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A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing QUOTES

A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing QUOTES

1 " To devise situation where the protagonist is force to tell a lie, a useful figure for the writer is the Devil. Like the Devil, the author actively searches for flaws in a protagonist's character and seeks to exploit these flaws...As an author, your job is to find ways of exposing the lies of your protagonist. "

― David Mura , A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing

2 " Does the protagonist deny the irreconcilable conflict? Does she lie about it- to herself and others? Does she make a choice between two irreconcilable desires? Then clearly her choice of one over the other reveals something essential about her that was not apparent at the beginning of the story. The protagonist-sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously- must reckon then with a new understanding of her character and who she really is and her place in and relationship to the world. "

― David Mura , A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing

3 " When a person comes from a family or a group that has been marginalized, when she is one of the "subalterns," the silence such a person confronts about herself and her experiences within the greater culture is a political condition. In such cases the very act of writing about herself and her experiences becomes a political act. "

― David Mura , A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing

4 " The writer must then see that once the protagonist lies, either to herself or to others-the lie will create its own repercussions, its own penalties and circumstances of revelation...A simple principle therefore is to create situation where the protagonist is forced to lie. "

― David Mura , A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing

5 " Writing comes out of the rift between what we have experienced and the language we've been given to express it. We write to bridge this divide, to find word adequate to our sense of reality...

Creative writing is the search for and creation of a language that will express what the writer unconsciously knows but does not yet have a language to express. "

― David Mura , A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing

6 " At other times the author is so concerned with creating and describing the consciousness and identity of the protagonist that he tend to think of the pursuit of the goal in terms very similar to those of the protagonist...One solution for these tendencies is for the writer to identify with and explore the desires and plans of characters who may be in conflict with the protagonist. These characters can act as hindering forces; they can also elicit other desires in the protagonist that might conflict with her pursuit of a goal. "

― David Mura , A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing

7 " For now, if you are a white writer writing about a character of color, here is one consideration: Do you have friends or colleagues of that race who would openly and freely tell you if you are failing in that task and how and why, and would you be willing to seriously consider their critiques? "

― David Mura , A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing

8 " One problem for the student of color is the feeling that if she is silent about a piece of writing that is racially problematic or insensitive or simply racist , she will be condoning such writing.

Moreover, the student may believe that to be silent is to be a coward.

At the same time, if the student of color persists in her critiques she will be increasingly attacked and begin to feel isolated and powerless. The student may feel then that to persist with her critiques is an attempt to maintain or regain power.

But Sun Tzu teaches that to retreat or lay low in times when one does not have power or sufficient number is not weakness; it is wisdom.

Sun Tzu teaches that taking time to build allies and gather forces is not weakness, but wisdom.
...
Or as I wrote to one such student, being an activist artist is not a sprint. It is a marathon. Artists need to plan and strategize and build their forces for the larger battles to come, to fight from strength not weakness. "

― David Mura , A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing

9 " So how us character revealed in story? In pursuit of her goal, a protagonist may encounter outside forces that prevent her from obtaining her goal. These outside forces may be other characters or various other sorts of hindrances- physical, financial, social/communal, legal, political, and so on...In David Mamet's critique of the problem play or film...he argues that a lesser work will somehow keep the protagonist from really being force to wrestle with irreconcilable conflicts...But in a serious literary work, the writer's job is to set up the circumstances of this irreconcilable conflict so that it is indeed irreconcilable. If it's not the writer needs to shift the valances of conflict so that it is irreconcilable. "

― David Mura , A Stranger's Journey: Race, Identity, and Narrative Craft in Writing