I have been in a lot of areas, whether physical or literary, where the logic behind writing has been questioned. This provokes me to wonder about the reasons I write. Why do I write about the things I write about? Am I trying to convey a message or is it just for my personal consumption? Is there a greater purpose for my writing? In search of some answers I turn to my greats, those writers who speak to and sometimes for me, for some guidance.
Staceyann Chin, one of my favorite slam poets, says that every time she walks out of her door she offends. Since certain spaces have been denied to her, she works with more passion and desire to place herself into those very spaces, to end the silence surrounding who she is and represents, by writing. She says it’s hard to provide equal space for other people in her work when she doesn’t have an equal space for herself.
Regie Cabico came to speak a couple of weeks ago and he began writing because there weren’t many roles for him available in musical theater, his field of study at NYU. He said he writes the roles he wants to play. He writes about things that are ignored by the “mainstream” theater world. In a sense he is doing what Chin is doing, writing himself into a space that ignores or rather constricts who and how he can be there.
bell hooks began writing Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism when she was nineteen because Black women were written out of her women’s studies classes. Race was ignored in many of her courses at Stanford, especially when it came to feminist thought and practice. She was writing the other story, the story she knew to be true and was tired of having ignored.
When asked, Alice Walker says that she writes the things she should’ve been able to read. The information that wasn’t available previously because no one would publish it, or because it wasn’t in the acceptable commodified formats. She writes what she sees as a void in literature.
I am tired of reading things that ignore my whole self. I am sick of reading about women, but really only reading about white women. I am tired of being told what I can write about, how I can write it. My semantics are an extension of who I am. They are part of my style; that which makes my writing stand out from all the others. I write to document, to save for ourstory these experiences that happen way too often, that go unnoticed, unheard. I write what I want to read, what I want to learn about. I write to let go that which bogs me down after a second/minute/hour/day of fighting “the man”—this process is also known as my life. I write to reclaim that which has been denied to me because of my Black womanness, my loudness, my belief in change.
I am at home in the space I claim through my words. In this world where far too often my body, my life, my way of thinking offends or is forced out of me. I write to remember, to affirm that who I am and what I stand for is important. I write about those things that are not proper cocktail conversation so that one day we can remove the silence around them, and destroy them. I write about race, I write about being a woman of color, I write about the experience of being marginalized because there are far too many silences and lies surrounding them. Silence only adds to the power of my oppression. I see and hear evil, so I will speak about and to it. I speak truth to power, even when I know that doing it places me in a very precarious position.
Writing is my space to rebel, to plan my revolution, that time when we all are accepted on our own terms, no conforming, no denial of who we truly are. Those places where we are the standard for each of our lives, where we don’t compare ourselves among ourselves but to who we know we truly are. When love is what matters. When respect for humanity is of utmost importance, not being right or claims to some piece of land, but the quality of life of those we share this earth with.
I am writing myself into those spaces where I have strategically been omitted. Those parts of history where Africa is referred to as the dark continent, those places where being a Christian or a Jew are the only acceptable forms of religious identification. Those “dark corners” around the globe that the country of my citizenship denies the right to life to so many because their names bounce awkwardly off of the tongues of WASPy US citizens. Those places where I cannot be accepted on my own terms because I talk about race and sexism and classism and heteronormativity and bring it in your face because otherwise these issues will never ever be confronted.
I am force-feeding my story, the stories of my comrades into those spaces that would have us killed, beaten, gagged and silenced. A simple teaspoon wouldn’t suffice. I am not your Mary Poppins, I will not be your mammy. This is my dose of the truth. This hard to swallow honesty that preserves my self, keeps me afloat. I cannot depend on someone else speaking my truths; I have been erased from history too often. I have watched too many people readily forget, I have readily forgotten. I write so I can remember. Sometimes the truth of what I go through is too hard to face, so I write it, place it on a page, a hard drive. This way I can go out and face my world again, look honestly at my reality. Accept those things I can’t change, and change the things I can. When claiming a space that has previously been denied to me, I can’t make space for you, you who already have that space.
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