(Reviewed by Jeyran Main)
How Dare We! Write is a non-fiction book which caught me by surprise. The work is a collection of writing exercises written by teachers, community leaders, career writers that are bilingual, and multicultural.
The editor expresses the notion of which, the writing world does not accept authors that are of color, and how one should overcome that. Sherry, in particular, is a Chinese Black Female who grew up passing for White in Minnesota. She hopes that by providing this educational tool, she can somehow facilitate healing and raise awareness towards the relevance of race, class, gender, age, sexual identity, culture and language in the writing world.
As I continued reading this book, I felt lost and a little overwhelmed with the fact that I had no idea that this was even an issue. I have been reading and writing for years and it never even dawned on me that there was a race issue when it came to publishing. I always believed that books were either judged by their cover design or sales, but never on the name of the author or his/her background. Surely, when it came to writing, it did not matter how you look, but how you write. Am I missing something here? I began to wonder, are these people who just struggled getting published? Or were they truly discriminated?
Either way, the work in hand was commendable and worth the purchase to read. The formatting, editing, and laid out work were written with perfection. The book discusses literary myths, grammar issues, personal narratives, being rejected and more. Each section is written with the added emotional aspect of how the author, alone, was impacted and felt on the journey, becoming a writer. I felt that this added a personal touch to the book and it was nice to know more about them.
I recommend this book to people who wish to be informed and look for supplementary text in a creative writing workshop.
