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“Writing Matters,” by Mel Donalson, May 9, 2013
Consider this….
African American poet, Gwendolyn Brooks, delivered a captivating poem about a woman
revisiting the decisions that she made. In the poem “The Mother,” the title character, reflects:
The Mother
Abortions will not let you forget.
You remember the children you got that you did not get,
The damp small pulps with a little or with no hair,
The singers and workers that never handled the air.
You will never neglect or beat
Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.
You will never wind up the sucking-thumb
Or scuttle off ghosts that come.
You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,
Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.
I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed
children.
I have contracted. I have eased
My dim dears at the breasts they could never suck.
I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized
Your luck
And your lives from your unfinished reach,
If I stole your births and your names,
Your straight baby tears and your games,
Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, your marriages, aches,
and your deaths,
If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,
Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.
Though why should I whine,
Whine that the crime was other than mine?-Since anyhow you are dead.
Or rather, or instead,
You were never made.
But that too, I am afraid,
Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?
You were born, you had body, you died.
It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.
Believe me, I loved you all.
Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I loved you
All.
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Why did Gwendolyn Brooks write that poem in 1948, exploring a topic about the illegal actions
of a desperate woman in the urban environment? Why?
Consider this….
Jewish author and activist, Elie Wiesel reflected upon a year-and-a-half in his life when,
as a teenager, he and his family were taken from their home in Hungary and sent into the maze of
horrors in Austrian and German concentration camps. In his memoir entitled Night, Wiesel
recalled the first night in a camp:
“Not far from us, flames, huge flames, were rising from a ditch. Something was being
burned there. A truck drew close and unloaded its hold: small children. Babies! Yes, I did see
this, with my own eyes…children thrown into the flames….A little farther on, there was another,
larger pit for adults….
Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, that turned my life into one long
night seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall I forget the small faces of
the children whose bodies I saw transformed into smoke under a silent sky. Never shall I forget
those flames that consumed my faith forever. Never shall I forget the nocturnal silence that
deprived me for all eternity of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments that
murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to ashes. Never shall I forget those things,
even were I condemned to live as long as God Himself. Never.”
Why did Elie Wiesel write down these experiences, feelings, and thoughts?
The answers to these questions about Gwendolyn Brooks and Elie Wiesel connect to the
words that shape the theme of this conference—Writing Matters. It mattered in the historic
yesterday, the volatile present, and will matter in the changing, technological future.
When I assert that writing matters, understand that I’m not excluding the importance of
the oral tradition—that verbal communication which meanders through a casual conversation, or
a more formalized speech like this one, or the multi-topical lyrics of pop songs and hip hop
tunes.
For example, Pop Princess Lady Gaga suggested the following in her lyrics about self
love:
“Don't hide yourself in regret, Just love yourself and you're set…Whether You're black,
white, beige, chola descent…You're Lebanese, you're orient…Whether life's disabilities
left you outcast, bullied or teased, Rejoice and love yourself today…No matter gay,
straight or bi, Lesbian, transgendered life…I'm on the right track, baby. I was born this
way…”
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But…why does the written word matter so much? One reason rests in the many different
forms, genres, and styles that emanate from the pen, the lap top, or the ipad.
Poetry—from ghazals, to sonnets, to villanelles, to free verse. Fiction—from fables, to
short stories, to novellas, to novels. Drama—from the dramatic monologues, to the one act play,
to the full length play, to screenplays. Creative Nonfiction—from the critical essay, to the
memoir, to biography, to how-to books—you know the popular how-to-books, the ones with the
numbers in the title…such as “16 Ways to Eat a Hamburger without a Bun,” or “10 Ways to
Have an Affair with Your Next Door Neighbor During the Christmas Holidays,” or “5 Ways to
Escape from Barstow Before They Know You’re Gone”…Yes, even pop psychology and life
coaching tips have a place in the pantheon of the written text.
Consequently, for some…writing matters because it offers an opportunity to capture
experiences, to swirl reality into metaphors and oxymorons and metonymy… to sift through,
elongate, or truncate the ways in which reality is bent and broken but beautiful.
For some…writing matters because it’s a survival tool, a personal pathway to negotiate
the daily dosage of disdainful, desperate, detestable, and deleterious dilemmas.
For some…writing matters because it provides a way to celebrate the uniqueness of an
emotional storm that lifts them far above the farmlands of Kansas, or the snowdrifts of Maine, or
the canyons of Arizona, or the curvaceous coast of California….. Lifts them far above to arrive
on the other side of a rainbow that’s filled with mischievous munchkins… or lobster-laden
landscapes…or purple-colored rock formations…or wet-suited surfers.
But the important question is—why does writing matter for you?
In her autobiography, Ghosts and Voices (1987), Chicana author Sandra Cisneros—who
is an accomplished writer of fiction, poetry, and essays—confesses that “instead of writing by
inspiration, it seems we write by obsessions, of that which is most violently tugging at our
psyche…there is the necessary phase of dealing with those ghosts and voices most urgently
haunting us, day by day.”
For Cisneros, there is the need to write in order to be free…to escape those traumas,
places, and people that have contributed so much good and bad in her past. She is the sum total
of her past, chained to walls that she didn’t build, but must break through in order to be herself.
For Cisneros, her manuscript serves as her manumission.
Vietnamese American writer Andrew Lam has found a national reputation with his
nonfiction in books such as Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora (2006).
However, he sees fiction as his first love. He measures his writing in the following way: “In
non-fiction you have to stay true to historical events, be they personal or national…in fiction, it’s
as if you enter a dream world that you created, but your characters have their own free
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will…When a character takes over…He lives his life, does things that are unexpected, and makes
you laugh and cry because of his human flaws and foibles.”
For Lam, writing serves as a way to authenticate actuality through non-fiction…and to
illuminate humanity through his fiction. For Lam, Writing Matters because it becomes a
measurement of the truths that dictate his life, whether they be related to a collective cultural
experience—such as immigration—or an individual act that exposes human weaknesses and
confusion.
But, still, the question remains—why does writing matter to you?
Now, I’ve been asked that question consistently over the years, and for me, there is no
one answer. There are many responses because there are many genres in which I write. My
critical books on film serve as a confirmation of an academic and scholarly interest I have in
cinema.…my poetry solidifies the many floating fragments of emotions and thoughts….my plays
function as literary autopsies of relationships both familial and romantic….my creative
nonfiction swings, in pendulum fashion, from blogging to memoir….and my fiction breaks open
all the concealed imagination, fears, and conformity that may have surfaced in my life.
My writing is about passion, discovery, discipline, affirmation, proclamation, liberation,
deviation, frustration, temptation, remonstration, redemption, and spiritual salvation. Writing
Matters to me because it is the counterpart of my complexity…the infrastructure of my
intellect… the shadow of my soul. Writing is the ideal that helps me to cope with the real.
In my recent novel, Communion, I sculpt characters who represent people who are
discarded and often invisible—because of sexual orientation, ethnicity, and gender. One purpose
of this novel was to reclaim conversations I had with a young man who was 18 when I met him,
but was already an old soul. It’s a novel that allows me to ponder the ways that children are
neglected…how greed is rewarded…how love is often fleeting…and how every life has
purpose.
Set in the 1980s, the story is complicated in its structure as it follows protagonist, Tony
Marcos, a gay teen who runs away from his crumbling home to find a life that eventually brings
him to the streets of Hollywood. It’s a multi-ethnic novel with characters who are in their teens,
their 20s, 30s, and 40s; characters who are white, black, Latino, Armenian, Samoan, and
Vietnamese.
Tony is a poet, a gentle young man who leans towards kindness, and he is also a young
man who enjoys dressing up in women’s clothing. Raised by his sister, Maggie, Tony enjoys a
home of acceptance. But when Maggie marries Jerry, a religious conservative, the home
becomes a place of tension.
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In this first segment I want to share with you, Tony pretends to be sick, and he stays
home alone from school, listening to his favorite pop group, Heart. In these stolen moments, he
has the freedom to express himself:
He reached for the jewelry box, its opened lid unable to close
against the mounds of earrings, bracelets, and necklaces. He lifted
a pair of earrings set with jade stones, their delicate green color
complementing the colors in the dress. He placed one into his ear and
marveled at how such a small dangling connection of gold-covered
metal and chiseled stone could make such a marked difference to
his appearance. Even without a wig, he liked what he saw, an image
closer to the one residing inside, the one that could be articulated
through the ritual of make-up.
Tony lifted the other earring, and turned his head to put it in its
place, when his eyes fixed on Jerry’s face. The intrusion in the mirror
was startling, out of place within the illusion of his moment. Jerry’s
eyes, even across the distance of the room, darkened in disbelief.
Jerry’s mouth hung wide, a dark cavern, his breath held in check, his
rigid body.
Tony tilted his head, angling his eyes again to see the fury that
possessed Jerry’s face. Jerry exploded across the room. Grabbing
Tony’s arm, he yanked him to his feet.
“What?” he asked shaking his head back-and-forth. “What kind
of devil are you?”
He raised his fist in a high arc and pounded into the rouged face
before him. After several blows, Jerry stepped back and looked at his
bloodied fingers. His balance was lost for a second, and he staggered
with the clumsy footing of a child rolling from a merry-go-round.
He leaned forward at the waist, his hands finding his thighs to settle
himself. In the whispered breaths crossing his lips, he repeated a
quick Bible verse, a saving raft to cling to in the unsettling currents
of rage.
“You will not possess me, Satan,” he said as he stood tall again.
Tony watched this one-man drama in silence, gingerly touching
his aching lips. And once again, the two locked eyes across a valley of
misunderstanding, the distance ever widening as the minutes clicked
by with the low beating of the clock on the dresser.
Jerry’s anger reddened his face again, but this time the confusion
left his expression. He grabbed Tony’s arm once more and dragged
him from the room, through the house, and out the front door. He
opened the car’s back door and pushed Tony inside, the print dress
rising awkwardly over Tony’s bare thighs. Jerry locked the door and
slammed it shut, as he stepped around to the driver’s side. In one quick
motion he started the car, looped it backwards out of the driveway,
and sped along the street.
“What’re you doing?” Tony screamed.
Jerry remained silent. His body and mind synchronized in the
mission that steered his vehicle through stop signs, rushing through
changing street lights. His stern demeanor chilled the interior, so Tony
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folded his arms over his chest as he gazed out at the familiar streets.
Tony gauged the speed of the car, contemplating whether to jump out
and run away. He figured that Jerry had some plan to chain him to the
wall of his Wayward Order chapel, to force Tony to listen to several
deacons all reading the Old Testament at once.
In a moment, Tony saw the corner store where he daily stopped
to finger a magazine, to steal a pack of gum, to buy a soft drink. He
leaned forward and saw Mr. Ortiz, the store owner, shooing away two
teenagers near his doorway.
“What are you doing?” Tony asked in a loud voice, comprehending
even as he spoke.
The car raced past the store. The tires screeching to a stop at
the painted curbside in front of the high school. Several students,
vulturing bags of fast food, looked at Jerry’s intense movements as
he rounded the car and opened the rear door. Jerry reached in and
grabbed Tony who retreated to the other side of the car. Jerry’s vice
grip was locked and fixed as he pulled Tony onto the concrete.
“Stand up!” Jerry said angrily. “Do you have any money?”
“What?” Tony asked in confusion.
“Money. Do you have any money on you?”
“No..no!”
Jerry pulled Tony’s arm, Tony’s heels unsteady from the awkward
force. Jerry, mumbling like a mad prophet, dragged Tony along the
walkway to the front doors of the high school, through the gathering
gauntlet of students.
“Good, no money, so you walk all the way home!” Jerry said
through clenched teeth. “You want to be Satan’s child, then you’ll see
what decent people think of you,” he added, his voice racing towards
some finish line that only he saw. “You vile abomination to the Lord!
I’ll cast you down and let them judge you!”
Jerry opened the right side of the double front doors, and in one
last energetic grunt, he pushed Tony forward to the hallway floor. Tony
landed hard, skidded a few inches as the dress twisted awkwardly
around his thighs and waist. His naked lower body, exposed beneath
the fluorescent lights, already filled the vision of those students and
adults moving in front of the main office reception area. Tony moved
to cover himself, to curl his body into some semblance of a dignified
heap.
“May God forgive you!” Jerry said aloud, storming back out the
door.
Those who stood nearby attempted to interpret what was
happening. Various students, already wallowing in nervous laughter,
whispered comments loud enough to reverberate off the walls. The
adults looked from Tony to the teens standing around, hoping the
obvious prank would soon become apparent.
Tony’s sobbing spread across the floor, rose into a mushroom
cloud that enveloped the hallway. A solitary sobbing that flowed in
lava waves across his bloody lips and onto the printed dress, where
the designs were dark-stained from the running mascara that scarred
Tony’s face. Tony couldn’t move his muscles, his numb body anchored
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to the linoleum floor. He heard his own crying, rising, enveloped by
the laughter that pressed closer. (pp. 162-165)
From this episode with his stepfather, Tony runs away, leaving his home in Riverside and
eventually arriving in Hollywood. Once there, Tony begins to live a life that is tough, but
rewarding to him because he can be that part of himself he was forced to deny.
One of the friends he meets in Hollywood is Lena, an African American teen fleeing her
home in Bakersfield to find Hollywood and her dreams of becoming an actress. Here’s the
opening of that chapter that highlights her longings:
Hypnotized by the passing landscape, Lena believed that the life she
dreamed was possible. Perhaps, it was the way the speeding bus gave
contours to the barren lands on either side of the freeway. Perhaps,
it was the sheer exhilaration of movement. She looked straight down
the narrow aisle of the bus and saw the freeway stretching before the
large rectangular windshield. The driver’s uniformed shoulder was
visible, moving slightly to keep the large steering wheel centered.
She loved the freeway, the way it had such an unending aspect
about it, looming forward, always forward, towards the many things
unseen. Lena drifted along the freeway, skimming just above the
surface, not touching the hard pavement below. There was an ecstasy
in the lightness of her body, with no obligation or need to concede
to gravity and any other law. The freeway possessed its own infinite,
singular mystery. And as with all mysteries, she thought, there was
always beauty. Beauty in the mere presence of the unknown, the
indiscernible.
Yet, as Lena closed her eyes, she knew too well what she left
behind in Bakersfield. After deciding to leave, it had taken her six
months to save. Six more months to listen to the shouting, slamming
doors, and broken furniture. The endless visits to the emergency room.
With her. With him. Her parents lived a sideshow life of pain without
the main carnival attractions of affection and acceptance. Lena left the
sideshow, knowing that if she could just find the main thoroughfare,
if she could walk just once into the big tent, that maybe her life would
find a spotlight. So, as her parents slept off their drunken Friday night,
Lena sneaked quietly away and over to Demetra’s house, where she
slept until early the next morning, catching the first bus out for Los
Angeles. (pp. 32-33)
When Tony eventually settles and shapes a life that he feels is paradise, he begins to
hustle the streets as his alter ego—Amber. Here in this segment, Amber flows into the streets and
negotiates the distinct environment:
When Amber arrived at Santa Monica Boulevard, the sun had long
disappeared. The night people ruled the streets in growing numbers.
She walked an easy gait, enjoying the evening’s warmth, searching
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the cars, returning flirtatious stares, rejecting the judicious gazes,
her face taut with foundation, rouge, eyeliner, shadow, eyelashes, lip
stick, the blonde wig. Her tight dress glittered, the spiked heels were
glossy and stylish. For the past month, she made certain that she took
the street in a flawless look, framed within an attitude of accessible
beauty. The streets always simmered with a particular rhythm.
On some nights, the tempo raced aloud, the crescendos frequent
and exhausting. On other nights, like a concerto, there were slow,
orchestral stretches of time. She enjoyed the diversity of rhythms, the
nuances of nocturnal chords, as lives intersected and overlapped.
She knew that her nightly meanderings along the boulevard
served dual purposes. She took the spotlight and competed to display
her beauty when compared to the others. She took the spotlight for
business. For her, the display of beauty was her skill, her craft, her
art. For her, the business was fantasy, a trade of illusions where men
brought their desperation, their seeking, their hunger to touch their
inner desires. Along with those longings, the men brought their
bodies, those needful things composed of flesh. To touch, to stroke,
to suck, to spark—all to submerge into moments that confirmed their
existence. (p. 324)
As I said, Tony is a poet, and in much of his time, he translates his life into words upon
the page. In this poem, he weighs the life of a fellow street hustler, a woman named Helen whose
flesh seems inextricable from the hard life on the concrete:
Helen of Hollywood was seldom understood,
the freeway ran through her heart,
her body wandering with exhilaration,
along the asphalt she stretched nyloned legs,
her hips rolling fully as an invitation
across the sidewalk stars and cigarette butts,
the tight, sequined skirt held her passion,
the thighs in bloom, the hem unraveling
its torn threads in a funky fashion
in the darkness with the lights strangely slanted
she appeared worth the price she sought,
and nothing destroyed her beauty but the dawn,
unkind, it crept behind as an afterthought
when her face flaked to a chalky sadness
her mouth seeped with the bitter taste,
the powder-filled nose eased the morning madness,
if not the throbbing loneliness, the sense of waste
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a life kept in shadows made days of neglect
as she waited for darkness, her friend, to stir,
thinking little of the needs for tomorrow,
tomorrow never giving a damn about her. (pp.466-467)
Later in the novel, after losing a number of people and attending funerals, Tony writes a
poem about one friend who was extremely close to him:
Everyone takes a space in this design,
a small piece that’s shaped and cut by a divine
idea which sees the completed whole,
for every jagged edge, a smooth ripple exists,
for every elongated line, a few knotted twists
resulting in patterns that are brilliant and bold,
forever slipping, fitting, overlapping,
the shifting seeks its own way of adapting,
and if your name had been omitted from life’s list
there would be no place more lonely than this (p. 479)
These examples from my novel demonstrate the reasons for exploring my protagonist,
and shows why Writing Matters to me. But, still, the important question remains—why does
writing matter to you?
Celebrated author of novels and nonfiction, Joan Didion, responds to the question in her
essay , entitled “Why I Write”:
“…a writer, a person whose most absorbed and passionate hours are spent arranging
words on pieces of paper….Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind
there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking,
what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear…What is
going on in these pictures in my mind?”
And here are some final thoughts…
If we were perfect persons, we wouldn’t need writing, wouldn’t need this intercourse
between text and ideas and rhythmic letters.
If this were a perfect world, we wouldn’t need to analyze and contemplate the actions and
behaviors of a North Korean dictator, of a Syrian President, of a Congolese rebel, of American
politicians who turn deaf ears to the people they were voted to represent.
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Writing Matters because it provides all of us with a way to make sense of the
nonsensical…it gives us a way to harmonize all the discordant notes of human struggle and
suffering…it gives us a way to dialogue with today, even as we say “yes” to tomorrow.
Thank you.