Writing as Resistance, Writing as Love   |  Joanna Kadi

Audience members at the reading don't sense my terror, because I'm an expert at hiding feelings and functioning in the face of unmitigated disaster. If I wasn't so afraid, I'd be amused at the gap between their perceptions and my reality. Someone asks a question about my fiction. I say: "Characters show up in my head and start talking and I try to write it down. These characters are often gregarious and talk loudly. So far I like all the characters who have arrived on the scene, except for some minor ones."

The audience perceives some radical leap of creative artistic energy on my part and is impressed. I consider a street person approaching any of these people and daring to speak about people in her head. The audience member would walk away as quickly as possible, after labeling the street person crazy. No audience member knows I've been labeled crazy and locked up in a psych ward. Would it change their opinion of my creative artistic energy if they did? But I can't know the answer, because fear locks up my lips.

I don't want to minimize my terror, but neither do I want to dwell on that alone, ignoring my fulfillment and privilege. Writing excites me. Fiction comes from characters who appear out of nowhere and talk to me. I wake up with the first two lines of a poem on my lips. I can't get ideas down fast enough when writing analytical essays. My fingers itch, and I place them on the computer keyboard as often as I can. This cultural work satisfies me; no adult I knew as a child got this from daily work.

And I can't forget I have a kitchen with food in it, writing utensils, clothes. These are privileges. They should be rights for everyone on the planet, but right now they're privileges and I must think about how I use them. Another of my privileges -- which should also be a right -- is literacy, the ability to read and write and express myself. I grew up around people who could not do this, and I understand the internal frustration and social scorn illiteracy evokes. Sharing class location with an illiterate person doesn't mean our experiences mirror each other's. In this case, I experience a privilege she is denied.

So, how do I handle my privileges? Do I espouse the oppressive lie about "pulling myself up by my bootstraps," and insist that if I can get my words published, anyone can? Or do I understand my literacy and writing skill as one tool for resistance and liberation? Why do I write? For who, for what? Who benefits?

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