For this week's post, I share from my #100daysto40 Instagram series. Please read on.
Day 76: Keep your love life private. If you are a frequent reader of my Instagram or Facebook posts, you will know that I share a lot of things about myself (a little too much if you ask my mother). However there are some areas of my life that I do not discuss openly and one of these is my love life. Because I write mainly for children and I also teach young people, it is particularly wise that I don't discuss my love life on social media. Some may call it prudish or paranoid but I am pretty sure no one wants to hear about Dr. Seuss', Robert Munsch's, or Judy Blume's love lives as juicy as they may be... not unless you're an adult who grew up on their work and would be interested in their bios but certainly not for young readers researching their fave authors on the internet. I know J. K. Rowling has shared some of her struggles with divorce, miscarriage, and mental health and I applaud her but I have different circumstances. First, I am a newly published author. Second, I am a Black woman who grew up in a workingclass immigrant household which comes with a lot of early lessons of "being twice as good to get half as far" and "don't mess with your job". (I'm proud and benefited from many of the values my parents taught me.) Even though I'm university-educated and technically middle-class, I don't have certain privileges. One of these is knowing how an action can be perceived negatively coming from my Black female self but more benignly from someone else. We see this in the media all the time. I don't want to oversimplify this conversation and say it's only about race because it's not. It's also tied into gender as well as archaic views of what it means to be a teacher. It may sound restrictive but I've found a happy medium/space that works for me and, for now, there is no expose about my love life. But who knows? One day, I may publish my romantic writing under a pseudonym or a slightly fictionalised autobiography. In the meantime, I choose to stay mum on this one.
Day 76: Keep your love life private. If you are a frequent reader of my Instagram or Facebook posts, you will know that I share a lot of things about myself (a little too much if you ask my mother). However there are some areas of my life that I do not discuss openly and one of these is my love life. Because I write mainly for children and I also teach young people, it is particularly wise that I don't discuss my love life on social media. Some may call it prudish or paranoid but I am pretty sure no one wants to hear about Dr. Seuss', Robert Munsch's, or Judy Blume's love lives as juicy as they may be... not unless you're an adult who grew up on their work and would be interested in their bios but certainly not for young readers researching their fave authors on the internet. I know J. K. Rowling has shared some of her struggles with divorce, miscarriage, and mental health and I applaud her but I have different circumstances. First, I am a newly published author. Second, I am a Black woman who grew up in a workingclass immigrant household which comes with a lot of early lessons of "being twice as good to get half as far" and "don't mess with your job". (I'm proud and benefited from many of the values my parents taught me.) Even though I'm university-educated and technically middle-class, I don't have certain privileges. One of these is knowing how an action can be perceived negatively coming from my Black female self but more benignly from someone else. We see this in the media all the time. I don't want to oversimplify this conversation and say it's only about race because it's not. It's also tied into gender as well as archaic views of what it means to be a teacher. It may sound restrictive but I've found a happy medium/space that works for me and, for now, there is no expose about my love life. But who knows? One day, I may publish my romantic writing under a pseudonym or a slightly fictionalised autobiography. In the meantime, I choose to stay mum on this one.
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