I was perusing the newly refurbished Barnes and Nobles, which is now being managed by the CEO of an Indie Press and for some reason got thinking about Jeanne Cummins’ American Dirt and all the outrage it caused.

I might have been conniving a new writing class on Voices.

I was thinking about all the spit that came out on Twitter from the hispanic community. It was similar, I suppose to the reaction the Indian community had over Adiga’s White Tiger.

These are the pitfalls of writing, what I call ‘Voicey’ stories. That is where, the ‘voice’of the character plays an important part in forming the nuance of a character. In Adiga’s White Tiger it was mostly through speech and dialect, but unlike Rushdie in Midnight Children, AA failed.

Writing through the lens of the ‘other’ is tricky. But what I find ludicrous is that many think a writer has no right to write about ‘the other’.

That’s a whole lot of bullcrap. Especially if you consider that one of the seminal books about India was written by a white woman—Katherine Boo—who dared to talk about things that most of us Indians never have. When I read Behind the Beautiful Forevers, I felt ashamed that it took a foreigner to write what no Indian has.

No one owns a character, a country, a community. We own observances. And everyone has a right to express them. Some like Boo does it impeccably. Some, well…let’s just say I flung White Tiger across the room when I read it and thought it was some sort of a weird joke the Booker committee was playing. But that doesn’t take away his right to do what he did. He just didn’t do a great job and that’s on him and yes he faced and will face criticism for it for all his life. But to say Jeanne Cummins had no right to write about the Hispanic Community is more than unfair. It is a prejudice in itself.

I’ve seen this over and over again while photographing the Muslim community in Delhi and Calcutta. Whereas in the latter, I was ushered into their homes and smothered with tea and stories, in the former, I almost had my camera snatched away. I don’t blame them. The Muslim community in Delhi have faced a lot of trouble that the peace loving Calcuttans have not. I don’t blame them for being defensive.

This outrage about who is allowed to write about whom, I think stems a lot from the way communities have been treated. Being defensive becomes the most natural thing.

Voicey fiction is a technique. If you do it well, it works and sells. If not, it will sound hokey. Writing in a child’s voice, an immigrant voice, writing in the second person. These are some of the forms I call Voicey books.

Thing is, when you’re writing a Voicey character, you’re inherently writing from their point of view and unless you know your character like your own face, it’s quite impossible to push your idea of people you’ve never really been and lives you’ve never lived but only imagined.

I cannot write about the poor people of Calcutta in the first person. Mostly because their life experience is so wholly different than mine, anything I said in ‘their voice’ would sound false.