Cotton Xenomorph\u2019s \u201cCryptids and Climate Change\u201d issue continues, with \u201cGrief Shells\u201d by Meg Cass and \u201cAfter The Flood Recedes\u201d by Justin Carter<\/a> awakening out of cryo-sleep in our literary <\/em>Nostromo. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It quickly became obvious, as I was reading Black Women Writers At Work<\/a><\/em>, that I was going to write more about it than just that Friday Links\u2019 1-2 paragraphs. Being honest, that was a thought I had before even starting the book. Black women are in the running for humanity\u2019s most cogent thinkers, if there were group-based awards for that sort of thing. My most cogent thoughts either happen after I\u2019ve been reading, say, Eve L. Ewing\/Claudia Rankine\/Gwendolyn Brooks, or after I\u2019ve been talking to my wife. Of course this book of interviews is going to speak to me, especially since it stars people whose stories aren\u2019t \u201cI wrote on my lunch breaks until my novel was done and then talked to my golf buddy Ketterman who works over at Simon & Schuster and now I\u2019ve quit my job at Sterling Cooper to write a lucrative series about a copywriter who learns he\u2019s secretly a superspy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wasn\u2019t sure how<\/em> I was going to keep writing about it, though. I read a book or more a week for this blog, which is pretty breakneck pace for The Shipwrecked Sailor, Area Dad. Going back and re-engaging with a book beyond what sticks in the nook-&-cranniest parts of my brain matter doesn\u2019t sound as fun as, like, sneaking in a game of NBA 2K after tucking the kid in bed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Then the last interview in this book, with Sherley Anne Williams, made me think that\u2019s exactly what I should do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n (Note: Sherley Anne Williams does not capitalize \u201cBlack,\u201d this is a post-2020 stylistic change from what I can tell<\/a>, I will reprint as written).<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs I travel across the country, I\u2019m hearing more and more that the people who were directly involved in the black movement feel they\u2019ve been burnt out by the movement and its aftermath. I think the reason why so much attention is now being paid to black women writers is because as a group we are, in our individual ways, trying to say, \u2018No, you can\u2019t stop now. Something was there, and you have to keep going on even in the face of the unknown.\u2019\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n See, right there out of the gate. This is not going to become an election post, but maaaan I read that and immediately thought of 2020. In 2020, we had clear eyes: COVID is bad, Trump is bad, cops are liars and murderers and petulant babies who don\u2019t deserve to lick gum off the bottom of our winter boots (but should). There was a lot of other stuff, too, but we were super clear <\/em>about those three things and it seems like they\u2019ve gotten watered down or lost their urgency. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t recommend checking it out, but someone over on Bluesky started an account called Four Years Ago Today<\/a>. It\u2019s worth reflecting on what we knew in 2020. That was the closest I ever felt to socialism mainstreaming in the US. COVID so clearly reflected how much we need each other, how much we depend on each other. What we owe those of us deemed \u201cemergency\u201d or \u201cessential\u201d workers. How much bosses extract from us, in unseen ways, and how much they don\u2019t need to. How much death could have been prevented if we had a competent government\u2014not just on the federal level, but robust social services and systems of aid. We can\u2019t lose that knowledge just because Joe Biden got the democratic presidential nomination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But this is supposed to be about writing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201c\u2018If we don\u2019t deal with ourselves, it doesn\u2019t matter how we deal with the white man.\u2019 This issue over the years has constituted one of the main differences between black women writers\u2026and black male writers\u2026Black women writers don\u2019t deal with the so-called big subjects. Now, more so than at any time in our history, we see that the so-big subjects\u2026those themes are all well and good, but the question still remains: what are we going to do about the here and now, me and you?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This struck me for a number of reasons that I\u2019m not sure relate to this gendered false choice of Big Themes vs. Intimate Themes. It\u2019s something that keeps me going when I feel like there\u2019s too much going on in the world. When the omni-crisis weighs too heavily. Why write poems when climate change is happening? Why write poems when there\u2019s a genocide in Gaza? Why write poems when so many people remain locked in prisons?<\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n There is always going to be trouble. There are things in the world that want to harm us. Art is one of the things that keeps us alive. We\u2019re always going to need art. Big-themed or, uh, intimate-themed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI feel that a writer ought to transcend his or her background to some extent. Background ought not be the only source of creativity. On the other hand, I do know the reason I was first inspired to do a story was because I wanted specifically to write about lower-income black women.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s nothing to add to this, except that that is<\/em> the balance all writers (and readers) need to strike. Some books are window books, some books are mirror books. Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop came up with that concept<\/a>, and here\u2019s me talking about it in a <\/a>Cracked<\/a><\/em> article about parenting<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI fit writing in[to my life] any way I can\u2026write anytime and anywhere. I could write in a room full of people; I could write on a train. I don\u2019t know if that was out of necessity, but I think it says I was comfortable enough to write anywhere\u2026I could work with the TV on, with kids running around. I was happy to do this.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Personally, I wish I learned how to do this 15 years ago. I used to need perfect silence (or chosen music), a closed door, time to get into the right headspace to be ready to try to write\u2014then, if I was lucky, I\u2019d get a good 30-45 minutes in before the whiskey made the thoughts illegible. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Now? Shit, dude, I\u2019ve written poems on my phone while Dora The Explorer<\/em> is on. I wrote chapters of Vine<\/a><\/em> waiting for chicken to roast. I wrote a whole goddamned Cracked<\/em> article on my phone at a playground in August heat. Go read all of them and try to figure out which one<\/a>. Having a kid is good way to figure out how to carve out writing time\/space without your precious little comforts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMy topics select me. Then I just go ahead and try to work with them. I really try not to push things. If it\u2019s going to come, it\u2019ll come. I\u2019ve always had enough projects going, so that if one was not going well at one point, I could just go on to something else.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n With the caveat that you should finish things\u2014I linked to a piece recently about the importance of finishing things and I stand by it\u2014this is great advice. Be humble in the face of your work, and let the work flow through you. The ancients were onto something with the Muse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think writing is really a process of communication\u2026It\u2019s the process of reading to people and getting their feedback that\u2019s important to me\u2026It reinforces the fact that I\u2019m in touch with somebody other than my own mind.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Writing is lonely, and as Mariame Kaba says, everything worth doing is worth doing with other people. We have a responsibility to one another, and our writing has to have a way of living in the world, too. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor me writing is a process of ordering the world. It is a process of bringing insight, playing around with possibilities, solutions, in a way I could never play around with actual life. Just think of the differences between the \u2018order\u2019 of a poem and a novel and the chaos of life. That can give you some insight in knowing that if the chaos cannot be ordered, at least it can be dealt with in a constructive way. It\u2019s this I\u2019m after.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Bob and I talk a lot on The Line Break<\/em> about feeling like writing is the one place we feel we can properly order our thoughts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNo matter how close to autobiography any one piece happens to be, if all I can see is that this happened to the writer, then the writer has failed. The autobiographical thread must represent something else.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019ve always felt this way. I really can\u2019t stand when I feel like a protagonist is a writer\u2019s stand-in. This is different from \u201cthe speaker of the poem is not the author\u201d\u2014of course not,<\/em> we all know the speaker of the poem is not the author, otherwise we wouldn\u2019t all repeat it so often and with such urgency, as though we were willing a lie to truth.<\/em> If I\u2019m watching a movie and vaguely-40s-ish-white-man-hero is making dad jokes<\/a>, or \u201cI should go to therapy\u201d jokes<\/a>, or whatever? I feel like I can smell the screenwriter on the screen. But if I read a book\/watch a movie and think \u201cI can tell the author has familiarity with this subject\/situation, but this character is their own person\u201d\u2014that\u2019s the sweet spot. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of the things I would like to see is <\/strong>real<\/strong><\/em> American literature taught in this country. I would like to see \u2018American lit\u2019 defined and taught in such a way that you\u2019re teaching the literature of all the people in America, not teaching it from one point of view as in the past, which excluded everybody else except white men and a few white women from consideration.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n She was saying this in the 1980s<\/em>. There is no mythic past \u201cwhen we weren\u2019t worried about all this race and gender stuff.\u201d The US has never<\/em> been a white nation, they just put it in the Constitution that only white, property-owning men counted. That\u2019s sort of like that verse about blended fabrics in Leviticus, or the one about homosexuality being a sin\u2014it was a lie they tried to will into existence by writing it down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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