Pen Names, Pseudonyms and the Writer's Personality

It’s easy to hide behind a pseudonym, using the cover of anonymity to say what you would not dare say aloud otherwise. But fear isn’t the only reason writers use pseudonyms.

Like the Bronte sisters, sometimes a pseudonym is the only way you get to say anything at all. Or, a psuedonym can enable fantasy, character development, take the imagination to places that the self as you know it may not want to go. A rather extreme example, but take the sadomasochistic Story of O, by Pauline Reage, the pseudonym of a writer whose true identity was revealed only forty years after its publication. (I imagine that the mystery around the author's identity heightened the experience of that book. I wonder, was she thinking and writing from her own personality, the character's, or a mixture of both? Who knows.)

Being somewhat anxious in disposition, I relish the thought of writing as someone else, conceiving characters and creating worlds without the baggage of my own name, family, background and complicated self.

The point of this topic is that I've decided to write under a pseudonym, of the personality I invoke when I speak honestly: Ophelia "Effie" Jones, my maternal great grandmother. I imagine that characters always have something of the self in there, and I admit, it is very tempting to believe that writing is an escape from the self, that our imaginations

Effie Jones was my great grandmother, on my mother’s side. Known as Ma to my generation of the family, she lived to be 98. She was outspoken, opinionated; I developed an agreement with the message that good girls don't talk too much, and the ones who do will not be loved. Of course, I managed to hear this whether my parents meant it or not. I seem to have put myself firmly on a collision course to agree with white male patriarchy. Where I got this angst about my gender and skin color I'll never know; it certainly wasn't from my parents.

And that's why invoking her when I write is transgressive; I am refusing to continue that old agreement with a way of thinking that says I have no value. I'm tearing up the contract, and writing as the worst possible thing I could be in that way of thinking: an outspoken black woman, fierce and unapologetic. Ok, so maybe I can't pull of fierce, but I can quit apologizing.

Also, for that same reason, I thought of bell hooks (who wrote Aint I a Woman), and whose pseudonym is her

At her funeral, Effie's unbelievably small coffin frightened me, as though she could terrorize me from the afterlife. She was stubborn, and often harsh. But she was a survivor. Of independent means because she had to be, my great grandmother had a food stall and earned enough money to live well. Effie Jones is the voice of the writer I hope to be one day. Unflinchingly honest, takes no prisoners, and she could often be wickedly funny. Family legend has it that one of my uncles was singing loudly in the shower one day, and she yelled out to him that his voice was “so bad he could break the heart of a broomstick.” That joke is still funny to us, making my mother laugh over 30 years later, and somehow finding its way out when relatives get together. My grandmothers have mellifluous names, like Sybil Correia and Pearl Marselline, but I chose her because she is the symbol. Independent because she had to be, Effie made many questionable choices in her life, but she never censored herself, stayed silent for fear of what others would think, or beat herself up for being less than perfect. I wish my ancestors could have been but I have the opportunities now that they didn’t. Sometimes when I think I should shut up about being a writer, I remember that they didn’t have an option. Why should I live as though I don’t? I am not sure what persona I am going to write from on this blog, but I certainly want some of hers.

The End of Blackness

In response to SteveG’s post, King, Washington, Lincoln, and the Iconization of Heroes:

Another sad consequence of iconizing heroes, turning them into flat paragons of virtue, is the disjoint that it creates between ordinary people and the icons. It separates the everyday from the heroic. It sets up an impossible system, where the heroes are perfect, better than perfect, 4.0 at West Point perfect.

Because the two dimensional icons of the civil rights movment are painted against the backdrop of the push for racial integration, their fictionalized perfection has unintended consequences for the mere mortals in their shadow. SteveG wrote: “Sadly, we have turned our heroes into icons where we can remain safe from their heroism, true and embellished.”

Far from inspiring, relying on icons can have the opposite of its intended effect, leading to self-censorship and despair, especially where integration or some sort of acceptance from white people is the goal. I wonder if, in the collective psyche, despair is the flip side of the unrealistic perfectionism of iconography.

With flat icons as heroes, perfection is on one end and pathology on the other in public conversations about race. There's little in between except nervous jokes, apologetics, class wars, distancing from all black people as a way of refusing to tolerate bad behavior, or unnecessarily indulging it. For the anxious sort, obsessive self-examination for 'self hatred' and 'internalized oppression' aim for perfection but we all know what happens to perfectionists. The word overbearing does come to mind.

Untangling this is important for me, as I have wasted time and brain space trying to figure out what I ‘should’ think about race, trying to squash myself into popularly understood molds.

In “The End of Blackness: Returning the Souls of Black Folk to their Rightful Owners,” Debra Dickerson argues that the final phase of the civil rights movement is a shift in focus, from integration and what white people think and do, to what happens between black people. She writes:

“The more fundamental problem with integration as a post-movement goal is that its focus is on white behavior and largesse – on whites allowing blacks to live nearby, to eat with them, to send their children to the same schools. But black autonomy is not whites’ to bestow, it is blacks’ to exercise.”

I’m no sociologist, and of course the dynamics of changing public discourse is complex. But, if such a thing were possible, I would recommend a cognitive-behavioral approach, a change in policies and a continued action toward ending structural inequalities, with – and this is indispensable – a change in self talk.

Relentlessly focusing on your relationship to whiteness, white people, white racism - that can make a person self reflexive to the point of insanity. Bob Marley's words, "emancipate yourself from mental slavery - none but ourselves can free our minds," ring truer when describing self talk among blacks, not as an admonition to stop thinking that you're inferior to whites.

I think that it's fairly safe to say that my generation, if it does grapple with white standards of beauty, or white ideas about us, we do so indirectly. For example, at my most self-conscious teenagery stage, I wasn’t comparing myself to white people; the girls I felt inadequate next to were varying shades of brown. No doubt, their lighter skin had a lot to do with their social success. But white people don’t talk about ‘good' and 'bad' hair, check babies’ fingertips at birth to see how dark they’re going to be, and mercilessly tease the nappy haired, the dark skinned, the full-lipped. It is blacks who dictate how other blacks should feel, think, dress, eat.

I confess that I am oversensitive to 'ought' and I hear it everywhere, not only in public black discourse. But the overriding 'ought' that I struggled with was the collective notion of blackness that seemed stuck on whiteness, a rigid notion of ourselves as beleaguered, and immediately smacks a scarlet T (for Uncle Tom) on someone with a different idea. I agree with Dickerson when she writes against

"...that passe state of mind that focuses on white racism instead of black solutions. The future of black progress lies in the black community, in the black heart, and in the black mind that is unafraid to look itself in the mirror and is thereby able, finally, to love and respect itself...The only step required to finish, and thereby end, the civil rights movement is for blacks to free one another from a strangling groupthink. All that's left is to act free, as free of black expectation as of white."

Freedom from God

The overthrow of the ‘should’ regime continues:

This month at the Well, the church community I belong to, we’re talking about freedom, and the minute I saw this theme I knew exactly what I wanted freedom from: God

In my head, God is an impossible to please borderline, an all seeing, all knowing nag. And since he sees what I’m thinking anyway, my sincerest efforts to think and be what he wants me to be and think are mere pretense; of course he sees the narcissism in every effort at charity, the selfish motive mixed in with the honorable.

Of course, this is a recipe for madness.

So I’m done thinking about God, being anxious to please and eager for approval I’ll never get. I hang out with Christians, and I can anticipate the theological answers to this, but if I keep painting those answers over the deep skepticism I have for all that Christian stuff will make me insane.

Plus, I suspect that this healthier approach, done with the soul-killing, is the path toward real spirituality, away from the szchizophrenia I’ve been forcing on myself.

Limbic Overdrive

Whatever the cause, my limbic system goes into overdrive when it’s time to write.

Beginning to write again was incredibly difficult, and the science of anxiety, landscaping the brain, partially explains this. But of course this is alchemy - part physiology, part mind, in quantities unknown. The recent overthrow of the tyranny of 'should' means that even though I feel this way, I'm going to keep writing, I have to even while I sometimes hate to. But the have to and hate to are inextricable from each other.

Debra Dickerson, a writer a like a lot, described the compulsion to write this way:

"Writing is like sex with someone whose sensuality overpowers you. I resist it even though I want it because the only way to experience it fully is to let go fully. So, I resist even though I know I’ll enjoy it once I yield, but not until I yield. "She says: "I was a pushover, I always gave in."

I think the drive to write is not unrelated, and to be a better writer I just have to write. Waiting until I'm good enough, doesn't help, and ignoring it doesn't make the compulsion go away. Freudian theories of sublimation, on your marks, get set, go! A 2002 Time article on anxiety is an interesting read; take a look at it here.

The cold hands and increased heart rate while I write, the incredible urge to delete these posts as soon as they're 'out there.' Why do I keep doing this? Well, whatever it is that makes me a writer also makes me a drama queen, and thinking of the drive to write as Eros, the life drive, is appealing. I've had my share of Thanatos-inspired experiences, and really, the romantic idea of the tortured writer is appealing only if you've never experienced it. I do tend toward self-destruction, for whatever reason, and there are no vaccuums of power.knowledge that the world of blogs is overpopulated and no one's going to read this does help.

I’m the worrying kind: perfection, performance, and good enough take up a whole lot of my mind space. Which rules out any kind of good sex, of course.

Still, I've cast my vote for Eros.

from Seducing the Demon: Writing to Save my Life, by Erica Jong

"The question remains: how to pierce the veil of the unconscious? Better than the elixir is ritual or routine...Meditation sometimes works...When all else fails, there's prayer. "As Thomas Merton says in New Seeds of Contemplation, "It is not we who choose to awaken ourselves, but God who chooses to awaken us."

"The notion of God brings us to the muse - the male writer's form of the demon. The muse also embodies creativity. She's fickle. She appears and disappears at will. We can't control her. And because we can't control her, we hate her as much as we love her. We try to summon her with sex, with falling in love, with mind-altering drugs. But the fact is, she won't be summoned. She alights when it damn well pleases her. She falls in love with one artist then deserts him for another. She's a real bitch.

"For me anyway, the muse takes the form of the demon lover...He appears at dusk and is banished by dawn. He is part vampire. We long for him to come and drink our blood..
Of course, the muse or demon lover is an aspect of self. I know damn well that when I am summoning this creature, I am really trying to connect with the part of myself that is free, imagnative and able to fly. This part of myself often gets lost under familial obligations and duties. I objectify my imagination as a separate creature, knowing this is metaphor. The muse or demon lover is inside me. I have to release the inhibitions that imprison me. I have to get rid of the voices that urge: write nice things, don't embarrass the family; remember the plight of the Jews; and be sure to write good things about Israel...Nothing freezes the imagination like family loyalty or political correctness."


Substitute "African Diaspora" for "Jews" and "Africa" for "Israel" and that's me exactly. Imprisoned in fear and niceness. And I'm not all that good at being nice, just ask my family. Somewhat unfrozen, I've been reading voraciously and I'm ready to write again. I really can identify with Erica Jong (me and every other woman, I suppose), out of surprise that someone else thought and felt some of the things I did. I have since learned that I'm not as terminally unique as I used to think. Onward, I keep writing.