Color Outside the Lines For Change

Bringing Writers from Diverse Backgrounds Out of the Margins & Onto the Main Pages of the Literary World 

Literature is a multicultural and international conversation which fosters understanding between people, because geographical location may change, but the basics of the human experience do not. The purpose of this group is to explore literary works by authors from diverse, ethnic, cultural and international backgrounds, who may not find their way onto the radar of popular culture and into peoples' living rooms, back packs and attache cases.

A few months ago, Martha Southgate's essay, Writer's Like Me, was published in the New York Times. In her essay, she questions the seemingly stunted trajectory of the careers of African-American writers. She explores the spaces where their career paths begin, meet and diverge from those of their white counterparts. Why are the adjectives prolific and renowned so rarely associated with the body of work produced by African-American writers? Why doesn't their work reach the bestsellers list more frequently?

Southgate defines the limitations of African-American authors' ability to gain notoriety and the accompanying paycheck, in terms of internal and external forces. There's the typical struggle which comes with being an artist with a day job, and possibly a family to support. African-Americans also carry the burden of intracultural expectations; a person benefiting from the fruits of the Civil Rights Movement should use their education to get a real job not spend their time playing with words.

I take the position that Southgate's exploration should be extended to other literary writers who find their work consistently relegated to the margins of the literary world, and only occasionally, then briefly enjoying the spotlight of mainstream media. Amy Tan, Walter Mosley, Sandra Cisneros, and Arundhati Roy are examples of this phenomenon. Southgate mentions several other examples from the African-American community in her piece.

Coloring Outside the Lines is a space to explore such writers work, as well as their experiences via interviews and profiles. It's also a space for people of various cultural and ethnic backgrounds to present original works which speak to and about their experiences in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, images, video and prose with telling stories that color in and around the lines where race, class, culture and ethnicity intersect and weave around one another.

According to Thomas Friedman the world is flat. I believe that writers and other artists, our storytellers and dreamers, bridge the divides where the ground is not level. We are also the ones, who will carry our communities to the next highest plane. Welcome!