Date: 2012-02-10 03:07 am (UTC)
The funny thing (to me) is that when we *discuss* empathy stuff in more abstract psychological terms in class, everyone pipes up positively, sounds on-board and so on. I mean, these are liberal Evergreen kids, etc. It's difficult for me because, I mean, this book was *written* in part due to the feeling that black culture should be written about by black people for a black YA audience. So this is the flip-side of that. Like, if you explicitly intend to validate a specific alienated group with your literature, do you also alienate another group, and is that to be expected?

I also don't know if I'm a pure example of presence of empathy as opposed to absence, since I'm familiar with some voodoo background, some American (which includes black) folklore, and I'm fluent in fantasy and fluent in world literature (manga helps, being an immigrant who initially read in another language helps too, etc). I'm pretty cosmopolitan, and these are well-intentioned but sheltered white kids from white towns in middle-class America. Even so, I was annoyed at the Ebonics and it took me time to get into it-- it's really a difference of degree. I didn't get *angry* at the book. I didn't tell myself 'I can't read stuff like this', or 'this isn't my culture so I don't get it'. At the same time, I did get some of it. While it's not my culture, I'm highly proficient in the overall symbology of world folkloristics, somewhat familiar with American folklore, and just plain used to non-white characters after years of manga (in fact, all-white characters in comics may bore me).

So that's why I try to be understanding. I don't know if my literary skills would translate to being good with minorities or people who're not like me, though in truth it feels like most people aren't very much like me, so it's not like I haven't got practice with that. I don't know if I'm *good* with people (like or not like me) though, so they may very well be better at interaction than I am. It's sort of like the question my tutoring center director raised, about how she doesn't think being a good *writer* makes you a good tutor, 'cause empathy & communication's more important. For me-- while I'm empathic, I'm more easily and fully empathic with literature than in real life, where I have to translate it into action/reaction, though I'm still a good tutor (so they say). Plus, I keep thinking my boss is wrong, and it really does make me a better tutor that I'm a good writer, 'cause I know how to fix things from experience, and have a much broader technical knowledge than some of our other tutors. And while our tutoring philosophy is to 'hold a space' to discuss the writer's process, I think technical knowledge shouldn't be overlooked. Blah blah... :>.
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the one who stumbled

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