A Disturbing Incompleteness

The greatest sin, fear, and burden of mine is one I’ve constructed in my own head entirely: mediocrity.

Perhaps this is a good place to start.

I was recently declined an opportunity to publish a story in a well-regarded publication. The reason for the rejection was not due to content. They liked the piece. Their dismissal was based on the fact that I did not hold citizenship of the country I was writing about. This feedback came just one week after being declined funding from National Geographic for similar reasons.

More specifically, the Nat Geo grant I had applied for was to support a team of Rwandan storytellers that I had met during my time in Rwanda. The group, two filmmakers, a teacher, and an architect were going to design and teach storytelling skills to empower marginalized indigenous women in two villages in rural Rwanda. The impetus was to preserve the indigenous history and culture of the Batwa people, a group which is under severe threat due to a complexity of issues, including wildlife conservation and post-genocide laws. However, because I myself was not Rwandan they declined the entire project. The specific feedback we received suggested that I, the grant submitter, should “stick to your own country.”

That experience requires its own piece entirely. The more recent story I pitched and had rejected was about my time spent in Myanmar in 2022. The article mediates over the ethical tradeoffs entangled with traveling to a country that is operated by military regime. I question the value of tourism amidst unrest, and wonder whether tourism, in context such as this, are more beneficial or harmful.

I never want to drown out marginalized voices. Much of my writing aims to do the opposite.

I tell stories from a personal perspective because I refuse to assume an authoritarian voice. I accept and delight in the fact that there is much that I don’t know. And so, I speak on my own behalf. That means my stories are often opinionated. There are relevant arguments to be made against imbuing subjectivity into the journalistic practice. But I would rather make clear my voice than to talk for, or over, someone else.

Without subjectivity and opinion, we risk neglecting some of the greatest stories. We risk complacency. Churning out stale, politically correct articles, ones that are absent and amorphous, appears—at least in my view—incredibly sad. Of course, we need objective, evidence-based, journalism. But we need not solely objectivity.

Living in New York City normalizes the incongruities of identity. And yet, even in middle school, the hierarchy of identity, nationality, and citizenship was evident. “Where are you from” determined status. It insinuated struggle, or lack thereof. My first day of fifth grade I sat between a boy from Switzerland and a girl from Sudan. Citizenship conveys a story. But it does not tell the whole story.

Everyone competes for victimhood. Most of the time, we compete on the individual level. Sometimes on a political or national scale. Who has it the worst, and who is to blame? Identity, and the way we tell our own stories, largely shapes this narrative. All of us have the appetite to be a victim at some point or another. It relieves us of our responsibility to act on things.

Storytelling and identity are distinctly connected and wonderfully complicated.

As someone who doesn’t have one place she calls home, it’s exceptionally frustrating to be told to stick to stories of places that I am from. Must we define our identities as a prerequisite for telling stories?

Lived experience has shaped my identity far more than have the passports I hold. I am perplexed at the assumption that my identity, or anyone’s, equates to citizenship, and that citizenship must reflect and support the stories one ought to write.

I understand the sentiment of having writers represent their own countries. I agree that the historic marginalization of local voices requires a shift in the ways we approach storytelling abroad as foreigners. But I insist there must be a reasonable middle ground, for those who fall in the middle.

Because the really good writers are the ones who are entirely themselves. They have their own vision, and hopefully its one that deviates now and then from pale journalistic requirements. Sometimes a disobedience of rigid boundaries is required to create something extraordinary. What does it mean to have creative freedom if we don’t have the space to fracture reality?