Ep 13 – History is Gay Podcast and The Poet X

Last month, the publisher Little Brown announced they would publish a problematic book that misgenders a historical figure. When called out on it, the publisher and the author doubled down on their position. In December 2018, an article appeared in the Romance Writer’s Report criticizing historicals for romanticizing white supremacy. The article garnered backlash from authors who felt they had creative license to write whatever they want, including only tragic endings for people of color and queer people. Lin rants about all this and then counters with the History is Gay podcast, which features the real life stories of queer historical figures. 

Margrit raves about The Poet X, slam poet Elizabeth Acevedo’s masterful debut novel about a teen girl struggling to project her voice from under both her mother’s weighty expectations of piety and society’s projections. Hope and light come, as is often the case, from art and poetry.

Question of the episode: Is there a story that made you understand your own life struggles better?

Join the conversation on Twitter at @World_ofStories or email us at worldofstoriespodcast@gmail.com. 

Transcript

Margrit 0:01
Welcome to our live stories. I’m Margrit and my pronoun is they.

Lin 0:05
I’m Lin and my pronoun she, and we’re here to talk about diversity in storytelling.

Margrit 0:09
So Lin, what have you been enjoying this week?

Lin 0:12
Well, so first of all, we have no listener comments. Just want to put that out there. Let people know the status of our interactions with the public.

Margrit 0:21
Yes, we enjoy listener comments. So if you do have comments, bring them on and we’ll mention them.

Lin 0:25
Please. Yes. Because we’re just here by ourselves talking to each other. And while that’s lovely, we would like to have more voices. We encourage you to comment.

So, recently, there has been a lot of talk about representation of marginalized peoples in history. And this has been going on primarily over social media. So I’m not sure, Margrit, if you have been as dialed into these controversies?

Margrit 1:01
I’ve definitely heard about the Dr. Barry controversy.

Lin 1:06
Yes, exactly. So what that is, if listeners don’t know, is that last month, Little Brown is a publisher and they announced that they were going to publish this book by EJ Levy, and it’s called The Cape Doctor. And it’s a fictional story about a real historical person, Dr. James Miranda Barry who was a trans man. So apparently, I’ve obviously not read the book, but the book apparently depicts Dr. Barry, not as a trans man, but rather as a woman cross dressing as a man. And when the author was called out on this, the author, whom I believe is a woman repeatedly referred to Dr. Barry as she and claimed that, oh, because this book is a fictionalized version of real life events. She has the liberty to–

Margrit 1:59
The literary license.

Lin 2:01
Right, exactly, to make changes, and obviously people were super pissed about this because–

Margrit 2:05
And people were pissed because there are, there’s very clear evidence that Dr. Barry was actually a trans man in the sense that he, he was known as a man and he left express instructions, not, for his body not to be undressed upon his death. And so, it was definitely, he did not want to be, he did not want his gender to be discounted or challenged in any way.

Lin 2:35
Right, exactly. And, you know, obviously, there’s so many layers to this that we could break down. For me, as part of at least this podcast, I wanted to highlight the fact that, you know, this author who is you know, sort of contemporary person of today is putting her, so imposing her story onto this, this person’s life, this man’s life, right? Saying, no, you know, her version of events is true as opposed to what actually was true and what actually happened and who this person really was.

Margrit 3:14
Or even she’s kind of blurring the lines by saying, well, it’s fiction, and so I can just do what I want.

Lin 3:21
Right. Right. And so then the other issue that has been blowing up social media started sort of back in December of 2018. And the Romance Writers’ Report is this monthly newsletter that’s put out by the Romance Writers of America, which is the big association for romance writers. And Elizabeth Kingston is an author of historical romances. And she wrote an article that appeared in the December 2018 issue, and she talks about how historicals have often romanticized white supremacy and so she gives examples of the fetishization of Asians, positive depictions of colonialism, degenerating sort of quote unquote, other cultures. And the fact that really the only stories that get happily ever after are the ones that are for white Christians.

Margrit 4:14
Right.

Lin 4:15
And so there was a lot of backlash against her article from basically white people. There were two letters to the editor that appeared in the February edition of the Romance Writers’ Report. And, you know, they’re basically saying like, oh, how dare she criticize us for writing what we want to write and, you know, the licenses that we have as fiction writers, similar to what the Dr. Barry situation was talking about. One of those letters to the editor brought in LGBTQ people into the conversation, and she like basically equated LGBTQ people as having the same historical significance as potatoes. Oh, and like when potatoes became a staple food item.

Margrit 5:08
Oh, so like a trend? I’m sorry. I’m very confused about the metaphor. In what way?

Lin 5:16
Yeah, so she was saying, oh, you can’t say that people within these years ate potatoes because that’s not historically accurate. Just like you can’t say that LGBTQ people had happily ever afters because that’s not historically accurate.

Margrit 5:30
Mm hmm. Okay, I understand the parallel now.

Lin 5:35
Yeah. So basically, like, a whole swath of society have the same historical significance and importance as like when people ate potatoes.

Margrit 5:46
Right.

Lin 5:47
Um, and obviously, like, clearly people were up in arms about this and–

Margrit 5:52
Rightfully so.

Lin 5:52
Again, yeah, of course, hopefully. But it’s just this idea that like this person who wrote the letter to the editor, she was like, no, listen, LGBTQ people, queer people cannot have happily ever afters because they had such tragic and such tragic lives. And okay, I’ll just say this that yes, queer people and people of color have faced a lot of discrimination in the past. And hello, they do that–they face discrimination today. Right? But it doesn’t mean that people didn’t go on with their lives like they had jobs and they were successful at those jobs, they had families–

Margrit 6:32
Or lived happily in, you know, families and couples and had found love that was enduring and relationships that were lifelong and things like that. Yes.

Lin 6:43
Yeah, exactly. And so it’s like mainstream society of today is so focused on victimizing communities that have historically already been marginalized and it’s like, it’s almost as if they’re saying if we hear stories–or happy stories about people who are marginalized, it’s like some sort of threat to their like cis white straight power,

Margrit 7:09
That they’re implausible if they’re–yes, absolutely. Because it’s kind of like that trope kill your gays, where if there is a queer character, then they have to basically die tragically, or something tragic has to happen to them because they’re basically a plot device for the straight character, protagonists basically.

Lin 7:31
Right. Right. And if you give queer people their happily ever afters it like undermines the, it undermines the authenticity or like the power or like the I don’t know what to call it.

Margrit 7:45
Well, it does undermine heteronormative society, doesn’t it?

Lin 7:48
Right, like it does, but that doesn’t mean that it like takes away from like white people or like straight people’s right to have happily ever afters. You know, it’s not mutually exclusive.

Margrit 7:58
Exactly.

Lin 7:59
It’s like I can have mine so you can’t have yours. Right? That’s ridiculous. So anyways, this is a really big, long rant. And my counter to it is a really cool podcast that I started listening to. It’s called History is Gay, which I love that title.

Margrit 8:18
Yeah, it’s awesome.

Lin 8:19
And I’ve only listened to a couple of episodes, but I’m like, completely totally hooked. It’s hosted by Gretchen and Lee, who described themselves as queer nerds. And for each episode, they pick a queer historical figure, and they showcase that person’s story and it’s really well researched. They go to a lot of primary source materials. And they are, you know, just telling this person’s life story and how they’ve impacted history. And they’re so excited and in the telling of their stories. It’s completely infectious. So I really recommend people check that out.

Margrit 8:55
That’s amazing. It sounds very much to me like One From the Vaults, which is a podcast by Morgan Page, who is Canadian trans woman and activist. She’s now living in London, but she has exactly the same format to her podcast, where every episode she talks about a transperson from history. More or less recent, and it’s again, very well researched and very well placed in context and interesting. And so the, I think this work of finding, you know, LGBTQ ancestors is really important and really interesting.

Lin 9:42
It is. Yeah, because something–there’s this one author whom I really love his work, ‘Nathan Burgoine. He writes amazing books and everyone should go read his stories. And he’s always talking about how as queer people, we’re not born into family of queer, other queer folks, generally. So we don’t get that sort of historical context that’s passed down to us through our upbringing just by like learning it for our parents, for example. And so it often feels like there is no history because we don’t see it growing up. And often people don’t even know what they don’t know. Like, they don’t know that there’s something out there that they have to go learn.

Margrit 10:25
Right.

Lin 10:26
Right? And so, I think podcasts like these are really important to try to pass down some of that, some of the history right?

Margrit 10:36
And popularize a lot of the, they do a great job of popularizing a lot of the work that has done in academia, in recovering these, these voices and these histories that society at large, the heteronormative part of it, is very intent on covering up or equating with potatoes apparently which is a new one to me

Lin 11:02
Yeah, so if you’re ever on social media and you see reference to potatoes and queer people, that’s where that came from.

Margrit 11:08
Wonderful. Yeah, immortalized. Fantastic.

Lin 11:12
Yeah. Great.

Margrit 11:15
Hashtag sarcasm.

Lin 11:17
Yeah. Anyways, what have you been enjoying this week, M?

Margrit 11:21
Oh, already? I thought we were talking about this some more. I was ready to talk about this some more.

Lin 11:27
Well, we can.

Margrit 11:28
That’s okay because I have, I think my part is a little bit long today. So…

Lin 11:32
Let’s go for it.

Margrit 11:33
Yeah. So I have read The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo which is–so, Elizabeth Acevedo is a slam poet and this is her debut novel. It’s a novel in verse. And it’s tremendously well done. It’s concise, it’s rhythmic, it’s engrossing. You can basically hear the slam poetry being performed as you’re reading it, and I totally devoured it. I had to do it in two sittings because I started it early one morning and then I actually had to go to work.

Lin 12:07
Ugh, work.

Margrit 12:07
So I was forced–I know it was so bad. I had to put it aside which was terrible. So I knew the next time I picked it up, I had to have time to like go through it and finish it because it’s just that captivating and so well done.

So the story is about Xiomara who is a nearly 16-year-old girl of Dominican descent and she lives in Bronx with her mother, father and twin brother. And she’s caught between her mother’s oppressive, very religious upbringing and an equally antagonistic world to which she reacts by fighting literally so physically engaging, you know, physical fights, But also trying to efface herself and her voice because she feels like if she does open her mouth, all, everything, all her frustration and all her anger will just tumble out. And then she will just be at a loss for what to do. She won’t have any, you know, she won’t be able to stop herself. And so she stays quiet.

So one of the things that she says, a sort of a line that stays with me, in a poem called Mira Muchacha because she says her mom always talks to her and she says, listen, girl, or like, look, girl. That’s how she, you know, just trying to explain things to her because she’s never happy. The mom is never happy with how the Xiomara behaves or what she looks like. And she says that she effaces herself and she says, quote, sometimes I want to tell her the only person in this house who isn’t heard, is me.

Lin 13:45
Mm hmm.

Margrit 13:46
And it’s just, it’s very, it reads like it’s a very raw and honest kind of a story. And it’s tremendously well done in that way. So basically, it’s a story of a girl trying to find her voice, the whole the whole story, right, in a world that meets her with obstacles at every single turn and gives her very few unconditional allies. She feels responsible to take care of her twin brother who is a genius. He’s her basically physical opposite. She’s, he’s tiny, and she’s, she’s big. And midway through the book, Twin, as he’s affectionately called, is revealed to be gay. So she feels responsible for shielding him from the reaction of her extremely religious parents, right? Because she fears that all of a sudden, Twin who now, who had been the example that her parents would always put up for her, like to follow, like they would totally, I don’t know, lash out at him because obviously homosexuality is not going to be accepted in their super religious and conservative worldview.

Lin 14:58
Mm hmm.

Margrit 14:59
But light and hope do come up in this book. And so it’s really interesting for me to see because we’ve had this conversation on the podcast before, where the hope is always coming through art. Right? When we talked about Echo and we talked about Less and, and so many books this happens that the salvation is through art because Xiomara gets to read her slam poetry at a public event. And she receives acclaim but also her parents start to see her as herself rather than a projection of all of their hopes that they’ve sacrificed their lives working for. Right? And this is the other side that the story does really well. In terms of not just making the parents as cardboard antagonists, but showing how hard and difficult it is to be an immigrant in the sense that, you know, they have to work to the bone. Her mom works as a cleaner. And so it natural–or like it normalizes the idea that if they’re sacrificing their lives, at least their kids should have a better life. It’s just that the idea, the parents’ idea, or the mom’s idea of what a good life for the kids is, is in complete conflict with what a good life would be for Xiomara herself. Right?

Lin 16:25
Right. Yeah, I think that’s often the case, I think, especially with people who tend to be creative and who or who want to at least pursue a creative career. And I don’t know if it is limited to immigrant families or maybe it’s more pronounced with immigrant families because as you say, they’ve had to sacrifice a lot. But the, the like, it’s true that creative careers are less stable and whatnot, but they often aren’t able to accept that until they’ve seen like, oh, well, this person or my like, you know, my, my child is actually able to do this successfully and they’re actually good at it, you know? And like, it’s, I mean, I guess it makes sense that they’re just concerned for the well being of their children, to be able to support themselves. But they don’t realize that by them disapproving, it makes it a whole lot harder for them to be successful. Because if you have, you know, it kind of like adds to the problem. Well, yeah, they’re not successful in this creative career, partly because they’re not being supported by their, you know, by their family. Yeah, I don’t mean like, financially necessarily, but at least, you know, emotionally.

Margrit 17:40
Morally.

Lin 17:40
And morally, yeah.

Margrit 17:42
So no, absolutely. That becomes another obstacle in career that is already fraught with a lot of self doubt.

Lin 17:49
Mm hmm.

Margrit 17:52
Yeah, so this is the book that I was going to talk about in the last episode and when I got derailed by that appalling incident in Dating Around But there’s such a clear connection here with Gurki, the woman in that episode, and what she was trying to say about the culture clash, right? Like, if you have no clue, you can’t understand the pressures of conforming to a culture, to the point of actually questioning or effacing your own individuality all together, right? Yeah. And why that guy’s demand for quote, unquote, honesty is such a privileged position. Because when you’re conformity basically determines whether or not you can belong in the only community and family that you have ever known. That honesty is just a moot point. It doesn’t even exist as a category. Right?

Lin 18:45
Right. Because then it becomes more about survival. Almost, right? When it–and that’s the case with immigrant families where the kids are living in one culture at home and then experiencing a different culture at school, or outside of the home. As well as like queer people where they might know or, you know, they might fear that their families aren’t going to accept them being queer. And it’s like, well, if you want to maintain these family relationships, it’s like some part of it is having to hide yourself. When it becomes no longer, when you become no longer able to hide who you are, then there is very high risk that you’re going to lose these relationships that are really important to you.

Margrit 19:27
Exactly. And this is exactly the point of you know that this book makes it the beginning, The Poet X where Xiomara is like if I open my mouth, then everything will come out. I’m paraphrasing, obviously. Elizabeth Acevedo puts it in much better language. But and so there’s no way of stopping the dam once, once the frustrations and the anger and everything comes out. And of course, of course, there’s always a temptation of doing that. But there’s always the fear and the question in the back of your head of like, but what are the consequences? And are the consequences worth it? Or can I just keep on living the way that I have until now, in a sort of like better the devil, you know, kind of situation than, than just open the floodgates of whoever knows what. Right?

Lin 20:18
Right. Yeah. And it’s, it’s not an easy, like cost benefit analysis.

Margrit 20:23
Yeah, it’s not clear cut.

Lin 20:25
It’s not. And it’s not like you just sort of like tick pros and cons on either side. Because a lot of it is, is unknown. Like, you don’t, people don’t know for sure how others are going to react. And yeah.

Margrit 20:39
This is exactly it. Yeah. And this, I think takes us to the question of our episode, so if you are listening along, we would really like to hear what you have to say about it.

Lin 20:49
Please comment.

Margrit 20:51
So is there a story that you found that made you understand your own life struggles better? Is what we would like you to comment on but you’re free to comment on anything that you would like.

Lin 21:02
Yes, so, either this episode’s comment or question, or any of the previous episodes, you can comment on Twitter at @World_ofStories, or email us at worldofstoriespodcast@gmail.com. We would love, love, love to hear what you think. Please join our conversation.

Margrit 21:22
Yes, please do and be sure to subscribe to our podcast to get new episodes as they drop. And if you’d like our show, please leave us a review on iTunes, Google Play, or wherever you’re listening to us. Thank you so much in advance.

Lin 21:35
Thanks. Bye.

Margrit 21:36
Bye.