…as opposed to writing ‘about’ marginalised audiences

There is a framed picture of a middle-aged white guy overlooking this workspace. Who is he? Why is he there?

Flaubert scowls, primarily acting as a critic, a writing conscience. I write something, I lean back, Flaubert catches my eye. ‘Not good enough,’ his scowl suggests. I will need to do some more work – for there is no fooling Gustave Flaubert.

But occasionally as I lean back, as I catch Gustave’s critical eye, his countenance suggests, ‘not that bad’. And my work is done.

I think that everyone striving for their best efforts would do well to position a fierce critic directly in their eye-line.

Faubert also noted that

“the art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.”

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)

An astute observation from Flaubert that leads us neatly into the origin story of M2M Books. For it was while writing the following section from my novel Love and Happiness that the absence of relatable reading material for marginalised audiences first registered. Harriet is marginalised from the mainstream by race and adoption:

Harriet is not at all engrossed in her reading. If she could, she would drop the novel like a hot rock; the story of an isolated half-caste girl slowly going bonkers. But she promised to digest the book over the holidays, and anyway, she has never abandoned a story before the last page, however awful, however troubling, however much she’s wanted to. She sighs. If only she had never opened The Wide Sargasso Sea.

Harriet has become a project. Since the second year, when Mrs Dawson notices her sitting in corners consuming ‘classic literature’, Mrs Dawson singles Harriet out for extra-curricular material that ‘you might find more interesting’. The books presented are singularly themed; Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Confessions of Nat Turner, an adaptation of Othello, and it has been made clear since day one that Harriet is expected to relate to these blood-soaked texts in a consequential manner. But Nat’s world and Jim’s world, Othello’s issues, Tom Robinson’s predicament have nothing to do with Harriet, and she has no cultural yearning to be associated with them. The truth is, like any other middle-class Cheshire resident, the base negro characterisations she finds in Mrs Dawson’s books are (apart from villains and one or two celebrities shown on the television) the nearest Harriet has come to experiencing black folk and their bewildering ways. And anyway, in Harriet’s class, in Harriet’s school, in Congleton, it is Harriet that least needs to absorb the message these alien tragedies provide. But Harriet won’t mention any of this to Mrs Dawson. Harriet’s only protest is to perform poorly in her essays and tests. Yet Mrs Dawson remains dogged; loftier considerations than academic results being the order of her mornings. So, at the end of last term, as Harriet’s English Lit class finishes dissecting Jane Eyre to the point of scholastic nausea, Mrs Dawson appears extremely proud of herself placing Wide Sargasso Sea on Harriet’s school desk.

Harriet marks the page, checks her progress, drops the miserable volume about the presumably doomed mulatto to the floor.

Love and Happiness – G James

So, when the submission window for M2M Books opens next week, we hope to receive manuscripts by marginalised writers that marginalised audiences, such as Harriet, will find relatable and immersive. Margin to margin.

M2M Books submission guidelines will be fully set out in our next post.