I have a wonderful campaign going on: the goal is to raise enough capital to begin casting and crewing STRANGE FRUIT the movie now rather than when and if a production company decides to run with it.
It has gone swimmingly well until I posted a link on my author page:
https://www.facebook.com/ReyOtisDarkFiction
This is the link for the campaign
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/strange-fruit-a-ghost-story/x/8208513
Below is the conversation as it unfolded...Think before you leap comes to mind. Also, Do no harm.
Working on a campaign to attach a BIG name to Strange
Fruit - Halle Barry, are you listening? Not kidding. Need some $ to attract
serious talent...LOTS of black actors out there, need excellent ones to make
this SING!
(name removed) Just what the world needs: Another White
woman writing about what American Slavery must have felt like. P.S. Anyone who
calls the American Slave Trade "mesmerizing" is a so out of touch
that it's nauseating. Do you even know what mesmerizing means?
Rey Otis Dark Fiction
While I am black, difficult to tell as age and photos are tricky, I will assure
you that I grew up hearing daily what slavery felt like. I grew up in Los
Angeles, my grandparents lived in Compton. Slavery continues to have an
enormous impact on African-Americans daily. As one, and one whose family hails
from the South, I can and will speak about it whenever I get the chance.
(name removed)My
apologies then. You really need to put something onto that page that tells
people of your heritage. Explicitly. So there is no misunderstanding. Also,
please please please pick a different word than mesmerizing. Mesmerizing means
something good and amazing.
(name removed) Actually Leti, you bring up a good point. Is the word "mesmerizing" a
good choice of words for such a painful part of life that permeates the world
on many levels and many races. I have never found the word to mean good or
amazing, but rather captivating or entrancing. I have read Rey Otis Dark
Fiction and it is VERY mesmerizing. My sub major in college was
African American History (I'm white BTW) and I found the entire slave
trade/African American history mesmerizing, which is why I couldn't get enough
of it. Heck, Lastly, as one white woman to another (ASSuming from your
picture), it is probably a bit stale and stereotyping to use the argument that
only black people can understand the plight of slavery. I applaud your courage
to speak up, however a message to the writer would have been more appropriate
and less uniformed publicly by writing it on her page. Keep up the fire inside.
It's nice to see such passion about a topic that effects every one us, all
races, to this day. Rey, I am a fan.
(name removed) I am not a White woman. I am Native
American.
Rey Otis Dark Fiction (name removed),
you are Native American. Didn't see the label. Nor should I have. That would be
really wrong. Even if you wrote about it. Hitler labeled people. Slave owners
labeled people. Cattle owners label their property. People do not need labels.
We need empathetic curiosity. We need tolerance.
Isabel Otis All
progress is lost when a writer is asked to justify her subject matter with her
race. Fail.
(name removed) ) We need more than tolerance. We need to
educate people on how the history of oppression has really fucked with people's
cultures and their heads. To pretend there are not people with African American
cultural histories or Native American cultural histories is to gloss over
history with White Out (pun here was accidental, but really amazingly great).
To say we are all American is true, but we are all more than American. We all
have our own cultural histories, and many of us are part of cultural
communities that are based partially (sometimes completely) on our heritage.
(name removed) All progress is lost if we let White
people control the stories of People of Color.
Rey Otis Dark Fiction (name
removed), you sound really angry. Clearly, you feel passionately about this.
There are great forums for discussion available. I am at a loss as to why you
chose my author page to vent...A simple, wow, my mistake would have sufficed.
instead you continue to lecture regarding the history of intolerance. Sort of
unnerving really. Isabel Otis
had a really good point: when we (when I say we, I mean you) insist that a
writer justify his or her choice of subject by means of race, we well and truly
fucked. You are deeply uncomfortable with the whole race issue. Really sorry
about that. WHO is pretending that there are not cultural histories? You
totally lost me there....
Isabel Otis
Agreed, not sure why a fiction author's page was chosen as the venue for your
strange tolerance crusade Leti...
You
are talking to a very embracing, accepting, and colorful group of people here.
You jumped to a conclusion about race, and made a judgement about who can and
cannot tell certain stories based on race. THAT is the true ignorance here.
Rey Otis Dark Fiction
and the really amazing irony here is this: I am black. I am campaigning to
finance a film about slavery. This is not a white conspiracy...this is a BLACK
WOMAN trying to fund a film. You posted such a massively negative comment on my
page that I will have to pay out of my campaign to re-post and regain some of
the positive momentum. I don't think you intended such disrespect and vitriol
but you certainly did achieve it.
Rey Otis Dark Fiction (name
removed) did you read the word 'Mesmerizing' on the campaign? Prior to that
word is a brief author bio - guess what it states: go on, guess. Here it is
verbatim: Rey Otis is the fabulously blended (African-Irish) American author of
Strange Fruit: a ghost story , inspired by the protest poem by Abel Meeropol
and the haunting musical versions by Nina Simone and Billie Holliday (and the
many others who have done this ode justice) . You clearly missed that when you
clicked on the link. So next time you go on a rant, do a small bit of research
first. I accept your apology.
Bottom of Form
Yep, that was my morning...how was yours?
Love ~ Rey
