I
was introduced to the work of novelist and activist Edwidge Danticat when I was
about 15 years old. I'll never forget the first story in Krik? Krak!
It documents the correspondence between a young refugee on a boat who writes to
his girlfriend in Haiti, and her letters to him that document the atrocities of
the Duvalier regime. They write, even if there is no place to send the letters.
They write with the hope that one day there will be a place to send the letters
to and from. The story does not end with a note of hope and for that reason it
was the first thing I sought out after reading Baldwin's "Going to Meet
the Man." Paralyzed by all the emotion and horror wedged inside me, I
reached for "Children of the Sea" and cried myself to sleep.
Based
on my scenario, one role of the woman writer is to document that which is real
and dreadful in a way that releases the pent up emotion. And once that emotion is
released, we walk forward stronger, more mindful.
Over
15 years later, Danticat remains one of my most cherished inspirations. Her
fiction pulls you right into the lives of complex characters who live under the dictatorships of Trujillo and Duvalier, or in the United States, often degraded immigrants - not to simplify their worlds into a couple of words but to offer the
vast complexity of the Haitian situation. Danticat is more than a conscious
writer who provokes a sense of empathy in her reader and shines light on a
history of oppression, she is an advocate for her people.
As
the director of a youth literary arts project that promotes social engagement
and grassroots action for stronger communities, I often turn to Danticat for
reference. In her 2010 collection of essay-memoir, Create Dangerously: The
Immigrant Artist at Work, she reflects on historical and contemporary
issues that have shaped her and the world she lives in. She is a successful
writer, a household name, who will never forget where she comes from and all
the work that there is to do.
Danticat
says: “Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously. This is what I’ve
always thought it meant to be a writer. Writing, knowing in part that no matter
how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or
her life to read them.”
There
is bravery in women warriors, writers, storytellers, truth tellers.
A
couple of years ago I was wandering through the stacks of Housing Works
Bookstore. My Life as a Traitor by Zarah Ghahramani is the memoir
of a woman who shares my first name and was born the year before I was, who was
made to disappear in Iran as a 20-year-old college student. Taken to Evin
prison. It is an account of torture and the complexities of dictatorships and
the whim of those with power. A whim that spared her life, and she left and she
spoke out.
As
an educator, I feel the presence of the women who have come before me. I am
inspired by the necessity of sharing women's stories from the perspective of
women writers.
To
teach I call on Bessie Head, Botswana's South African woman of prose. I call
Arundhati Roy, if you don’t know, go know, that’s Arundhati Roy. I call Leslie
Marmon Silko of the Lacona nation. I call Isabel Allende, who taught me the
talents of the women's sex and horrors of men's politics before I was old
enough to know that the world is full of mass graves. I call on Toni Morrison.
I
recently listened to a speech by Michelle Alexander on 'Race and Caste in
America' she calls for an end to mass incarceration, reparations for the war on
drugs, and rehabilitation instead of punishment. She spoke of truth, of being
able to see the truth in a system that hasn't changed since Jim Crow: we just
use different words now. As an educator, I look to the bravery and wisdom of
women warrior writers to inform my worldview.
And
to inform my lifestyle. The Bengali writer and activist Mahasweta Devi (whose
stories are translated by the postcolonial scholar Gayatri Spivak) was not a
simple voyeur into the lives of tribals, she cast off her middle class
lifestyle and went to live in the mountains with the people most oppressed in
India and from that vantage point she shared their stories. I quote from the
description on the back of Imaginary Maps: "Whether she is
writing about ecological catastrophe, the connections between local elites and
international capitalism, gender and resistance, or tribal agony, . . . Devi
always links the specific fate of tribals in India to that of marginalized
peoples everywhere."
This
is a message shared with the resistance against police brutality in Ferguson,
MO. It is not an isolated issue. The murder of Mike Brown is connected to the
oppression of black men across the country and the history that made it
possible. His murder is connected to the capitalist system in the United
States, a country built on slavery, a country stolen in righteous annihilation
of the indigenous people living on the land, a country that continues a Big
Stick policy not just in Latin America and the Caribbean but across the globe.
And we see women resisting men's wars. A line of women in Oakland, on Friday,
November 28, chained themselves to the Bart Transportation and stopped the
trains for over an hour. On the ground in Ferguson young women comprise many
bodies on the front lines of the resistance.
There
is my inspiration.
But
it is equally important to remember the women that have touched my life
directly. The women that helped me figure out what Raw Fiction is all about.
Spring
2012: I was taking a course in postcolonial literature at Hunter College as a
non matriculated grad student, trying to figure out my life and planning Raw
Fiction as a one-off project. My professor, Sonali Perera, author of "No
Country: Working Class Writing in the Age of Globalization," impressed and
inspired me to no end with her meticulously developed coursework and
postcolonial passion. And then there is Tanisha Christie, director of "Walk
With Me" a documentary that highlights three women-artist-activists, who
heard about Raw Fiction and held on to me and put up with me and pointed me in
the right direction time and time again.
So
while there are so many great women writers and activists who I have mentioned
as inspiration and models, those that touch our lives directly are the ones we
can't live without.
And
Mahogany Browne, my classmate, a new friend and necessary inspiration. Thank
you for your work and your writing.
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