STUMBLING TOWARD THE BUDDHA, 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION
In the 10th anniversary edition, author’s notes give you a context for the stories I told in the original 2014 edition. Who was I in 2014? Who am I in 2024?
I had to re-read the original book in order to compose the author’s notes.
My initial reaction caught me off guard.
This is great! Had there been anyone nearby, I would have jumped up and yelled, listen to this paragraph, listen to this damn fine sentence. There was no denying it. My writing was good. MC Hammer good. “You can’t touch this.”
There’s nothing more satisfying than praise from my harshest critic—me.
In this spirit, on to the next step, composing the author’s notes.
I breezed through author notes, first draft.
Editor’s (Jessica Conoley) response, “What do you feel? Say what you’re not saying.”
Her response struck a cord. I dug in.
Author notes, next dozen drafts. What I was not saying erupted all over the manuscript. No matter the subject of any essay, the author’s note ranted about racism.
I hadn’t seen this coming.
The note for a story about meditating in a park screamed that the park was named in honor of a real estate developer whose covenants prevented homeowners from selling to black people, but nobody cares, since Kansas City boulevards and neighborhoods memorialize slave holding confederates, and was the last city on the planet to name a street after MLK, which by the way …. The rant continued for a page and a half.
Rage—although, granted, deeply satisfying—touches only the surface of feelings. I want my writing to be layered.
In search of deeper emotions, I employed sure fire self-reflection methods. Binge on sugar. Write for ten minutes. Binge on fashion videos. Meditate five minutes. Binge on Netflix. Write for ten.
When I published Stumbling toward the Buddha in 2014, my audience was majority white. (Still is, but I’m deploying a desegregation plan.) I knew my readers personally. They were crazy about my writing, and they promoted me like crazy. They sang my praises to their friends and friends of friends—all white. They invited me to hold readings in their living rooms, spiritual centers, wellness centers, and art galleries.
To this day, they remain engaged and loyal.
I resent their loyalty.
White readers do not know me. They do not know, upon entering a room, I scan it for a non-white face and finding none, feel marooned. They do not know, daily life triggers PTSD, and the traumatic stress is never post.
Some readers might never know me, unable to bridge the divide created in 1619.
The root of the disconnect also lies at my doorstep. A re-read of 2014 Stumbling shows me the essays are less vulnerable, less self-revealing than I thought they were. Stumbling frequently strikes a race-neutral tone. “Fun and Games,” for example. You can’t tell the author is Black. You’ll read about yoga, My Weekly Reader, Ed Sullivan, and pineapple-Canadian-bacon pizza—none of which tells you a sister wrote this story.
Is that inclusive?
Or dismissive?
What’s the difference between transcending an issue and ignoring one? I don’t know.
Race-neutral feels less than truthful, and readers who come to my pages for authenticity, deserve authenticity.
I revised the author notes.
I replaced references that were deferential to white readers: Exit The June Taylor Dancers; enter The Fly Girls. Alluding to the unrecognized courage of young people, I swapped out generic language for specific, citing my great-great-grandfather, who escaped enslavement at the age of fifteen. I wrote about feeling Included at a Buddhist retreat, because our silent ranks were black, brown, red, and yellow, as well as white. I described a racial humiliation inflicted by my white mother. I marshaled my fury to express outrage on my father’s behalf, the career erasures he faced as a black author in a white literary world.
Revisions taught me how I erase myself from my own stories.
My heart is broken.
Twenty-seven thousand rewrites later, the manuscript for the new edition was suddenly finished.
Finished?
Impossible.
I double-checked.
Done.
Lesson learned by reflecting back from ten years on? The white gaze is a low-grade fever. I won’t let it sap my creative energy. Subconscious concern for white readers bleeds hesitation into other subjects I write about, from metaphysics to family history. At the beginning of this process I saw that my writing is good. At the end, I know it will be better.
I emailed the manuscript to Jessica, stood at my laptop, and grinned.
I did it. I dreamed up this project, and I did it. I made something. I wanted to tape it to the fridge. I wanted to holler. Wait. I did holler. I ran around the house, clanging a bell I dug out from the junk closet.
“Honey! Honey! I did it.”
Ben and I whooped. We croaked “Eye of the Tiger.”
How could I possibly celebrate this moment?
Shop? Dance? Sing?
I wanted to do one thing more than anything else in the world.
Write.
In the 10th anniversary edition, author’s notes give you a context for the stories I told in the original 2014 edition. Who was I in 2014? Who am I in 2024?
I had to re-read the original book in order to compose the author’s notes.
My initial reaction caught me off guard.
This is great! Had there been anyone nearby, I would have jumped up and yelled, listen to this paragraph, listen to this damn fine sentence. There was no denying it. My writing was good. MC Hammer good. “You can’t touch this.”
There’s nothing more satisfying than praise from my harshest critic—me.
In this spirit, on to the next step, composing the author’s notes.
I breezed through author notes, first draft.
Editor’s (Jessica Conoley) response, “What do you feel? Say what you’re not saying.”
Her response struck a cord. I dug in.
Author notes, next dozen drafts. What I was not saying erupted all over the manuscript. No matter the subject of any essay, the author’s note ranted about racism.
I hadn’t seen this coming.
The note for a story about meditating in a park screamed that the park was named in honor of a real estate developer whose covenants prevented homeowners from selling to black people, but nobody cares, since Kansas City boulevards and neighborhoods memorialize slave holding confederates, and was the last city on the planet to name a street after MLK, which by the way …. The rant continued for a page and a half.
Rage—although, granted, deeply satisfying—touches only the surface of feelings. I want my writing to be layered.
In search of deeper emotions, I employed sure fire self-reflection methods. Binge on sugar. Write for ten minutes. Binge on fashion videos. Meditate five minutes. Binge on Netflix. Write for ten.
When I published Stumbling toward the Buddha in 2014, my audience was majority white. (Still is, but I’m deploying a desegregation plan.) I knew my readers personally. They were crazy about my writing, and they promoted me like crazy. They sang my praises to their friends and friends of friends—all white. They invited me to hold readings in their living rooms, spiritual centers, wellness centers, and art galleries.
To this day, they remain engaged and loyal.
I resent their loyalty.
White readers do not know me. They do not know, upon entering a room, I scan it for a non-white face and finding none, feel marooned. They do not know, daily life triggers PTSD, and the traumatic stress is never post.
Some readers might never know me, unable to bridge the divide created in 1619.
The root of the disconnect also lies at my doorstep. A re-read of 2014 Stumbling shows me the essays are less vulnerable, less self-revealing than I thought they were. Stumbling frequently strikes a race-neutral tone. “Fun and Games,” for example. You can’t tell the author is Black. You’ll read about yoga, My Weekly Reader, Ed Sullivan, and pineapple-Canadian-bacon pizza—none of which tells you a sister wrote this story.
Is that inclusive?
Or dismissive?
What’s the difference between transcending an issue and ignoring one? I don’t know.
Race-neutral feels less than truthful, and readers who come to my pages for authenticity, deserve authenticity.
I revised the author notes.
I replaced references that were deferential to white readers: Exit The June Taylor Dancers; enter The Fly Girls. Alluding to the unrecognized courage of young people, I swapped out generic language for specific, citing my great-great-grandfather, who escaped enslavement at the age of fifteen. I wrote about feeling Included at a Buddhist retreat, because our silent ranks were black, brown, red, and yellow, as well as white. I described a racial humiliation inflicted by my white mother. I marshaled my fury to express outrage on my father’s behalf, the career erasures he faced as a black author in a white literary world.
Revisions taught me how I erase myself from my own stories.
My heart is broken.
Twenty-seven thousand rewrites later, the manuscript for the new edition was suddenly finished.
Finished?
Impossible.
I double-checked.
Done.
Lesson learned by reflecting back from ten years on? The white gaze is a low-grade fever. I won’t let it sap my creative energy. Subconscious concern for white readers bleeds hesitation into other subjects I write about, from metaphysics to family history. At the beginning of this process I saw that my writing is good. At the end, I know it will be better.
I emailed the manuscript to Jessica, stood at my laptop, and grinned.
I did it. I dreamed up this project, and I did it. I made something. I wanted to tape it to the fridge. I wanted to holler. Wait. I did holler. I ran around the house, clanging a bell I dug out from the junk closet.
“Honey! Honey! I did it.”
Ben and I whooped. We croaked “Eye of the Tiger.”
How could I possibly celebrate this moment?
Shop? Dance? Sing?
I wanted to do one thing more than anything else in the world.
Write.
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