few dollars? How many ads do readers need to see you the site to make $1000 (just a pulled out of the air number for illustration). I guess I wonder which business model is better for the site, ad revenue or donations.
Anyway, I might be the only one curious about that sort of thing, but it can’t hurt to ask, eh?
No I am also curious abut things! Did they not also have a mysterious male benefactor who was maybe only the male part of that statement but wryly stated once that he wished to go down in history as the only dude who did not have a press comment on Girls. He was also from Chicago? These are literally the only things I remember about this early mysterious figure, but i also thought he was important in getting the Toast in the toaster, so to speak.
I thought the mysterious man was Nicole’s husband. With the power of ‘hedge fund money.’ I may have remembered that wrong…
Ad revenue is great! Do not feel the need to click through to things you don’t want or need, but if you see something on the site advertised that you WOULD like, it is great for us if you click through then.
You may be confusing Nicole’s husband with Nick Pavich, who was with us when we started the site, but is no longer affiliated with us in any way. He was not our benefactor.
Thx. After reading the interview I was all (elbows on table, chin in palms) ‘tell me more about the economics of web publishing!’ I know nothing about this huge topic.
The casual racism comment really got to me. At a xmas party, I got called a ‘wetback’ (living in Aus at the moment). Now I’m in the process of a formal complaint. What really bothers me is grown people are excusing the behavior “She didn’t know what she was talking about” Ugh… It’s so toxic and pathetic.
WTF?!?! I mean seriously. There are many downsides to working in government, but a comment like that would bring down HR fury like a ton of bricks! (i hope, I hope, I hope…we’ve come that far at least)
I work in a private school and I’m sorry to say that the other staff member (a vice principal) last urged me to keep quiet and not go formal. Not sorry to say that I’m so happy we are planning on moving out of here.
GOOD GRIEF. I am sorry.
On my android tablet I see a banner ad at the top, but no ads scattered throughout which is refreshing. I have no need right now for a Ford truck, but when I do, I will click here.
Fantastic, thanks Nicole. Good to know I'm not falling behind the curve.
In AUSTRALIA? I didn't think anyone here knows what that means. Or do Aussies have their own special spin on the term? (I'm not Australian, but I live here.) Or did she think that was a cute term for Mexicans? Give me strength.
Compared to Wonkette, the ads here are polite indeed.
Yeah, in Aus. Apparently she was in California/Mexico for a visit. She knew exactly what it meant. When she found out I was from LA, her initial response was "Los Angeles is horrible, the people are rude! Rude!" The irony in that comment…. she's so gross.
Good bloody lord. Utter utter utter obliviousness. :-/
GOOD GRIEF. I am sorry.
<3