{"id":78449,"date":"2015-10-29T10:18:08","date_gmt":"2015-10-29T14:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/?p=78449"},"modified":"2016-01-12T18:22:42","modified_gmt":"2016-01-12T23:22:42","slug":"the-power-of-the-n-word","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/?p=78449","title":{"rendered":"The Power of the N-Word"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u00a9<\/a>
\u00a9 Leo Reynolds on Flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I must have looked at that word on the first page, third paragraph of my novel, PROVENANCE, at least 100 times.<\/p>\n

A young black man, caught after dark in a sundown town, is running for his life.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re Richard Whitaker\u2019s boys, you know us!\u201d he shouts over his shoulder as he tries to escape what could be a fatal consequence for just arriving in town on the late ferry. The racist sheriff responds,
\n\u201cThen you know! No niggers \u2018llowed in town after sundown.\u201d<\/p>\n

There it is, the N-word. For the time, 1909, the place\u2014a fictional coastal town in southern Virginia\u2014and the situation,\u00a0the language is authentic. However, in today’s still racially challenged world, like other racial slurs\u00a0from our recent past, the word still stings. Today, it is not politically correct to use the N-word; I debated whether to change that word to one that was more palatable, more attuned to today\u2019s sensitivity. I decided to leave it in because it is so visceral, to serve as a reminder of how far we\u2019ve come and how far we still have to go when it comes to matters of race.<\/p>\n

There are still places where people of color are considered a threat like they were in sundown towns throughout the this country; though the blatant signs once posted with the message, \u201cNigger, Don\u2019t Let the Sun Go Down on You In (fill in the name of the town) are thankfully a thing of the past<\/u><\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are still people who hurl the N-word around to demean and hopefully destroy. Though not my intention, some will say I perpetuate the power of the word by using it. Outside of this literary context I believe that may be a valid argument. However, in PROVENANCE, my novel about a family\u2019s determination to survive and thrive despite the overt racism that scarred the early 20th<\/sup> century, my goal is to demonstrate that the N-word is powerless in the face of self-determination. It becomes meaningless if\u00a0 you realize it defines not one single\u00a0thing about you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I must have looked at that word on the first page, third paragraph of my novel, PROVENANCE, at least 100 times. A young black man, caught after dark in a sundown town, is running for his life. \u201cWe\u2019re Richard Whitaker\u2019s boys, you know us!\u201d he shouts over his shoulder as he tries to escape what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[125,21],"tags":[49,64,128,127],"class_list":["post-78449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-provenance-launch","category-social-change","tag-donna-drew-sawyer","tag-intolerance","tag-n-word","tag-racism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/10\/N-Letter-by-Leo-Reynolds-2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=78449"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78449\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78464,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78449\/revisions\/78464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/78450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=78449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=78449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/donnadrewsawyer.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=78449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}