🧵 Thursday Thread: Do Stories Even Matter?
Does the mere act of creating stories imply hope, even in the darkest narratives?
Sorry I am so late with our thread today. I was at the doctor and she was running more than an hour behind. Then I had to do extra labs and go down to the pharmacy. Because, bodies.
But, I love my doctor and am lucky to have her and lucky to have a reasonably healthy body and lucky to be alive making art and teaching art in this brutally beautiful world that’s breaking my heart right now.
Or maybe it’s not the world that’s doing that.
Maybe the world is—as Andrea Gibson said today in their beautiful Post-Electoin Letter to A Friend—the only antidote to the heart breaking and breaking and breaking by humans.
Andrea said:
Every natural thing in this world is invested in the peace of this world. All that is good and gracious whispers, “We are with you.”
I know this is true about the natural world. My body knows this is true. Andrea also said:
I keep asking myself, “What is my job in this moment? What do I specifically have to offer?” It’s empowering to ask those questions because no one’s job will be the same. There were many years of my life that I did not feel I was actively participating in change unless I was in the streets protesting. As my health worsened, I knew that wasn’t where I would be of most service. Creatively explore where you might be most useful. Throw a What’s My Job party and explore the question with your community. Friends may reflect a specific talent or gift they see in you that you haven’t yet recognized.
And this got me thinking about a time in my life years ago—more than a decade now—when I realized I wasn’t volunteering enough. Actually, I wasn’t volunteering at all. I was just coming out of those intense family years where Jon and I had six kids living at home, and suddenly it was down to just one or two high-schoolers. I knew I needed to be doing something, and it dawned on me that the one thing I could do, my one most important job, was to teach writing wherever it was needed—so I signed on as a volunteer mentor for the Minnesota Prison Writing Project and through the Writer-to-Writer program at AWP, which prioritizes underserved writers.
I’ve thrown almost all my eggs in this one basket, the basket of '“doing language,” the basket of saving ourselves through language, the basket of stories, which have always been the means by which humanity has made sense of ourselves, each other, and the world.
So, considering how I’ve made “doing language” my main job in life, the single gift I bring to every metaphorical table at which I sit, I’d love to talk about it, the role of writing, if any, in healing what’s broken in our world right now.
Any and all thoughts welcome, and questions welcome, too! But here are some questions to get us going:
Do you think the act of writing is inherently an optimistic endeavor? Does the mere act of creating stories imply hope, even in the darkest narratives?
How do you reconcile the idea of “art for art’s sake” with the need to address real-world issues through writing? Can those two impulses coexist, or are they fundamentally at odds?"
Do you believe that stories have an inherent moral obligation? Should writers aim to challenge societal norms, or is it enough to entertain?
Do our personal stories—memoir and personal essay—matter in a world that’s on fire? How?
Love,
Jeannine
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