I write a lot of gay stuff because, well, I'm gay. The thing is, when writing gay poetry or queer essays, I have to be conscientious of who is going to read it. If I throw out some stuff about flagging but with carabiners or open with a joke about uhauling, I'm gonna lose a lot of readers if they aren't a part of the queer community because they will be lost and confused amongst all the rainbows.
Half the time I end up cutting out a lot of the gay stuff as a result. I try to make things a little more accessible to the general public to increase my readership reach and get people interested in reading something they might not have been exposed to before i.e gay stuff. But sometimes, I wonder if that's the right thing to do. Should authors have to sanitize/alter their work or provide appendices in order so that people not from their community or culture can read it?
I started thinking about all of this after reading Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie's Aya of Yop City. The graphic novel is based on Abouet's life in Côte d'Ivoire and it frankly incredibly well written and interesting. However, what's interesting is that Abouet and Oubrerie specifically made the story accessible to white folx like myself who've never so much as spoken French or been to Côte d'Ivoire.
Like they literally made extra bits and pieces for us unfamiliar readers. They wrote it in continental French rather than Abidjanian French and then translated that to English. They added footnotes explaining words (as a matter of fact, they added a whole appendix of words and definitions of words). There's tons of this paratextual stuff that is not necessary for the story but it is necessary for people unfamiliar with the culture and its nuances to understand the story well.
They did everything possible to make it easier for those not in the world of the story to understand. My question is why?
Why do we purposefully make the stories of oppressed and minority peoples accessibly to the majority? Is it cause we want them to understand? Is it cause we think they deserve to understand because they are the majority? Is it just for marketing so that we can sell more books?
We're in a world that caters to the majority, primarily white folx in European countries and the United States. (Of course, I say that as someone who lives in the US so my perspective may be a bit skewed.) Do we need to keep making everything for the majority?
As much as I enjoyed Aya, I could've still enjoyed it without the paratextual stuff that made it easier to understand. I could've googled words. Though I will say, I wouldn't have read it if it were in French because I'm not quite fluent there. But maybe I should be more willing to try.
I get why Abouet and Oubrerie added so much extra stuff and made it accessible. They wanted to tell the story of this place to those not from it. They wanted to fight back against the stereotypes that have come about about Africa and the Ivory Coast. If they didn't make it accessible, people probably wouldn't read it, but maybe we should all be willing to work a little harder to understand things we aren't used to.
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