Writer With a Vision Transcends Stereotypes

Your article “Trying to Write Across Color Lines” (Calendar, Nov. 18) struck home with me for a number of reasons.

I wrote the original screenplay for the movie “New Jack City” (1991). It was my intention to weave a well-structured, realistic yarn with a strong black male lead (a novelty at the time). Although the final product did not conform to my original vision, the movie was commercially successful. As the box-office returns rolled in, I was approached with virtually every black-themed street-crime, action project around town. I moved on to other studio projects.

Though I’m not Chinese, I traveled to Beijing to interview students in hiding and wrote about the democracy uprising in Tiananmen Square. While I’m not a “wise guy,” I wrote a Mafia movie. I lived in Ireland and wrote a screenplay about the Irish Republican Army.

Is my racial background obvious now? Maybe not.

Should it be?

I made a documentary (“Eight-Tray Gangster: The Making of a Crip”) in which a gang member narrates his view of life before and after the L.A. riots. Daily Variety called it “a powerful slice of current urban African American life.” The Hollywood Reporter said it was “more frightening and sympathetic than any existing dramatic films on the subject.” It has aired on television in a dozen countries, and the video is used by teachers, social workers and law enforcement worldwide.

Is it important here to mention my ethnicity?

When you read a writer’s words, you can’t see the color of his or her skin. You can only judge the quality of that writer’s thoughts and feelings.

Movie-making is a collaborative process. No single person on any film project can rightfully claim all the credit or blame for the end product. Nor is it possible for any individual, no matter how creative, to speak for an entire race or to depict the whole rainbow of experiences of any diverse group.

However, an accomplished writer offers a singular perspective called “vision.” And this vision derives from cultural heritage, personal experience and the power of imagination, not necessarily in equal parts. The essentials of good screenwriting--solid structure, logical plotting, strong characterization and believable dialogue--are what all screenwriters aspire to. Good writing is good writing.

Thanks to publishers and producers finally awakening to the endless supply of talented writers of color, an array of good writing is becoming accessible to us all. But in the first blush of this renaissance, as revealed in the Calendar article, racial stereotyping of writers continues to limit creative horizons.

As long as an employer of creative talent hires only those of their own race, the resulting work is in danger of becoming inbred and myopic. We are learning, all of us, that an outsider’s stance can enable a writer to recognize and remark upon aspects of life that others may overlook or take for granted.

Hopefully, as we inch closer to the next century, we will write with, for and about each other without reservations and with greater courage.

Even now, great storytellers such as Toni Morrison, August Wilson, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Alvin Sargent and William Goldman, to name just a few, continue to prove that the best writing speaks to a universal audience.

James Baldwin said that, as a writer, “yourself and your people are indistinguishable from each other . . . and your people are all people.”

He also said, “No one in love or trouble or at the point of death is only a recognizable color.”