:)

If you read the story, the word is in there for a reason.  It is set up that that is the atmosphere of the times, that is the language of that day.  She isn't talking about how it was in your neck of the woods, it's how it was where she was.  Laura isn't using the word for shock value, she isn't using it to be currently derogatory, she's quoting the times she lived in.  I think the word is essential to the authenticity of the story.

I grew up in the west in the 60's and my grandfather used the word constantly.  It was a sign of those times.  My mother never used it, amazing considering her upbringing, and it's a word I don't use.  My grandmother didn't use it around me until after my grandfather died and senility set in in the rest home.  The staff members (black and white) gently got her to quit eventually, but early on when I would apologize for her, they told me it was just the way things were in my grandmother's day; they understood how her senility set her back.  It's not right, but that's how it was.

What I'm trying to say here is that your discomfort with the word is exactly the right response, but your objections to Laura's use is wrong.  I don't think the story works without it, I believe it hinges on it.

I agree s. bailey.  Although I've never been to the States and therefore have no authority on or direct experience with the issue; as an outsider this story brought alive to me a real sense of a time and place that should never be forgotten (however ugly and brutal, including the language).

You sure let the cat among the pigeons here, Laura. I'm on your side in supporting the legitimacy of your usage because of the time scale of your story. But then I don't live in the US.

What does strike me is how this particular word, with its innocent origins, from the latin for black, above all other derogatory terms, has achieved such an ascendancy in opprobrium. It is as if it has become the scapegoat for the 'white' conscience. As has been noted, it's OK for a black person to use it. A similar process seems to be taking place, certainly in the UK, with the slang term 'Paki' for Pakistani, and used by the ignorant and prejudiced to denote any Asian. And we can pat ourselves on the back, feel righteous, by deploring that usage, and, hey presto, the problem is resolved - our scapegoat.

I'm totally convinced that we must take care of the language we use, but in an historical, or semi-historical story, such as this, I think the very use of that word actually reinforces its message against abhorrent racism.

Another literary reference comes to mind with Conrad's story, The Nigger of the Narcissus. That title would hardly have got into print today.

I'll let it lie there. I think if we are to discuss the more general issues here, it should be done through the Discussions board.

milner

My disagreement was with the comment that the use of the word "is still rampant." 

I think there is a place for the word in the story - and especially in the title but it is used in such a way that the focus is taken away from the relationship the writer had with Anne.  Repeating "I hate that word"  focused the reader on the word.

I certainly reacted to it from an American point of view. 

I'm sorry Slick, what confuses me is that you have this story in the present. At the end you mention that 23 years have passed. So you are not using the word in the context of the past, but rather in the present. This is the difference between your usage and Twain's, cummings', etc. etc. They used the word nigger at a time when my grandparents or greatgrandparents would have accepted the label. In thier day it would have been a political statement to use a different word, today it is a racist statement to use the word. Maybe you got lost in the context of the story.

I do understand that the word nigger is still used in parts of the south, but typically by inbred hicks with tobacco juice stains on thier overalls. If your are writing the story from the perspective of an uneducated hillbilly you're on target. By the way, the use of the word nigger was a matter of political correctness in 1970, this is 2007.

Crap, I was going to make the point that eb and Lavonne made about an hour ago. The logic of the argument is: The story is being written in the eighties (its been 23 years since...), therefore the use of nigger is current. Even the argument that you are quoting the past, as was suggested is out the window after you use the word again. If you are writing as a racist (which isn't a racist thing to do) then its an essential part of the story, although I would wonder why you state that the word 'still bothers' the author. Are you writing this from the perspective of a conflicted racist?

Everyone who brought up past usage is right, in theory. They edited the 'n-word' out of Huck Finn because it is innapropriate to use now. This was stupid, Huck and Jim should have used thier gps locater to see if they were out of Missouri in that case. You are writing in the present (or at least the 80s), so the use of the n-word is racist. I am curious as to why you bring up the fact that it is still being used today? Are you saying that it is acceptable to use the word today? Maybe in the context of "Which nigger stole the confederate flag off my truck?" I'm not saying you're racist, its just the context of the story.

i'm on Laura's side.  it's a hard word and a harder story.  actually, i don't feel i have much of a right to weigh in on this discussion, being a 55 year old white guy from Reading, Pennsylvania.  but, i DO get the feeling that Laura is using the word legitimately, from experience, in an almost reportorial fashion.  i agree with Lavonne in that it's been done before and better in To Kill A Mockingbird...but what's to stop a writer from trying?  failure is an honourable position.  not trying is what sucks.
     i applaud Laura for this ragged, emotional story.  the fact that it didn't work out is no big deal with me.  Laura?  prose is tough.  short stories are even tougher, because there's literally zero market for them.  the days of Capote and Hemingway and Fitzgerald and the Saturday Evening Post are over.  if you really want to do something with this tale...turn it into a novel.
     nice try.  and don't let this tempest in a teapot get under your skin.
     best...
          always...
                    john
     

I wonder if it would be possible to use the word nigger in speech only. Drop it from the title as it offends so much and drop your closing line 'that word still bothers me'

excellent suggestions, andrew!
perfect!

Hi,

  I am hearing you all.  I will gather my thoughts and post again soon....

  Thanks... Laura~

Laura:

Being a lover of poetry, it is at least fairly rare that I'd comment on a prose work (although I do read them on occasion).  The title of this piece, "Them Nigger Days," most assuredly drew my attention; after all, being one born "Black," that wild "n-word" never fails to raise flags of certain and special depth.

With that said, the speaker's childhood relationships with:  (a) Anne, (b) Ellie, and (c) the word, "nigger" are interesting; although there is nothing particularly novel (i.e., 'new') about:  (1) the backdrop, (2) the plot ['tho factual in nature], (3) the story itself, as it unfolds, or (4) the 'tragic end'.   

It seems, largely, the tale brushes a broader theme of 'friendships', enemies, and disillusionment along the way toward 'growing up'.  But ahh, ohh ahh, we see there is a racial dilemma in the proverbial mix --  the speaker's mid-twentieth century world is one in which some folk 'seem' to have "a real soft spot for the niggers in town" and others "hated niggers."  How unfortunate it is that the truth of such dichotomy continues to flourish, even today, even at this very moment. 

Let me not digress too long, however.  What use of the word “nigger” (once in the title and five times within the body) does for this prose work is draw much more attention to the piece than it might otherwise command.   Some readers are immediately ‘put off’ by it – which is a form of negative attention, if you will.  Other readers, in the name of ‘authenticity’ and/or ‘free speech’ may find the flow of “nigger” in this work to be ‘courageous’.  Yet more readers may think the writer harbors an affirmative desire to use the word – perhaps being unable to do so in day-to-day communications, so folding it neatly (and repeatedly) into prose renders the use ‘more acceptable’.

Sometimes, it may matter whether the ethnicity of the “n-word’s” user is “white” or “black.”  There is a cadre of individuals who find themselves okay with ‘black use of the n-word’ (claiming that we who are Black can take ownership of the term and wield as it as we may well please), but who hold in penultimate disdain ‘white use of the n-word’ (claiming that those who were/are racist, oppressionist, and otherwise were/are at odds with the full personhood of ‘we who are not white’ are de facto precluded from n-word use).

My position on it is this, when a writer chooses to use any word, whether it’s something as neutral as “if,” “and,” “but,” ‘or’ whether it is connotation / denotation loaded like “nigger,” s/he must wholly understand knowledge of the word’s dynamic(s) and command an ability to aptly convey such understanding to the reading populous.  There are many ‘n-word’ users out there (of all ‘colors’) who are, sadly, totally (or almost so) clueless.

Laura’s story about Anne, Ellie, the maid, the families / communities ‘divided by some track(s)’, could benefit significantly from some development of precisely “why” the speaker finds (or found) herself “bothered by that word” [‘nigger’].  Perhaps then, some lingering questions about the frequency of use within the work, and its prominent placement in the title, could be both intellectually and emotionally resolved.  Further, development of such reasoning (as to the ‘why’ behind the speaker’s feelings about the n-word and its use) would likely add some depth to both the story and to “Anne,” whose sentiments seem strangely hollow – which most certainly is at sharp odds with the scene and situation as such are presented.

Thus concludes my half-penny (copper-faced & brown as it is) on this topic (in black & white) for the moment.

Carol Elizabeth Owens

As a short postscript on the larger social issue, freely note the following (today at CNN.com):

GREENWOOD, Louisiana (AP) -- Two shotgun blasts were fired into the home of the town's mayor, who says he had been cursed at before but never physically threatened.

Police stepped up security after the shots were fired early Monday at the home of Ernest Lampkins, who was elected in 2004 as the first black mayor of the small, predominantly white northwest Louisiana town.

I agree with the others, Laura, and I don't think you intended to hurt anyone----we have seen your heart in your work, and it is a compassionate heart----perhaps it is needful to have more understanding on the negative power of words like that...

In this story, you are writing from compassion, and from your hatred of violence----but that word, all by itself, engenders hatred in the heart of the reader----it is a hate word with the spiritual power of hate inside it----when it is read, no matter how honorable the writer's intention is, emotions of hate are inevitably felt in the heart of the reader----the reader can push them away, but they are still initially felt, because of the word's essential negative spiritual power----and when the word is used over and over, the hate flowers over and over in the heart of the reader, and the reader must deny it over and over...

As for myself, by the time I got to the end of your well written and grief-evoking horror story, I was so angry at the use of that word that the moral of the story was less effective than it would have been had you used a more acceptable word...

your friend,
Michael

Hi...

  I am not sure why I didn't expect so many comments on this story.  Honestly I have felt left a bit amiss as to how to tackle some of them.  First, I must say, it was never ever my intention to put forth any sort of racist thoughts to anyone.  I am as far from a racist as you can get.  And while I don't feel it necessary to have to defend myself, I kind of feel like I have to.  This word evokes negative emotions on every level, and should.  It was my thought, and I know that it is only my thought, that using the word would fill this story with an aura of extreme uncomfortability.  But what I got was defensiveness coming out and anger.  By that time, the story gets lost, and the point then doesn't matter anymore.  The delivery becomes lost. The point becomes mute.  I think that has really bothered me.  I guess I thought I might be attacked on sentance structure or lingo, or tense.  But, I thought that I might be given equal opportunity as anyone else to try something different.  This was a total opposite extreme for me.  But I felt it so deeply to the core, that I wanted to let it out, to try it.  The point was to refer back to a period in time, after slavery, after segregaton, but before any permanent real change in human equality was completely applicable.We are all equal.   I see the point that sometimes less is more.  I have pondered over the day, how to rewrite those places into something that gives equal value to the distaste of this word without having to use it.  I have as yet to come up with an answer that will work for me.  But I am trying several options, and by the end of it, it may be lost.  If that happens, then so be it.  But I will have tried.  I know that people base perceptions of others on what is seen.  I know that my story raised all sorts of issues.  I grew up hearing tales of the slaves my great great grandparents owned, and how that when they were freed, they stayed with my family, because they had been treated so well.  Having grown up with relatives that lived in a small town just 35 miles south of Atlanta, I was exposed to all sorts of acceptance and racism.  It does still live on, in the same way that those that are HIV positive have to contend with things like people who won't even allow their children to get near one of these men or women, because they are afraid that they will somehow catch AIDS..... It is the same kind of ignorance that is still out there today.  There were so many posts that I can't break down now who said what but, I do think it was unfair to attack my character, based on something that I tried to write.  It's a story.  It's not the living, breathing, human that I am.  I own my frailties and shortcomings; I admit my mistakes, but I am nothing more than an imperfect human being who deeply cares about all people and who has strived in my life to make a difference, one person at a time, by loving.  I had no idea I would stir up such dissension.  I really want this story to work, but for today, and for maybe the next bit of time, I feel it my responsibility to the integrity of this piece to consider all the options  If I can't make it work, then I can't make it work.  This piece will never be all things to all people, I will never make every reader feel it the same way.  That's why writing is so personal to any given two people.  It will mean different things to different people. 

  With that said, I thank you for the comments, for each one holds value for me, even if I don't share the issues raised with the same intensity that each of you individually shared them.  This does not mean in any manner that any of your viewpoints are less important.  It just means, that I have to and want to make this work.  There was some great insight given here.  I choose to chew on it a bit.  And needless to say, the War of the North and South was fought once, and I don't necessarily want it fought again here. 

  And lastly, for those I have offended in my trying of this piece, I humbly offer my apologies. 

With kindness to all you uniquely and wonderfully made people......  Laura~

Heck, I thought it was a great debate! I don't think anyone was truly offended.  It's good to spill your guts every now and then!

Hey - you're number six in the top 10 topics list!