The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop

October 19, 2020
Colorado College English professor Chavez (coeditor, The BreakBeat Poets, Vol. 4) combines memoir and teaching guide in this spirited call for building more inclusive and supportive writing workshops. Chavez deplores “traditions of dominance and control in the creative writing classroom” that cater to “(white) creativity, (white) imagination, and (white) autonomy on the page.” As a private tutor and a college instructor, she developed a workshop model that “decentered whiteness and redistributed power equally among participants and instructors.” Classroom objectives and activities include freewriting, reading aloud to develop participants’ authentic voices, and the replacement of “canonical texts” with a “living archive” of works by “young people, people of color, women, queer, differently-abled, and gender-nonconforming artists.” Chavez documents her own frustration at being “the only person of color present” and feeling “alienated and isolated and deeply lonely” during her graduate studies at the University of Iowa, but makes no mention of low-residency and online creative writing programs that already offer more inclusive alternatives to the traditional model she rails against. Still, the mindfulness and generosity that guide her teaching principles will resonate with other scholars and students who have been working to diversify creative writing and English literature programs.