Tag Archives: desi writers forums

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How we write when we write about IDENTITY (The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison)

posted by Noor

I have always thought of writing as a narcissistic activity. Many of my characters invariably start looking, sounding, and even acting like me. They are always conflicted – struggling with identity, roots, cultural values, treading two value systems at the same time, their senses continuously at war. It is often difficult to separate yourself from your writing, take a step back and view it from a stranger’s eye – but you don’t always have to. Sometimes, to preserve the integrity of the story you want to tell, you absolutely have to draw from what you know best, what you have lived through, what you have observed, witnessed, and learned. Most importantly, in order to recount a story and remain true to its essence, you must do so in an unapologetic fashion and write it not for the reader, but because the story deserves to be told. I learned this from one of my favorite authors – Toni Morrison and the genius that is her first novel, The Bluest Eye.

Published in 1970, The Bluest Eye spans a year in the life of Pecola Breedlove, a young black girl in Lorain, Ohio. I am not going to recount the story for you all, because that will take me away from the themes that I want to cover today. If you have not read this book, PLEASE do yourselves a favor and get a copy. It is a very fast read, and though the story is tragic, the imagery is delightful. I was struck by the vividness and beauty in the images that Morrison has so effortlessly created. What I really want to focus on is the narrative organization and themes of the novel and how she has managed to create this book of immense power without actually victimizing or criminalizing any of the characters. You are simply told about the suffering and the way Pecola experiences and internalizes it.

1. “Writing without the white gaze”
Toni Morrison has written this book without being cognizant of a white audience. She has not explained herself or her characters. She has simply written this story without apologies or warnings. She has incorporated important elements of the black culture of Lorain, Ohio around the time of the second world war. She has talked about music extensively – both jazz and blues – to the point where you start to hear it as you’re reading the book. Most importantly, she mentions in the afterword that it was very significant for her to use “speakerly” language.

2. Seasons in The Bluest Eye
The novel begins thus: “Quiet as it’s kept, there were no marigolds in the fall of 1941.” This is compounded by the organization of the book in seasons: autumn, winter, spring, and summer. Right in the first line, Morrison introduces this idea of something being wrong – and we all know it’s not just about the marigolds. There has to be more to it, but she employs a beautiful distraction to develop her theme. By introducing this idea of nature and marigolds that did not sprout, Morrison has skilfully started to build upon the themes of seasons, the natural order, and the thought that “something has gone wrong.” Right away, we learn that Pecola Breedlove is having her father’s baby – the problem of marigolds skirts this horrific reality, which is mentioned in passing, perhaps to make it more bearable. This theme of seasons continues throughout the book.

3. Developing “foils” for the main character and explanation without excuse
(Foil: A character that by contrast serves to highlight the distinctive nature of another character).
Throughout the narrative of The Bluest Eye, we see many contrasts between the Breedloves and the MacTeers. Pecola’s story is so horrifying and tragic that if it had been presented without the strength of Claudia and Frieda, perhaps we, as readers, would not have been able to accept and process it. So Morrison developed the characters of Claudia and Frieda as foils for Pecola’s character. Claudia and Frieda shoulder the weight of Pecola’s suffering because their positive experiences and their strength allows the reader to digest the horror in Pecola’s story. Pecola by herself is too frail to carry the book on her own. Through their positive experiences alongside Pecola’s harsh life, we are able to read the book with a sense of loss and despair, but without getting completely despondent. This is helpful because it allows the reader to see why the characters choose what they choose and how their choices are ultimately a reflect of their experiences.
Cholly, Pecola’s father is a product of his circumstances. This is explanation without excuse. We understand how and why someone like Cholly might come to be. Morrison, at no point, makes excuses for his behavior, but when you learn about Cholly’s experiences – how vulnerable he is made by all that he faced as an adolescent, you begin to understand his motives and why he committed the terrible act of sexually assaulting his daughter. All this is done by Morrison’s organization of the narrative. It is important to pick up a few things here.
The narrative is organized so that we immediately assume that Cholly is a heinous person. Right from the beginning, we know that Pecola was having her father’s baby – many of us immediately develop a bias against Cholly for this reason. However, as the narrative unfolds and we gradually begin to discover what brought Cholly to this stage in his life, we begin to understand his intentions and motivations. This is an extremely difficult task for a writer. To make your reader understand your character, think like your character, and realize that what your character does is a culmination and reflection of his/her life experiences is paramount! And very, very difficult. As I mentioned before, however, Morrison has done this effortlessly and seamlessly. The narrative flows from one character’s story to the other’s in a fluid manner.


There is a long list that I still have in my notes – topics that I wanted to highlight in this entry, but I think I should stop now and let you all mull this over. But if you take away anything from this entry, let it be the importance of organizing your narrative. The Bluest Eye is one of my favorite books, and I discover something new in it every time I read it. Please have a clear theme in your mind when you begin to tackle a story. Even if you know exactly what you are writing about, it is very easy to be distracted – adhere to the themes that you want to establish and develop in your work. Use creative ways to explore the nature of your characters. Develop foils – they do more for your characters and your story than you can possibly imagine! Write without apologies and explain without excuses and keep building on those themes.

Here’s to writing like Morrison one day!

Random Trivia: The title of this entry was inspired by a Raymond Carver short story. GUESS WHICH ONE?

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The Importance of Being Right…On The Money

The new forums are up, the switch being made from the rigidity that was phpBB 2 to the more fluid and interactive SMF forums. For now, I’ve kept the same color scheme as our old version, although this will change when we’ve finalized a color scheme and layout for our main website.

Heads up: there’s a new writer’s workshop being arranged by British Council in Dhaka, for writers between the ages of 25 and 35. Sadly, I don’t qualify but I’ll be damned if I don’t try. There’s no harm, is there? As it is, details available here including the attachments and documents required before submitting a writing sample. So if you’re interested in attending a workshop, please do take a look.

Because of a slight mix up regarding polling dates on the forums, we’ve lost about a week of potential voting. However, we’re urging our members to vote now and to keep it up till Monday night, when all polls are scheduled to expire. December 11, 12.01 am is when they “officially” expire.

There’s also been a shift in policy, where we now require a minimum of 4 votes (those with a single vote to their name will be independently voted on by the mods, because obviously we didn’t vote the first time around! I repeat: vote to keep these pieces in the running) to make it into Phase 2 of the selection process. Phase 1 remains the voting stage, and is instrumental to our process, but we introduced Phase 2 because of an apparent lag in quality which the votes, although extremely helpful in their own right, don’t always get it right because not everyone’s voting. As a result, the five moderators will step in and finalize all pieces. We’re also not going to be taking in as many pieces as before, with each column having a limit in terms of how many will go in. For this, we are profoundly sorry, and it’ll make selection extremely difficult but someone has to do it.

We’re looking at the possibilities of marketing our website in national newspapers, radio, bookstores, etc well before our scheduled reading in March. To this extent, we require excellent pieces and this isn’t saying that what we have now aren’t excellent. We just mean, with less pieces, we have more time to spend and communicate with writers on those pieces and can, as a result, help in making it the best it can be.

Once the design and more importantly, logo of our website is finalized, we will begin printing out fliers, posters and bookmarks to be distributed in bookstores as a way of getting the audience we want and are looking for. These will be sent out to all major cities where our members reside: Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi with a special care package sent to our international members so they can help spread the word wherever they are. This is marketing on a vast scale, especially considering that it’s been practically nonexistent until now. Taking this in context, you might now understand the importance of both a redesign and new look both in terms of design as well as content. To this extent, we hope that both as members and readers of our work, you’ll appreciate all changes that will go into effect in the new year.

As always, anything you’d like to add, please voice them in the comments or send me an email on either the address available here or at comments@desiwriterslounge.net.

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Eye Twitches & Creativity

My eye’s been twitching consistently for the past week. What do you think the odds are that it has something to do with website administrative duties? Nah, didn’t think so.

There have been updates, however, which is why there’s a new post in less than a week. The forums have been shut down, at least till Monday evening for maintenance and upgrading purposes. Come the new week, and we’ll have a new forum. Well, to be honest, we already have one but I’ve had to convert it from phpBB to SMF which for some reason, wasn’t as easy as I had thought it would be. However, it has been done and my Sunday has been utilized to great effect. Excellent. All members, posts, topics and threads have made the shift.

We’ll also have greater control over the registration process, with these really easy to add modifications. Compared to phpBB, SMF seems like heaven. Literally. Whereas previously the reason for membership and signature fields were one, they have both been miraculously separated with the former being mandatory and coded in from the backend to that effect. If you don’t fill it in appropriately, it will result in actual revocation…how frackin’ amazing is that?! What I’ve wanted to implement for a year has been incorporated in a day. Sad, I realize but also incredibly fulfilling.

There’s also a nifty newsletters option which takes care of my previous concerns and I have the option to send them in HTML which can include our official header/logo (when we have one) on top. Seriously. I was going to pay for this. I am still a CS person, it seems, or at least with a mildly mechanical bent of mind to say the very least (allow me my butter this one time, please).

There’s also a calendar for events, which again, takes up quite a bit of what I wanted incorporated. Eventually, I’ll find a way to bridge our forums with the site everyone else sees and has access to.

Also, you can change your display name finally (this was something I had incorporated in my own vision, before switching over to the open source world. Back when I thought coding was fun!) to something other than your username, which is most especially useful if you want your privacy.

You’ll also get ‘Happy Birthday’ messages from the forum provided you want to, and have entered your birthdate.

So there are a ton of new things in this forum board that weren’t there earlier, and although I’ve spent most of the latter half of the day ensuring everything remains as close to possible as it was before, it’s going to take time for the users to get used to this new format.

But hopefully not too long. I shall admit to being supremely excited; after a much needed length of time, finally something to talk about.

The new forums will be launched Monday evening, and if you’re a member you will be notified accordingly.

I’m hoping for a new design with the New Year, and we’ll be well on our way. With changes in the editorial policy planned as well, things are gearing up to a (hopefully) more productive quarter.

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10 Things I Hate About This

No, I’m not going to start listing them down, I just really wanted to use that phrase. Ridiculously short story I have no plans on expounding, which makes mentioning it entirely unnecessary. Lovely!

Now that I’ve located what looks like a promising designer, the only drawback is that they’re located here…as in Pakistan here…as in, in my city Pakistan. Yes. After a rather saddening experience with an Indian developer (God bless the Indians, though; they’re not all bad, one bad seed notwithstanding! Tons of bad seeds in Pakistan, too!), I would much rather not deal with subcontinental developers. However, their ratings, client references and portfolio seems to speak for itself. And they have now graciously agreed to providing me with a mock up…which is basically a prototype of where they’ll take the design of the site, along with showcasing what they can do. Since I was deprived of this previously, and not wanting to take any risks this time around, taking the advice of my very knowledgeable sister, I am a little more optimistic. Of course, the development that I’ve planned and outlined in this blog is still scheduled. But first and foremost, is a face-lift.

Addressing quality related issues is another thing entirely, and which will hopefully be addressed and put to reasonable rest by our small “board” some time this weekend or next week. I don’t know whether it’s the editorial policy or the fact that a small set of members are the only set that post and re-post and thus, are the only ones available for e-zine polling. There are some marketing related issues and plans up my sleeve, which might unfold subject to agreement by the others. There are a lot of things to be decided, and specifically towards our new look, logo and design etc.

There is still the dream of making it to print, which might, ironically, be more quality oriented. The problem with being web-based is that though you’re able to reach a wider base, it becomes a tad problematic when you’re using it for quality assurance. Not everyone’s at the same level, which shows through in the forums, where the pieces are…”workshopped” according to one of our members. Although most of the hardcore stuff happens behind the scenes in the ‘editorial’ stages, which brings me to another question: are we not doing a good job of it? Should we be pushing our writers harder…or what, exactly? I realize that everyone ages at their own pace, and to that extent we should give them both time and space for growth, but this worries me. Because some how, in some way it’s setting us back.

A few posts back I mentioned how a complete stranger stated that my work represented on another website was far better than the content put on display in our ‘zine, which though flattering to me, was a disappointment. Everything seems the same. Are we not pushing creativity hard enough? Not focusing on pushing the envelope? After all, isn’t that part of what a workshop does for you? It pushes you to be your best. One piece or maybe two from members is good, and then they slip again. I need to know why.

I suppose the easiest thing to say is that writing isn’t the same for everyone, which is what I am constantly being told time and time again. It’s frustrating to hear the same thing from different people: not everyone’s like you, not everyone takes writing so seriously. It isn’t about taking it so seriously…it’s about actually using criticism to improve. It’s the want to get better, to progress, to push the envelope. That isn’t asking for much, is it?

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Chivalry’s Dead

Although including the perspectives of a completely new member was a bold idea, I thought it might work. You have to understand where I was coming from, however–I thought there would be more talk about goings on in the literary world–I hardly expected a religious debate.

I think it’s key to understand the purpose this blog serves; as an introduction to the site itself. Sure, I’d love for our writers to eventually put up their thoughts and opinions on the goings on of the Pakistani cultural world, but that’s where it ends. Opinions and debates are what The Abstract Thinker on the forums, exists for. It’s exactly the sort of things the Podium will cater to, once it’s actually functional.

I’m having second thoughts about my developer. There are reasons, I think, why the cheap ones come cheap. They are profoundly unreliable. I was to receive updates today…and did I? Nope. In fact, it’s quite safe to say I received no communication of any kind.

In other news, our Orkut community has entirely changed. The description, the way the name’s been structured (DeSi Writers for whatever reason), the location (what was once Pakistan is now Mumbai, India. Pardon the yowls of disbelief!), the image (ours was always a cup of tea. Now it’s your typical pen and paper), the community owner (goodbye, Sana–it was great while it lasted). It’s a little sad to see your past go up like that, but then, as I stated so aptly on the community: that was our past, the site is our present and future. And obviously the new breed of desi writers on Orkut are now entirely disassociated from what we were three years ago. They’ll make their own history. Ours is still there, for those interested although most of our work has made the transition into our archives. I think it’s safe to say, since Sana is no longer the community’s owner, it’s no longer ours. It used to be, yes but it isn’t anymore.

Let’s observe a moment of silence for the death of a great community, and one if it were absent, we wouldn’t be here.

For those of you who live in Islamabad, know that Sharabeel’s latest is here: Be Careful Where Your Clothes are, and according to Obi, is a farce. So…I’ll probably see it, with both my sisters in tow. I have to say, I’m very partial towards plays casting people I actually know. I think I’ve just become a tad lazy though.

Polls continue to run in the forums until December 10 and if you’re thinking of submitting a new piece, know that the deadline for this quarter is December 1. So you have about a week for submissions, and about two for polling.

A request to our members and would-be’ers, please do vote. We’re all about democracy here, don’t you know?