Creating While Marginalized
Your art may not be everyone’s cup of tea but the right people will come around for a sip.
There are people out there who need your art, music, or any other creative works you produce. When you put your art out into the world, you are literally contributing to art history just by existing.
If you belong to a marginalized community, you are not just creating for yourself anymore. You’re creating space for other marginalized artists by just speaking with your authentic voice. When it comes to literary arts, visual arts, the music industry, and more, bigotry and obstructionism exist and can sometimes compound your experience as an artist – something to which I can certainly relate.
“Seat’s Taken…”
There are so many marginalized people throughout the history of various art mediums who’ve attempted to go around unjust organizations and institutions by concealing their identities or essentially building their own table without support. This undoubtedly is far more difficult, but I would also say the most daring works of art come from a sense of isolation, channeling painful feelings, and then putting such emotion into a creative project.
When I returned from Iraq in late 2005, my sense of joy in creating art practically dissipated, but I forced myself to paint, draw, and create despite hand tremors, insomnia, and night terrors.
It wasn’t until 2008 when I seriously started to write out my manuscript for Quixote in Ramadi and query literary agents as well as traditional and independent publishers. I prepared myself as best as I could by reading up on how to make a book proposal, a quality query letter, and more in order to position myself as a serious writer who was motivated to tell a story of trauma and surviving a horrific deployment.
However, I was met with a series of no’s and excuses as to why my manuscript couldn’t be accepted. In 2013, after hearing the same lines from agents and publishers over and over about how the market wasn’t ready for my book or that the manuscript had too much profanity, an independent publisher got real with me - and I’m eternally grateful that he took the time out to be open and frank about the path ahead.
Essentially, this small publisher in the US Southwest stated that my book contained a powerful story, but it also challenged the ongoing narrative of justifying US-led wars around the world and what it’s doing to civilians and war Veterans alike. It also wasn’t helping that an Indigenous Pacific Islander was holding the pen as Veteran memoirs pushed by mainstream publishers are overwhelmingly white with a few minorities who don’t challenge imperialism are occasionally allowed through the gates. To me, this verified what I was feeling, yet I had felt alone in saying so. And this came from an older white male publisher. He declined to publish my work out of fear of backlash, but encouraged me to never stop writing and to have courage that one day my voice would be heard.
While I wasn’t thrilled with another ‘no’ - even if it validated my sentiments over 5 years of literary rejections - I took this access denial as a gift. So, I self-published Quixote in Ramadi in 2013. A few traditionally published authors - all white women - who either wrote about their own military experience, or the experiences of others, initially scoffed at my self-published book, saying:
“Oh, that’s too bad you had to self-publish! LoL!”
“Sometimes you have to wait your turn!”
“One day, people will be interested in what Islanders have to say…”
Did you cringe a bit at any of those microaggressions? Because while that happened in 2013, all of those people are cringing much harder as DEI and intersectionality theory gain more steam - and they are now desperate to remain relevant despite their absolute shit behavior.
Even if Indigenous Pacific Islander voices are still absent from mainstream literature, I know how valuable my voice is based on the amounts of microaggressions and pushback I got from privileged authors who were handed every opportunity with book deals, professional marketing, sales support, and representation.
If what I was saying wasn’t important, they wouldn’t have worked so hard to put me down and exclude me. While I didn’t have any of those systems of support, I still got to speak with Representative Speier at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. Not because I asked to, but because her office requested my presence at her event after reading my self-published book.
So don’t allow negative people deter you from speaking up about your narrative. Because while you may not be everyone’s cup of tea, the right people will come around for a sip.
Later as I started to write The Desert Warrior, I encountered similar rejections saying the usual:
“Your book is just not right for the market at this time. Maybe next year?”
“We don’t need any more memoirs unless you’re famous.”
“We only publish military genre if you’re a Navy SEAL with a peen.”
Whatever. I expected it.
However, this time around, I got a literary agent from a major agency in New York that did publish the usual “thank me for my service” SEAL stories and reality show “pick me” marmoset dipshit memoirs.
At first, my agent (we’ll call her “Jane") and I had wonderful phone chats and she really seemed to believe in my work. Yet this enthusiasm started to wane in the coming months when she pitched my memoir to all of those “We Need Diverse Books!” publishers who allegedly wanted underrepresented voices. They overwhelmingly hit back with some additionally disappointing yet validating news.
One publisher in New York confided in Jane that no one was going to publish a memoir like mine unless I was a blonde with blue eyes and a victim complex. Essentially, only white damsels in distress need apply.
Once again, this was disappointing but this commentary kept coming up with numerous publishers saying that no one will want to buy a book by a Micronesian (because WTF is that?!?!?! GASP!) woman combat veteran and that since there aren’t any major Pacific Islander authors, there is no way to gauge my potential for success via profit & loss forecasting. Therefore, it was a constant ‘no’ to my manuscript.
After a steady stream of “whites only” microaggressions from publishers behind closed doors to my white hipster agent - many of these publishers are those you’ve probably heard of - we decided to have another call to figure out a way forward. Jane suggested that I shorten my manuscript, which I did to about 280 pages - quite standard for a trade nonfiction book. She then suggested I rearrange my chapters, make then shorter. Then longer. She would jump around from task to task so much that I realized what she was doing.
Much like the traditional publishers, she was moving the goal post. Instead of advocating for my book, she was engaging in gaslighting. I then confronted her about it, and she vehemently denied it, of course (see: gaslighting). I gave her examples of books of similar lengths, chapters, and so on. From Hemingway to Winona LaDuke, I compared and contrasted where my manuscript structure really wasn’t an outlier or a problem. I just wanted to know what her issue was.
“Don’t compare yourself to famous authors and what they’ve done. Who are YOU to think that your work is special?” she barked back over the phone.
While I wasn’t insisting my work was worthy of a literary prize, it was that my manuscript length or the amount of chapters were no different than well-known works.
However, what she said spoke volumes. It was her insisting that I should know my place - and that I didn’t belong in literary spaces of privilege with social and financial capital. She was merely giving me lip service, humoring the one woman of color on her author list at the time, and I knew I deserved better.
After this last conversation, I ended my contract with her and decided to go the self-publishing route again. This time, a few of the same “wait your turn” white women authors offered assistance. I accepted, only to be ignored and sidelined once again. Perhaps the empty offer was a way to assuage their guilt, but I expected it and it’s always worth a shot.
Since I was working full-time, I decided to take on an editor who could do both copy and content work with me to ensure my book was ready to publish. An Irish professor at the University of Nevada - Las Vegas named Shaun assisted me in separating the wheat from the chaff, which got my book out onto the market.
After all that I’ve endured, I would have been remiss if I didn’t ask him how he felt about the manuscript. After the line and word edits, which all felt quite normal and routine - what I was hoping for, an experience without the weird contempt or gaslighting - I asked if he could tell me what he thought the problem was with my work that elicited so many rejections.
He wasn’t American and could still give a perspective of privilege yet with somewhat of an outsider lens. In the end, he provided an abundance of notes of his personal thoughts and insights, for which I was grateful to hear because it confirmed how pain and trauma are, in fact, universal.
He then said, “Thanks so much for letting me read your book! I really enjoyed it. That might sound like a strange thing to say given the content, but what I mean is that it is a fulfilling experience, and I think I learned a lot.”
He didn’t have to provide this feedback - he was already paid - but he did confirm that from his experience instructing in an MFA program that my manuscript wasn’t a problem. It’s the industry that is filled with prejudice.
Time and again, this sentiment has been validated. In short, it’s not you who isn’t important - it’s the unnecessary bigotry that we’re dealing with which is bullshit.
Art World Navigation
When it comes to my journey with the art world, it was cumbersome, but I would argue that there are more ways to navigate around microaggressions and institutionalized discrimination. I’ve found a lot more support among other marginalized visual artists than I did in the literary arts, and as a result, have been able to display my work in various independent galleries and public venues.
Additionally, I’ve been more successful in selling work in my own online art shop in addition to selling work from my virtual art exhibitions. Art is subjective in the way that it can be created by anyone, but even though I’ve experienced setbacks throughout my interactions with galleries and curators, I would still say that it has been a far more positive journey than with publishing.
Art should be able to exist in any form or venue possible - it’s for everyone. The fact that art can now exist in all parts of society means that artists are experiencing a wider range of opportunities than ever before through different genres, mediums, and venues.
And yet somehow we’re still stuck with this outdated system where white men reign supreme in the art world. While many art institutions have allegedly attempted to diversify their curators and artists, the art world represents a community that is still deeply rooted in colonialist tradition—the things that continue to oppress women and other minority groups.
In my case, I’m not someone who has been formally trained artistically from an institution or school. While I can proclaim to be an artist, I am at a disadvantage because not only do institutions want to promote their star students over everyone else but art schools do not always reach marginalized people and instruct them on how they can engage with art for political activism or social change. The art world does very little in providing resources for emerging artists or collectives that are marginalized by race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, etc.
Art Activism
Art can be used as a tool to express one’s identity and social realities instead of being regarded as an apolitical form of self-expression. Art can change society—it does it all the time through various mediums and genres. And yet so many art institutions continue to ignore its potential to enact change within society by promoting only work that reinforces dominant narrative structures but in catering to neoliberal consumer ideals without challenging power structures and the art market.
Therefore, art activism is a way of expressing one’s art in order to spark social change within society. Art activism can be used as a vehicle for social justice, especially since we live in an era where we require all forms of art, including art education, to promote social justice issues such as feminism or anti-racism—issues that are essential to dismantling power structures because art will always be political.
Art activism brings together marginalized communities so they can practice art themselves without having to rely on others who control how their identities are represented (read: white male curators).
Art doesn’t belong solely to those who hold dominant social positions and capital—it belongs to everyone and should be accessible to everyone.
Battling Institutionalized Bigotry
Let's say that you're an artist who wants to fight the broken system, you want to push back against that bigotry and marginalization. You want to find a way to break into an industry, but you might often find that the primary decision-makers who determine whether your career happens or not are people who not only don't understand your identity but may not even really believe that an audience exists for your demographic – or even worse, they don’t want your art seen, heard, or experienced at all due to prejudice.
When marginalized groups are not represented within the halls of power - from mainstream traditional publishing or art galleries - and are denied the opportunity to have their stories told, it fundamentally undermines the purpose of what art is supposed to be. Art has always been about giving a voice to those who are unheard, about expressing emotions and experiences that may go unspoken in other settings, and often about finding healing from pain or inspiring strength in difficult circumstances.
Art can help us survive, it can help us heal, and it can give us hope. So when marginalized people are denied this space to breathe, when they are being subjected to erasure, or being forced to relinquish control over how their identities and their stories are perceived, it's not just "the market" driving taste, it's institutionalized and systemic discrimination.
When marginalized artists are denied an opportunity to perform, share, or exhibit their work, we create a culture where folks feel compelled either consciously or subconsciously to dim their own shine. The art world does itself a major disservice not only to the marginalized community but also to the art industry itself.
This doesn't mean that parts of various creative industries aren't inclusive or that certain organizations don’t welcome people of all racial, ethnic, or gender identities and expressions, it just means that if artistic industries want to genuinely claim that art is for everyone, then they need to include groups who have historically been excluded from traditional publishing, the art world, theatre, the music industry, and every other creative avenue that allows for showcasing powerful self-expression.
Be Unapologetically YOU
Creating while marginalized is a difficult existence. Art is subjective. Art is personal. Art is for people to experience. Art, if it exists in the public eye, must be accessible for anyone who wishes to experience it. There are no boundaries when creating art, which is why I find it so fascinating that this is where society has set limits on us as individuals who create art because of our identities.
Identity plays a huge role in the art we create and how we express our experiences through a variety of mediums. Art is a powerful tool of self-expression, especially for marginalized artists who do not have visibility within the established art world or other creative industries.
Art itself demands space and authenticity. Marginalized artists often only have access to publicity and artistic spaces under specific terms with conditions set up by bureaucratic institutions led by privileged people who identify with dominant culture that sometimes further marginalize lived experiences rather than building us up.
Creating while marginalized means pushing back against those boundaries and utilizing the limited spaces available as tools for visibility and resistance where and possible. It takes courage because there are consequences for artists who push back against their respective industries. This process of pushing back can dehumanize us, make us feel less than, and bring up the worst parts of ourselves and allow the generational trauma of our history to surface.
Powerful narratives demand space and visibility, with or without the support of mainstream industry powerhouses, because art will speak its truth without them - it cannot be silenced. Art is a way to build communities and platforms where there was none before and much of what we see is a continued struggle to articulate our own stories with #OwnVoices.
Creating while marginalized is also compounded with the duty to uplift those voices around you as allies while building your own voice. It's exhausting.
However, we can channel much of this frustration into powerful works of art that act as a beautiful piece of resistance that we should not take for granted. As marginalized artists, this is truly a gift in disguise because it truly takes bravery to create under systems that would rather see us silenced and disappeared.
Marginalized Art Takes Courage
Art is meant to uplift marginalized voices, no matter what anyone says about your existence. Art exists outside the boundaries of the social and financial capital around us made up by social constructs built on capitalism, dominant culture, and imperialist institutions. Those of us who don't fit within its colonial confines are actually free to do what we want. While many of us may not have the access to capital to create without oppressive burdens (costs, time, space), don't let naysayers or lack of access to privileged spaces deter you.
To this, I say self-publish if you need to, set up your own art shop or virtual exhibit, create a short film you’ve always wanted to make. Write that play or TV script. Act as though you’re going to get a yes, no matter how many times you’ve heard no, and someone somewhere will fall in love with your work because you’ve invested time, passion, and energy in being authentically you despite the odds and obstacles – and that’s a beautiful thing.
I’m not gonna say that it’s easy to push aside demoralizing moments, as all those feelings are undoubtedly valid and real. You’re going to get tired of fighting at various points in your life and you’ll need to reset and recharge from negative situations. When you find yourself exhausted, do your best to give yourself a bit of self-compassion.
At the end of the day, your struggle and your sacrifice through your art can help make someone else’s life that much easier and provide a relatable vision and voice when someone is feeling alone in the world. Just by striving to be your best and most creative self, others will be inspired to do it, too, and as a community, we can lift one another up to greater and more creative levels than ever.
Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.
Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.
