Writing from a Place of Community

Congratulations to everyone out there doing NaNoWriMo! I hope it’s going well for you. Hang in there!

The holiday season is upon us yet again. Yes, I’ve been hearing Christmas songs and seeing yuletide decorations for sale at Wal-Mart for weeks. But I must admit to you that I’m pretty annoyed by early attempts to push me into the spirit.

However, magically, the day after Thanksgiving, I’m all in. I played some Vince Guiraldi on the way to the coffee shop this morning: "Christmas Time is Here (Instrumental)." I’m wearing a warm hat with a pom pom on the top while writing this. My transition from Grinch to Elf is flawless and complete.

The mission statement for this Substack is “on writing, craft, worry, and joy.” Most of my posts cover all these points at once. Today, I want to lean, just a bit, towards joy and how to claim it on your own behalf and for those you love.

Also, a huge congratulations to the one and only Imani Perry, winner of The National Book Award, for her nonfiction book: South to America. Her acceptance speech was incredible. I recommend you give it a listen.

I have a very big announcement coming soon. A gift to myself, and, perhaps, to you, Dear Reader. For now, thanks for reading this newsletter. I know you could read anyone’s work, so I appreciate you. Lastly, thanks to the premium subscribers. Your support makes this platform possible. I appreciate you too!

Now, without further ado...Writing from a Place of Community.

Who do you write for?

Let’s assume for a moment that you’re a writer and you want to help make the world be a better place.

Let’s assume for a moment that your primary goal isn’t about making money or proving something to yourself.

Let’s assume that you’ve been drawn to writing by voices or that wordless feeling beyond voices, smokelike vibrations that come from the place you call home and the people who lived before you were born.

In a capitalist society, we’re all driven to make a living, pay taxes to support structures that don’t support us.

In a patriarchal society, we sometimes find ourselves moving at the whims of folkways that perpetuate the domination of certain genders by another. Of women, queer, and nonbinary identities by masculine ones.

In a racist and xenophobic society, we watch all the ways policies and mainstream mores seek to disenfranchise The Other primarily for the economic benefit of the white, the “real” American, the most privileged.

With so many images and ideas being projected by the media and, frankly, by ourselves, we sometimes find ourselves providing a megaphone to ideas we don’t support or believe.

As the old saying goes, all skin folk and kin folk. And I’m willing to bet that every one of you have read a book or seen a movie by creators who appear to share your identity only to be disappointed when you realize the story was likely enthusiastically approved by some executive named Jacob or Jessica.

I’m not here to talk about Jacob or Jessica. I know a Jacob and quite a few Jessicas. I like them well enough. But I’m here to talk about you, me, and us.

Each of us comes from a particular, but not necessarily unique background. The communities that raised us, the people that fed and taught and hugged us made us who we are today. Maybe your parents drew their first breaths down south or out west or somewhere in Asia or Africa or the Caribbean. Maybe you did.

I know where I come from. My parents were born in the American south as were most of my ancestors going back at least a couple hundred years. They were Black. Some worked in fields. Many owned businesses. Some did both depending on the stage of their life.

But there’s also something that makes writers like us a bit different. Many thinkers before me have written about this. Alice Walker, James Baldwin, Richard Wright. To be a literary person, is to be by definition different, something of an outsider, queer in the ontological sense.

If you read 100 or more books by the time you turned 18, it may feel difficult or even false to say that you’re just like your aunt who, like my father’s sister Loretta, God rest the dead, who worked in a cafeteria most of her life, and, as far as I know, never read anything other than the Bible and the newspaper to get discounts on groceries.

But I’m her people. And she’s my people. The same way that your people are yours and you are theirs.

Let’s do a very quick thought experiment. Imagine that you’re in one of the places where your people gather. A church. A reception hall. A school gymnasium.

You walk up to a microphone and for the next five ten thirty minutes you read your work, a poem, short story, memoir chapter, or novel excerpt. You read it well, with rare control over your intonation and rhythm.

During your reading, you hear chuckles or “uh uh uhs” or “that’s right, girl” at the appropriate moments. Occasionally, you look up and see that your audience of community members are paying rapt attention. One of your elders in a row near the front is paying particular attention. Even if the personas in the work are younger, you can tell that they see their unseen selves in your words. They feel affirmed, perhaps for the first time their long life. You hope that someday writer does this for you.

When you stop reading, the audience applauds passionately for a full minute. Many people come up to talk to you after, including your nemesis from high school who made fun of you for being bookish and having weird hair. ***this did not happen to me, I assure you lol*** They excitedly tell you how much they appreciate your work. This is not the response you expected, but it is the response you needed.

There were some people from outside your community standing near the back. You don’t know what they were doing there, but by the time you stopped reading, they are gone.

Now, let’s imagine the same scenario: a large gathering of people from what you consider to be your home community. Throughout your reading, you hear no responses. Just people clearing their throats or notifications chiming on a phone someone didn’t bother to silence. After a long while, you look up and see an elder near the front row. They don’t seem happy to be there. They shake their head.

After you finish reading, someone tells you great job, but you can tell their just being polite. Soon, mostly everyone is gone. Except for two people in business suits named Jacob and Jessica. Sorry to bring them back, but there they are. They walk over and gush over how authentic and educational your work is. They ask you to fly up to New York for a meeting at a big publisher. Within weeks, you’ve signed a publishing contract and a development deal to have your work turned into a Lifetime TV movie. Suddenly, you’ve got more money in your account than ever before.

The first scenario is proof that you were working for your community.

The second scenario is proof you were working for them.

Occasionally, these two scenarios overlap. Your community is fed by your work and a mainstream audience embraces it. But you need to be intentional because your soul knows what it is doing to the world.

This question over authenticity is a challenge to each and every one of us in this industry. From what work gets purchased and distributed. To what covers are chosen for the books. To what work is most critically acclaimed. To whose work is most monetarily valued.

I am not making an argument that all work from a given community must fit a certain mold to be acceptable. However, I am here to say that there are obstacles that some of us face that are not an issue for the white, the male, the cis-gendered, the capital-A American. The writer must write with intention. She must consider the effect she wants to have on her community, and, by extension, the world.