The Optics of Opportunity
The story of a literary fellowship that maybe wasn’t so strange at all
“Hey, nigger, nigger, nigger,” Jackson Taylor, the writing instructor, called out, pointing his finger at me from across the Chelsea loft that had been renovated into our classroom. I and 13 writers had been invited to participate in a mysterious writing fellowship funded by the Barnes & Noble founder, Len Riggio. For our writing assignment, we had been tasked to complete the thought, “I remember…” A young black poet in his 20s had written and shared a syncopated poem whose rhythms bounced around the room. Buried in his poem, he’d quoted a title from a 1935 poem by Wallace Stevens, “Like Decorations in a Nigger Cemetery.” Taylor demanded to know why he, a white person, couldn’t use the n-word if this black writer could.
The Springing Center, as the fellowship would be called, had invited a group of emerging writers to use our work to engage and interrogate structures of power. We were Black, African, Indian-American, Asian-American, along with seven white writers from America, Russia and Portugal, and we had all been drawn together by the prestige of the Barnes & Noble name. Though the fellowship would run twice a week for a full six-weeks before disappearing in a puff of smoke, it was clear from the first class that, though we’d been tasked to examine…
