When I reflect on the discussions we’ve held in this course, a few things come to mind. First, that I enjoy writing, talking about writing, and learning about other people’s approaches to writing. One of the main reasons that we write is to be understood; by ourselves, by our family, by society. Understanding how people view writing helps me understand how I view myself. Writing is an exploration of self, and exploration of others’ writing is one of the only ways to understand how we are all connected, but separate; separate, but equal. Different, but the same.
The other thing that comes to mind when I reflect on these discussions is that there are two very distinct Americas. One for black folks, and one for everyone else. Now, in an ideal world, I would love to talk about writing outside the context of race and racism, overt or implicit, intended or otherwise. When I talk about writing, my understanding of the history of race in this country bears heavy on my mind. It informs my decisions, my responses, my analyses. It is impossible to separate this racial understanding from my critical approach to writing. It is impossible to separate literature from race, because literature is a microcosm of reality, both within and without the human condition.
The problem with discussions of race in America is that one side of the debate is uninterested, unwilling, or unable to view the past with objectivity. One side of the aisle refuses to acknowledge factual history, while the other is unable to move past it because it lives in their genes. The concept of epigenetics tells us that our ancestors’ memories, their experiences and traumas, are carried in our DNA and even affects us on a visceral level. Now, when you have one side of a debate that carries the pain of the past in their bodies, carries it on their shoulders, in the tension on their brows, and then you have another side who has their heads in the sand, refuses to listen to anything you have to say, feigns ignorance and continues accusing you of digging up old graves, how can one possibly hold a debate worth engaging in?
It’s like screaming at a brick wall – the only thing you’ll accomplish is losing your voice. Ultimately, this serves to silence you as a person of color – more specifically, as a black person – in America. As a black American, the only real goal is to survive this country. An African American proverb says that “a closed mouth don’t get fed.” How does one toe the line between surviving, which is more often than not analogous with keeping your mouth shut, and opening it so that you can eat? How does one call out injustice without being forced to re-experience active traumas which they face on a daily basis? How does one reflect on any of this while still discussing literature with a capital L?
How does one, as a black person, rectify their desire to write with the fact that the Literary Canon is largely white? That black voices have never necessarily been valid? How does it feel to have your visibility, your existence, erased from every level of life, to be only left with writing to carve out a space for your presence, a space to breathe, and then to have that one space be snatched from your fingertips? Discussions are great. But when your survival depends on keeping your thoughts to yourself, one wonders where to draw the line between sharing and breathing. Some of us breathe, others live with asthma-panic-attacks. Some of us only have these words, and so we write. We write to breathe. We write to remain free.