By Vanessa East

How Dare We! Write: A Multicultural Creative Writing Discourse, edited by Sherry Quan Lee, is a collection of essays from the pens of twenty-four Minnesota-connected writers of color, all exploring what it is to put one’s heart on the page in a world that may not be prepared to accept or honor it. It is a book of essays about writing, but it is just as much a book of essays about identity: how it is negotiated, how it is expressed, how it is silenced, and how it is celebrated.

This book has no intention of being passively read. If you read it and don’t see yourself in its pages, it encourages you to reflect on whose stories you gravitate toward and why, and offers a rich array of perspectives to explore. If you do find yourself there on the page, it invites you to be in community with the writers in this volume; it points to writing as an academic pursuit, a career, and a means of expression, and says, Yes, you.

A bit of context: I have been an avid collector of books about writing for many years. I am also biracial, which is a part of my identity that I re-negotiate with myself every single day.

This book turned out to be unlike any writing reference book I have read. Of the thirty-odd writing books in my collection, many have spoken to my identity as one who loves the written word, as a recovering perfectionist, as a person who thinks in rhythm and will rewrite a sentence until the rhythm is right; this is the first book on writing that has spoken to my identity as someone who is all of those things, and is a biracial woman. It was a revelation to see on paper that there are other lovers of writing out there who are thinking about that piece of their identity every day, too.

How Dare We! Write is a collection edited with a specific mission: to place the art and craft of writing squarely in the context of culture, in particular cultures that are often pushed to the margins. As editor Sherry Quan Lee states in the introduction:

“I believe who we are influences our writing, just as who we are may defy those who think they have power over our writing. I knew in my heart that for writers of color, writing isn’t just about process and craft, but also the challenges we face as writers, and how we overcome those challenges. […] I wanted a textbook that considers the relevance of race, class, gender, age, and sexual identity; culture and language; and that by so doing, on some level, facilitates healing.”

In keeping with that vision, this collection of essays winds through the subjects of literary gatekeeping and the learnings and constraints of academia, to the loaded notions of “correct” grammar and palatability, to the bullets (and dodged bullets) of rejection in the publishing world, to the ways writing can heal. At the end of each essay, the reader is pointed outward to the writings that inspired and informed each author’s work, then invited back in with a writing prompt that resonates with the essay’s content or theme.

The writing prompts are as rich and varied as the voices that inspired them. If you were to commit to completing every single one, you would find yourself writing news articles from 2030 and stories of resistance in your community, walking or riding to new places and noting what you see and feel, committing to a month of engaging deeply with Black authors, seeking out story in music you have never heard before, and writing a love letter to your name. They push the reader to act and to explore. The first draft of this review was written in response to one of the prompts: it was scribbled down on a video call with a friend while she worked on her own project, both of us sharing our goals and circling back to what was working and what was holding us up. (I’m not saying this book is so powerful that it essentially generated the beginnings of its own review, but here the review is, so make of that what you will.)

There is a dedicated section of this anthology that is titled, “Identity(ies),” but identity is woven through every essay in the collection. The clear statement that rings through is that it all begins with identity, and no matter the subject, identity is still guiding the pen. In the opening essay of the collection, Kandace Kreel Falcón observes of her experience in the world of academia:

“‘Valid’ academic writing and scholarship requires distance, a pretend, yet required, scenario in which the observer is supposed to be outside of that which is being observed. This is laughable. Who is behind the keyboard, the pen of your ethnographic observational notes in your field journal? Who is the name attached to your page?”

Ultimately, those questions and their echoes form the core of the collection: Who, in their entirety, is behind the pen? What are the costs and the rewards of bringing your wholeness into the words you write? Who do you hope will read those words and see their own wholeness reflected back to them? And, in that moment of connection, what becomes possible?

You can watch a recording of ESFL’s How Dare We! Write event on our YouTube channel.