Pride Week Guest Post from Juliann Rich: Secret Confessions from an Ally — On Wrestling with Privilege

Okay, I admit it. I was scared to write CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE, a book about a sixteen-year-old boy who falls in love with another boy…at Bible camp.

That’s right. Scared.

Bold Strokes Books, June 2014.

But not about whether ultra-conservative Christians would get upset with the book (or with me for writing it). No, I tossed and turned, night after night, worrying I’d mess up the story and inadvertently hurt or offend the LGBTQ community.

Hit PLAY on the Track marked “Internal Critic, Part I” and dated Fall, 2011: Why don’t you write that nice mystery you’ve been dreaming about instead? The one with the straight, white, forty-five-year old woman detective with the dachshund sidekick. Yeah, that’s the book for you.  

Stop. Rewind. Replay (about 754 times).

See, I couldn’t argue with the logic of that message. If write what you know is true, then I—a straight, middle-aged woman—had no business writing a book from the perspective of a gay teenage guy.

Or did I?

Jonathan Cooper, my main character in CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE, certainly thought I did. He came to me in all the quiet spaces of my life and even barged into the noisy ones, wielding that rare form of tenacity that is usually reserved for campaigning politicians. Seriously. The kid was relentless.

Then there was the matter of my reaction to Jonathan Cooper’s story. I’d raised a wonderful young man who happens to be gay. I love him dearly. I was raised by evangelical Christian parents. I love them dearly. This story touched the deepest places of my being—the ones that have defined me the most—and left me feeling that it was not only something I could write, it was something I had to write.

I determined to give it a try and wrote a first draft, which succeeded in living up to all purposes and predictions of first drafts. In other words, it told the story, but it stunk. I had the plot, but the prose was too lyrical. The voice was too old. And the third person point of view that felt, somehow, literary? Yeah, that had to change. If I was going to do this story justice, I knew I had to close the distance between my Jonathan and myself. I needed to feel his pain.

But therein was the problem. I hadn’t felt his pain.

I hit a wall. Oh sure, it was bricked up with good intentions: the desire to be respectful; the desire to be accurate; the desire to not appropriate someone else’s culture, history, reality. But it was still a wall, and it was stopping me from doing the important work I felt called to do.

Bold Strokes Books, September 2014.

Hit PLAY on the Track marked “Internal Critic, Part II” and dated Winter, 2012: Who do you think you are, tackling a story like this? What exactly do you know about being a teen guy, much less being a gay teen guy? 

Stop. Rewind. Replay (about 1203 times).

Who do you think you are? Good question, huh? The answer was more complicated than I realized when I started writing CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE. I knew who I was: a straight, white, cisgendered, able-bodied, forty-five-year-old woman in a hetero-/cis-normative society. While I’ve stood by my son as he has fought against prejudice and discrimination because of his sexual orientation, I have never personally experienced such things. I’ve never been the brunt of a homophobic slur. I’ve never been told I can’t marry the person I love. I’ve never worried about whether it was safe or socially acceptable to hold my husband’s hand in public or give him a kiss goodbye. In short, the more I sought Jonathan’s emotional truth, the more I smacked into the hard, undeniable wall of my privilege…and the more I wondered whether I had the right to tell his story at all.

But I was also a writer with a story that was demanding to be told, facing the epic question of whether or not I was the right person to write the book. I dove back into CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE, uncertain of but committed to discovering the answer to that question.

The first step required me to become a method actor. If I was going to write Jonathan, I had to become Jonathan. I was surprised to find that shedding my female old-fogeyness and peering through Jonathan’s eyes was much more fun and freeing than I thought it would be, even if what he and I sometimes saw together was not pretty. Jonathan taught me a ton throughout writing CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE and even more in SEARCHING FOR GRACE, the sequel that will be released through Bold Strokes Books in September 2014. He taught me about the rare form of courage it takes to choose authenticity over acceptance. He taught me about the sting of pain for being judged not for what you’ve done, but for who you are. He taught me how to take the next step and ask for help when my imaginative abilities reached their limits.

With Jonathan’s encouragement, I reached out to my son, to my son’s friends, to their friends. I asked them questions and they told me their truths, their secrets, their shame, their fears, their triumphs. They kept it real. They kept me honest.

In the end, I did finish CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE. It is currently available through Bold Strokes Books and everywhere books are sold. I am so thankful I let Jonathan lead me through this venture. He taught me about pain and privilege. He taught me to weigh every word carefully, in my writing and in my day-to-day conversations, for words possess both the power to create worlds and destroy lives. More than anything, he taught me that when I affirm others, I am also affirmed.

This, of course, has sparked a new track that plays in my mind these days, and it goes a little like this…

Hit PLAY on the Track marked “Secret Confessions from an Ally” and dated Summer, 2014: I’m a person with privilege I didn’t earn and don’t deserve any more than anyone else. I am also a writer. I have a voice I want to use to tell stories for the community and the people I love. I may get it wrong. I will get it wrong. But there are people with first hand experience—wonderful and generous beta readers—who will keep me honest and accurate. Even so, I will be afraid, but that’s no reason not to do this work I love.

Stop. Rewind. Replay.

Juliann Rich.

Minnesota writer Juliann Rich spent her childhood in search of the perfect climbing tree. The taller the better! A branch thirty feet off the ground and surrounded by leaves, caterpillars, birds, and squirrels was a good perch for a young girl to find herself. Seeking truth in nature and finding a unique point of view remain crucial elements in her life as well as her writing.

Juliann is a PFLAG mom who can be found walking Pride parades with her son. She is also the daughter of evangelical Christian parents. As such she has been caught in the crossfire of the most heated topic to challenge our society and our churches today. She is drawn to stories that shed light on the conflicts that arise when sexual orientation, spirituality, family dynamics and peer relationships collide. You can read more about her journey as an author and as an affirmative mom on her blog, The Rainbow Tree.

Juliann is the recipient of the 2014 Emerging Writer Award from the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival for her debut novel, CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE (Bold Strokes Books, June 16th, 2014). She lives with her husband and their two dogs in the beautiful Minnesota River Valley.

You may stay in touch with Juliann via her website: www.juliannrich.com or email at juliannrichbooks@gmail.com.