[Janice D. Soderling]

Intrinsic to this discussion and always current is Tillie Olsen's "Silences".

It begins

This book is about such silences. It is concerned with the relationship of circumstances--including class, color, sex; the times, climate into which one is born--to the creation of literature.

(...)

A passion and a purpose inform [the] pages [of this book]: love for my incomparable medium, literature: hatred for all that, societally rooted, unnecessarily lessens and denies it; slows, impairs, silences writers.

It is written to re-dedicate and encourage.

"Silences" particularly discusses the writer-woman because that was a prominent issue in the public debate when the book was written, but it does not neglect to recognize other "silences" and their causes. The chapter "Silences--Its Varieties" includes: censorship silences, having to censor self, political silences.

I recommend each and all to read this book or re-read if the initial reading was a decade or more ago.

Some thoughts of my own:

To be in an anthology presupposes that one writes. It also presupposes that the writer has made an impression on someone by publishing a large corpus of work from which an editor can select.

To publish a large corpus, one will have conceiveably written double, treble, hundredfold, the published amount and had time to hone the craft. That presupposes time to write. And to read.

On the climb to "the top" some will remain on (or fall off of) each stairstep. Many voices will not be heard without some impassioned editor to collect them and provide a forum.

It was The Crisis (the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), founded by W. E. B. Du Bois in 1910) that first published Langston Hughes. Without it, his work might have been lost in obscurity. Similar circumstances might be cited for many minority writers who later became acclaimed.

Most certainly, in my viewpoint, we need magazines and (their) editors who create specialized magazines and anthologies to showcase minority writers. This creates a focus that otherwise might not be noticed even by the members of that minority. But that is only one viewpoint and I concede that others may have reasons to differ, just as others may have reasons to agree.

This thread has become lengthy and many harsh words have been thrown from alll directions. But the fair-minded reader will perhaps have found cause to ponder questions such as: Is there a problem? If so, what are the reasons? If so, what should be done about it and why?

Afterthought might lead to an adjustment of attitudes and action. If so, this lengthy thread will have served a good purpose.

Hopefully all the participants will continue to find the Eratosphere a forum with a high ceiling for debate and differing viewpoints and not go away mad.

I think most of the points that can be made, have been. But I may be wrong.