The Optics of Opportunity

The story of a literary fellowship that maybe wasn’t so strange at all

Hafizah Geter
Gay Mag

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Illustration: George Peters / Getty Images

“H“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…

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