Everyday Canvas

Double Consciousness

Prompt: In W. E. B. Du Bois book, The Souls of Black Folk, he addresses the experience of double consciousness, a divided identity split between the consciousness of how one views oneself and how one is viewed by others. Have you struggled with representing yourself while being conscious of how readers may view you when they read your work.


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Not really because I don’t think of the readers while I am writing, although those who write books on the subject say to target an audience. I sort of write for me and although I have been published, which happened because of where I worked as a linguist or because friends who published magazines and books picked my pieces on their own, I haven’t submitted my stuff as of yet. I may in the future, that is if I have a future, but it is a pain what an author goes through after their submission is accepted.

Having said this, that double consciousness thing is a fact and. it does happen to me during the everyday living. I may be sitting in a room talking to people, but how I feel may be different than what I project and possibly what the way people see me. It isn’t that I hide anything or utter false stuff about myself because I don’t do that. I don’t need to do that. It may be because, in my life, so many people have projected things about themselves onto me and who they believe I am, which mostly isn’t true or complete. Not that what they projected is negative either. Mostly it has been overly positive, but to my understanding, that positivity is usually false or exaggerated.