Prolifically Raw: Association of Writers

Saturday, April 10, 2010

Association of Writers

Welcome to the followers of this blog, I've just spotted you on the dashboard but cannot quite figure out how to say a hello. So I do it here! Hello and welcome.

And I am posting from the road as I am in Denver, Colorado right now for the annual conference of writers. More than 8000 people are here and it's craziness but also wonderful. I have seen so many colleagues in writing and teaching. Hugs all around.

The most moving conversation came via on a panel about women writing memoir assembled by Kerry Cohen (pictured here). Here is the description from the conference guide: Truth or Trash? Women Writing Memoir. (Kerry Cohen, Sue Silverman, Rachel Resnick, Melissa Febos, Meri Nana-Ama Danquah) This panel of memoirists will explore why women's stories—those which fill an otherwise cultural silence—are more readily labeled confessional and even trashy by some in the media and even academia. Is there a connection between our outsider voices and the frequency with which our work is judged as a lesser art form? We will also address how best to handle negative reactions we receive when we reveal our intimate stories, and how to use this reaction to even grow as writers and mentors.

Each of these women were brave, smart, thoughtful and generous. In talking about story and who gets to tell story, the conversations were both very personal--women telling their lives of being devalued, abused, addicted, confused, lost, lonely and then how they were courageous enough to tell their stories in the form of memoirs. And upon this telling, via publication, found they were again devalued and abused by many in society (media, fellow writers, critics, bloggers) who were threatened by their truth. As Sue Williams Silverman said, as a way of explaining the emotional backlash to truth: "when I tell my truth, aren't I, by covert association, asking you to explore your truth?" While I am paraphrasing Sue here, she said this far more eloquently, I nodded in agreement.

Meri Nana-Ama Danquah, author of several wonderful books, spoke to how she had written a book about depression titled Willow Weep for Me and her publisher made the choice to place this subtitle: A Black Woman's Journey Through Depression. Meri asked the question-not about being a women speaking her truth-but who gets to tell the truth. How is her book labeled a "black woman's" experience, when a book written by the likes of an author like Susanna Kayson, Girl Interrupted is not subtitled A White Woman's Journey Through Depression?

This point brought tears to my eyes. I suffer my own anonymity but I am far freer to express my truth than Meri-by what? By the merit of my skin color. It's madness.

And then came Melissa Febos, who tells the story of being a sex worker at a time in her life, as a young woman, when she was addicted to heroine. Her book is titled Whip Smart. She, as you can imagine, has been horribly attacked for her writing and her truth. Still, Melissa stood tall at the podium and said she does not regret telling her story. She believes the good she has done far outstrips the beating she has taken from those who are threatened by her work. In the end, she told us she felt that the negative response is just fear. Fear makes us small and it's contagious, she said (paraphrasing again).

Also on the panel was Rachel Resnick, who I've only known via my Facebook and SheWrites connection and our mutual friend/author Hope Edelman. Among Rachel's work is Love Junkie, (which I purchased from her directly and read last night with such admiration and sorrow). Rachel, as she spoke, reminded us that we are dimensional creatures-not pure victims and that to write as we do means we must also look, continue to look and look again, at our shadows as we tell our story.

I left this panel with a deeper view into the work of the memoirist. How brave are the story tellers, the modern Joan of Arc's, who survive the atrocities leveled in our time and who must face, upon telling the truth, more abuse. Why would anyone speak under these conditions and yet, has any change been wrought by repressing story?

As writers, memoirists and women, we fillet ourselves for the world, knowing we will be both elevated and slaughtered in the process. We do this personal dissection because, in the end, our experience of living is all we have. As Meri, on the panel said, "I am not an expert on depression but I am expert on my experience of depression."

Our experience is what we have to give the world and via memoir-when well done-we are giving our very lives as classroom, comfort, inspiration and more. I cannot help but ask myself, "AM I NUTS," and yet, here I am at the page again--writing.

In the end, what better path to stumble, fall down, crawl and walk upon than that of the writer.