The Ongoing Struggle of Minton’s Self Promotion
A friend wrote an entry admitting that he used to carry some jealousy towards minority writers:
So, I used to be a little jealous of the amount of anger material these minority writers had access to. I mean, Tran, Vietnamese, the child of naturalized immigrants, had the Vietnam War to use as a world-event that affected his life without his choice.
There is a lot of inspiration in one’s cultural identity but if that inspiration doesn’t allow the artist to create works that break past the illusory bonds of time and space [lay off the crack pipe, Josh] to that oneness that unites us all, then the art won’t last, and it won’t have quite the impact the artist hopes it will.
-Joshua Minton
I wrote my first poem in the seventh grade for Valentine’s Day. It was for a girl named Penny Nichols [I heard she became a car model]. She was by no means the smartest girl, but she was pretty and I remember her being nice to me. We used to hold hands. After that, writing became complicated. As a journalist, I had to be accurate and un-bias [which felt impossible]. As a younger man, I felt compelled to always point out that I was Asian. I remember a [white] friend that grew up with me had said, “Come on. You grew up in North Ridgeville, what makes you so different from me?” I remember telling him if he had looked in the mirror. I remember a girl getting her car vandalized with graffiti. It read CHINK LOVER.
If I were to say that I wish I didn’t have to go through racial prejudice or stereotypes; if I were to say, “I wish I were white.” I’m considered self deprecating. And if I embrace all the stress, then Josh is right—I’ll be limited in what I can and cannot write. And everything will just consist of that struggle, verses the struggles that we all endure.
I was accepted to a conference at CSU called Imagination. I’ll be working with a writer by the name of Dan Chaon this summer. In his book “Among the Missing,” he wrote a story called “Safety Man,” which details a Chicago woman’s life and a gift she receives, Safety Man, an inflatable doll that mimics a male passenger. Her husband dies and then this doll, a half torso, now becomes her coping mechanism. She sleeps with it. Her children name it. Her co-workers had mistaken it for a boyfriend; as if she had moved on after her husband’s passing. It is life and death—inflating and deflating. Chaon mentions no nationality and no weird customs. There is nothing that alienates the reader. There is nothing that has to be translated. It becomes about the story, instead of the struggles of the writer.
It’s a black and white world. And I feel that I don’t have luxuary of being gray—actually I am beige, and in the right light, I look white. And I’m compelled to correct the world—no, I’m not white. I’m beige. They walk past me and think ‘whatever,’ and I go home wondering is it that important? Maybe I could be white, in the right light it kind of does. And then I feel guilty and say, "No. I'm beige. I'm beige."
So, I used to be a little jealous of the amount of anger material these minority writers had access to. I mean, Tran, Vietnamese, the child of naturalized immigrants, had the Vietnam War to use as a world-event that affected his life without his choice.
There is a lot of inspiration in one’s cultural identity but if that inspiration doesn’t allow the artist to create works that break past the illusory bonds of time and space [lay off the crack pipe, Josh] to that oneness that unites us all, then the art won’t last, and it won’t have quite the impact the artist hopes it will.
-Joshua Minton
I wrote my first poem in the seventh grade for Valentine’s Day. It was for a girl named Penny Nichols [I heard she became a car model]. She was by no means the smartest girl, but she was pretty and I remember her being nice to me. We used to hold hands. After that, writing became complicated. As a journalist, I had to be accurate and un-bias [which felt impossible]. As a younger man, I felt compelled to always point out that I was Asian. I remember a [white] friend that grew up with me had said, “Come on. You grew up in North Ridgeville, what makes you so different from me?” I remember telling him if he had looked in the mirror. I remember a girl getting her car vandalized with graffiti. It read CHINK LOVER.
If I were to say that I wish I didn’t have to go through racial prejudice or stereotypes; if I were to say, “I wish I were white.” I’m considered self deprecating. And if I embrace all the stress, then Josh is right—I’ll be limited in what I can and cannot write. And everything will just consist of that struggle, verses the struggles that we all endure.
I was accepted to a conference at CSU called Imagination. I’ll be working with a writer by the name of Dan Chaon this summer. In his book “Among the Missing,” he wrote a story called “Safety Man,” which details a Chicago woman’s life and a gift she receives, Safety Man, an inflatable doll that mimics a male passenger. Her husband dies and then this doll, a half torso, now becomes her coping mechanism. She sleeps with it. Her children name it. Her co-workers had mistaken it for a boyfriend; as if she had moved on after her husband’s passing. It is life and death—inflating and deflating. Chaon mentions no nationality and no weird customs. There is nothing that alienates the reader. There is nothing that has to be translated. It becomes about the story, instead of the struggles of the writer.
It’s a black and white world. And I feel that I don’t have luxuary of being gray—actually I am beige, and in the right light, I look white. And I’m compelled to correct the world—no, I’m not white. I’m beige. They walk past me and think ‘whatever,’ and I go home wondering is it that important? Maybe I could be white, in the right light it kind of does. And then I feel guilty and say, "No. I'm beige. I'm beige."
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on Monday, June 20 at 12:50 PM.
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1:12 PMColor aside, that's spectacular that you'll be working with Chaon. He's a spooky-good writer.
2:12 PM
Vandalism aside I'd go through it all again, you are my best friend and soon to be discovered as the amazing writer I've always known you to be.
3:26 PM
Beige is beautiful.
When I was in college I met up with my first boyfriend- a Chinese guy from Singapore.
I remember one day my roommate commented, "He's so light, he almost looks white.", like that made it okay for me to date him.
I thought to myself, "What a bitch!" but I can't imagine the things he had to listen to.
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