Why did you become a writer?
Welcome to Created By, a digital series by Hollywood Workers for Peace highlighting the stories of Hollywood laborers who are challenging our industry to end its support of state violence and imperialism.
Throughout this series, you will find essays on subjects such as being an anti-Zionist in Hollywood amid heightened censorship, explainers on the importance of connecting struggles like the genocide in Sudan and police brutality in the United States, Q&As with organizers and activists in our industry, updates on protests, and more. If you have a story you’d like to publish with us or an idea for a story you think we should cover, please email us at: wgaforpeace@gmail.com
If your story is approved, you will work with experienced editors to prepare it for publication, with the option to publish anonymously or with your name attached. In solidarity!
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By Hari Ziyad
“Why did you become a writer?” the executive asks, smiling at me through the screen. For a moment, I consider answering with the story I tell myself: I’ve always believed that there is liberation in storytelling, if you do it honestly. Through some magical combination of words, some form of literary juju, a writer can force an audience to confront hidden truths, and to imagine new realities that are so desperately needed.
As someone who belongs to several communities that have suffered various histories of oppression, I want to believe that I became a writer for moments like the one that currently has us swallowed. If you’ve been paying attention to anything beyond absurdly biased mainstream news sources, you’ll know that powerful forces are working overtime to justify and cover up an ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.
Every day for the past seven months, dozens if not hundreds of Palestinians are murdered by Israel. Every day, Israel drops bombs on Palestinian civilians. Palestinian children lose limbs, are orphaned. Palestinian fathers lose their children. Palestinian mothers lose their own mothers. Even the UN and the ICJ, institutions historically loathe to challenge Western imperial powers, have lent support to the idea that what we are witnessing is a genocide. And the Biden administration eagerly pays for and supports this genocide, while our industry is overwhelmingly silent, if not in support of it, too.
I want to say that I write for a record of my discontent with injustices like these. I want to be someone who writes in order to honor all of the parts of me and my communities that powerful people are so desperately trying to erase. This is a good story.
I say it’s surprising that I’ve had several of these meetings recently because I’ve stated some of my discontent publicly, but it’s not safe to talk like this around this town. Imperialist ideologies, of which Zionism is only one, have long had a vice grip on Hollywood. Since October 7th, many decision-makers in our industry have only doubled down on repressing any criticism of Israel and its occupation of Palestine.
Up-and-coming actress Melissa Barerra was fired from Scream 7 for speaking out. Even Susan Sarandon was dropped from her talent agency. The Jewish director of an Oscar winning film about the Holocaust was publicly attacked and unironically accused of antisemitism for a mild statement denouncing the genocide. The censorship is so blatant and unavoidable that those of us who would otherwise speak up often silence ourselves out of fear before the censorship is even imposed on us.
But somehow, I booked this meeting. I don’t know if the execs I’ve met with just haven’t seen anything I’ve written on these subjects, or truly don’t care. Having witnessed an overwhelming amount of unchallenged repression and blacklisting, I can’t imagine the third option: that they actually agree with me. And so, when the executive asks why I became a writer, I give a different answer: I grew up in a storytelling household and stories have changed my life. This is also a good story. And, while true, the way it’s told reveals another truth that was intended to be kept hidden, like all good stories do.
The truth is that I hadn’t fully committed to writing for the reasons I told myself I write. All of those flowery words about speaking truth to power sounds lovely, but when it really comes down to it, there are other reasons for taking meetings in which I have to convince people like this exec to invest in bringing my words to the screen. To make money. To be known. For some level of stability and safety.
If the executive were to ask me which writers I look up to, I’d have no hesitation naming the main one. My North Star is Toni Morrison, who once said in a commencement address to the Barnard class of 1979: “I want to discourage you from choosing anything or making any decision simply because it is safe. Things of value seldom are.” I remember these words as, twenty-five years after her speech, Barnard students are hauled off by the NYPD for protesting the genocide of Palestinians. I imagine most writers would hear Morrison’s words and loudly agree. But what do her words mean in practice?
I’m good at making excuses. I tell myself that safety isn’t the sole, simple reason I make decisions to be quiet when being loud becomes scary, for turning my social media pages private, and maybe that’s partially true. When things seem particularly dangerous, I convince myself that my speaking up won’t have much effect anyway, so why waste my time (and potential income)? Aaron Bushnell set himself on fire and died in the name of stopping this genocide (and another unnamed woman set herself on fire and barely survived), and yet Israel still invades Rafah, Joe Biden’s supposed “red line” and the last “safe” zone for hundreds and thousands of noncombattants, even after Hamas accepted a ceasefire proposal. What good would come from anything less than Bushnell’s act even if I were to do it?
I don’t always know the answer to that, but I do know that for my writing to do anything of value, for it to truly be liberating, I must be honest even when it doesn’t feel safe. No one else is going to do the work of telling the truth for me. If I really became an artist to tell the truth, if I honestly think that’s what makes good stories, I should be telling the truth about this genocide as often as I can, and I should be doing it at the top of my lungs.
A writer who became one for the reasons I claim would never be okay with ignoring a genocide, or working with anyone who would demand that I do. The artist who became one for the reasons I claim would, at the very least, try to reach as many people as possible to get it to stop. If we are only the writers we claim to be in theory, we are not those writers at all.
Stories about this moment are being written as we speak, and the best ones will reveal the truth behind the reasons we became the writers, actors, and artists we are today. Even if you are not one of the artists uncovering the truth with the magic of your words, it will be uncovered. When it is, what will be your truth?
Hari Ziyad (he/they) is an award-winning screenwriter, the author of the bestselling memoir Black Boy Out of Time (Little A, 2021), and a certified death doula. Recipient of the Inevitable Foundation’s Elevate Collective Collective + STARZ #TakeTheLead Grant and a Rideback Rise Circle Member, Hari is currently a writer on the Wondery podcast Black History, For Real, and was previously a staff writer on The Neighborhood (CBS).
