After 'MFA vs POC': De-Canon Lists Writers of Color on Practice

De-Canon discusses moving forward after Junot Diaz's groundbreaking 2014 New Yorker article "MFA vs POC," which revealed many of the institution's flaws, shortcomings, and disservices to writers of color. According to Neil Aitken of De-Canon, "At the heart of the MFA vs POC discussion is the contention that any discussion of craft does not take place in a vacuum -- that race is part of one's lived experience and how we see ourselves and are seen does impact how and what we write." Aitken suggests we become better educated, and to that end, offers a helpful list of authors of color who discuss craft in print and online. From there:

If we wish to be more cognizant of the ways race and craft intertwine as we interrogate assumptions about canon, aesthetic tradition, and the workshop, then we need to read and study the existing archive (which, though often invisible inside a typical workshop, nonetheless exists) -- and if we find some things are missing, we should call attention to the gaps and (if possible) work toward filling them.

This following list is an expansion of a post I started on my own blog to catalog what writing resources are out there that have been written, edited, or presented by other writers of color (if you are aware of other texts, essays, and resources that should be listed, please post in the comments and I’ll add them in). [...]

Essays on Craft (online)

Diaz, Junot. “On My Way to the Novel, I Fell in Love with the Short Story,” Literary Hub (10/7/16).
Perez, Craig Santos. “On Writing from the New Oceania,” Ottawa Poetry Newsletter (11/24/16)
Perez, Craig Santos. “ʻfrom Organic Acts’: Tsamorita, Rosaries, and the Poem of My Grandma’s Life,” Life Writing Journal (2015), 1-6.
Perez, Craig Santos. “from Unincorporated Poetic Territories,” The Force of What’s Possible: Accessibility and the Avant-Garde (Nightboat Books, 2015).
Perez, Craig Santos. “from a Poetics of Continuous Presence and Erasure,” Evening Will Come: A Monthly Journal of Poetics (Issue 28, April 2013).
Perez, Craig Santos. “The Poetics of Mapping Diaspora, Navigating Culture, and Being From,” Doveglion Literary Journal (2011).
Poddar, Namrata. "Is 'Show Don't Tell' a Universal Truth or a Colonial Relic?," Literary Hub (2016).
Wurth, Erika T. "The Fourth Wave," Waxwing Magazine (2015).
Wurth, Erika T. "The Fourth Wave in Native American Literature," The Writer's Chronicle (2016).

Learn more at De-Canon.