In the first year, first semester of my MFA in creative writing program, we discussed a short story by African American writer Dana Johnson, \u201cMelvin in the Sixth Grade.\u201d One of my favorite professors, a white man who lives on the Upper West Side, largely praised the story with one small aside- Johnson\u2019s lyrical reference to Peabo Bryson, a Rhythm and Blues artist now in his late sixties.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cRaise your hand if you know who Peabo Bryson is,\u201d my professor said in an effort to prove his point. I scanned the third floor room of the college\u2019s epicenter, and decidedly raised my hand. I looked for *Matthew, who was older than me but younger than my dad, shades lighter than both of us, a high yellow that resembled chewy caramels, sitting at the far end of the long rectangular table. Matthew managed to reference Smokey Robinson and Snoop Dogg in his work, and we found each other quickly, smiling. Along with one other black writer, we were three hands raised, three out of twelve, the minority in our majority white common space.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m so into you. I don\u2019t know what I\u2019m gonna do<\/span><\/i>, lyrics familiar to me as I remember waking up every Saturday morning to my dad blasting \u201coldies but goodies\u201d from the twenty inch speaker in our small living room in East Atlanta.<\/span> I\u2019m So Into You<\/span><\/i> is a song I carried through my awkward stint in High School, my undergraduate tenure at Howard University and now at the cusp of thirty, it remains the perfect love song. An evocation of 1970\/80\u2019s bare black love, an embodiment of everything I missed in the age of Black Power.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYou see what I mean,\u201d My professor went on. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t quite work anymore. That\u2019s the problem with pop culture references. Say, Stevie Wonder. Had she used Stevie Wonder, then maybe. We\u2019ll always know Stevie Wonder. But Peabo Bryson, eh.\u201d He shrugged his shoulders.<\/span><\/p>\n I cleared my throat, knowing what I knew then, knowing what I know now but was too afraid to say then; that Stevie Wonder and Peabo Bryson don\u2019t provide the same context, that you can\u2019t interchange black artists at your convenience. That the harmonic talent of a pleading Wonder does not equate the smooth brown sugar vocals of a jheri curled Bryson. This is all to say, the most obvious fact of the matter, Wonder is not Bryson, and Bryson is not Wonder.<\/span><\/p>\n To my professor\u2019s credit, I don\u2019t think he was implying the bodily mobility of black artists, but I also don\u2019t think he was considering that not everything is written for everyone, that for a work to feel specific to me, it certainly can not also feel specific to him. He did not ask the relevant questions: Who was \u201cMelvin in the Sixth Grade\u201d written for? And don\u2019t African American writers need work that embodies them (us), too? And do you need to \u201cget\u201d the reference in order to enjoy the story?<\/span><\/p>\n This was one small moment of many, across numerous classrooms, via a myriad of instructors, through an overstock of peer feedback. This accumulation of moments (some bigger than others) is what it means to be a black writer in a white space. To be asked to tweak your work until it\u2019s centered, no longer within African American margins but betwixt the divide, crossing over. To be questioned and questioned and still unheard. To be fetishized but unpublished. To have a reader tell you they don\u2019t \u201cget\u201d it, cannot relate to it with a mere shrug of the shoulders.<\/span><\/p>\n These facts manifested again when I attended the 2015 Tin House Summer Writer\u2019s Workshop. It was my first time in Portland, and I was unaccustomed to the city\u2019s politeness, the homelessness resembling bohemia, barefoot youth bearing cardboard signs with neat print. Portland was never a vacation destination; Portland was for white people. And indeed, Tin House was a very white space, where I workshopped the beginning pages of my novel about real love and black identity.<\/span><\/p>\n It struck me as concerning when one of my white peers said she could totally relate to my work, that we needed more black characters, which was why she herself was writing a futuristic novel where the main character was black. After all, everyone will be black in the future. And oh, I wouldn\u2019t believe how unfairly the police treated her white father. Yes, she could totally relate to my work. Or couldn\u2019t she? Had she read my writing at all?<\/span><\/p>\n The following summer, the summer of 2016, I attended my first year of WriCampia as an instructor. I was naive to the way in which young writers of color might also feel misunderstood, out of place, bearing an accumulation of small and big moments. And because of my naivete, I cannot say I was there for them in any extraordinary way, in the way in which I should have been there. And so, I was determined to make 2017\u2019s WriCampia experience different.<\/span><\/p>\n With Rebecca and coworkers\u2019 help, I brainstormed an elective for marginalized writers needing a safe space, to have their work deeply heard and felt, to showcase the way lingual specificity emphatically builds writing. Like a professor (white, female) once told me, it was my goal to aid their work in becoming \u201cmore like itself.\u201d To help their writing dive deeper into what it already was. I wanted to hear their most authentic voices. Needless to say, I was anxious about leading this elective. I was under self-induced pressure to make it work, to unite and not (unnecessarily) incite. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It must have been some fate of the universe that I implemented this new elective titled \u00a0Voice, Culture, and Race, not even a full month after attending another writer\u2019s workshop of my own. Kimbilio, a black fiction writers retreat in Taos, New Mexico, was the deep sigh of my summer, a pressing down on my shoulders, a magical place to say the least. It was a place where everyone seemed to \u201cget\u201d me, where I didn\u2019t have to explain the words I\u2019d bled on the page, where I didn\u2019t have to anticipate uncomfortable after-class encounters. Kimbilio rejuvenated me as a writer and a thinker and a present being.<\/span><\/p>\n I hope I was able to give our WriCampia writers this same feeling of peace. Every night, Voice, Culture, and Race (VCR) met from 8:30 to 10:30 to discuss being a writer of color. We discussed pushing through racially charged conversations, writing in native languages, writing about ancestors, and finding voices that reflect community, family, and history. Just as importantly, we discussed being a listener, how to listen when someone\u2019s work is different than your own, how to listen without judgment but understanding,<\/span> how to listen without feeling some ethnocentric need to see yourself inside of the story. <\/span><\/i>Within this effort, VCR quickly became a family, no longer a space I was implementing but something the teens grounded, as concrete as a country\u2019s land. African American, Venezuelan, Puerto Rican, Ethiopian, Korean, and bi-racial writers claimed it promptly. It was beautiful to see this coming together. It was equally beautiful to be a part of it, and I extended an invitation to everyone near me.<\/span><\/p>\n In a different workshop one morning, a white writer said, \u201cI don\u2019t think I can attend VCR. I\u2019m just too white for it.\u201d She didn\u2019t look at me as she said it because it wasn\u2019t directed at me. I suppose she was thinking out loud.<\/span><\/p>\n I hesitated, knowing I would kick myself later if I didn\u2019t address her now. In one way or another, her words were in fact, for me. \u201cMaybe that\u2019s a good thing. Maybe it\u2019s a good idea for you to be in a space where you\u2019re not the majority. Maybe it\u2019s important for you to know what it feels like to be in the minority.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n She took this well, as I knew she would, and we resumed our workshop.<\/span><\/p>\n The next night three white writers from my morning workshop came to VCR, and we played a game where everyone mapped their worlds with physical and emotional landmarks. At the end of our two hours, a few writers shared their maps, vulnerably pointing to their homes and neighborhoods and memories. One of the white writers from my morning workshop was the last to share, the <\/span>only<\/span><\/i> white writer to share. Her map of her neighborhood in Brooklyn hyped the whole room, the whole colorful room of writers that spilled from small couches and oversized plush rockers, onto chairs borrowed from the next room over, onto any random surface sturdy enough to sustain a body\u2019s weight. This accumulation of bodies found a connection within her world, and it was a bonding, insightful moment with lots of laughing and dapping.<\/span><\/p>\n The beauty of this moment was greater than the other writers’ relation to her map. With humanity, relation is to be expected. The beauty of this moment lay in seeing her push through the discomfort of sharing a map in a space that may not have felt like her own. The beauty lay in watching her peers gift her the blessing of listening. They heard her specificity for what it was and not what they wanted it to be. I can only dream that VCR\u2019s accumulation of moments similar to this one rejuvenated its attendees as writers and thinkers and present beings.<\/span><\/p>\n Janelle Williams<\/strong> is Writopia Lab’s In-School and Outreach Lead Instructor. She is a graduate from Manhattanville College and Howard University.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Janelle Williams, In-School and Outreach Lead Instructor In the first year, first semester of my MFA in creative writing program, we discussed a short story by African American writer Dana Johnson, \u201cMelvin in the Sixth Grade.\u201d One of my favorite professors, a white man who lives on the Upper West Side, largely praised the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":183,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-staff-voices","entry entry-center"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.writopialab.org\/writopiaspeaks\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/IMG_8956_08_17.jpg?fit=2048%2C1365&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9aRpX-1Y","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":779,"url":"https:\/\/www.writopialab.org\/writopiaspeaks\/a-series-of-small-gestures-embracing-conversation-and-storytelling-in-our-spring-professional-development-sessions-to-help-reframe-the-way-kids-think-about-ai-get-kids-excited-about-reading-and-hel\/","url_meta":{"origin":122,"position":0},"title":"A Series of Small Gestures: Embracing Conversation and Storytelling in Our Spring Professional Development Sessions to Help Reframe the Way Kids Think About AI, Get Kids Excited About Reading, and Help Kids Shine Their Inner Light","author":"Matthew Jellison","date":"June 18, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"By Matthew Jellison and the Instructors at Writopia Lab Each spring we hold a series of professional developments for our instructors that expands our resources and punches in on a specific element of our teaching practice. 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Thank you to all of the members of our community who contributed to this poem including young writers, parents, guardians, school teachers, Writopia instructors, staff,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Newsletter"","block_context":{"text":"Newsletter","link":"https:\/\/www.writopialab.org\/writopiaspeaks\/category\/newsletter\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":245,"url":"https:\/\/www.writopialab.org\/writopiaspeaks\/talk-scholastic-awards-results\/","url_meta":{"origin":122,"position":2},"title":"How to Talk About The Scholastic Awards’ Results by Writopia Founder Rebecca Wallace-Segall and Program Directors Yael Schick & Danielle Sheeler","author":"Rebecca Wallace-Segall","date":"January 27, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"This year\u2019s results for the Regional Scholastic Writing Awards are intended to be announced in most regions on January 28th, 2021. Many of our writers ages 13-18 will find out that their pieces were honored with honorable mentions, silver keys, and\/or gold keys! We are so, so happy for all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "For Parents"","block_context":{"text":"For Parents","link":"https:\/\/www.writopialab.org\/writopiaspeaks\/category\/for-parents\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":656,"url":"https:\/\/www.writopialab.org\/writopiaspeaks\/struggle-and-growth\/","url_meta":{"origin":122,"position":3},"title":"Struggle and Growth","author":"Matthew Jellison","date":"March 17, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Written by Matthew Jellison, Associate Director of Education, Writopia Lab I\u2019m struggling. This is good, actually. Isn\u2019t struggle at the center of learning? I always remind the instructors at Writopia\u2014the writing and education non-profit where I oversee the professional learning of our network of adult writers who teach writing to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Staff Voices"","block_context":{"text":"Staff Voices","link":"https:\/\/www.writopialab.org\/writopiaspeaks\/category\/staff-voices\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.writopialab.org\/writopiaspeaks\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/421407324_874087061390966_6621489193818010739_n.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.writopialab.org\/writopiaspeaks\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/421407324_874087061390966_6621489193818010739_n.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.writopialab.org\/writopiaspeaks\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/421407324_874087061390966_6621489193818010739_n.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.writopialab.org\/writopiaspeaks\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/421407324_874087061390966_6621489193818010739_n.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.writopialab.org\/writopiaspeaks\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/421407324_874087061390966_6621489193818010739_n.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.writopialab.org\/writopiaspeaks\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/421407324_874087061390966_6621489193818010739_n.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":486,"url":"https:\/\/www.writopialab.org\/writopiaspeaks\/the-art-of-losing-how-a-botched-game-of-literary-bingo-inspired-an-educational-forum-with-our-moms\/","url_meta":{"origin":122,"position":4},"title":"The Art of Losing: How A Botched Game of Literary Bingo Inspired An Educational Forum with Our Moms","author":"Matthew Jellison","date":"May 28, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"By Matthew Jellison We were losing literary bingo when the thought hit us. We were surprised to be losing. After all, Malcolm and I have spent the better part of a decade working in literacy, and Yael about a decade and a half. We are (affectionately speaking) literary nerds. 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