Something that I’m constantly thinking about is what it means to decolonize literature. We’ve talked recently about the harm caused from the idea of Universality in Literature but what are steps we need to take to get to a more diverse canon? Of course, it means that we need to read books by marginalized authors but what else? What about literary form and story structure? Are we doing enough to make progress in the right direction? Our culture is deeply influenced by literature. Publishing authors from diverse backgrounds is a big step but is it enough? What else can we do?
Today I’ve invited the brilliant writer, Lilly Lu, onto Bookish Brews! Lilly just earned her PhD in English and I’ve always admired their views on writing and literature. I’m overjoyed to have Lilly with me here today to talk about what a call for diversity in literature really means. I learned so much from this chat! I really hope that you can learn just as much as I did. Please help me welcome Lilly Lu!
Decolonizing Story Structure & Literary Form
Amanda Khong: Welcome, Lilly! I’m so excited to have you join us at Bookish Brews. Before we get started, can you introduce yourself? Tell us who you are, what you do, and what you are excited about!
Lilly Lu: Thanks so much for having me, Amanda! I’m a queer author of color represented by Tara Gonzalez at EMLA, and I’m a PhD Candidate in English at UCLA. I’m a bit of a rogue writer and I enjoy thinking across a multitude of genres and historical periods. Both in my academic work and in my creative work! My research focuses on British Romanticism, gender, novel form, and race, and my creative work usually features gothic elements and themes like anti-imperialism, diaspora identity, and queerness. I love to write about tender feelings and comforting relationships found in the midst of harsh worlds. I’m excited about blending genres and seeing what they can do together.
Amanda: I’m excited to talk about how a call for diversity in literature also means that we will have to open our minds to different literary form of writing and adjust our expectations of story structures. Can you tell us a little about what that might look like in practice?
Lilly: Yes! The more I learned about novel history and literary form in graduate school, the more I realized how constructed our rules for writing are. And how constructed and reified our understanding of genre is in popular discourse. If you look back to novels in the western canon, even just a hundred years ago, you’ll find that literary form is messy and not straightforward!
The ideas of “show, don’t tell,” for example, or that we have to have a three-act structure, don’t apply to even canonical works in the British canon. (Look at Vanity Fair! Or Tristram Shandy! Or Clarissa!) The idea of what a novel is or should be changed drastically over the course of several hundred years and changed based on culture, ideology, and sociopolitical history. I find it interesting and suspicious that, juxtaposed to this, US-based creative writers are taught such rigid rules of writing—rigid rules that do bear a relationship to, and stem from, ideology and power structures and hegemony (and of course, the market).
A call for diversity in literature should definitely mean including more diverse authors in publishing. It should also mean, therefore, a diversity of literary forms and genres! For instance, a lot of what we understand to be the narrative beats in conventional romance is based on an allosexual framework: a meet cute, instant attraction, obstacles to a relationship, an attempt at a relationship, a crisis/breakup, resolution and reconciliation, union. Form (of a relationship) follows content (attraction). But for ace-spectrum (or in particular, what I’m thinking of for demisexual romances), attraction is shaped differently and paced differently; the beats will be different! There are so many ways this could go, but a few possibilities include: Plot events may have to precede attraction. Slow burn may be replaced by a slow boil. Friendship might come first.
Amanda: That’s a perfect example of how writing must match the story and the characters. Especially in a genre like romance where a lot of people think that the structure needs to be more rigid than most. Do you have any thoughts on how this might look in genre writing as well?
Lilly: Yes, this absolutely extends to genre fiction, especially in world-building and magic systems in SFF and horror. My thoughts on this are very much shaped by Edward Said’s work, and extends also into contemporary literature. So much of fantasy (in what we conceive of as the west in general and particularly in the US) is premised on Orientalist tropes, the ideas of “the East” as exotic vs. “the west” as structured and disciplined, and so many of these narratives are told from a white and Christian point of view.
Even thematically, I see a lot of redemption arcs, a lot of atonement arcs. I was just speaking to an Asian diaspora friend the other day that something I see in Asian dramas that I don’t see too much of here in the US is the long-game revenge plot! Those are fun, and those are something I grew up seeing a lot in TV series. You get some of that here and there in Hollywood, but it really is underutilized as a trope.
I don’t think the solution is to get white writers to use tropes used more by BIPOC writers, necessarily, but to invite more BIPOC authors to utilize tropes that are available to them from their own perspectives, from the media that they know and love.
Countries and cultures outside of the US hegemonic culture have so many of their own literary and fantasy traditions, so many of their own narrative structures. Again, the solution is not for white writers to co-opt, for example, the 起承轉合 structure in order to “diversify” their own writing (which is too often the knee-jerk response in the industry), but to make room in the industry for these structures used by marginalized writers who know and love them–who want to remix them as diaspora writers–and for people in power to acknowledge that there are things they don’t know they don’t know. Make space to acknowledge you don’t know everything, and let those who know speak.
Amanda: Based on these examples, it really looks like we must embrace a wide variety of literary form and story structure based on the writer, characters, and intended audience. Why do you think we’ve built up such a rigid story structure in today’s canon? Who benefits from narrowing this scope? What can we gain by widening our perception of what is acceptable form and structure?
Lilly: Without getting on my soapbox too much, we need to remember that canon is constructed, always in the making. “Brilliant books” and “works of genius” shouldn’t be taken as a given, and the rigid narrative structure—what counts as “good writing”—starts in the English curriculum in the classroom. It starts with anthologies that select for what makes up canonical English literature. It starts with MFA programs that teach “good writing” and repeat rules that were taken as a given but are themselves constructed and have active connections with pro-imperialism propaganda. It starts with making lists of what counts as good literature.
Change can happen at each of these points of the process of canon-making if we REALLY question the basis of how we judge good writing. In the classroom: Is XYZ really a genius who needs to be taught in an English survey course, or is it more that they uphold a certain idea of what English literature should be? What are the underpinnings of that category? What are my biases as an instructor? In creative writing: Does this character lack agency or do I have my own US-centric ideas of what agency looks like? Is there something I’m missing here? Is agency really important after all? Are there other ways for a character to interact with the world that isn’t premised on white savior behavior (ownership, agency, action, and colonialism)?
We would all benefit from widening our perception of what is narratively feasible. As readers, don’t we want to see more variety? Aside from these more serious points, wouldn’t that be more fun to open our eyes to more forms of storytelling, to make room for a wider range of humanity, to see what’s artistically possible?
Amanda: Yes! It would definitely be more fun to read a wider range of stories! What are some actionable steps that writers, publishing, readers, and anyone else in the book world to start breaking down these constructs? Do you have any resources for those who might want to expand their thinking on what literary form and story structure really mean?
Lilly: As marginalized writers, we should write the stories the way we see fit. If an experimental story structure seems to be working for the story we want to tell–if that’s what feels right–I think we should commit to it, at least until trusted readers suggest otherwise. I also think that marginalized writers who are querying and submitting their work should find trusted readers, agents, editors, etc, whose vision for the work aligns with their vision. It was important to me when querying that I find an agent who understood what it was that I wanted to do, who didn’t hop on board because of trends and who didn’t want to mold my book into something that wasn’t my own, but who felt passionately about the story I was trying to tell.
As to publishers, editors, agents, and readers, I think the work of breaking down these rigid constructs starts with questioning our own biases about what makes for “good writing.” We don’t have to do away with every rule we’ve been taught, but questioning the assumptions underpinning these rules might be useful. A helpful metric when I’m reading others’ work as a critique partner is: Does the way this story is told align with the content and message? Is there a better way for this author to tell the story they want to tell?
I saw a few tweets the other day that resonated with me and made me think about early feedback I got on my manuscript–the tweets were about how marginalized writers often are told that their protagonists lack agency or proactiveness. This feedback, to me, is premised on cishet white masculine and/or Enlightenment/imperialist ideas of what it means to be in and interact with the world. What would happen if we were to open our minds to other (perhaps gentler) ways of engaging with the world? What stories would emerge then?
Amanda: What is one rule you learned or unlearned that has worked for you and your writing? And more importantly, how has this change in perspectives impacted your life outside of writing?
Lilly: Something that I’ve learned (from fandom spaces and from East Asian media I grew up with in particular) that I carry into my writing is that character matters so much more than plot. If you have a character that is compelling, fleshed out, with interesting contradictions, you have the foundations for a good story. Plot, I think, can be ironed out in revisions and always tinkered with later on, but characters–their voice, their worldview, their vibe–are what stay with readers. You can have the greatest plot ever but if your characters don’t draw people in, that’s a much harder problem to fix. Character-building is a part of the craft that I try to lead with when I write a new story.
Learning to question rigid rules of writing has helped me to become a better teacher and scholar–and also makes it more exciting for me as a reader! Opening my mind to various methods and structures of storytelling is just more fun.
Looking Forward
We talk about diversifying literature a lot here at Bookish Brews and I’m so honored to have Lilly’s perspective on literary form and story structure. So much of our literary canon follows such strict guidelines for what a proper story is or isn’t and Lilly is absolutely right, we need to expand our ideas on what constitutes a good story and how those stories are told.
