Letter to Readers

I thought my column in the NC Journal dated today (March 20) might provoke a letter to the editor, but I didn't think it would be from me.

Here's the letter I just emailed:

A subtitle to my Stage Matters column used the term "Trailer-trash." I did not write these words, and I find the term offensive. I never refer to any group of people as trash.

Readers of this site may remember an anecdote I quoted in December. Here it is again, with the operative words emphasized:

In the new issue of American Theatre, there's an interview with playwright Lucy Thurber, whose play, Scarcity, dealing with an American working class family, is printed in the issue. Thurber recalls a conversation with [playwright August] Wilson at the O'Neill summer playwrights conference. "I write about poor white trash," she told him. "Are you trash?" he asked her. "No," she said, "I'm just using it as a descriptive term to explain that part of the population." But Wilson said, "Again, I ask you, are you trash? Are the people that you grew up with trash? Are the people that you love trash?"

"That was a huge, emotional moment for me," Thurber said. "Where it cracked, this play was born. The language we use about ourselves is important. There is something about having the courage to talk with dignity and trust and faith about these parts of America that are us."

The column reviewed a production of All's Well That Ends Well that sets the play in a trailer park. I wrote that the setting didn't work, and I amplified some of the points in my post here yesterday.

I've asked that the subtitle be changed in the online version. If it is changed, I'll link to it from here. If not, I'll post the review later.