Summary Writing Part 1
In her essay On Seeing and Being Seen: The Difference Between Writing with Empathy and Writing with Love, Alicia Elliott explains how she developed as a writer naturally and the obstacles that she initially faced.
The author yearned to be a part of the literary community but was denied the opportunity due to her nature until the age of 25, when she wrote about how reading a book by an Indigenous woman had influenced her writing career. She discussed her love of writing and how her taste has evolved as she gets older. Because book companies originally argued that native people didn’t deserve to be on book covers, she also details her battles to get published. Elliott also talks about how racism has historically been prevalent in literature. White authors have romanticized and misrepresented Native Americans ever since European explorers first set foot in the Americas.
This article concludes with the notion that a writer may express situations they haven’t directly experienced in their writing, but Elliott contends that they must do so with more than just empathy?they must express such experiences with love.
