Are you still reeling in shock at the presidential election results? Are you pulling at your hair wondering, “How did this country get so racist??” Are you posting statuses about how it is now time to come together to fight racism in the face of current political threats? Have you found yourself saying, “Well, at least this administration is waking people up.”

Hi! I see you there! Welcome to the anti-racism movement. I know you were kind of hoping to sneak in the back of class in the middle of this semester and then raise your hand in a few days to offer up expert opinion like you’ve always been here — but you’ve been spotted, and I have some homework for you, because you’ve missed A LOT and we don’t have the time to go over it all together. I’m glad you are here (I mean, I’d really rather you arrived sooner and I’m a little/lot resentful at how often we have to stop this class to cover all the material for people who are just now realizing that this is a class they should be taking, but better late than never I guess) and I know that once you catch up, you can contribute a lot to the work being done here.

If you are just now feeling the urgency of the need to fight systemic racism, chances are, you are white. I know, I know — I’m starting off with blanket assumptions about you and that doesn’t feel good; you literally don’t have to tell me about it, I’m quite familiar! But seriously, you are probably white or white passing (yes, I’m aware that Ben Carson and Lil Wayne exist and some people of color are capable of holding on to baffling amounts of denial, but I do not have whatever power it would take to break through that level of delusion so let’s just stick with new white folk). I’ve written down this handy list of things that you’ve missed so far that you’re going to need to catch up on, on your own time. This knowledge and preparation will not only make your fight against racism more effective, it will allow us to continue our progress as you catch up.

If you are just now feeling the urgency of the need to fight systemic racism, chances are, you are white.
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This work is the worst.

Woah, I know — I’m starting off in the most negative way possible but look, I need you to know what you are signing up for. Fighting racism is one of the most difficult things you will ever do. I mean, reading this essay might be a little uncomfortable, but it is NOTHING compared to the conversations you are going to have to have, the privilege you are going to have to sacrifice, and the brutality and pain you are going to have to be able to look in the eye every day. Not only will this work get harder and harder the further you dive in, you will also get what at times seems like a very small return on your efforts.

If you want a fucked-up silver lining, you can always remember that people of color (POC) are also doing this work, never have the option of taking a break, and also have to live through the actual racism being fought in the process. So, buck up and get ready.

Your welcome parade. You missed it.

It was a beauty too — floats and streamers and everybody was clapping and cheering. But then it ended and we swept up all the confetti and everyone had to get back to work. Sorry.

Every idea you have for how we can better fight racism has already been discussed.

I know you might be saying “but how can you know that Ijeoma, you don’t know me?” I know. Trust me. I know. You are a 10-year-old explaining to a theoretical physicist how time travel might work. The theoretical physicist has already heard your theory and many others. She probably had some of those same theories when she was 10. And while your interest in time travel and your imagination and intelligence might well lead you to eventually help invent time travel, it will only do so after it has been paired with a lot of the education and experience that the physicist that you are trying to explain time travel to already has. But you are not actually 10, so your ideas are not cute. Keep them in your hat for now while you learn the basics.

Your journey to understanding that racism is a real problem and you have been contributing to it has already been covered.

Please don’t raise your hand to tell us all the tale of how you came to see that you are part of an oppressive system. We were there. When you didn’t know, when your obliviousness was contributing to our oppression, we were there being oppressed. When you were ignoring our cries for help, we saw you look away. As you stumbled along the path of recognition, we were the people you took down with you in each fall. We would rather not go over that all again.

But all is not lost, and your story does have real value — to people who are not in this room, who are afraid of acknowledging the part they play in a White Supremacist society. You can show fellow white people that they can survive the self-reflection necessary to fight racism. Please, share your story with them, it can do real good.

White People: I Want You To Understand Yourselves Better
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Your ramp-up period. You missed it.

When POC were very, very small, we got a few years of comfort and protection from some of the realities of a White Supremacist society. When we were safe at home with our parents, the effects of systemic racism were muted somewhat, although never entirely. Then when we were 4 or 5 and went to preschool we discovered we were four times more likely to be suspended from preschool, and by the time we went to kindergarten another kid called us a “nigger” or another racial slur, and from then on we’ve been neck-deep in that shit.

So, if you weren’t there, you missed it. Nobody is going to hold your hand through this. If you fuck up, you will be called out. If you slow us down, you may be left on the side of the road. If we are angry at white people, we will say we are angry at white people, and nobody is going to add “not all white people” for your benefit. You will find a way to keep going — we have.

Nobody is going to hold your hand through this. If you fuck up, you will be called out.
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Free, individualized education is not a thing we do anymore.

I know you would prefer a nice, safe sit-down with someone who would patiently walk you through all of this, but we have millions of people we need to get right and an entire system of White Supremacy to fight. We do not have the time or energy. Also — that “free labor from POC” thing is kind of how we got into this mess. The questions you are asking have already been answered by POC — some of whom have already been compensated for their time and effort. Google is your friend. If we have to live it, the least you can do is Google it.

We care about multiple things here — at the same time.

Yes, we are aware of how dangerous this administration is. No, we do not have “better” battles to be picking right now. We are doing multiple things at once, because we cannot be sure if it is the cops that will kill us, or the racist jokes at work fostering an environment where we are seen as unreliable and dispensable that will leave us unable to feed our families. But we know that it all can kill us in body and spirit, one way or another, so we will drag people for cultural appropriation and demand that schools provide a more diverse education to our children, while also raising alarm about the Muslim ban, ICE raids, and police brutality.

You could maybe help pick up some of the slack instead of trying to refocus our efforts in a way that makes sense to someone who doesn’t actually have to live with the consequences of what you think we should just “let go.”

Your privilege is the biggest risk to this movement.

That’s right: the biggest risk. The compromises you are willing to make with our lives, the offenses you are willing to brush off, the everyday actions you refuse to investigate, the comfort you take for granted — they all help legitimize and strengthen White Supremacy. Even worse, when you bring that into our movement and refuse to investigate and challenge it, you slow down our fight against White Supremacy and turn many of our efforts against us. When POC say, “check your privilege,” they aren’t saying it for fun — they are saying it because when you bring unexamined privilege into anti-racist spaces, you are bringing in a cancer.

Your privilege is the biggest benefit you can bring to the movement.

No, I’m not just talking nonsense now. Racial privilege is like a gun that will auto-focus on POC until you learn to aim it. When utilized properly, it can do real damage to the White Supremacist system — and it’s a weapon that POC do not have. You have access to people and places we don’t. Your actions against racism carry less risk.

You can ask your office why there are no managers of color and while you might get a dirty look and a little resentment, you probably won’t get fired. You can be the “real Americans” that politicians court. You can talk to fellow white people about why the water in Flint and Standing Rock matters, without being dismissed as someone obsessed with playing “the race card.” You can ask cops why they stopped that black man without getting shot. You can ask a school principal why they only teach black history one month a year and why they pretty much never teach the history of any other minority group in the U.S. You can explain to your white friends and neighbors why their focus on “black on black crime” is inherently racist. You can share articles and books written by people of color with your friends who normally only accept education from people who look like them. You can help ensure that the comfortable all-white enclaves that white people can retreat to when they need a break from “identity politics” are not so comfortable. You can actually persuade, guilt, and annoy your friends into caring about what happens to us. You can make a measurable impact in the fight against racism if you are willing to take on the uncomfortable truths of your privilege.

Thank God For Identity Politics
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You will get better at this, but at first you will fuck up a lot, and you will always fuck up a little.

You are a human being and human beings are inherently flawed. You are also a human being who has lived with an entire life of unexamined privilege and racist social programming. You are going to fuck up hardcore. You are here because you are a decent human, and because you are a decent human you are going to feel pretty shitty when you fuck up. You will probably be called out, you may even be dismissed by some folk, and that may make you feel angry and defensive along with feeling shitty. You will need to get used to the pang of guilt from realizing you have fucked up and it has hurt people. Because it will hit you again and again.

It is okay to feel guilty about things that you are guilty of. It will not kill you, but hiding from that guilt and responsibility can kill others. So feel the guilt, realize you are still alive and intact, figure out how to do better, try to make amends if possible, and move forward. You are not alone. We are all fucking this up in various ways, every single one of us. Right now, there are whole big problematic chapters in our movement. We are all trying to do the work and wrestle with the ways in which we are causing more harm than good. But we have no choice but to keep working, even when it sucks.

You are here because you are a decent human, and because you are a decent human you are going to feel pretty shitty when you fuck up.
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I’m glad you are here. I’m angry you are so late — have I mentioned that? I’m very, very angry you are so late because so many of us have been lost fighting without you. And you are going to just have to live with that anger for a while because you deserve it. But I am also glad you are here. I am glad you are seeing more clearly now and have decided that you no longer want to be a part of the problem. Eventually, I may get over my anger and I may even trust you, but until then I’m still going to need you to do the work to help dismantle the system that you have benefited from and have helped maintain for so long.

Because I do need your help, and I do know that you can help in ways that I cannot. Your reward may not be the warm welcome and heartfelt thanks that you might have been hoping for, but a more just and equal world will have to suffice.

If there is one thing white people have taught me, it’s that you cannot stand the truth in any of its forms.

White people, you have a motherfucking problem.

You lie too goddamn much. You teach your kids to lie too goddamn much. You tell your families to lie too goddamn much. All you fucking do is lie and lie and lie about lying to the point that you are killing everyone, including yourselves.

You lie at the highest levels, so much so that we expect it from our elected officials. Our presidents have told lies that resulted in the death of more than 50,000 American soldiers. You lie about civilian massacres. You lie about terrorist attacks against Black Americans. You lie about sex education and risk the health of your children. You lie about your friends’ qualifications to run national agencies, which results in unnecessary deaths. You lie about your experiences while reporting. You lie about American history. You lie about historical heroes. You lie about slavery. You lie and lie and lie on a massive scale and cover up the lies, protect the liars, rehire the liars, and elect the liars because *shrug* everybody lies.

You lie about the littlest things, like if you ate the last cookie. You lie to your spouse about their annoying habits. You lie to your kids about how to make babies. You lie to your neighbors about your debt. You lie to your boss about sleeping in. You lie to your co-workers about your weekend. You lie to your doctor about your body. You lie to everyone and say you are fine. And you lie to yourself about how wonderful and nice a human being you are.

You lie and lie and lie on a massive scale and cover up the lies, protect the liars, rehire the liars, and elect the liars because *shrug* everybody lies.
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But you aren’t nice. You wear a veneer of nice. You are a rotten tooth in the mouth of the world. Instead of taking care of yourself and preventing decay, you feed on the power of your whiteness like candy. When you start to smell, you use mouthwash and mints to hide it. When you start to visibly decay, you try to hide it with whitening gel. When you start to hurt, you take pain medication. When the pain becomes too great, you finally seek help — and that help is to numb yourself, pull out the nerve, then slap a crown on it so that no one can see your empty core. Instead they see a perfect veneer passing for a healthy tooth. But it is a tooth that feels no pain and only emulates the others.

In case you didn’t know, that ability to feel is called empathy. And as far as I can see, white America has none.

Or maybe you do. Maybe you have empathy, but it’s overshadowed by the centuries of stinky, infected rot left by your presidents, your congressmen, your police, your lawyers, your corporations, your lobbyists, your business leaders, your forefathers, and your motherland, all in the name of colonialism. Maybe you don’t know what empathy even feels like anymore.

Human rights violations are so interwoven with American history that you can no longer tell what’s right . . . if indeed you ever could.

You are a rotten tooth in the mouth of the world. Instead of taking care of yourself and preventing decay, you feed on the power of your whiteness like candy.
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I know, I know, not all white people. My husband is white. Except I wrote an entire fucking essay about how I needed to put his ass in check for his lack of empathy. Except that I spent years tuning him into what the fuck is going on with the huge swath of the population that doesn’t look like him. And I still deal with the empathy-less white people he’s brought into my life. Not often, because I love myself too much to deal with that weird combination of superficiality and toxicity that permeates white society and dictates their interactions, but still. They are in my life, kind of.

And at work? The fact that these people categorize murder by cop as politics makes me want to throw a goddamn table. “I don’t talk politics at work.” People were murdered and you liken it to the ego-stroking and ass-kissing office bullshit that I put up with for my check? Get the fuck outta here!

Seriously, get the fuck outta here.

Can you really not see the difference? Does this really not resonate with you? Does the constant replaying of the murder of Black people really not matter?

You don’t have to answer that. I already know. We aren’t human to you. We never have been.

But you won’t admit that because it means telling the truth. And if there is one thing white people have taught me, it’s that you cannot stand the truth in any of its forms.

I keep asking myself — when will they see the monster in the mirror? When will they see who they really are? What they do? How they destroy the world with their endless quest for power and the tireless subjugation of others to do it? When will they admit their fucking inability to see the humanity in difference?

Honestly, I wouldn’t care if so many white people didn’t have so much fucking power. But y’all do, and your consistent abuse of that power has destroyed countless lives and continues to do so. From your rapist sons, to your murdering daughters, you continue to destroy everything you touch.

But I have hope for you.

My hope is that one day, enough of you will stop lying to yourselves and heal. That one day you will stop lying to yourself and admit that you are an empty shell, existing on the continued pain of others as you beg, borrow, and steal from EVERYONE else to feel relevant.

One day you will stop killing everyone who doesn’t fit your image.

One day you will stop attacking anyone who questions your decayed foundation.

One day you will actually love instead of trying to destroy people who live, love, and somehow thrive despite your oppression.

From your rapist sons, to your murdering daughters, you continue to destroy everything you touch.
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In these times of tragedy, we talk about Black healing. It’s a necessary conversation about something we have a lot of practice doing. Hundreds of years worth, actually.

What we need is white accountability. Are you strong enough to do it?

I’ll wait.

A few days ago I caused a stir in my own tiny corner of the internet world by saying what I thought everybody already knew: If you support Trump, you are a White Supremacist.

When people talked about Hillary going too far when she said half of Trump’s supporters can be put into a “basket of deplorables,” I was left scratching my head and thinking: Only 50%?

If you support Trump, you are a White Supremacist. Full stop. Not just the passive amount of White Supremacy that we all end up participating in, in an inherently White Supremacist system — you are an active, hateful, dangerous White Supremacist.

Now some of you may be asking, as you have on Facebook and Twitter: “Ijeoma, are you really willing to call half of the U.S. population White Supremacists?” And to that my answer is hell yes. This may seem like a bold statement to some, but honestly, I can’t see why.

Human beings can quite easily fall in line with violent hatred and oppression; any quick glance through world history will show that to be true. Do you think that the Nazis came to power against the will of the German electorate, or with the support of the German people? Do you think that slavery was upheld purely by the few rich enough to own slaves, or by an entire society that even erected armies to defend it? And no, none of this can be excused away as “a product of the times” — humans are not like wine grapes; we do not have a few “bad years” that we can blame on the soil. If you recognize that these horrific systems of abuse, oppression, and even genocide were upheld by everyday people, then you have to acknowledge that everyday people are capable of some pretty heinous shit. You can be in the PTA and you can pay your taxes and you can volunteer at your local homeless shelter and at the same time you can be actively upholding the oppression of others. It has been done before and it is being done now.

Human beings can quite easily fall in line with violent hatred and oppression.
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So yes, half of the U.S. population can be actively working to uphold violent White Supremacy, and yes, Trump’s campaign is violently White Supremacist. Your grandma who supports Trump is a White Supremacist. Your buddy who supports Trump is a White Supremacist. That’s what happens when you actively support White Supremacy. Here’s a sample of what is a vibrant buffet of White Supremacy that Trump supporters are backing:

Make America Great Again is a call to White Supremacy: When was America greater than it is now? The ‘60s? The ‘50s? The ‘40s? How you answer that question depends on how white you are. I’m only half-white, so if I go back to any time before 1967, my very existence would have been illegal in many states. Hell, two decades after I was born, anti-miscegenation language was finally removed from the Alabama state constitution, so for me — I have between 2000 and now to draw from. Every period of time in U.S. history prior to this one was less safe and less free for people of color, so if you plan on “Making America Great Again” and you are referencing any time in the past — you’re asking for a return of White Supremacy.

Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric is racist as fuck: I’m not saying that if you believe in tighter immigration rules you are immediately a White Supremacist (although you might just be), but if you go about it by insinuating that the Mexicans crossing the border are rapists, and if your proxies are warning of “taco trucks on every corner,” then you are trying to tap into a White Supremacist narrative of the black and brown brute and you are sure as hell dogwhistling that white culture in America is at risk.

Trump’s Islamophobic rhetoric is racist as fuck: Now, before you barge in letting me know that “Islam isn’t a race,” let me please remind you to sit the fuck down. Islam isn’t a race, but Trump’s Islamophobia sure as hell is racist. If Trump and his followers didn’t think of SCARY BROWN PEOPLE when they thought of Islam, Islamophobia wouldn’t exist. If Islamophobia wasn’t racist in nature, we’d treat all problems within other religious communities not affiliated with scary brown people the same way we treat Islam. If Islamophobia wasn’t racist, we’d be trying to “liberate” Mormon women currently being punished for their own rapes at BYU. If Islamophobia wasn’t racist, we wouldn’t have conservative politicians fighting against raising the statute of limitations on child sex abuse so that Catholic priests could finally face justice for their crimes. If Islamophobia wasn’t racist, we would have declared war on “Christian Fundamentalism” after the Oklahoma City bombing and the multiple deadly Planned Parenthood bomb and gun attacks over the years. If Islamophobia wasn’t racist, Trump would be seeking immigration bans on people from ALL countries that produce terrorists (which is basically every country), not just brown ones. But because Islamophobia IS racist, Trump has been able to stir up White Supremacist hatred and fear of the brown “other” and turn it into votes.

This is just a sample of the White Supremacy that has seeped into every corner of the Trump campaign. It’s not everything, but it’s enough. It’s enough to overshadow any possible positive you could entertain in supporting his run for presidency.

There is no compromise between equality and violent White Supremacy.
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So if you support Trump, you are supporting all of the above, and you are supporting White Supremacy. If you support Trump for other reasons, you are STILL supporting all of the above, and you are supporting White Supremacy. If you believe that you are actively against White Supremacy and yet you will support Trump, you are lying to yourself. People are being hurt right now by the racism that Trump is peddling, by the bravado that the legitimization of this election is giving to White Supremacists. What in the world could Trump possibly be offering you that would cause you to overlook all of the above?

And I’m not saying you have to vote for Hillary to not be a White Supremacist. I’m not saying that there aren’t some Hillary supporters who are white supremacists (see: everything I’ve ever written about this election for more). You CAN be a Hillary supporter, a Jill Stein supporter, a Gary Johnson supporter, or a die-hard anarchist and still be a White Supremacist. But if you are a Trump supporter, you ARE a White Supremacist (and yes, all 15 Trump supporters of color are perfectly capable of being White Supremacists, too). You looked at a campaign built on open, gleeful, hate-filled White Supremacy and you said, “sign me up!”

And I’m not willing to coddle you. I’m not willing to create a safe space for you to be able to elect White Supremacy into law without being called what you are: an unabashed, willful proponent of White Supremacy. There is no “middle ground” to be found here. There is no “compromise” between equality and violent White Supremacy. And there is no “gentler way” of confronting racism when my basic humanity as a woman of color is not enough to sway you against electing a regime that is built on the hatred and fear of people who look like me. And those of us directly harmed by the disgusting hate you want to elect into office will not forget that you traded away our safety and humanity for empty promises of “winning” and “greatness.” We see you for who you really are.

So, I always keep a few live captive humans on my starship for research purposes and well, if I’m being honest, also because it can get pretty lonely in space. I might add that these Homo sapiens represent a pretty diverse array of humanity from various ethnocultural, socioeconomic and gender backgrounds as I’m an equal opportunity Predator. I only really mention this so I don’t come across as completely ignorant as I explain my story.

Anyways, more often than not during the daily probing of my humans, they passively-aggressively comment on the fact that despite me being an alien warrior hailing from the furthest reaches of space, I have human-like “dreadlocks”. One day after I violently forced them to play Space Bingo with me, I revealed to them that for most of my 5679 years, I did not have these dreadlocks and that only in the last few decades did I adopt the stylish dread-like extensions they now see protruding from my central brain sac.

They told me that what I was doing was cultural appropriation and that I was no better than the white humans, particularly the white human celebrities that sport dreadlocks purely for the “trend,” like the human youth monarch known as Kylie Jenner.

I began to wonder if I was truly just as bad.

I mean, I’m definitely worse. Don’t get me wrong. I hunt innocent, intelligent alien life purely for sport. But I meant more in terms of whether I was also guilty of this cultural appropriation.

After some introspection, I realized they were right. I grew out and fashioned my cranial tendrils into ‘dreads’ because I thought it made me look cool. Years prior, I saw that many notable humans including the human Reggae icon Bob Marley had them and I wanted to get in on the trend. This decision was only reinforced more recently after I watched Blank Panther and saw that the apex of human physiology known as Michael B. Jordan sported them as well. Oof Killonger.

Well, I now know that dreadlocks aren’t “just for fun” to quote the Instagram caption of the also physically impressive human known as Zac Efron, when he posted a picture of himself with dreadlocks. As my human prisoners later explained to me, dreadlocks are part of a cultural identity which I don’t have the right to adopt, as a member of a privileged, historically oppressive, violence-seeking, Xenomorph-slaying alien race.

On top of that, I learned that many African American humans are still discriminated against for employment opportunities because of their dreadlocks. And for me to sport them just because I think it adds an extra ‘wow’ factor for when I turn off my cloaking device and theatrically reveal myself to prey, is unacceptable. Furthermore, I’m sure the black human community doesn’t appreciate their dreadlocks being adopted by a maniacal alien with a sphincter for a mouth.

For my insensitive actions I feel much regret. Not the violent alien predation though. No regret there.

This realization led me to contemplate my society’s previous actions even further. I was told that cultural appropriation is when a dominant culture takes an element of a minority culture after having systematically disenfranchised those same people in the past. According to this definition then, I’ve realized that any culture we Predators try to adopt will be considered cultural appropriation as there isn’t a group in this galaxy we war-mongering alien Predators haven’t screwed over and persecuted.

Even the white humans.

One of my fellow Predators, Nadine-X12-Prime has recently started wearing Patagonia jackets, eating Nature Valley and standing still at concerts. Is she appropriating white culture? If Nadine-X12-Prime was a non-white human many would say that it is not cultural appropriation. But since Nadine-X12-Prime is a Predator, who historically preys on the humans that come out of Soul Cycle and Macklemore shows, one could argue that now, her cream-colored Patagonia zip-up is culturally appropriated.

And what about my beloved shoulder mounted plasma canon? Did I culturally appropriate that from the Gorlax people of Jupiter-7 after I pillaged their civilization? To them, that shoulder canon was a religious rite of passage. And I just used it to aimlessly shoot at that California governor. I’m deeply sorry Gorlaxes.

And even the practice itself of unfairly ruling over other groups without their consent? Did I culturally appropriate that from the British humans? My bad.

I think I have a lot of reparations to make. Which is why, as soon as the Earth Sun goes down tonight, I plan to stalk the closest Supercuts human fur cutting establishment and capture a human fur butcher. I will then make him remove my dreadlocks, as my first step towards being more culturally sensitive and aware of my alien privilege.

Then, I will of course add him to my collection.

Helen Palmer Geisel was attending a dinner party hosted by the Johnstons. As the host hugged her, she turned to him and exclaimed, “You don’t know how I needed that!”.

He had suspected her remark was in relation to the increased workload at Beginner Books, a publishing company that she co-founded with her husband, Ted Geisel. Or perhaps, he wondered, there was a more sinister reason. Perhaps her remark was a cry for help, a sign of her increasing loneliness and unhappiness after an almost 40-year marriage that was bound by obligation, rather than love.

Two days later, the Geisels’ longtime housekeeper stumbled upon Helen’s dead body in the bedroom of their La Jolla residence.

A prescription bottle that originally contained one thousand capsules, was now filled with just seven hundred and six. A letter, directed to her husband, was found near her lifeless body. “I didn’t know whether to kill myself, burn the house down, or just go away and get lost,” it read. The morning after, members of their inner circle gathered around the house to comfort the new widower.

Their neighbor and friend, Audrey Stone Dimond, had placed herself in front of the window at the Geisels’ ocean-front property and affixed her gaze into the blurred horizon—perhaps ridden with guilt that their affair, not yet exposed—had contributed to Helen’s untimely demise. Or perhaps she was anticipating the agony that would accompany the accusations of moral corruption that were sure to follow; despite everything, she still loved the man and wanted to be with him.

In less than a year, Dimond divorced her husband, sent her children away to boarding school, and did indeed fulfill her utmost desire—Ted Geisel and Audrey Dimond were married.

The suicide letter that Helen wrote for Ted had been signed off with their secret code. A make-believe law firm named “Grimalkin, Drouberhannus, Knalbner, and Fepp.” If such a playful and rhythmic bouncing of words sounds familiar, it’s most likely childhood nostalgia resurfacing. Helen was the uncredited and largely unknown writer responsible for nurturing the creation of one of the most influential authors and artists of the 20th century.

To the world, he’s an American icon, but to countless children all over the world, he’s better known simply as “Dr. Seuss.”

A published author herself, she was once widely regarded as his “chief editor, chief critic, business manager and wife.” For interviewers who had an exclusive with Dr. Seuss, their go-to question is why a famous (and married) children’s book author doesn’t have any of his own.

“You have ‘em, I’ll amuse ‘em,” he quipped in interviews with The New Yorker and Los Angeles Times—an understandably evasive answer to a perhaps overly personal question.

But behind closed doors, in particular in a conversation he had with his niece, Margaretha “Peggy” Dahmen Owens, he dropped the decades-long façade and revealed, “It was not that we didn’t want to have children. That wasn’t it.” In The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, the entire book was dedicated to a seven-and-a-half year-old named Chrysanthemum-Pearl.

In an interview with Robert Cahn for The Saturday Evening Post, Ted explained he created an imaginary daughter as a comfort to his wife. This came in particularly handy for after-dinner conversations at their house, when the guests commenced their braggart statements pertaining to their offspring or grandchildren. He would proudly declare that Chrysanthemum-Pearl could “whip up the most delicious oyster stew with chocolate frosting and flaming Roman candles!” and “carry one thousand stitches on one needle while making long red underdrawers for her Uncle Terwilliger!”

For years the name of Chrysanthemum-Pearl had appeared on the Geisel Christmas cards, but then so had Norval, Wally, Wickersham, Thnud and a dozen other fictional infant-like characters. In a conversation between close family members, it was revealed that in the fourth year of their marriage, Helen had been hospitalized in New York due to worsening abdominal pain. The doctors couldn’t diagnose the underlying cause and thus made the swift decision to remove her ovaries, rendering her incapable of ever having her own children; she was thirty-three years old.

Peggy Owen’s son—named Ted after her famous uncle—recently shared his mother’s favorite photograph of Helen with me. Her deep chestnut brown hair is delicately curled in bunches, bordering her warm, softly featured canvas. Her pale blue eyes offer an agreeable gaze, flanked by an authentic, radiant, all-teeth-showing smile—the sweetness intensified by the red hue of her lipstick. To say that Helen was like a mother to Peggy is an understatement.

Peggy’s own biological mother had died when she was only seventeen years old, and the Geisels had welcomed her into their home when she first moved to California. Two years before Helen’s death, Dr. Seuss had dedicated the book, I Had Trouble Getting To Solla Sollew, to her with the inscription, “For Margaretha Dahmen Owens, with love and thanks,” as a token of appreciation for her staying with them while his wife was ill. Helen had struggled for more than a decade with partial paralysis fromGuillain-Barre syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder where the immune system attacks your healthy cells, which leads to weakness, numbness and tingling.

Two years before Helen’s death, he wrote Peggy, “. . . Yesterday Helen was pretty depressed, but today she’s got her sense of humor back. Besides two baths, she today started Occupational Therapy . . .  starting with lessons on how to dial telephones, unbutton buttons, brush teeth, comb hair, and a first stab at writing.” He solemnly continued,

“Helen sends her love and wants to thank Al for loaning you to us. And so do I. I don’t know how I would have got thru the past two weeks without you. And I can think of no one I have ever met that I would rather have been with during this period. You really took care of everything (including my spirits) . . . and when you left, you left me better organized than I have been since the Spanish American War. Someday I’ll do something for you.”

Before her health had deteriorated, Helen was a talented writer and businesswoman. She graduated from Wellesley College with honors in 1920 and thrived in an environment where the curriculum was focused on languages, literature, and even economics. After graduation, she enrolled in Oxford University, an institution that awarded women degrees for the first time only four years prior to her arrival. Unbeknownst to either of them, Ted Geisel was to also attend Oxford after he graduated from Dartmouth.

In 1925, a young American girl sitting behind a doodling Ted peered over his shoulder and was surprised to see how little he was paying attention to the professor. After being in several lectures with this student, she concluded that he always just seemed to be immersed in his own little world.

A year earlier, she had arrived at Oxford with her widowed mother. Standing at five foot three inches, Helen Marion Palmer, Ted recalls Helen possessing a “certain grace” that was distinctly unique to the other women at Oxford. One day, as she watched Ted illustrate John Milton’s Paradise Lost, she insisted he was on the wrong career path. “What you really want to do is draw”, she said. Her judgment solidified by glancing at another one of his pages, “That’s a very fine flying cow!” University of Cincinnati graduate, Joseph Sagmaster, was also attending Oxford and had introduced the pair having known the both of them personally.

Years later, Ted Geisel would dedicate the book Yertle the Tertle to his friend; legend goes that this honor was perhaps bestowed upon Sagmaster because he introduced Geisel to Helen back at Oxford. Sagmaster himself said this was, “the happiest inspiration that he had ever had.” Their swift romance had all the trappings of Ted’s impulsive nature, with a sharp dash reminiscent of an old Hollywood film. After racing back to Oxford before curfew, Ted proposed to Helen in a roadside ditch after he had taken too wide of a turn on their two-horsepower motorcycle and had accidentally toppled them over.

“So, we became engaged,” Ted said, but for a time it was their secret. Geisel granted his first Saturday Evening Post interview with Robert Cahn, revealing why he became Dr. Seuss, the simple reason he draws the way he does, and the undeniable effect his wife, Helen, has had on his career. Two years ago, a republished article from 1957 had appeared, in which Cahn wrote how the famous author “depends at all times on the level headedness of his wife, Helen” to pull him out of predicaments where his impulse has inevitably led him. Separately, Ted’s sister Marnie had always talked of how Helen had been “a great help to him in his work”.

Around the beginning of 1957, Ted had trouble finishing his Christmas-themed book.

The whimsical tale had featured the “bad old Grinch” who “would try to stop Christmas from coming to Who-Ville.”

In a bid to protest commercialization, the Grinch plotted the sinister mission in destroying any gifts, ornaments, trees and fixings that the Whos had planned for their beloved annual holiday. Then arrived the stumbling block. He wondered how he could wrap it up without injecting a pathetically sentimental ending.

“Helen, Helen, where are you?” shouted Ted from his secluded den into the living room. He planted a sketch and a verse into her lap and continued, “How do you like this?” She shook her head and he was distraught. “This isn’t it. And besides, you’ve got the Papa Who too big. Now he looks like a bug.” Ted rebutted, “Well, they are bugs” to which Helen added, “They are not bugs. Those Whos are just small people.”

Later that fall, How The Grinch Stole Christmas was published.

Seventeen years earlier, he had struggled with another book, Horton Hatches The Egg. At the time, the Geisels were living on Park Avenue in New York City. As Germany began to occupy France, progress on the book was immediately put on hold. Instead, Ted began sketching brutal images of Adolf Hitler, and the benign elephant affectionately named Horton, was momentarily consigned to oblivion. The sudden priority shift didn’t seem to bother Ted, who was quoted as saying, “I didn’t know how to end the book anyway, so I began drawing savage cartoons.” He continued, “I had no great causes or interest in social issues until Hitler.” The conception had originated from an earlier sketch that Geisel had drawn which superimposed an elephant over the branches of a small tree.

He then spent countless days trying to figure out how Horton could have entangled himself in such a way. At that point, Helen swooped in with her creative wit and began brainstorming ways to bring Horton down. In Ted’s words, her pivotal contribution was in the climactic lines that follow the hatching of the egg on which Horton sat on for 51 weeks. Then, suddenly, in an epiphany-like state, Helen and Ted cheered, and cheered and cheered some more.

“My goodness! My gracious!” they shouted. “MY WORD! It’s something brand new! IT’S AN ELEPHANT-BIRD!” Ted claimed his wife is a fiend for a story line and that every idea and every line is worked and reworked until the two of them are happy, coiling into a tight bind their decades-long literary partnership and elevating her contribution as being paramount to everything he’d ever published at that point (14 books in total, including, And To Think I Saw It On Mulberry Street, The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, Thidwick The Big Hearted Moose, If I Ran The Zoo, Horton Hears A Who! and The Cat In The Hat). In 1959, Helen once told interviewer Peter Bunzel that “Ted doesn’t sit down and write for children. He writes to amuse himself. Luckily what amuses him also amuses them.”

Her husband agreed and also remarked at his own disbelief surrounding the conclusion, especially considering the absence of forethought during the writing process. “Ninety percent of failures in children’s books come from writing to preconceptions of what kids like. When I’m writing a book, I do it to please Helen and me. But when it finally comes out, I take one look and think, ‘Oh, my God!’” As with most successful writers, Ted was eventually approached by Hollywood. For first-time screenwriters Helen and Ted Geisel, their synergistic collaboration had materialized into an original screenplay titled Design for Death, which chronicled the events leading to Pearl Harbor. It went on to win the 1947 Academy Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary.

However, despite their well-deserved high-caliber Hollywood accolade that many spend years trying to obtain, they were driven away by “disillusionment with the film industry” and instead proceeded to make The Tower in La Jolla their permanent home.

The Cat In The Hat was published through the company they co-founded with Phyllis Cerf at Beginner Books (an imprint of Random House). Helen had, perhaps in an act of defiant independence, used her maiden name to publish numerous titles under the Beginner Book banner over the years, including A Fish Out Of Water, I Was Kissed By A Seal At the Zoo, Do You Know What I’m Going To Do Next Saturday? and Why I Built The Boogle House.

During her tenure, she had displayed her natural business acumen by heading up as Vice President at Beginner Books until her sudden death in 1967. Harry Crosby is a 96-year-old award-winning author, historian, and La Jolla resident whose parents knew the Geisels. In addition, he had spent some time on the board of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego with Helen. “She was a wonderful woman,” he told me. “I mean, really, she was very intelligent, and she was very generous and polite.”

In the background of the phone call, Harry’s wife can be heard nudging him to add that there has been, “nothing written to show how important she had been in getting her husband into all of those positions and getting his stuff accepted.” He continued, “he became as well-known as he was, certainly in large part, because of her assistance.”

“Dear Ted, What has happened to us? I don’t know. I feel myself in a spiral, going down down down, into a black hole from which there is no escape, no brightness. And loud in my ears from every side I hear, ‘failure, failure, failure…’ I love you so much…I am too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are, that I cannot conceive of life without you . . . My going will leave quite a rumor, but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. Your reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed . . . Sometimes, think of the fun we had all thru the years . . . “

Her unconditional love and devotion to her husband was palpably apparent in her written suggestion to falsify reasons behind her death. Her concern—even at the edge of suicide—was to protect his wholesome image to friends, family, and most importantly, the millions of readers all over the world who have come to know and love the paradoxically elusive and magnetic Dr. Seuss. Most newspaper clippings from the date of her death chose to omit the details surrounding her suicide—The New York Times, from an article dating October 24, 1967, noted that “she died in her sleep.” It wasn’t until years later that the truth surrounding the circumstances surfaced and family members—including Ted’s former mistress and second wife Audrey Geisel—began to confirm it. Carol Olten, historian at the La Jolla Historic Society remarked to me, “suicide was a taboo subject back then.”

Nowadays, when accomplished authors, fashion designers, artists or other public figures exit the world through an act of suicide, their namesake artifacts inherently carry a heavier weight of fleeting significance, arguably even more so than when they had been alive. The day after Alexander McQueen’s death, retailers reported a 1400% increase in sales. Similarly, sales had increased by 600% the day after Kate Spade’s suicide was announced. In an over-simplified and economic sense, it’s a practical display of supply and demand. Years after Sylvia Plath’s death, scholars are still dedicating themselves to her work in order to dissect and apply speculative theories on the beloved author. In 2013, The Smithsonian reported, “…cultural fascination with her continues to burn brightly despite—or perhaps because of—her premature departure from this world.”

Perhaps the posthumous and rapid consumption of these works represents a greater human condition: that we, despite modern society favoring atomization and individualization, have an embedded desire to commemorate a person or a group of people who symbolizes a positive impact on the wider community, expressed through groundbreaking contributions in the arts, humanities or sciences. Conversely, it can be safely said that most, if not all humans, have an intent to leave a similar mark when our inevitable mortality arrives.

When I asked a long-time La Jolla resident and bookstore owner, Laurence McGilvery, on whether or not he had any memories of Helen Palmer Geisel, he told me over the phone that she had the most “seductive gaze he’d ever encountered.” The comment caught me off guard and I was confused—the description he gave was inconsistent to other accounts I had stumbled upon at that point. I asked him if I could continue this conversation over e-mail considering my Australian accent can be a little incoherent at times. Over e-mail, he quickly corrected himself, “The first Mrs. Geisel! I was remembering the second. It was Audrey who looked up at me on our first and only meeting with the most seductive gaze I ever had encountered.”

He doesn’t recall ever meeting Helen, although her husband, Ted, frequently visited his bookstore. Thirty years after Helen’s death, Audrey Geisel (who has recently passed away) had given University of San Diego, California a multi-million-dollar donation that assisted in the library’s extensive renovations. As a token of their appreciation, the library—easily one of the most recognizable buildings in San Diego thanks in part to its unique Brutalist architectural design—was renamed after her and her second husband, Ted Geisel. With an additional lump sum gift in 2015 came a new café inside the library named, “Audrey’s.”

Five miles south, at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, lies a small library embedded in its white-walled corridors and in plain black text it reads, “Helen Palmer Geisel Library.” Much like her own demeanor, the space is unassuming, subdued and notably humble. A lack of online search results questioned its existence, but the Communications and Marketing Manager at the Museum had affirmed that there was indeed a small library dedicated to her. No other information could be found pertaining to the library’s namesake. Helen’s work and her contributions to the creation of Dr. Seuss couldn’t be efficiently exploited through marketing campaigns after her death.

Not only was Helen’s death swept under the rug, but that feat could have only been made possible if she publicly claimed title to his revolutionary success, which she never did. Years earlier, with a keen observation over a young Ted Geisel, she nurtured and fostered a man with an undeniable talent that was yet unbeknownst to anyone else but her.

When evidence of his potential came to light to the young married couple, she had effectively made her life legacy about choice, sacrifice and unconditional love. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the choice to stand by her husband’s career and fade into the background was not an easy one.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises has been successfully running their multi-million-dollar global portfolio almost 30 years after the beloved author’s death, thanks in part to his second wife, Audrey Geisel, who passed away this year. She was known for her stringent control of licensing partnerships and fierce protection over their intellectual property. Her unrelenting clutch of some of Ted and Helen’s work—coupled with expertly tailored marketing and public relation campaigns—assisted in a generally accepted wholesome and sunny legacy of the famous children’s book author. It’s only in recent years that his sordid minstrel past has unsurfaced and Geisel’s work has come under fire for racist cartoon depictions.

But even with his arguably sordid personal life and problematic societal stances, his legend and life remain largely unsullied and the Dr. Seuss juggernaut rolls along, celebrated year after year, bookshelf by bookshelf. And that’s in no small part to the sacrifices of Helen Palmer Geisel; her contributions have affected the lives of millions of people all over the world, and have sprawled across three generations.

Their niece, Peggy, called her death “her last and greatest gift to him.”

In April 2016, Beyoncé released her sixth solo album and I was forever changed. The album was Lemonade, and while its true purpose was to showcase the Black woman’s experience (and to call out her unfaithful husband and his lover, who will forever be known as “Becky with the good hair”), it also served another purpose: it allowed Black women to stand up and state that they were angry. It allowed Black women to claim a feeling that they may have been afraid to claim for years because they didn’t want to seem unbearable or threatening. Watching Beyoncé stroll down that street, smashing car windows at random, with a big smile on her face, was therapeutic. It was refreshing.  

For a race of women that have had our emotions stereotyped and thrown back in our faces for centuries, it was necessary. I feel as though an apology is needed. Why, you ask? Because for every offhanded comment calling a frustrated Black woman “an Angry Black Woman,” there are white women dancing in cowboy boots, singing along to Carrie Underwood as she depicts keying “the side/Of his pretty little souped-up four-wheel drive.” If we compare the two videos, both Beyoncé and Carrie Underwood are livid that their respective partners are cheating on them. Both resort to violence, although Carrie’s character’s violence is a lot more personal. She’s destroying the actual car of her boyfriend, as opposed to Beyoncé’s character. I use the term “character” here because that’s also important. While we may not know any of these women personally, nothing in the tabloids have shown us that either one of these women would willingly destroy your items. In fact, Beyoncé might prefer you to place “everything you own in a box to the left.”

While Beyoncé and Carrie are feeling the same emotion, and demonstrating their anger in the same unhealthy manner, only Beyoncé receives the label of “Angry Black Woman.” Only her anger will be addressed. I would ask why that is, but a smart aleck would reply that it’s all in the name: Beyoncé is Black, and Carrie Underwood is…well, not, and “Angry White Woman” isn’t a universal trope. The idea that a Black woman sharing her frustrations deserves a term, but not a white woman doing the same thing, is racist.

Think about how Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is treated when she expresses her disgust with Trump, and other members of the Republican party. Her name is dragged through the mud. Trump famously called Waters “an extraordinarily low IQ person” after she publicly called for people to confront White House officials on their immigration policies whenever possible. However, Bill O’Reilly said it best, reducing his feelings towards Waters’ comments about our president back to her appearance: “I didn’t hear a word she said. I was looking at the James Brown wig.” I would like to apologize to Rep. Waters and to every single Black woman who has had their arguments reduced to a punchline about their appearance. It’s a cop out. It’s something that we have all faced. Whenever a man attempts to call me out of my name, I remind him that I was “a fat bitch” before he showed his ass. He’ll continue being an ass and I’ll continue being right.

The idea that a Black woman sharing her frustrations deserves a term, but not a white woman doing the same thing, is racist.
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Growing up, whenever I expressed my unhappiness with an issue, I would get called an “Angry Black Woman,” even if angry wasn’t the word that I would use to describe my emotions at that time. I tend to be vocal about my feelings, and sometimes, people—usually White people, but not always—believe that I’m acting aggressive towards them, even if my anger isn’t geared towards them.

When Serena Williams was accused of coaching at the U.S. Open, she argued back, calling the umpire, Carlos Ramos, a “thief” and a “liar.” She was tired. She worked hard, and to accuse her of cheating was too much for her. She has kept her mouth closed for years, but no longer. She was ready to speak, and she was angry. But Williams lost, and commenters attacked. A cartoon by Mark Knight that depicted Williams stomping on her racket was called racist, because it depicted Williams as a brute; her opponent, Naomi Osaka, a Haitian-Japanese woman, was depicted as blonde and white. The whole story was a mess, but Williams has been targeted by the media for years. Everything from the fact that she married a white man to her strong, built body have been insulted all over the Internet.  

A Black woman is never supposed to show her anger. In fact, showing her anger outright can lead to her being “objectified and dehumanized” in comparison with her white female counterparts. A Black woman needs to make sure she isn’t seen as a threat. She needs to be “strong” and “independent” but never angry unless it suits a narrative that is being used against her. I’ve had men tell me that they love it when I’m angry, because it makes me seem so sexy. They view my anger as passion because it excites them in ways that they haven’t been excited before. However, that narrative quickly changes when I’m angry at them or angry about something that has affected me in a negative way. Then their tones change, and suddenly I’m acting defensive or I’m being too aggressive. I have been called threatening by a partner before, all because he didn’t like my tone of voice. He had dated Black women before, but he hadn’t dated a Black woman that was so quick to call him out on his shit. Men view my anger as sexy until it doesn’t benefit them in the bedroom.

I’ve had men tell me that they love it when I’m angry, because it makes me seem so sexy.
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I truly believe that if you ever used the term “Angry Black Woman” to describe a Black woman who wasn’t looking to take your shit anymore, you need to sit back and apologize. Maybe you don’t know how to. It’s not the easiest thing to do because it requires you to eliminate racist and sexist bias, but it can be done. I want you to go back and think about how much garbage this woman has had to put up with before she decided that this was enough. Black women must calculate the risk that will surely present itself when she decides that she is ready to call someone out. In an opinion piece for the Guardian, Ruby Hamad discusses the “strategic tears” that white women use against women of color to make themselves play the part of the damsel in distress. It is seen as a power move, and coupled with men dismissing Black women’s feelings due to their skin color and the issue of likability, it doesn’t make Black women eager to raise their hands and voice their discomfort with an issue. It isn’t as easy as one would think.

Give this woman the chance to express herself and listen to her. If you listen closely, most of the time, she isn’t attacking you personally; she’s most likely asking you to treat her with empathy. Stop touching her hair. She is not a Chia Pet. If she isn’t being physically or emotionally abusive, let her be angry. Let her scream from the mountain tops if that’s what she needs to do. Let her take a walk around the block or take a long car ride if that’s what she needs. Confront your own issues with her before you attempt to confront her personality. Now, take a deep breath and let the fear wash over you. You owe her an apology. She deserves it.

The free public library is a product of the Industrial Revolution. Prior to the mid-1800s, only the rich read. That all changed, however, when Melvil Dewey took over as State Librarian of New York in 1888. The concept of a free public library had been gaining ground sluggishly since the mid-1800s but, few libraries were truly free for all, with most requiring annual subscription fees. Dewey goosed the growth of free public libraries with funding, infrastructure, and regulation.

He invented professional organizations and opened librarian schools, bullied committees, and made rousing speeches. He was a zealous librarian celebrity, famously arrogant, and completely committed to the idea that the public could only improve themselves if they understood and embodied Christian morality. Dewey could provide this education with books, which would “elevate” them through a system of ideologically coordinated public libraries. When shown the foundation of Western literature—ran the logic—readers would understand how society functioned as well as their place within it. The result would be literate but passive components of a capitalist machine. Public libraries would be its oil.

Those same public libraries began to move away from Dewey’s vision almost immediately upon his ouster from the profession for sexual harassment, anti-Semitism, and career-spanning fiscal hijinks around 1905.

Almost as soon as Dewey opened a library school, librarians began to migrate away from his conservative ideals. Library doctrine of the 21st century emphasizes empowerment rather than passivity; the library should serve as a bastion of free thought and durable democracy. The American Library Association—Dewey’s own organization—vigorously supports seditious and controversial literature, and the Office of Intellectual Freedom thrives with its blessing. Librarians of the 21st century are more likely to be secret radicals than soldiers of conformity. They have appeared at Occupy Wall Street, stood up against White supremacists, advocated for Black lives, and gone to bat for LGBTQ book displays.

Nevertheless, the bones of public library work are Dewey’s, and if the profession no longer exists purely in his image, then it still bears a striking familial resemblance. As libraries move forward into an increasingly diverse future—one where the yawning gap between rich and poor is constantly exacerbated by technology and lack of education—it finds itself in the rare position of equalizer, leveler, and sharer of privilege. Public libraries could be powerful mitigators of a class crisis in an increasingly class-distressed nation, but first, they must grow past Dewey’s architecture and define themselves anew.

Those at the very bottom of the class pile make up the public library’s most loyal and most dependent users. For them, book purchase and charitable giving are simply out of the question, never mind a run for the office of Trustee. Their voices will not be heard in public discussion of the library; if money talks, they are nearly mute. However, they make their wishes known through their avid use of the Internet, driving libraries through classic consumer modeling. Low-income library patrons don’t just enjoy public-access computers, they rely on them.

Craigslist is now a critical housing service; many high schools distribute homework over Google services; being unable to use the Internet at will is debilitating. Even reliance on mobile technology–which is how most low-income people access the Internet—can’t make up what users lose when printers, keyboards, and full-size screens are out of the picture.

Public libraries are keenly aware of their role in bridging the digital divide, which is the little-discussed but gaping success gulf between people who can afford technology and people who can’t. But even as libraries work to fix a digital revolution that is crushing vulnerable people, cognizant of the fact that few other organizations are filling this niche, they struggle to keep the library “nice” for donors, who may jump ship if the library seems to be “deteriorating,” and elected trustees, who may cease to support library outreach to marginalized communities if they feel that a quaint, attractive book warehouse is becoming un-vote-for-able.

Vulnerable voices will not be heard in public discussion of the library; if money talks, they are nearly mute.
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Compounding this problem is the fact that many librarians in administration can’t articulate, and sometimes don’t realize, the importance of class awareness in library work. This is because most librarians are white, middle-class people who are able to afford graduate degrees. Those who can’t afford the degree may still work in libraries as technicians or clerks, but administration is generally out of reach for them. Opportunities to steer the library’s direction are rare for non-degree holders who might otherwise give the profession a more diverse perspective. Again, we have Dewey to thank.

Dewey believed, at least in word, that idealists shouldn’t worry about money when devoting their careers to the public good. His own initial willingness to take less money for library work compounded his later willingness to pay other people less money for library work, leading to his decision to hire women into the profession. After all, a woman could be paid far less than an equally qualified man, and she posed no threat to established male leadership. How ironic that Dewey’s conserve blinders led to the eventual women’s takeover of libraries, to the extent that 79% of librarians were women in 2017. How tragic that this very same takeover still resulted in an internal pay gap.

In 2016, the average degreed librarian was paid a little north of $27 per hour. The degree that made this wage attainable costs at least $5,500 from Texas A&M Online and upward of $50,000 from Syracuse University; the Master’s requirement to become a librarian functions as a gatekeeper, and many people—especially those from disenfranchised backgrounds— simply can’t afford the toll. Alternatively, if a graduate degree becomes possible for a student who otherwise couldn’t afford it, why not make the most of the opportunity and become a lawyer—who average a yearly income of $118,160—instead of idealistically gunning for a middle-class job?

Anyway, most library jobs are now part-time positions, even those requiring degrees, and breaking into a benefited full-time library job can take years. In effect, the graduate degree—which Dewey also introduced as a requirement for professional librarian status—filters talent and diversity out of the profession. The result is a cohort of well-meaning librarians who may not have vital enough connections to the marginalized sectors of their communities to make the best possible impact there.

The digital divide is the little-discussed but gaping success gulf between people who can afford technology and people who can’t.
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Though modern librarians celebrate the role of non-degreed colleagues—also known as “para-professionals” or “para-librarians”—they also find themselves in a bind when confronted with the fact that the degree is a barrier for some of their colleagues. If the Master’s requirement goes, then librarian salaries may become devalued and current degree-holders, already struggling to find full-time work, will suffer financially. Lower salaries could also undermine the profession and fail to draw talent into public libraries. However, it is undeniable that some talent is already failing to be drawn into areas where it could be best utilized. Para-professionals and librarians work on different sides of an invisible fence, often doing similar work but having vastly differing levels of impact on their institution’s direction. In many libraries, they even belong to different unions.

But to all appearances, Dewey never intended the library profession to be accessible to people of non-middle class status. He and his fellow morally—and economically—elevated white Christian librarians were showing up to help everybody else become them, a mission of cultural homogenization. They had no stake in perspectives rooted in the communities they were trying to serve. Their perspective was the only one that mattered, and it was that everybody should read Socrates and the Bible.

During Dewey’s tenure as State Librarian of New York, library grants were determined by the number of “quality” titles that a collection contained. The work of William Shakespeare was of appropriate quality. Popular rags-to-riches fantasies and romances were not. While Dewey himself hailed from a working class background, he held himself separate from and above most of the people he set out to save. His substantial charisma amplified the force of his vision—flawed as it was—and whether because of contemporary ignorance, conscious preference, or infectious enthusiasm, nobody called him out on the problems with his model.

The first generation of truly professional, organized librarians were a pack of Dewey converts, peppered with the occasional skeptic who knew better than to speak up.

If Dewey could have imagined the diversity of modern library clientele and their respective needs, would he have considered them important? Not likely. The critical literature of homeless LGBTQ minors, Muslim immigrant mothers, and college-bound men of color isn’t conducive to the creation of obedient class-dwellers who sit contented in their particular pigeonhole.

Dewey’s concept of “quality” literature would never have extended to the likes of James Baldwin or Camille Paglia. Today, librarians and the ALA stand robustly in favor of diverse literature, but they are hampered by the homogeneity that Dewey’s system still fosters. Class fractures that run along racial and ethnic lines quickly become library problems; in an increasingly bilingual America, it is still the rare librarian who can explain how to use a printer in Spanish.

This issue isn’t limited to libraries, of course. Many middle-class professions, including social work and teaching, are overwhelmingly white and well-meaning for similar reasons.

The obligatory graduate degree filters talent and diversity out of the profession.
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Like teachers, librarians tend to put in a lot of off-hours work, often reading for several book clubs and professional background without even considering reimbursement. The relative value placed on books holds strong thanks to state and regional offices that depend on book circulation statistics as metrics of a library’s performance. But book culture, too, is privileged territory. A book takes time, and time is money.  

The concept that all people should or even could set aside hours in every day to “improve themselves” through reading has simply fallen through in an age when poverty is expensive and maintaining middle class status requires workaholic tendencies. Reading is a luxury activity; the ability of libraries to develop will depend on getting books into the hands of a broader audience.

Here, at least, the library is starting to change the game. E-book lending models are a roaring success fewer than ten years after their debut. They’re remotely available, mobile-friendly, and fee-less incarnations; they fit into pockets, budgets, and schedules alike—literature is available on the bus for free. The most significant threat to this new innovation is a chaotic publishing model that has shown itself to be deeply uncomfortable with the idea of digital loaning, however. Going forward, one of the library’s most critical missions may be to stand between their patrons’ reading rights and the companies that want those rights to cost money.

Librarians have worked hard to flip the script of the judgmental, classics-heavy library. Meanwhile, in the face of constant budget squeezes and the departure of full-time jobs, libraries themselves are reorganizing. Many are trying to combine innovation with healthy caution for ideas that could prove bad. As long as the moment is right for skepticism and self-awareness of present shifts, then perhaps it’s also time for a look at the roots of the public library, especially at Dewey and the men who sought to use libraries to impose class obedience through reading. Attempts are being made. Loanable collections of tools empower apartment-dwellers. Community meeting room space and summer lunch programs have become library projects. The traditional book bastion is growing into something more.

Book culture is privileged territory. A book takes time, and time is money.
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But if libraries are truly to transform, it’s time to do some much-needed navel-gazing. Only diversity will empower them to serve a diverse nation. If the solution must include the graduate degree, then it could manifest as an extensive, aggressive program of scholarships and recruitment. Without, it may involve union-like behavior on the part of the ALA, or even partnership with existing bargaining units. This may be prudent anyway. There are plenty of reasons for libraries to employ knowledgeable professionals full-time. The fact that these reasons may not always involve books only speaks to the fact that knowledge is versatile. Unions may be crucial to ensuring that librarians of all degree statuses do not fall between the cracks of the digital age themselves.

Dewey was short-sighted: providing information for free is always radical. Despite their problematic mold, libraries have reshaped themselves into unifiers, and deeply important Amazon alternatives. There has never been a better time for a free public information alternative to corporate greed. There has never been a better time for that alternative to represent a force for anti-division and equality.

“That respectful bow that #NaomiOsaka gave to Serena Williams at the presentation ceremony…that’s Japanese culture for you. An athlete and a lady. Maybe it’s time for Serena Williams to take some lessons.”

I blinked in disbelief at this Facebook post from a woman friend in India, but it found an echo across the world, especially here in America, in the wake of Osaka’s win and  Williams’ loss at the U.S. Open. We decided we could tell two of the world’s greatest athletes about the conduct of cultures, the comportment of ladies, and who exactly needs to school whom.

The controversy raging around Williams and Osaka has made many casual observers  think they are experts on tennis, umpiring, and sportsmanship. But we’ve also been weighing in on something we already have down pat—prescribing women’s behavior.

What is more disconcerting this time around is that we’re pitting two women of color against one other. Tennis is a spectator sport, but here the gaze is heightened; what transpired last Saturday was ultimately not just a game, but a spectacle of two brown, female bodies vying for glory in a sport that has been historically white and male. As if on cue, white male Australian cartoonist Mark Knight delivered an image of Serena Williams as a gigantic, fuming baby with an unruly Afro, stamping on her racket while the umpire, Carlos Ramos, asks Naomi Osaka, “ Can you just let her win?” Look closer and you will see that Osaka is drawn as a tall, skinny blonde, looking up at Ramos with both poise and a childlike innocence. Composure, here, is not for brown skin.

It’s easy to think that, because Osaka is a woman of color, racism and sexism are not at play. But when my friend and others refer to Japanese culture, what culture are they comparing it to? What ‘culture’ does that Facebook post conjure up for Serena Williams, one might wonder. What we leave unsaid speaks volumes about our beliefs. Naomi Osaka has a Japanese mother and a black, Haitian father. She holds dual citizenship in America and Japan and is a New Yorker.

Why don’t we credit her Haitian background as making her gracious?

Osaka’s victory has pushed Japan to both redefine and articulate what it means to be Japanese.  “Her soul is Japanese,” a Japanese spectator told The New York Times. “She doesn’t express her joy so excessively. Her playing style is aggressive, but she is always humble in interviews. I like that.”

This isn’t the first time that a Japanese woman has been admired for being “demure,” no matter that here she is being crowned a world class athlete and would be forgiven for whooping it up a bit. As is so often the case with controversies around race and gender, what happened with Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka tells us more about who we are, not them. This year’s U.S. Open tells us who we want our women and people of color to be.

Leslie Jamison—author of The Empathy Exams—wrote in the New York Times earlier this year: “The sad woman often looks beautiful in her suffering: ennobled, transfigured, elegant. Angry women are messier. Their pain threatens to cause more collateral damage.”

Jamison is white. Her essay went viral, tapping into a growing national female rage—albeit a non-violent one—that’s been swelling since the Trump election and the staggering revelations of #MeToo movement. We can barely come to terms with white women’s anger, so how do we begin to find empathy, let alone support the rageful tears of a black female athlete?

What do we discern from Maria Sharapova’s words in her autobiography for Serena Williams’ behavior in the locker room after she was defeated by Sharapova in the 2004 Wimbledon final? Williams had let go, “guttural sobs, the sort that makes you heave for air, the sort that scares you…I got out as quickly as I could, but she knew I was there,” Sharapova wrote in Unstoppable: My Life So Far. Elsewhere in the book and in interviews, Sharapova has spoken of Williams’ “thick arms and legs,” and refereed to herself as “the skinny kid who beat her.”

Sharapova often spoke of being intimidated by Williams on the court. Fair enough. But the white imagination has an ongoing history of looking at even the most vulnerable moment of a black body (Serena was sobbing in the locker room!) and still feeling like a victim. The #sayhername campaign led by scholar-activist Kimberle Crenshaw is painfully poignant in describing phenomenon; the black female body has been struck dead by the white man’s fear—again and again and again—yet somehow it’s the white man who lives in terror.

Whether or not Sharapova taps into the white imagination in thinking of Williams’ sobs as animalistic, she certainly taps into the collective imaginations of gender and beauty— “thickness” as masculine or unattractive, skinny as feminine, desirable.

When we shrink away from a black woman’s guttural sobs, how could we be expected to lean into her rage?  We can’t, or at least we won’t. Let us not forget that Sandra Bland was pulled out of her car, tased, and arrested to later die in jail because she “mouthed off” to a man in power.

You shouldn’t trust me to explain tennis. I have never played a sport in my life. But I am a brown-skinned woman who has faced the consequences of mouthing off, with my family in India and at my job in the United States. I heard something in the voice and saw something in the body of Texas state trooper Brian Encinia when he dragged Bland out of her car ( “You seem irritated,” he said, clearly warning her that she had no right to be irritated, leave alone angry).

I heard the same coiled anger from the umpire Carlos Ramos on Saturday. Countless women and even more women of color know this man’s voice and feel his body language in our bones: smile, submit, be grateful to be here.

Male tennis players like John McEnroe (the prince of rage on the court),  Blake and Andy Roddick have spoken in support of Williams’ claims of sexism ,and said that they have said and done worse and gotten away with it. Yet, greater in number are those who will protest that all we are demanding from Williams is “sportsmanship,” and that the queen has fallen from grace for her own “childish” and “bratty” (the gentlest terms borrowed from the best of Twitter) behavior. I ask them to consider that racism and sexism do not show up in a vacuum without a complicated and painful history.

The sight of Williams weeping and pleading with a white female and white male referee (“This has happened to me too many times here!”) raises the specter of too many racist images to even count. Williams was crying out against a cumulative history of punitive consequences; we should hear in her cries the silenced voices of history.

For instance, earlier this year, Inside Tennis reporter Bill Simmons asked Williams if she was “intimidated” by Sharapova’s “model good looks.” He said he had waited 14 years to ask her this question, prompted by observations of the two women’s looks made by none other than Donald Trump in 2004 after Sharapova defeated Williams at Wimbledon.

A white man egged on by another white man to ask a black women—one the best athletes on the entire planet—to discuss how her face and body compares to that of a thin white woman. It’s racist, grotesque, predictable. And it adds up. That Serena Williams shows up on the court a whole and graceful athlete after a series of such abuses should leave us in awe. But, ah, Williams was grossly wrong to point to sexism last Saturday.

The New York Times brought in tennis great Martina Navratilova to get us to calm down and examine Williams’ behavior. “What Serena Got Wrong,” said the headline. And the subhead—Just because the guys might be able to get away with it doesn’t mean it’s acceptable.

What Ms. Navratilova—and others who come in with such simplistic rhetoric—should also know is this: as tennis great Billie Jean King pointed out on Twitter and later in the Washington Post, just because penalties are also handed out to male players doesn’t mean they aren’t handed out to women more often. Further, men who misbehave are not just allowed to, but rewarded for it, sometimes being given endearing titles: Andre Agassi was called “l’enfant terrible” of tennis. No such cute French terms bubble up for Ms. Williams.

Williams and Osaka dared to play. But we don’t get to sit back and enjoy that; there is no naked glee for the marginalized. We were given the spectacle of our women in tears. Like millions of women succeeding at the workplace and apologizing for it, Osaka apologized to the crowds for defeating Williams. And Williams did what many women do at the workplace. She recovered from her own disappointment and took care of her young female colleague. Williams asked the crowd to stop the booing; she asked the stadium to celebrate Osaka. She embraced her and looked genuinely happy for her victorious opponent.

But the spectacle demands that we see a black body in rage, not in repose, and a docile, demure woman set against her to make her rage all the more appalling. It doesn’t matter if that’s not who these women are. These are the roles we want them to play.

Writer Damon Young calls this the weight that black Americans carry, which robs them of their big moments. The pictures of both Williams and Osaka in tears reminded me of another moment in which black winners were denied the pure, dazzling moment of celebration in the spotlights, sashaying to center stage, awash in applause and uproarious cheers, the way white victories often are. I thought of the moment at the Oscars two years ago, when Moonlight won for Best Picture and some confusion over cards handed the spotlight for a moment to La La Land. By the time the black stars and filmmakers of Moonlight arrived on stage, the story had shifted, the lustre dulled. Sure, Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway made a mistake. It could have happened to anyone.

But you see, it happens to some people more often than to others. Some of them stay gracious. Some don’t—they fall from grace.

Something is wrong at school.

It’s Tuesday morning, and you’re supposed to be in the middle of art class. Ginger, the art teacher and your close friend’s Claire’s mom, often runs late, but never like this. You’re still adjusting to fourth grade, but you’re looking forward to class with Ginger, who knows what she’s doing and disregards rules.

Claire is at school, so Ginger can’t be absent because her daughter is sick. In the words of Madeline’s Miss Clavel, something is not right.

The following series of events seems simultaneous. Ginger walks into the small room where your Montessori school’s Upper Elementary class keeps its math supplies and language material. The main teachers, Ms. Tethel and Mr. Josh, tell the entire class to sit in a circle on the floor. Someone pushes a TV on wheels inside.

You learn new words that day: The first is hijack.

Somebody hijacked two planes and crashed them into a tall building in New York City — another plane is aiming for the Pentagon, which until this day you only know as a shape.

The second is terrorist — the people who did this are terrorists.

Why will be impossible to grasp, but right now you’re concerned with the what. You don’t know much about war or attacks — years ago, when your dad tells you about Iraq, the enemy in a war, you picture lines of people shooting muskets, alternating like some twisted version of Red Rover. At Montessori school, you’ve only learned peace.

You aren’t sad yet, because you still don’t understand. What if someone calls from the airplane toilet, Akangbe, a sixth grader, jokes to sound clever in a situation the group doesn’t understand. You don’t say anything, but you know people can’t use electronics on a landing plane from all the times an attendant has told you to shut off your GameBoy. And crashing is like landing, right?

When your mom picks you and your sister up from school that day, which rarely happens, she says that Jodi, her boyfriend, and the soccer team are coming over. They need somewhere to react.

A bunch of blonde girls, teenagers, cry in your family room. They need something to eat, and you need a minute away from them. You walk to the snack drawer — next to the freezer, bottom drawer. There’s a bag of tortilla chips that’s stale, but they don’t seem to care.

You never paid much attention to Afghanistan before, but now you feel pressed, awkward. Afghanistan is right next to Iran. Does that make you complicit? There is going to be a war and people are sending anthrax around in envelopes. Even opening the mail can kill somebody now. You write “no” next to Taliban, terrorism, and war in your diary. If that’s in there with your most personal thoughts, people won’t think you’re lying, right? Don’t people know you want the world to be better?

Things change at school. It reminds you of the divide you felt last year during the election, one of the first times you realized people don’t get along. Is your dad going to fight in World War III? you wonder. Then you remind yourself that he is almost 40, safe because he’s too old. You draw words — elementary protest signs — opposing the war. Years later you learn about radicals and you want to become one. Maybe even for Iran.

High school is emotionally excruciating, but at least nobody seems to care about you being Iranian. It takes you years for you to realize it’s because you look just like your white American mother. You lucked out: People like your grandmother’s rice and call you exotic. Your friends never assume you’re Muslim (of course, as an arty kid, most of your friends are freshly declared atheists), or associate you with the threat of nuclear weapons. Instead, they thank you for bringing them headscarves back from Iran.

Barack Obama takes office, and over time the battles overseas and in your mind subside. Even in the summer of 2009, when the election is rigged and a quasi-rebellion hangs in the air, people side with the Iranian populace, especially after seeing a militiaman shoot Neda Agha-Soltan in the heart, the one death that overshadows Michael Jackson’s. Your worries subside a little, because it looks like Americans finally understand that Iranians are people.

You move to another city for college, opening up a new world — a world that, to your surprise, teaches Farsi. Obviously, you take it — you’re obligated. Maybe within a few years you’ll be less embarrassed, able to communicate with great aunts and uncles who never fully mastered English.

Introductory Persian is challenging, but manageable. There’s a good mix of students in your class: international affairs and political science majors, a handful of Iranians and halfies. You take every available class for your degree, and as you advance you feel further behind. Class sizes dwindle and your handicap sticks out more: your accent, your cruddy compositions you can barely read, your inability to roll your tongue or sound out unfamiliar letters.

At home, you felt Iranian. Your grandparents practically lived with you — for a few years they did live with you. Your father, the patriarch, decides everything. You eat rice and eggplant stew for dinner at least once a week. You dance with your hands at loud parties. But here, among real Iranians, you are different. You don’t look like them or speak like them. You realize you are not very Iranian at all. Something is wrong, and it’s you.

You are 24 on Election Day when you pull into a church parking lot to cast your vote for the country’s first potential female president. Today feels symbolic. The system of buildings connected to the church used to be your school. The swings and slide are still there in the front playground where the older kids spent recess. You smile at the porch outside the room where you learned about September 11th, but right now your mind’s set on the future.

You’re on a friend’s couch, eyes rapt on the television, cracking open a beer because you’re starting to worry. You tell yourself it can’t happen, but at the same time you’re not surprised about certain states. You know a state that won’t let people use the bathroom is going to vote red. Perhaps you see more evil in the world — by this point, you know damn well that not everyone is considered a person. And you’re right. Another red state, another beer. You seek comfort in addition, calculating the electoral vote. You try to think about the FiveThirtyEight projection that turns out to be horribly wrong. Michigan’s results come in and you know numbers can’t help anymore.

You only worry about yourself a little, because in the second debate he approached the “Iran issue” like a business deal. Iran has oil, saffron, caviar. Messing with Iran when all you care about is money is moronic. You’re fretting over everyone else you care about: those who really have something to lose. You can’t believe that voters would put so many people in danger to keep their sense of superiority and enjoy slashed taxes — never mind, you can.

“I’ll be okay, but I’m afraid for everyone else,” becomes your new motto.

You aren’t Muslim — hell, you can pass for one hundred percent white girl, or at least Jewish — but you are a dual citizen. Your existence is tied to a place news commentators think is bad. At this point, you don’t want to believe he’ll take charge. That denial won’t fade.

Your existence is tied to a place news commentators think is bad.
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And you’re angry with everyone who voted for him, everyone who thought they were more important than all those people who have something at stake — like your stepmother, whose child shares your Iranian blood. As a pacifist, you understand where she comes from to a degree, but you’re still angry, because that language didn’t spark a shred of hesitation or concern.

And you know they ignored him because they thought they had nothing at risk, even though you know they did.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

January comes and everyone starts quoting Orwell. 1984 becomes a bestseller again, but you think the country’s become like Animal Farm. People who wanted to keep their power are about to lose it. You have to be more than white to have power these days — you have to be the one percent of the one percent. A hundredth.

It’s kind of funny, actually, because this “dystopia” people say America is becoming is based on real historical events, as all dystopia is. Government corruption is inevitable. People just don’t care unless, or until, it’s personal.

His name is inescapable. You can’t stand to use it, to acknowledge that the “freest country in the world” was that easy to con, so you call him The Government. The guy you used to make fun of in middle school is the President, and now there are thousands of rich white males who want to annihilate people you care about from this hypocritical conglomeration called democracy.

Less than a week before you’re supposed to leave the country, the government tries to enforce a travel ban. No Muslims. By this point, you know that “Muslim” just means brown, or white but not white enough. Iran is on that list of seven countries. The fear that haunted you a decade ago rushes back because he’s trying to start a war. Iran isn’t the same as it was 30 years ago, but you know most people here don’t know that. No, they don’t care to know. For the first time in your life, you are afraid to exist.

There’s a protest at the airport tomorrow. You have to go. You have to. You spend hours assembling an Iranian flag from nine pieces of construction paper, exacerbating the tendinitis in your elbow, to draw the four crescents to scale. The next morning, you become inspired to write “TRUMP IS THE NEW SHAH” on your masterpiece, but first you need a silver Sharpie. If you aren’t going to mince words, then people need to be able to see them clearly.

You talk to your dad about it. The government is horrible, you say, but seeing so many people come together gives you hope. Movements are afoot. “You didn’t grow up in a totalitarian government,” he responds. He doesn’t have to say anything else to assert that you don’t understand.

If you aren’t going to mince words, then people need to be able to see them clearly.
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Your parents don’t want you to drive to the airport — they don’t want you there at all. They’re worried about you getting stuck in traffic, detained, harassed, hurt. “People are crazy,” they say, and emotionally exhausted, you pass out. You don’t think Atlanta will become Tehran, but you also don’t want to argue.

You realize you’ve taken your luxuries for granted far too long. That others have dealt with far worse for far longer.

At work the next morning, your boss cracks a joke about a coworker not being able to come back from France. He’s unambiguously white — they all are.

“Sarra, you’re not a dual citizen, are you?” But you are, and you’re terrified. You’ll probably never get to see certain relatives again — your great aunt will die and you won’t even get to say goodbye. And you make sure to say it in a dry, distraught tone. It must have not worked, though, because those jokes keep coming back.

You’re still mad, three days later, at the airport. Of course, you actually have a reason to be scared. While your group works out a check-in mishap, you flip through family passports. First, you admire yours, and catch the place of birth: CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, USA. Then you thumb through your dad’s. It doesn’t bear a city, just IRAN. It might as well say THREAT. You start breaking down in TSA because your father’s passport bears a word that shouldn’t be heavy. He tells you not to cry, but you’re convinced the law will capsize in a few days and you won’t be able to come back, that he’ll get taken away. The pressure weighs you down like a wrecked car, compacting panic and pushing out tears.

You dad’s passport doesn’t bear a city, just IRAN. It might as well say THREAT.
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You learned early on that being Iranian means you’re always on the defensive. That people will avoid your family and struggle to understand that Middle Easterners share their humanity. Maybe it doesn’t even matter who’s in charge of either country. People learned to hate the country that both is and isn’t yours long before you were born; they’ve just been invited to openly embrace that prejudice once more.

At least, you think, the government can’t take your tears away. So you just keep crying.

Crazy Rich Asians is being touted as the hit romantic comedy of the summer and a cultural win for Asian-Americans, but not everyone feels that way; the dialogue surrounding this charming and effervescent rom-com has been divisive and complicated.

The criticism Crazy Rich Asians has received for its promotion of the model minority myth and moments of anti-blackness are completely valid, but we also need to be realistic about the role pop culture plays in pushing a truly progressive agenda and the timeline in which that agenda unfolds.

As a poor, fat, queer, mixed Filipina-American, I didn’t relate to Crazy Rich Asians either, but as a person who studied film and works in the entertainment industry, I know better than to look for my story in the mainstream. This movie is not all of Asian American representation. It’s the introductory course that gets Hollywood interested in more complex lessons about our community.

It’s easy to focus our hatred on a tangible product rather than at the larger system. The Joy Luck Club was the last major American film with a majority Asian American cast and it was released 25 years ago. This film too—which is decidedly more serious and more relatable to a larger group of Asian-Americans, continues to receive hypercritical ire for not doing “enough” for the community. But Amy Tan, the author of The Joy Luck Club, and Kevin Kwan, the author of Crazy Rich Asians, have a responsibility as artists to share their truth—however small a slice of truth that is—and it’s unfair to demand that these singular pieces of art speak on behalf of all of Asian America.

This is a complex community—representing 21,655,368 individuals with ancestral ties from over 40 countries— comprised of multiple ethnic groups, social classes, and intersectional experiences.

We need to be realistic about the role pop culture plays in pushing a truly progressive agenda and the timeline in which that agenda unfolds.
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When Kwan wrote Crazy Rich Asians, he was drawing from his experience as a wealthy Singaporean-American. In a video op-ed for Harper’s Bazaar titled “These are the Real Crazy Rich Asians,” Kevin Kwan says, “How much of my book is based on reality? About 150% of it.” This is the world he lives and knows. For Kwan to write a book based on any other Asian-American experience, but his own would be hollow and disingenuous. To expect more denies the validity of his experience and sets a dangerous precedent for other marginalized writers.

We already have to hide certain facets of our identities when navigating this bigoted world, we shouldn’t have to hide our truth from our own communities. All art deserves criticism, but it’s important to evaluate where that criticism is coming from. Our community’s resentment with Crazy Rich Asians and The Joy Luck Club has less to do with the actual films and more to do with the painful truth that Hollywood continues to deny our multicultural and multifaceted existence.

Crazy Rich Asians was never going to be a radical criticism of capitalism, white colonialism, and racism in the United States. The gatekeepers of Hollywood benefit from upholding those systems; to take aim at these systems would take aim at their own power. Despite its self-purported  progressive reputation, Hollywood is a business—a business that made $11.7 billion in 2017—and is still keenly focused on making a profit. And that profit is believed to stem from a film’s ability appeal to the whiter—ahem, wider—American audience.

The disillusionment felt by many Asian-Americans shows that marginalized people are hungry for representation in Hollywood and that they don’t fully understand the trials of filmmaking in a system as bigoted and bureaucratic as Hollywood’s.

There are three major parts to the film production process,  and a film can die at any of these points: Development, Production, and Distribution. For a major motion picture, every step of this process can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. This goes to pay writers, talent, crew, executives, lawyers, and everyone else involved in the making of the film as well as costs for costuming, location, and props.

It’s impossible to find out how many scripts get passed over by the power players in entertainment, but here are figures from a small facet of the industry.  The Black List is a “an annual survey of Hollywood executives’ favorite unproduced screenplays” founded by Franklin Leonard, a Black Hollywood executive that wanted to get the industry to take chances on scripts that kept getting passed over. Along with the annual survey, the Black List has become a place where unrepresented writers can get feedback and industry eyes on their work.

The Black List “has hosted more than 55,000 screenplays and teleplays” since it started and of those 55,000 only 338 were put into production. Only 6% of the movies that were hosted on the site made it into production, and that’s coming from a place that wants writers to succeed.

With Crazy Rich Asians, the source material was already there in Kwan’s bestselling book. In August 2013, Nina Jacobson, the founder of the production company Color Force, bought the adaptation rights to Crazy Rich Asians only 2 months after the book was released. Once the rights were bought, it would be logical for production to start soon after. Well, that’s when the production entered its personal “Development Hell”— an industry term for a project that’s stuck in the development stage for years.

Crazy Rich Asians didn’t start production until 2017 for many different reasons, including a scheduling conflict with lead actress Constance Wu, due to her role on Fresh off the Boat. Roadblocks like this aren’t uncommon for productions, especially feature films. All of the normal struggles that a feature film faces—script, crew, actor changes, going over-budget, licensing issues, etc.—are heightened when the film centers on people of color. It is a lot easier to say no to a film that doesn’t have a profitable precedent, so it’s remarkable that people kept saying yes to Crazy Rich Asians at all.

As a poor, fat, queer, mixed Filipina-American, I know better than to look for my story in the mainstream.
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When people see Crazy Rich Asians in theaters, the logos of the production companies flash before their eyes and the first few names aren’t recognizable to most American moviegoers—SK Global (made up of Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, and Ivanhoe Pictures), Color Force, and Starlight Culture Entertainment. The last logo to fill up the screen is the iconic Warner Bros. Studios shield, with the words “Distributed By” above it. This demarcation as distributor—and not as a production company—is extremely important.

Jacobson knew that if she wanted to make Crazy Rich Asians a reality, she would have to go outside the American studio system for funding, hence the partnership with Ivanhoe Pictures, a U.S.-based Asian film investment group. Starlight Culture Entertainment, one of the other production companies involved, is a giant Hong Kong investment company with stakes in multiple industries aside from entertainment, including chemicals, environmental protection products, and gambling. These production companies are the ones that believed in Crazy Rich Asians.

They are the ones that work on adapting the material and creating a package (attaching a director and producer to a script to make it more marketable). They are the ones that bring their creative assets to distribution companies to get more funding and guarantee that people will get a chance to see it.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. and Netflix were the two distributors that the creative team behind Crazy Rich Asians had to choose between. Kwan and Jon Chu, the film’s director had to make the final decision. They ultimately chose to go with Warner Bros., despite the lesser offer, because they wanted the cultural impact of a theater release.

As a traditional distributor, Warner Bros. backs the project and sends it out to their distribution channels— theaters, rentals, and personal copies—hoping to make a profit (or at least their investment back) in ticket, DVD, BluRay, and digital download sales. Warner Bros. shares of the profit come back to them, so they can continue the cycle with another film.

The disillusionment felt by many Asian-Americans shows that they don’t fully understand the trials of filmmaking in a system as bigoted and bureaucratic as Hollywood’s.
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It’s not shocking that Netflix was willing to give Crazy Rich Asians a trilogy deal right off the bat. Netflix, and other digital subscription based distributors, have taken more chances on projects that feature marginalized characters than traditional studios because of their business model. They don’t have to gamble on ticket sales to make their money back—they already have a well of money from subscription fees to draw from. But if Kevin Kwan and John Chu had chosen the initial Netflix payday over Warner Bros. smaller budget, Crazy Rich Asians wouldn’t be a cultural touchstone that sold out theaters for multiple weeks.

The initial goal of any film is to make the backers’ investment back, but the stakes are even higher with minority-lead films. The experiences of people of color are automatically politicized, and subsequently othered. Studio executives don’t think general (i.e. white) audiences will relate to characters of color. They don’t believe that the stories of marginalized communities will succeed (even when it’s been proven they will time and time again).

Girls Trip was only given a $20 million budget (even with the star power of Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Regina Hall, and Tiffany Haddish) and it ended up making $140 million gross—seven times its budget back. Warner Bros. believed in Crazy Rich Asians enough to back it, but gave it a relatively small budget of $30 million considering the high-profile actors and the lavish backdrops, costumes, and set pieces that the story demands. In its first two weeks, Crazy Rich Asians, more than doubled its budget in box office revenue, proving that it wasn’t such a risky bet after all.

The American film industry has largely failed us since its inception in 1907, and will continue to fail the most marginalized of us. Supporting major releases—even begrudgingly—helps convince major studios and distributors to bet on more of our stories. All the odds were stacked against Crazy Rich Asians—a fun, apolitical, rom-com with light-skinned Asians that speak King’s English. It took years of community building and pushing against Hollywood gatekeepers to get this film made. It took allies with power to bet their good standing in the industry on the stories of people of color. It took the cultural groundwork of The Joy Luck Club, Fresh off the Boat, and every bit of honest representation in between.

If people still aren’t content with our victories in the mainstream, seek out and support the underground! There ARE independent filmmakers making the most brown, queer, anti-capitalist Asian-American films you can imagine—like the 2017 short film Salamagan (dir.  Elisah Oh) currently on the film festival circuit.

Organizations like CAAM, CAPE, Kore, and 18 Million Rising, are dedicated to uplifting diverse Asian-American artists through funding, fellowships, film festivals, screenings, and promotion through social media. CAAM’s film festivals feature some of the biggest names in Asian-American entertainment right alongside new talent (and they’re taking submissions right now!)

Many of these organizations have events with actors, writers, directors, and producers at all talent levels because they are meant to uplift our community through art and mentorship. I urge you to take all your anger, disappointment, and pain at Hollywood and Crazy Rich Asians and put that energy into artists and projects you want to see succeed.

Kwan told his story with Crazy Rich Asians. Now, let’s go share our own.