Writing sensitively: defining sensitivity in the literary sphere

ABSTRACT

This paper interrogates the concept of ‘sensitivity’ in creative writing. While the term appears to be relatively straightforward, the methods writers use to write sensitively differ: some may simply consider the feelings of the group represented, while others may engage with interviews or employ the use of a sensitivity reader. This paper uses complexity theory and critical race and whiteness scholarship to define and theorise how sensitivity is used within the current publishing landscape. It argues that, while writing sensitivity can offer greater opportunities for representation on the page, it can also further reinforce racial hierarchies already present within the publishing industry.

KEYWORDS:

• Fiction; ethics; sensitivity; cultural appropriation; whiteness; critical race theory

A common sentiment amongst writers who engage with discourse around writing the comparatively marginalised Other is that it should be approached with sensitivity. In these cases, sensitivity is referred to as a kind of methodology. Writers strive to do a good job in their representation. While many writers suggest ‘research' leads to increased authenticity, what this research consists of is not always expounded upon. The works are said to ‘ring true' in some cases, while a few have been met with criticism. Exactly how writers achieve sensitivity, and whether it makes for a more authentic work is difficult to measure.

I argue that sensitivity as a definition can be seen as a site of complexity. Its meaning shifts depending upon the context in which it is used. To understand reaction to sensitivity and the way in which it is approached by writers, this paper explores the following factors: (1) writer’s identity, (2) the subject’s identity, (3) how the subject has tended to be constructed within the literary sphere (that is whether they have been heavily stereotyped in racist propaganda in the past), and (4) the situation of under-representation in the publishing landscape. Depending on its use, the term may inadvertently position whiteness as the central authority on writing characters of Other backgrounds. A more nuanced look at the idea of sensitivity in writing must take into consideration power dynamics and methods of story production.

Contextualising sensitivity

In order to define sensitivity in the context of writing Others, it is important to first discuss cultural appropriation. Cultural appropriation is the use of elements of another culture for the purposes of telling a story. In the introduction to Borrowed Power: Essays on Cultural Appropriation, Ziff and Rao (1997, 1) draw on a 1992 Resolution of the Writers Union of Canada: ‘the taking – from a culture that is not one’s own – of intellectual property, cultural expressions or artifacts, history and ways of knowledge’. In the context of fiction, they refer to cultural appropriation as literary or voice appropriation (Ziff and Rao 1997, 17). While cultural appropriation can be viewed negatively, this is not always the case. Asch (2009) points out that souvenirs are appropriation, but buying them does not always lead to offense. I have argued previously that the extent to which cultural appropriation is likely to be seen as offensive depends on the level of exploitation (LeClerc 2020). For example, a misrepresentation that fits into a narrative used to demean or oppress a group of people is exploitative. An author who has been paid large sums of money to produce a work about a marginalised character's experience while Own Voices¹ authors are under-published within the industry can also be seen as exploitative. As such, the power dynamic of the writer and the subject is inextricably linked to how the appropriation will be received.

Cultural appropriation is further complicated by the various positions writers take on the issue (LeClerc 2018). Some writers advocate for the ability of writers to write and represent characters any way they choose, a position I describe as the ‘artistic freedom’ argument. Others feel that cultural appropriation has a negative impact on representation and that writers should ‘make space’ for those underrepresented groups to tell their own stories. This hinges on the idea that the ‘space’, or current pool of marginalised writers published, is currently quite small (and for some groups it may even be non-existent). This I refer to as the ‘cultural appropriation’ position. Similarly, Rosemary J Coombe (1997, 75–77) has previously discussed ‘Romanticism’ and ‘Orientalism’ (see Said 1979) as ‘two poles’ that arise out of the debate. However, I take a different lens on these approaches and explore this in terms of a spectrum.

A third position to be explored is that of ‘sensitivity’. This is a broad range in the middle that involves some research or consultation with the community represented. Thus, sensitivity is one lens through which to view the discussion of writing the Other. It is also an area in need of theorisation, given the variety of ways it has been approached. In the following section I will provide an overview of how sensitivity has been defined in both academia and more general popular writing discourse, through a review of opinion and news writing on the topic.

Sensitivity can be seen to encompass an awareness of power relations and the situation of the author in relation to the subject/Other. However, there are a range of ways in which the author may engage with the subject. While some authors may research the subject through secondary texts, others may interview people of similar backgrounds to their subject. One could argue that an author who conducts interviews may produce a more authentic narrative compared to one who simply researches, given that it provides a first-hand account of the experience. However, even when stories are told in the first-person using interviews from a subject, the author is the ultimate decision maker in the formation of the narrative. There still exists the potential for an exploitative narrative. This has been explored by creative writing researchers. Jessica Rose (2011, 7), for example, calls for responsibility in our decisions, taking an approach that focusses on the author rather than the subject. Angela Savage (2016) argues for conversation between the writer and the community, seeing the subject as a representation of the community as a whole. Meme McDonald (in McDonald and Pryor 1999/2000, 2) discusses the importance of collaboration, seeing the author and the subject as contributors to the shaping of the narrative. Janelle Adsit and Renée M. Byrd’s book Writing intersectional identities: keywords for creative writers (2019) also provides an overview of key terms and questions to consider within the discussion. The variety in approaches highlights the ways in which sensitivity can be interpreted differently depending on the author’s concept of research. This suggests that sensitivity as an approach occupies a broad spectrum: it can range from consideration of the impact of writing on the community to engagement with the community.

Definitions of sensitivity are dynamic, fluid and contextual. Complexity theory encompasses the multiple factors that contribute to a situation. Situations have their own (sometimes unique, sometimes predicable) set of complex circumstances. Take for example the situation of a person taking clothes from a friend’s wardrobe. I can take into consideration the various factors involved in this case to make a prediction of what may happen. The friend’s attitude towards clothing, how well the friends know each other, or whether the friend was invited to try on the clothes. The friend’s reaction to it would also depend on their personality, whether they perceive this to be funny, annoying or rude. My point is that there are multiple factors that impact situations and the way information is interpreted, particularly when it comes to social interactions. According to Ang (2011, 790), ‘the complexity of things (problems, events, practices, institutions, systems) is generated … by the multiplicity of meanings and perspectives which continuously work to shape and reshape their shifting and contested configurations’. A white writer who writes ‘sensitively’, is usually seen as positive, meaning to take into consideration the feelings of the group represented. However, a First Nations or Person of Colour (FNPOC) writer referred to as a ‘sensitive’ writer usually carries the connotation of being offended or ‘over-sensitive’ (LeClerc 2020). Contextually, the word is more likely to take on a different meaning depending on the identity of the author and the political climate. To understand this reaction to sensitivity and the way in which it is approached by writers, factors such as the (1) writer’s identity, (2) the subject’s identity, (3) the construction of the subject in the literary sphere and (4) under-representation of FNPOC authors in the literary landscape are key sites to explore. Social interactions involve a range of complexities. While reactions to writing may not be predicable, examining the range of factors that contribute to their creation can give us some insight into exploitative power dynamics and structures which may further marginalise FNPOC writers.

1. The writer’s identity

People may experience different levels of discrimination based on their social class, race, gender, ability and other marginalising factors (see Crenshaw 1991). The term ‘positionality’ refers to a writer’s position within society and the power relations inherent in that position (Adsit and Byrd 2019, 165–170). For example, I am speaking for the position of a Chilean-American woman living in Australia. Being part-Irish American gives me particular advantages in society afforded to those people associated with whiteness. However, I am also Latinx. Because of this, I face discrimination. As someone who identifies as a writer of colour, I am speaking from a particular positionality in the context of this discussion.

When approaching the writer’s identity, discourse on the topic has tended to describe the writer’s proximity to the characters in terms of a binary: white writers and FNPOC writers. This is reinforced by the fact that the binary exemplifies the colonialist power structure in which the literary industry is situated. bell hooks (2013, 4) refers to ‘imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’, to allow us to think about how the industry is constructed of interlocking systems that maintain culture and domination. Aileen Moreton-Robinson (2004) and Ghassan Hage (2000) analyse whiteness in terms of the position of privilege that it provides. A character who is not described in terms of race tends to be seen as white by default, and all other racially marginalised groups are described in relation to it. The relationship between whiteness and the maintenance of racial hierarchies positions whiteness as the norm against which other races are judged (Moreton-Robinson 2004, p.vii). A writer can have a proximity to whiteness, what it values and sees as important, without being white. The focus is on the narrative itself, and whether that reinforces colonialist stereotypes and tropes about a group of people.

Claudia Rankine and Beth Loffreda (2015) refer to the ‘language of rights’ when describing the discourse around white writers writing FNPOC characters. This language may include ‘I have the right to write anyone I want’ or ‘I don’t know if I am allowed to write this character’. Jeanine Leane (2020) discusses it as ‘invisible charter of rights’. In this discourse, they argue, the white writer sees imagination as a space free from race while also acknowledging race as a central factor in writing characters of Other backgrounds. This can be seen in the vast amount of writing by white writers of FNPOC characters in the literary sphere, which I will discuss further in section three. While whiteness, like race, is a societal construct, it has a strong impact on the discourse of writing of Other backgrounds, often shaping the discourse. Easily observable in the discourse on writing is the vast amount of articles on the topic written by white journalists and writers. Even more evident, in my experience, is the lack of writers of colour as creative writing educators and academic commentators.

In response to controversy surrounding the mis-representation, and racist representation, of characters of marginalised backgrounds by white writers, the discussion has turned to the idea of sensitively approaching the writing of characters as a solution. Perhaps in this desire for a set of ‘rules’, the most common approach to writing sensitively, is to propose an ethical framework based on the author’s individual experience of writing. Angela Savage (2018) produced an article for Writers Victoria entitled ‘The Responsible Writer’ suggesting that it is up to the writer to produce their own ethical standards, but recommending some guidelines: clarify narrative intent (eg, ‘why am I writing from this point of view?’), research, consultation and sensitivity reading, and openness to criticism. Another example is Bellette’s (2013) article ‘Interrogating whiteness: A precarious cross cultural/racial creative writing PhD journey’. Bellette’s paper asks how she can ‘fracture whiteness in her writing’ in order to interrupt the ‘interrupt unconscious acts of narrative whiteness’ (p.1). In ‘Writing white, writing black, and events at Canoe Rivulet’, Catherine McKinnon (2012) asks how a writer might fictionalise historical Indigenous figures. She produced ‘guidelines’ based on how non-Indigenous writers produced (and misused) Indigenous characters and interviews with Wadi Wadi elders and the Illawarra community members. It is important to note that acknowledging whiteness does not mean the text will be free from the reproduction of a colonialist narrative (see Alison Whittaker's (2020) essay ‘So White. So What’). As a matter of fact, it can serve as a red herring, and distract from mis-representation.

In the context of writing First Nations characters, there are more official guidelines put forth by organisations. ‘Protocols for using First Nations Cultural and Intellectual Property in the Arts’ is published by the Australian Government's Australia Council for the Arts (2019). It details legal, ethical and moral considerations for using Indigenous cultural material. The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies also produces ‘Guidelines for the ethical publishing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander authors and research from those communities’ (AIATSIS 2015). It details how to engage in ethical publishing and the use of material written about history and culture. As well, First Nations authors have proposed questions to reflect on before choosing to write Indigenous characters. Anita Heiss' (2002) article ‘Writing about Indigenous Australia – Some issues to consider and protocols to follow’, discusses many of the issues of writing characters of Indigenous backgrounds. In her essay ‘Subjects of the imagination: on dropping the settler pen’, Jeanine Leane (2018) also poses a series of questions for settler writers to consider.

There are workshops on writing the other that teach writers worried about ‘offense’ how to write sensitively. The most famous is Shawl and Ward’s (2023), website Writing the Other, which contains several workshops and a link to their book. These are also becoming more commonplace as workshops at literary festivals such as The Emerging Writers Festival (EWF 2019) and through writing centres like Writers Victoria (2023). While Shawl and Wards’ workshops focus on the need for representation of diverse characters in texts, the purpose of the festival and writers centre workshops are a little more abstract. They serve more of an educational purpose, presenting the different sides of the argument for and against writing characters of other backgrounds and allowing the author to make their own ethical decisions.

Thus, there is a common belief that sensitive writing involves an awareness of privilege. This can also manifest as an interrogation of the author’s identity with relation to the subject or Other. This relational approach takes the form of a first-person account of writing, citing considerations the author applied to the work. Looking at workshops also suggests that the ethics of practice is determined by the author themselves. This is not the case in First Nations contexts, which contain clear protocols for the production of artwork and projects.

2. The subject’s identity

Interrogating the identity of the author in relation to the subject remains problematic. In an upcoming book chapter, I have written about the ways in which the media and texts, which may also be constructed by people who are of a different background to the author, can influence authors’ perceptions of certain groups, and how this can lead to replicating stereotypes and misrepresentation (LeClerc 2024). The further away in proximity an author is to a character from a different ethnic background, the more likely they are to rely on previous knowledge.

Arguably, the most convenient way to avoid misrepresentation is to hire a ‘sensitivity reader’. While there has not been much written on sensitivity readers in academia, in recent years the discussion around the topic has blossomed in the form of opinion pieces and online articles. Much like the debate around cultural appropriation, these debate the necessity and role of the reader. According to a spate of articles published around February 2017, writers of Others and their editors have increasingly used ‘sensitivity readers’ as a means by which to ensure they have not misrepresented a character. ‘Writing in the margins’ (originating in 2012) was a website that provided a database of sensitivity readers, although it is no longer maintained (see Ireland 2018). The group aimed to point out ‘internalized bias and negatively charged language’ that can arise when writers create ‘outside of [their] experiences’ although they warn that this is not a guarantee, as readers may see things in different ways (Ireland cited in Waldman 2017). Central to this description is the idea of offense, or avoiding offense. Sensitivity readers act as a kind of cultural editor (see Flood 2018; Qian 2019; Ro 2017; Sullivan 2017) whose role is to correct stereotypes.

Criticism against sensitivity readers has called them a form of censorship (Alter 2017; Flood 2018). However, according to Clayton (cited in Mason 2017), a sensitivity reader has the potential to legitimise the mimicking of marginalised voices by non-marginalised writers:

It feels like I’m supplying the seeds and the gems and the jewels from our culture, and it creates cultural thievery,’ Clayton said. ‘Why am I going to give you all of those little things that make my culture so interesting so you can go and use it and you don’t understand it? (Clayton in Mason 2017)

Roderick (cited in Waldman 2017) also points out that the reading of insensitive material can take a heavy emotional toll on the sensitivity reader. As a result, the assumption that those underrepresented in writing benefit from sensitivity readers has been called into question.

The writers’ proximity to the subject plays a role in the construction of the character. However, it is misleading to think that proximity is authenticity. As Jeanine Leane (2016) argues, we need to change the terms of conversation and ask questions about our own assumptions, such as why we assume it is easier to write a character nearest to us. To frame writing in terms of rules simply reinforces the language of rights. While research may be involved in approaching writing sensitively, the control is still within the grasp of the writer. Without consultation with the people represented, this representation runs the risk of construction using already fictionalised elements, relying on tropes present within the mediasphere (see Appadurai 2015). When referring to already centralised white writers, this means that whiteness still operates as the authority when constructing characters of racially marginalised backgrounds.

3. The construction of the subject in the literary sphere

The construction of the subject is therefore not created within a vacuum. There has been a long history of racist representation of certain marginalised groups. For example, racist propaganda targeted at First Nations people has had long-lasting impacts on the literary sphere and attitudes towards First Nations people. Relying upon the mediasphere for representation means operating in a landscape where this propaganda was allowed to flourish for centuries. The topic of racist representation has been approached by writers such as Jeanine Leane (2016), Alexis Wright (2016), Sandra Phillips (2015), and Rankine and Loffreda (2015).

Jeanine Leane (2016) argues that ‘literary representations are never just benign descriptions; they enter into and shape our national discourse’. Leane describes books in which Aboriginal people were written out of the picture, what she refers to as the ‘literature of erasure’. As Alexis Wright (2016) asserts in her seminal essay ‘What Happens When You Tell Somebody Else’s Story?’, ‘Aboriginal people have not been in charge of the stories other people tell about us’. Wright discuss the national narrative in which stories are told on the behalf of First Nations people, supposedly ‘for their own good’, and the dangerous impacts of these narratives. Instead, as Sandra Phillips (2015) suggests, writers need to move ‘beyond the long-held stereotype and figurative and literal confinement established by colonialism’ (p.99). Jeanine Leane (2016) has also advocated that interpretations be ‘informed by the growing body of Aboriginal scholarship exploring the politics of representation’.

I was once at the at a gallery where I saw Ali Gumillya Baker (2018) installation, racist texts. The pile of racist books went all the way the ceiling – gallery viewers looked small in comparison to the stack. It was a striking physical example of the influence of racism on the literary sphere. This long history of misrepresentation has helped to shape the narrative that certain groups are in need of saviours. This is why it is important that writers challenge stereotypes through Own Voices writing.

4. Under-representation in the literary landscape

Another concern raised about sensitivity readers is that they could aggravate the already significant under-representation of Own Voices authors. Own Voices refers to books published by writers of the same background as the characters (see Lim and Kwaymullina 2018).

Over the last decade, studies in English speaking countries have undertaken to track this underrepresentation. In the USA a look at book reviews in the New York Times showed 655 out of 742 were written by Caucasian authors (Gay 2012). The ‘Writing the Future’ report found that only 14% of people working in publishing houses came from Black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds in the UK (Spread the Word 2015, 26). The ‘Re:Thinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing’ report found that the publishing industry caters to a white and middle-class core audience (Saha and van Lente 2020, 2). Lee and Low Books Diversity Baseline Survey examined books in 2015 and 2019 and found that ‘76 percent of publishing staff, review journal staff, and literary agents’ and this remained unchanged in the four years between surveys (Lee and Low Books 2021). In 2020, Canadian academic Richard Jean So and Gus Wezerek wrote an article entitled ‘Just How White Is the Book Industry?’ for the New York Times, describing their research into ‘how many current authors are people of color’ (Jean So and Wezerek 2020). They found that of the 7,124 books in which they were able to identify the race of the author, 95 percent were white. Diversity Arts Australia’s (2019) Shifting the Balance Report found that ‘As at 2 April 2018, CALD Australians were under-represented across every leadership role in every cultural sector, organisational type and jurisdiction’ in the arts industry. While sensitivity readers may improve the issue of representation of diverse characters, it will not solve the pressing issue of under-publication of culturally diverse authors.

Conclusion

Despite the emphasis on sensitivity as a way for more privileged white writers to ethically explore narratives about the Other, there is still the question of what ‘sensitivity’ represents as an approach. Defining sensitivity can be illusive since it is not always clear what the author means by ‘writing sensitively’. In this paper, I have approached this by looking at four factors. The first, the writer’s identity, places emphasis on one’s privilege and identity, in particular as it relates to the Other or subject of the writing. However, this becomes complicated when we consider the second factor: the subject’s identity. While proximity to the subject through interview or experience is seen as a way of writing more authentically, previous knowledge may also play a role in the construction of character. When taking into consideration the fourth factor: the construction of the subject in the literary sphere, this has the power to replicate stereotypes already present in literature. As such, the writing of characters of more marginalised backgrounds can result in the perpetuation of offensive stereotypes and reinforce the narratives of the dominant culture. This is particularly true of First Nations characterisation in Australian writing.

Sensitivity readers offer a way for more privileged writers to lessen the instances of mis-representation and the chances a work may be offensive. However, the issues of mis-representation’s impact historically in the literary sphere, and the fact that the whiteness is still framed as the authority on the text, remain. A higher level of engagement with the group represented may help to avoid reproducing a dominant cultural narrative, though this remains a minimal impact when the fourth factor is considered: the under-representation of FNPOC writers in the literary sphere. Cultural appropriation will continue to create offense, and be the subject of critique, as long as FNPOC writers remain under-published in the industry. As a result, the term ‘sensitivity’ is not as equalising as it may appear. Depending on how it is used, it has the power to reinforce racial power structures which prioritise white interests. For sensitivity as an approach to be truly revolutionary, it should consider the various aspects of the author-subject relationship described in this paper, and above all, promote equality in the field of publishing more broadly.

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Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tresa LeClerc

Dr Tresa LeClerc holds a PhD in Media and Communication from RMIT University in Australia. She is currently a lecturer in Professional Writing at the University of Melbourne. In the 2022–2023 academic year, she was a lecturer at the University of California, San Diego in the Synthesis Writing Program at Seventh College. In 2021 she was the Subject Coordinator for the Digital Politics and Cultural Complexity and Intelligence courses at the University of Melbourne.

Notes

1 The Own Voices Movement began as a hashtag in 2015 by writer Corinne Duyvis (2021) and refers to authors who are of a representative background to their characters.