Ongoing Thoughts on Poets of Color and Publishing

Niki Escobar has left a comment on my previous post re: publishing and writers of color. I think of publishing as strategic; we direct our work towards editors we anticipate as being open to our work. Their perceived openness can be because of ethnicity or gender, but certainly, I’ve learned that just because another writer is Filipino/a American does not mean s/he wants to support my work, or wants my work to have anything to do with him/her. Rather than waste my energy trying to cultivate bayanihan where there just isn’t and may never be, I just have to move on to other editors and writers, other Fil Am’s, API’s, folks of color, feminists, folks interested in multilingualism, allies and supporters of all ethnicities and genders, writers and editors not interested in fetishizing ethnic experience, and who are critical of fetishizing ethnic experience. Surely, as “ethnic” writers, there is much more to our work than ethnicity, and surely there are multiple ways in which to write about ethnicity, should we choose to write about it in the first place.