Writers as Dense Forest of Activism and Love

Powerful is the best word that I can think of to describe the 2017 AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) conference in Washington, D.C.  Needed also comes to mind.

Highlights:

Keynote Address

Azar Nafisi, an Iranian writer who became an American citizen in 2008, and is the critically-acclaimed author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and other works, a Johns Hopkin professor, and journalist, gave the keynote speech.

She said that in America, we are suffering from a crisis of vision, faith, and values – that the crisis isn’t political, it’s existential – it is about our identity.

The poet and tyrant, she explained, have always been rivals over the truth; the tyrant fabricates reality, whereas the poet reveals it.  With tyranny in Iran, women, other minorities, and culture were targeted first.  She added, “Does this ring a bell?”  Today’s problem, then, she continued, is, in part, that of one voice becoming everyone’s voice, which writers must prevent.  Literature is about learning about the other.

She reminded us that as James Baldwin stated, to disturb the peace is the writer’s role.

 

Panel:  “Agents of Change:  Social Justice and Activism in the Literary Community”

This panel helped me to form important questions:

1. How do we amplify?  How do we go from social media activism, letter writing, and petition signing to louder forms of protest?  We do not want to use the tactics being employed by the Trump administration and supporters.  How do we fight on our own terrain?
2. How do we make attention to issues that matter, such as those involving people of color and other minority groups, sustainable? (Instead of mainly focusing on them just after an event has occurred that requires response.)
3. How do we build bridges and to whom? Do we focus on the young?  Those who did not vote?  What strategies do we employ to get people to engage in necessary conversations?  How do we find a way to lower the tension instead of continuing to raise it?

 

Readings

Danez Smith, when asked how he survives, replied, “I survive by remembering sitting on the porch with my grandmother.”  He remembers the beauty – to write those details about life.  He said that the reason he writes about the issues that are faced by our country is out of love.

There were many moving readings.  The names James Baldwin, Adrienne Rich, and Frederick Douglass, among others, were often evoked.  “Love” was a word that I heard repeatedly recited in poetry.

 

Candlelight Vigil for Freedom of Expression

Several phenomenal writers spoke, including a writer who almost could not make it to the AWP due to Trump’s travel ban, and explained about having to go to Mumbai for her Visa.  She said to imagine the people who had been waiting for years to come to the United States, the refugees, only to be told to turn back, to go home, when no home awaited.  The woman she sat next to on the plane spoke no English and could not order a meal or fill out a form without assistance.  She hadn’t seen her daughter in ten years, so when the ban was frozen, she purchased yet another expensive ticket in an effort to reach her daughter as soon as possible, before the travel situation could again change.

Another writer, a transgender queer person of color who was an immigrant, talked about the United States and being able to dream that someday a transgender person could be president and being unwilling to give up that dream.

Ross Gay closed the vigil with a beautiful metaphor.  Evidently, trees are able to communicate through their root systems.  If one tree is low on a nutrient, it can let another tree know, and if that other tree has a surplus, it is able to send the nutrient to the tree in need.  It reminded me very much of how my mom described the Great Depression:  “If a neighbor’s baby was in need of milk and we had it, we would give it to them and vice versa.”  She lamented how the world had changed – how she felt that would no longer hold true. Ross Gay, however, made it clear that we writers are the trees, that we need each other now, more than ever.

When the AWP began, I thought ahhh…I’m with my tribe.  But I leave D.C. today, thinking, ahh…I’m with my trees!

Writers as Dense Forest of Activism and Love

 

Powerful is the best word that I can think of to describe the 2017 AWP (Association of Writers and Writing Programs) conference in Washington, D.C.  Needed also comes to mind.

Highlights:

Keynote Address

Azar Nafisi, an Iranian writer who became an American citizen in 2008, and is the critically-acclaimed author of Reading Lolita in Tehran and other works, a Johns Hopkin professor, and journalist, gave the keynote speech.

She said that in America, we are suffering from a crisis of vision, faith, and values – that the crisis isn’t political, it’s existential – it is about our identity.

The poet and tyrant, she explained, have always been rivals over the truth; the tyrant fabricates reality, whereas the poet reveals it.  With tyranny in Iran, women, other minorities, and culture were targeted first.  She added, “Does this ring a bell?”  Today’s problem, then, she continued, is, in part, that of one voice becoming everyone’s voice, which writers must prevent.  Literature is about learning about the other.

She reminded us that as James Baldwin stated, to disturb the peace is the writer’s role.

 

Panel:  “Agents of Change:  Social Justice and Activism in the Literary Community”

This panel helped me to form important questions:

1. How do we amplify?  How do we go from social media activism, letter writing, and petition signing to louder forms of protest?  We do not want to use the tactics being employed by the Trump administration and supporters.  How do we fight on our own terrain?
2. How do we make attention to issues that matter, such as those involving people of color and other minority groups, sustainable? (Instead of mainly focusing on them just after an event has occurred that requires response.)
3. How do we build bridges and to whom? Do we focus on the young?  Those who did not vote?  What strategies do we employ to get people to engage in necessary conversations?  How do we find a way to lower the tension instead of continuing to raise it?

 

Readings

Danez Smith, when asked how he survives, replied, “I survive by remembering sitting on the porch with my grandmother.”  He remembers the beauty – to write those details about life.  He said that the reason he writes about the issues that are faced by our country is out of love.

There were many moving readings.  The names James Baldwin, Adrienne Rich, and Frederick Douglass, among others, were often evoked.  “Love” was a word that I heard repeatedly recited in poetry.

 

Candlelight Vigil for Freedom of Expression

Several phenomenal writers spoke, including a writer who almost could not make it to the AWP due to Trump’s travel ban, and explained about having to go to Mumbai for her Visa.  She said to imagine the people who had been waiting for years to come to the United States, the refugees, only to be told to turn back, to go home, when no home awaited.  The woman she sat next to on the plane spoke no English and could not order a meal or fill out a form without assistance.  She hadn’t seen her daughter in ten years, so when the ban was frozen, she purchased yet another expensive ticket in an effort to reach her daughter as soon as possible, before the travel situation could again change.

Another writer, a transgender queer person of color who was an immigrant, talked about the United States and being able to dream that someday a transgender person could be president and being unwilling to give up that dream.

Ross Gay closed the vigil with a beautiful metaphor.  Evidently, trees are able to communicate through their root systems.  If one tree is low on a nutrient, it can let another tree know, and if that other tree has a surplus, it is able to send the nutrient to the tree in need.  It reminded me very much of how my mom described the Great Depression:  “If a neighbor’s baby was in need of milk and we had it, we would give it to them and vice versa.”  She lamented how the world had changed – how she felt that would no longer hold true. Ross Gay, however, made it clear that we writers are the trees, that we need each other now, more than ever.

When the AWP began, I thought ahhh…I’m with my tribe.  But I leave D.C. today, thinking, ahh…I’m with my trees!

One Slugs: Belated One-Sentence Movie Reviews

The Road – Better to take the road “less travelled by” and this ain’t it;  little back story and much agony lead to too neat closure.

Precious – Definitely not a weekend rental, this film is a hard watch, even by my tastes, which run dark, but is undoubtedly worthwhile.

The Wolfman – Although I liked Del Toro in Traffic, his performance falls flat here, so I never invested in the protagonist, but if shiny baubles are enough, the cinematography and set design are well done.

Things We Lost in the Fire – Berry and Del Toro both give their utmost in this drama of loss and healing that works.

Love the Ugly Red-headed Stepchild: The Role of Creative Writing in Academia

With increased emphasis being placed upon assessment in schools from Kindergarten through college, and especially in a time of economic turn down when the arts are increasingly in jeopardy, it is imperative that creative writing as an academic discipline continue to flourish as it has been for the past three-and-a-half decades in the United States.  According to The AWP Official Guide to Writing Programs, undergraduate creative writing majors grew from a mere three in 1975 to currently exceeding 137.  Although creative writing has been often deemed the “ugly red-headed stepchild” of the English department, it is a vital component to English education.

Creative thinking is as necessary to thought processes as critical thinking and to have one without the other is to be ill-equipped for tasks that require  “out-of-the-box” thinking.  Furthermore, today’s educational system focuses so intently upon informational writing that the “affective” side is frequently neglected.  Creative writing can serve as an outlet for not just emotional release, but genuine exploration of the intersection between ideas and emotions, conflicting truths, and expectations and reality; it is a mode of discovery and the marriage, the very manifestation, of creative and critical thinking.

In their December 2009 Writer’s Chronicle article, “Out of the Margins:  The Expanding Role of Creative Writing in Today’s College Curriculum,” Chad Davidson and Gregory Fraser posit that advantages to including creative writing are that it:

1.  Promotes close-reading skills

2.  Challenges the myth of linear process

3.  Encourages both detachment from, and investment in, one’s writing

4.  Implicitly critiques the myth of the isolated genius

5.  Fosters a beneficial apprentice mentality

In addition, it gives students a respite from the shallow characters and predictable plot structures that mass media has been attempting to shovel into their mouths since their first silver spoons.  Students are often searching for something deeper, more substantive, something that will make them see and think in new ways.

Another reason that creative writing course curriculum is valuable is because of its interplay with linguistics.  Creative writing teaches syntax as students are advised to vary sentence construction and length and to tighten structure.  It teaches etymology as they examine word origins and semantics as they explore connotation and denotation.  It teaches phonology as they listen closely to words for alliteration and assonance.  And creative writing instructs students about sociolinguistics as they explore dialogue of characters with socioeconomic backgrounds dissimilar from their own.

I instruct college creative writing.  Recently, a student e-mailed to thank me for my introductory course because she had never had an opportunity to write creatively before.  As much as I appreciated receiving the communique, it also wounded me to know that the student had made it through 13 to 15 years of formal education without such exposure.  Creative writing, as major, as minor, supports professional writing, journalism, communication, broadcasting, computer graphics technology, theatre,  advertising/marketing, culture and media, and other majors.  In K through 12, it helps to flower imaginative minds that may otherwise wilt.

For the past two years, I have seen less and less creative writing job postings.  We live in a world with state budget cutbacks impacting schools across the nation.  And what suffers most?  The arts, deemed “superfluous” when during times of strife, individual stories need more than ever to be voiced.  Love the flaming hair, the accompanying freckles.  Spread the word.

One Slugs: Belated One-Sentence Movie Reviews

Single mother of a five-year-old that I am, most of my film viewing occurs via DVD rental, so very rarely will I be able to provide a movie review the week of release.  That said and in case you aren’t caught up, roll ’em:

2012 – As disaster fare goes, this film was on the better end in relation to special effects, plot and characterization.

Astro Boy – While it’s no Toy Story, it kept my attention the entire time, unlike say G-Force and Alvin; I empathized with the li’l robotic protagonist.

Avatar – With all of the funding that they sunk into the extraordinary lifelike special effects, couldn’t they have spent just a wee bit more on the script?

Blind Side – Even for a non-sports fan such as myself, the flick proved engaging and heartwarming.

New Moon – Why?

Ponyo – Jianna gave this bit of rated “G” anime a two chubby-cheeked smile, and although I preferred Totoro, the film was still a worthwhile watch–how could anyone not love when li’l girl Ponyo runs atop the typhoon?

Up in the Air – I entered expecting a rather light-hearted frolic through romantic comedy, and was instead surprised and delighted by its depth and timeliness.

I, Eye, I, Eye, I, Eye…

This week, during my two and a half days devoted to writing, I wrote while well and awake (what an amazing difference that alone can make!) and slowed myself down by switching to pen and paper so that I would have pause between thought and commitment of thought.  One chapter became three, as I moved from tell to show, immersing readers in the story, and I believe will be four chapters once I am done fleshing out the narrative.

I also read Lee Gutkind’s Keep it Real.  In it, Gutkind questions the vagaries of memory, which has been part of my problem.  First, I’ve repressed some crucial moments because they are simply too painful to remember.    Gutkind quotes memoirist Mary Karr, who states, “Sometimes to forget an event may be the most radiantly true way of representing it” (Gutkind 134).  In some areas, I may choose to be succinct or to play with the use of white space to represent silence, and I think that considering the pain that I dole to readers in great detail in other sections, doing so will speak volumes.

At less crucial times, however, I haven’t blocked out memories–time has simply taken its toll, so to move from tell to show, I’ve had to take liberties, making certain to be true to intent.   To illustrate, in my apartment in Houston, I had a temporary roommate, Candy Man.  I remember his making Ramen Noodles.   I remember his confessing something deeply personal about his life.   To go from summary to scene, I wrote as if seeing him stir the soup and invite me to join him for lunch (my soup and my table, mind you) and had him divulge his secret as we ate.   It was 1997, and I may have just compressed two memories together due to lack of context for the more important one, but have any animals been injured during the making of this film?  No.  What I mean is that I told the emotional truth without intent to deceive.  Whether I want to or not, I am going to need to take similar liberties to create strong story.

Gutkind also quotes Ursula K. Le Guin, who maintains, “I am an artist…and therefore a liar.  Distrust everything I say.  I am telling the truth.”  He then explains the necessity of self-examination, infallible memory, and that examination of the unreliable produces truth about self, and doing so is necessary to develop reflective creative nonfiction. He goes on to differentiate between the “I” functioning as a camera lense, and the “eye” as the camera, trained on “author’s actions and mediations” (Gutkind 79-81). Oddly, I have found that in first drafts, I am more successful rendering the “eye” than the “I.”  As a thinking individual, I have often felt as though I’ve gone through life half as observer.  Furthermore, as a woman raised by a near-martyr mother from the Silent Generation and a conservative Boomer sister, the “I” wasn’t stressed at all.  (Only in later years did I find my I.)  As such, I haven’t always concentrated on the “I,” so in memory, it has become the weaker element.  I believe that for most people the opposite would hold true, which is why so many M.F.A. professors complain about egocentrism in their students’ work.  There are dangers in imbalance on either side.

In a later chapter, Gutkind writes, “Often we assume that if we speak in an I-voice, it is always the same I.  But this I is shaped by time, by experience, and by mood.  There’s the I with a sense of humor about the whole thing, the I who is still puzzled, the I who has wisdom to impart, the I who has an ax to grind.  There is also what we might call the Lyric I:  the I who is silent; the I who speaks through fragmentation, through pure observation, through white space, the I who disappears into the gaps, eclipsed by language and metaphor” (120).  As I grapple with these various I’s from childhood to present, I am becoming increasingly convinced that I suffer from multiple-personality disorder.  (Just kidding!)  Seriously, though, on paper, as in life, it is in working our way to the essence of each of these, in part through what what we recall vividly or only in the most vague sense, that makes us human and makes up our story.

What is your I?  your eye?  Where does your natural balance lie?  Distilled, what is your story and what does it say about you?

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Please Note: Due to unusually heavy work demands, for the next eight weeks  posts may be irregular or absent. Regular weekly blog posts will resume in May, once the spring semester has ended.   Grading beckons.

How Do You Like Me Now?

We all know that in fiction, we want a protagonist that we can root for, even if, as an anti-hero, he or she is flawed.  While I have read successfully crafted pieces with a central character whom I disliked, while I may have appreciated the text intellectually, emotionally the read was a barren wasteland and, therefore, not as powerful.  But what about in creative nonfiction?

I attended a writing group meeting today and one member said something that had already crossed my mind–that I need to show the good in my antagonists, the good that kept me loyal to these dysfunctional men that I dated–or I run the risk of losing readers’ empathy.  However, I have also posed the question to myself:  what if at times I simply am not a protagonist with whom readers can feel an affinity?  Will they stop reading?  Do I have an obligation to my readers to be an empathetic character?  I don’t know.

On one hand, I will present the circumstances that led to my being the person who dated men who, over time, as substances increasing took hold of their lives, became increasingly mentally, emotionally, physically, and even sexually abusive toward me.

On the other hand, at some point a person needs to take ownership of his or her own role in life’s events.  What if I exhibited weakness of character at times?  What if I lost my way?  What if I was so willfully determined to find out the answer to a burning question that it drove me almost to my demise?  What if I couldn’t give up, let go, admit defeat–defeat in love, defeat against substance abuse?  What if (horror of horrors) my readers, at times, want to shake me, slap me, take me by the hand and drag me away from unhealthy situations because of my obvious lack of self-preservation?  Will they then give up on me?

I will paint my antagonists as fully as I can because these men in my life didn’t have handlebar mustaches and tie damsels to railroad tracks (okay, close–but not quite).  They were victims as children to their own dysfunctional upbringings with alcoholic parents, as was I.  They made me laugh, they held me tight, and healthy or not, in their ways, they loved me.   I know without question that they would have given me the world if it were as simple as choosing to press a button–that they would still, but that in reality, they loathed themselves, so how in the world could they ever love anyone in a normal fashion? Addicts.  They were busy killing themselves.  And as I explain to myself and to my readers how my young adult life became a night terror, I will have to do it as truthfully as I am able, readers’ good opinions of me be damned.  Because I was young, naive, and stubbborn.  I am human, and I am not writing fiction.  I am writing about a girl who grew up in dysfunction and continued on in dysfunction, which escalated, as often happens.

I do not think that creative nonfiction can be held to the same standard as fiction in relation to having an empathetic protagonist.  Readers may have to root for me in spite of rather than because of me.  Mine is a latent coming of age story.

What do you think, dear readers?  Have you read a memoir where you just wanted to throw the book through a picture window, but kept reading anyway, and in the end, were glad that you did?  Or would you stop reading because the central character has failed you somewhere along the way?

Ball Gowns and Brass

This week was not spent so much on writing or even researching as it was upon recovery from a nasty stomach bug (the cockroach of the flu family, if I were to guess).  After listening to about three hours of TV  news (which is more inclined to aid than to hinder vomiting), I flipped, desperate, to the Dick Van Dyke Show.  In the episode, Rob intentionally closes  a top desk drawer quickly as Buddy and Sally enter the room, knowing that when he leaves , they will snoop.  What he has hidden away is a memoir chapter, which they ultimately admit to reading because it is unfinished and their curiosity must be sated.  During discussion that ensues, Rob says something like, “Well, no it didn’t really happen that way, but I like my version better, and if so-and-so tells his story, then he can write it his way.”  In this particular scenario, Rob had made himself the hero of the situation–the one with control, whereas in reality the opposite had occurred.  Rob has actually committed an ethical breach by changing the factual truth.  Had he written the chapter in such a way as to encompass both the factual and his emotional truths, however, he would then have had acceptable creative nonfiction.

I am reminded of an anecdote told at the 2008 NonfictioNow conference at University of Iowa by the great nonfictionist Philip Gerard.  He explained how, as a boy, he had been told that his father, who was in the army, had met his mother while she was singing at a drinking establishment.  In his mind, it was a club.  His mother was wearing a long blue gown.  His father entered in full military uniform, medals shiny, dangling.  As an adult, though, he learned that it had actually occurred at a bar.  His father was in his civvies.  And his mother had been forced by her alcoholic father to get up and sing for his drinking buddies.  Talk about the deflation of a romanticized notion!  But Gerard stated esstentially this, and it was an “aha” moment for me:  Both of those truths–the emotional and the factual–make up the truth of my life.  Creative nonfiction involves the ability to juxtapose those truths.

As I look back at my life, I realize that the distance between my factual and emotional truths is much closer now than it was a decade ago or longer.  Maybe it’s the writer, the reader, the romantic, the idealist, in me, so strong, that made my emotional truth heightened in comparison to the factual truth,  and perhaps to dizzying heights at times when I was in my twenties and still trying to defy the reality I saw but did not like, but with the exception of possibly the most pragmatic among us, who can say that they have lived a life in which emotional truth and factual truth have not been periodically at odds?   In the time line, the plot line, that is your life, where are your points of juxtaposition?

Memoir-able Lessons

Almost 200 pages into Queen of Lilac Time, I am ready to share recent insights:

• Tone:  It is easier and less time consuming to use old and stand alone work as notes for new chapters than to try to revise it to fit.  Revising, which seems the “lazy” method, ultimately proves more work.  (Trust me.)

• Layering:  It is imperative to keep the narrative moving.  Instead of being a “perfectionist” with each chapter, as I have in the past, I have realized that the momentum I build as I progress will allow me to work on new chapters while adding layers within and notes at the ends of older chapters for later revision.  I now keep my memoir file open all day to add a line or a note whenever the muse allows.  I have had to accept that I am constantly adding layers to all chapters simultaneously and will improve imagery and build larger worlds within the story later.  The momentum being built also aids confidence.

• Writers’ Block:    While I don’t feel exactly “blocked,” I sometimes feel depleted.  When this occurs, I will research myself.  This may mean reading old journals and letters, reviewing previous creative work, interviewing friends and family, or even posting questions to Facebook friends from childhood or posting an excerpt about our childhood under “notes” and asking for feedback.  Reading published memoir also helps.

• Ethics:  In addition to changing names and places connected to guilty and innocent “characters” and writing with no intent to deceive as I tell my emotional truth, I also ask the question, When does my story end and another’s begin? I stop writing when I reach this seam.

The more that I write, the more that I realize not only how much is left untold but how many layers have yet to be unearthed.  I’ll be certain to share further insights as I,  self-anthropologist, write the next 200 pages.

Break on Through to the Other Side

I hesitate to even say this, but I think that writing memoir–the process of analyzing my life–is so painful to me that it has made me lose my appetite.  Until two weeks’ ago, I worked on it diligently every day since January 1st and lost six pounds.  Then, due to work and personal responsibilities, I put it aside and found myself ravenous mid-week.  Could it really be that examination of my past serves as an appetite suppressant?  If so, it is sad commentary indeed.

Among the many reasons that I am writing about my life, though, is the thought of release–of freedom.  I don’t know for certain if it will work, but I feel that I can write my way to personal renewal.   I think that it is my way, much more so than psychoanalysis or anti-depressants, alcohol or orthodox religion.  Writers write their way to the other side.  The other side of the unspeakable.  Writing is my sacred space.