I know we’re still in the midst of a pandemic, but I am pulling my mask down, letting everyone see my fine lines. I am here to confess. My heart is beating fast, my breath shallow because what I am going to say breaks the two cardinal rules of my house growing up. Don’t let people know your business. Don’t let people know your struggle. I take a deep breath. I doom scroll, to hide. I know it’s pointless; I breathe to pivot and share.
The pandemic has hit all of us hard. It has peeled back several layers of national delusion reminding us that the only exceptional aspects of America are our crumbling infrastructure, racism and the corporate profit over people ethos.
My story is like others and admitting it fills me with a bit of shame. I am one of the 2.2 million women that fell out of the workforce this past year. Writing this makes it feel more real, and from firsthand experience, I have to say it feels gross. In 2020, I made less money than I did when I was in my mid-teens. The least amount I have ever made as an adult.
I have/had a wellness practice for over a decade. When the pandemic hit, I canceled my corporate yoga teaching gigs for safety. When the CDC announced in-person sessions were no longer safe, I canceled those too. After a few weeks, and the realization that the pandemic wasn’t going anywhere, I attempted to move my private yoga and hypnotherapy clients online. Only a few were willing, the rest wanted to wait the pandemic out. I had to cancel a meditation teacher training and issue refunds. My income slowly dwindled to near nothing.
Relief filled me when the state of California stated that there would be Pandemic Unemployment Assistance for sole proprietors. The EDD granted me PUA. However, when I received my paperwork, something was amiss; it said that I made zero dollars in 2019, and I would start receiving my payment of zero dollars by a specified date. I spent several months attempting to get through to fix it and called over twelve hundred times just to be subjected to a constant loop of messages moving me from one area to another. I never broke through not even to leave a message and gave up.
Luckily, my overhead and costs of operating a business dissolved too. Unlike many of my friends with small businesses, I wasn’t stuck in a lease or needing to figure out if I could keep employees on. My practice was mobile. I don’t have children and my mortgage payment is low. Even though it has been a struggle, my husband still had a career, and we could tighten our budget and breathe to pivot. I know even though I’ve experienced hardship, I also have privilege.
Even with fewer responsibilities, I was caught in the maelstrom. The world was out of control, people were dying, businesses shuttered, and work dried up. I applied for essential worker jobs, but my lack of experience in that sector and educational overqualification blocked me from positions. I sat and thought about what I could do. I couldn’t fight the tide so I yield and write. I breathe and pivot.
I had dreamt of writing a novel or creating a collection of short stories, but that was a fantasy filled with false starts and stops. As Paulo Coelho wrote in The Alchemist, “People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel they don’t deserve them, or they’ll be unable to achieve them.” For me it was the latter. I wanted to, but I didn’t think I could write that much. Being able to create a substantive body of work seemed outside my reach and capacity. This past year, I leaned into the writing community.
The pandemic taught me humility and how to ask for help. It also taught me I can be a prolific writer. Currently, my historical novel is four chapters away from completion; I have over 100 short stories, fifty poems, and ten personal essays all created within the past twelve months. I also received a contract to write ESL readers in November, of which I have had twenty published. I applied to an MFA program, because if not now, when? It surprises me that my fingers are attached to my hands at this point.
Though I have generated a large body of work this past year, it was primarily possible because of the literary citizenship of others and opportunities that arose out of crisis. Women Who Submit, my writing buddies, my accountability partners, and my critique circle have all been instrumental in this time. I have applied for scholarships for writing programs, grants and fellowships. I won an award, was paid to write, and received funding. The writing community, especially the members of WWS, have been an invaluable resource with feedback, advice, and moral support.
In the words of Maya Angelou, “My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.” With gratitude, hope, and determination, I have been able to breathe, to pivot fully into my writing practice.
Thea Pueschel is a writer, multi-media artist, and the winner of the TAEM 2020 Flash Fiction Summer Contest. Thea enjoys exploring the dark with light and the light with dark and a firm believer that without the shadow art and literature has less soul.
The weekend after the inauguration, I woke up to flat Los Angeles light. I heaved a deep sigh into the fog that had settled in, and then urged myself from bed. Month nine of the pandemic meant getting up in the morning required a different sort of motivation. Still, I placed soles on cold floor, brewed some coffee, and settled in to write before the rest of the household was up. There was a new president now and a woman of color as vice president. No threatening tweets had been launched overnight. Still, a different sort of urgency settled in around me, like the gray that clung heavily to the world outside.
flat LA Light: watercolor on paper by Noriko Nakada
In February of 2018, we launched Breathe and Push. In that first column, I described listening to Valarie Kaur’s “Breathe and Push” speech as my family drove through the night from Oregon to Los Angeles. In the midst of so much political trauma, I wept as I stared up at a starless sky.
In that speech, Kaur suggested: “What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb? What if our America is not dead, but a country that is waiting to be born? What if the story of America is one long labor?”
Over the past three years, Women Who Submit has played midwife to the labor of so many women and nonbinary writers. With the support of this community, we have written and published and shared our words. Many of you joined me when I asked you to breathe and push toward a better America.
But after these long, hard years of labor, how do we breathe and push differently in 2021? After taking to the streets, and writing letters, editorials, to push against gun violence, family separation, child abuse, racial violence, and a hostile publishing world, we have continued to feed our creative work. Now, after hunkering down for almost a year to keep our communities safe, the losses from COVID 19 continue to mount, revealing and exacerbating so many of the inequities we’ve pushed against. The world has changed, but much remains the same.
I stared out into the gray light that morning in a country under new leadership, but still in the midst of a global pandemic, and as the fog burned off, I was tempted to step outside, to walk with relief through a world restored to what it was before. But I didn’t urge myself from sleep and will myself to the page just for things to be the same. There is still so much to do, both in the world and with my creative projects.
Let our words set us on a path toward something different because our stories can heal us and heal those around us. From the isolation of what has been nearly a year of quarantining, let’s write the story of our America. Write it and then demand that it to be told.
Noriko Nakada writes, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. She is the author of the Through Eyes Like Mine memoir series. Excerpts, essays, and poetry have been published in Kartika, Catapult, Meridian, and Hippocampus. She spends her hours at home with her two kids answering approximately three thousand questions per day.
“Somebody got to step up and testify for blessed lives just so you remember the possible is real . . .”
The public rage against 2020 is so strong, so virulent, that I almost feel like I’m committing a sacrilege to say that in 2020 I had a good year.
As COVID became hourly breaking news, I recognized that I was safe in so many ways. I was not home schooling, not a family caregiver, not a front-line essential worker. I already work mostly from home and could keep running my business. Financially I was spared the blood pressure raising hours that millions experienced while trying to get unemployment benefits.
“All Here” S. Pearl Sharp 2020
“Surreal” is the word I’ve heard most to describe 2020. What the pandemic asked of me was to become useful within my means to do so. That included the pleasure of shopping for a 98-year-old friend and finding books she might find interesting. Once she learned how to use Zoom, we were on a social roll. Sharing that $1200 stimulus check with those who were not going to get any check introduced me to activists organizations I had not been aware of, like a group founded by Latino bartenders here in Los Angeles who support the mostly undocumented back-of-kitchen help, and two groups with showers-on-wheels who roll into different sites each day providing full shower services to houseless individuals. In the presence of such a staggering loss of lives and multiplying crisis I thought it was important, among friends, to skip the complaint and to keep sharing a “We are still standing” message.
2020 gave us a new Book of Revelations: white Americans on TV shows looking quite amazed as they declared that the pandemic had revealed to them — as if the news was new — the full scope of disparities in health and housing, life and death, between the really rich and the every day poor. Then look at all the corporations, media and business heads who suddenly realized how mono-colored their boards and executive offices are with few or no Blacks, Latinos and Native Americans. Now if all these entities who publicly promised to fix their part of the problem actually keep that promise then that alone might make 2020 significant.
Early in the year, I was part of the hospice team of a friend and co-creator who was making her transition after a long struggle with lung cancer. Yes, watching her die was heart wrenching, yet it also brought some new artistic friends into my life. For the rest of the year each phone call, each e-mail announcing the loss of another friend or hero took my breath away. In between these moments I was inspired by those who dared to say “There’s another way to do this.” For example, as thousands were denied access to their loved ones, even while watching them die, at a hospital in Illinois someone made sense out of the abnormal. They put the son of a dying patient in full protective gear. The son was then able to hold his father’s hand until he passed. Compassion often requires courage.
I’m a creative, by choice and profession, so I’m thankful that 2020 brought out people’s most magical and useful creative efforts all around the world, with technology allowing us to witness it. From the cellist who fingered the notes using a roll of toilet paper and played perfectly, to the father who built a full graduation stage in his front yard for his daughter to walk across, to the year-end release of Boston Dynamic’s smooth dancing robots, this embrace of creating alternate possibilities in a time of lock down has its own healing affect.
So, thank-you 2020! Because of you “normal” has gained full permission to become something new and, if we focus on it, the possibility of becoming something better.
poem excerpt: “A Blessed Life” available on S. Pearl’s poetry w/jazz CD Higher Ground c.2020 S. Pearl Sharp/ Poets Pay Rent, Too
S. Pearl Sharp is a writer, filmmaker, actor, creativity coach, broadcast producer & host, and artivist. Learn about her work at http://spearlsharp.com/ and her YouTube channel asharpshow.
Sitting here at home with a dying tree as the focal point of our holiday seems an appropriate way to end 2020. In these waning days and long winter nights of December, the year is dying. Los Angeles struggles for breath, symptomatic of a city where too many have refused to make decisions for the common good. Still, even this year holds beauty and light.
As I look back at my notes from the year, I’m filled with so much gratitude for Women Who Submit, for the spaces that emerged in this community across the days and nights of this pandemic.
We launched our first anthology, Accolades, and many of us made our way to AWP just before everything shut down. We held space for weekly check-ins on Saturdays where we danced and wept, shared and listened. We acknowledged accomplishments, set goals, and learned to ask for help.
We closed our eyes in grounding exercises and reflected on the houses of our work with Allison Hedge Coke.
We wrote alone together.
We participated in an all-day conference and a top-tier submission blitz. We supported and buoyed one another. We greeted one another, “Ahoy, girls!” and we published books, chapbooks, essays, stories, poems, and articles. We shared and listened in regular open mic readings. We submitted work in acts of hope and resistance, and we created a network for book reviews.
During a time when it was often difficult to gauge the right things to do, but also a time when the right things to do were obvious, Women Who Submit refused to cancel. We held one another accountable and shared resources. We read and celebrated and lifted up one another’s work because that is the kind of community we have created.
We held space and understood how both presence and absence were forms of grace.
Thank you all for making this community a place where we breathe and push and remind one another to keep going. Where a comment, a mention in the chat, a book recommendation, a call for a submission can become a thread that connects and sustains us through a web stretches across days and miles.
In a few days, I’ll take down this tree. It will be recycled into mulch and returned back to earth and soil. Women Who Submit will check in both before and after the calendar year shifts from 2020 to 2021. Women and non-binary writers across time zones will find ourselves at the hand-written page, or in the glow of our screens. We will write the first words of the new year, and then we will write the next words until we fill a page and then another. We will show up in our new spaces when we can, and they will provide what we need until we find safe ways to lift one another up in person again. Together, we will bury this year and use it to make something new.
Noriko Nakada writes, parents, and teaches eighth grade English at Emerson Middle School in Los Angeles. She is the author of the Through Eyes Like Mine memoir series. Excerpts, essays, and poetry have been published in Kartika, Catapult, Meridian, Compose, and Hippocampus. She is spending her time in quarantine perfecting sourdough, biscuits, and pie crust. She has two kids and answers approximately three thousand questions a day.
Three months have passed since I’ve written here, and this week the weather in LA turned cool. Back in March, I wore jeans and hoodies to teach my classes from the kitchen table, and this week I pulled on sweaters and socks and continued teaching from the kitchen table.
Fall sky in Los Angeles.
We are living through a pandemic. An election looms. The humidity has dropped tempting spark and smoke.
Despair rests around the edges. In the dregs of my coffee. In the nightmares that wake me. In the cough I hope is just a tickle in my throat and nothing more sinister.
I revisited an essay tonight as I watched the World Series with one eye, too afraid to hope for a Dodger victory. In the final essay of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, “On Become an American Writer,” Alexander Chee discusses many ideas, but one is how we must continue to create when writing feels pointless. He considers what to say to his writing students when overwhelmed with despair; when they wonder, “What’s the point?”
Over the past few months, I’ve often asked myself this same question. As I stare into digital rectangles, some fluid with life, others dark and revealing just names, I’m not sure what to say to my students as we hurl across our syllabus toward a month of novel-writing. I’m not sure what to say to myself, or to other writers when we meet to discuss our work. And still, I believe in telling stories, and I believe in the stories within each of us.
Chee says, “I turned my back on the idea that teaching writing means only teaching how to make sentences or stories. I needed to teach writing students to hold on—to themselves, to what matters to them, to the present, the past, the future. And to the country.”
As the women and non-binary writers of Women Who Submit stare down this unfathomable stretch of time, I invite us to believe Chee when he reminds us that writing matters. “[I]t’s the same reason that when fascists come to power, writers are among the first to go to jail. And that is the point of writing.”
Are you writing? Is it a poem, a phrase, a string of words waking you up at night? Are you staying up late or setting the alarm early? Do you log into a Zoom or steal a few moments while the kids watch tv? What are you writing?
Keep breathing into your work. Keep pushing your best work into the world. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Noriko Nakada writes, parents, and teaches eighth grade English at Emerson Middle School in Los Angeles. She is the author of the Through Eyes Like Mine memoir series. Excerpts, essays, and poetry have been published in Kartika, Catapult, Meridian, Compose, and Hippocampus. She is spending her time in quarantine perfecting sourdough, biscuits, and pie crust. She has two kids and answers approximately three thousand questions a day.
Time works in such interesting ways, especially right now.
In early March, when I could see the shut down coming, I imagined staying at home for weeks at a time. Trusting our fridge and pantry would hold, I hoarded books. I’d have time to read! I’d read all the books! I bought more so I wouldn’t run out. So far this quarantine has lasted twelve books.
On March 8, 2020, I ran the LA marathon’s 26.2 miles in under five hours. I thought I’d keep running during the safer at home order. What a great way to recover and stay in shape. So far, I’ve run 75 total miles in quarantine.
Time is funny during a pandemic. When school was in session for my students, my children, and for me, I woke up early, got in hours and hours of teaching, and planning, and grading. We were so busy, but it felt like wheels spinning in a cage. School has been out for six weeks. The wheels are still spinning.
Water and time flow along the Deschutes River in Central Oregon.
There is time to write this summer. Time to submit work, revise, query, edit. Two hours each morning: Women Who Submit Writing Alone Together for 120 minutes. Sometimes those minutes are enough. Sometimes the minutes stretch into 180 or 240. Suddenly, there aren’t enough minutes to do it all.
If you record a reading and it’s less than a minute, it might be too short. If you record a reading of an essay and it’s longer than a minute, it might be too long. Everyone wants recorded readings. Time them carefully.
The pendulum of time swings back and forth. One day, I do absolutely nothing. The day stretches. The kids turn rotten and the avocados become overripe. I fill the day with nothing and nothing and more nothing. I read the news and fill with anxiety. I do nothing. The next day I’m up early: exercise, make breakfast, start bread, drink coffee, write, revise, help kids with their work, edit, read, fold dough, make lunch, check the news, make donations, answers emails, play with kids, bake cupcakes with the kids, pull weeds, write a letter, make dinner, bake bread, go for a walk, wipe down the counters again, write, check the news, read, sleep. And then the pendulum swings back and again and again and again and again.
In Ruth Ozeki’s novel A Tale for the Time Being, she writes of the now: “But in the time it takes to say now, now is already over. It’s already then.” How quickly the now becomes then. As we swim in this river of days, they flow past us and disappear. We float on these moments, however we measure them: in minutes or hours, in pages or poems. The days rush into weeks and weeks into months. July is almost over and August will arrive. 2020 is already half over. It’s taken about three minutes to read this. Thanks for sharing your time.
Now, what do we do next?
Noriko Nakada writes, parents, and teaches eighth grade English at Emerson Middle School in Los Angeles. She is the author of the Through Eyes Like Mine memoir series. Excerpts, essays, and poetry have been published in Kartika, Catapult, Meridian, Compose, and Hippocampus. She is spending her time in quarantine perfecting sourdough, biscuits, and pie crust. She has two kids so she answers approximately three thousand questions a day.
I have thought long and hard about my decision to address the newest example of police brutality against Black men and women in America that has resulted in the worldwide protests. Sometimes the only way that I can deal with the rage that these images evoke in me is to become numb as a defense mechanism. Far too many times these occurrences flood our timelines for a few weeks, and then are gone until the next incident. I worry about myself, but more than that, I am constantly worried about my family and you, my students. I pray that the world can see the joy and light that I see in your faces daily. I see you for the individual qualities that you bring to the classroom. I see your excitement but also your pain and struggle. Quiet, loud, extroverted, introverted, disengaged, actively participating, Black, White, Asian, Latinx, Pacific Islander, Native American, Multiracial, Gay, Straight, Bi or Curious, I see you and advocate for you. I want nothing more than to protect you as you figure out who you are as you pass through the awkward years of middle school. You have enough to deal with becoming yourself without having to deal with images of abuse due to immigration status, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, oh and on top of all of that, a worldwide pandemic that has isolated you from friends and loved ones for months.
The last time Los Angeles was awakened by a civil unrest was in 1992. I was a couple of years older than you are now. I remember how that impacted me and the many emotions that I didn’t know how to express. I experienced all three stress responses: fight, flight and freeze. I felt powerful from the rage but also completely helpless against a system that continuously exhibited disdain for me and my people. The far too often attacks on character either through explicit statements or with microaggression based on implicit biases adds to the stress of trying to exist in peace.
Through the years with each new murder at the hands of police or “stand your ground laws,” I could feel the pressure building to another eruption that inevitably happened two weeks ago. I would like to be optimistic that this time it will be different. So far, the evidence is suggesting that this time may be different. Maybe since people were confined at home and couldn’t turn away, they finally see and understand what Black people have tried to explain about mistreatment and the systemic racism found in the police, healthcare, and school systems of our country.
I hope and pray that when you are my age, you will not have to tell future generations experiencing yet another civil unrest the story of “When I was your age…” My parents told me of Marquette Frye in 1967, my story in 1992 was LaTasha Harlins & Rodney King, and in 2020 it is George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arberry and too many others to name. I believe that your generation can break this cycle. You are open to an entire world through social media to share experiences and understand each other. Learn and become who you are so that you can celebrate and respect the similarities and differences of others. You have shown that you can adapt and survive anything. To quote one of my favorite cartoons, “I believe that you have the power to change the world” (Avatar the Last Airbender).
Congratulations on all of your accomplishments. I am so proud of each and every one of you. It has been my pleasure to be your science teacher.
Sincerely,
Ms. R. Montgomery
I majored in Biology and graduated from California State University Dominguez Hills. My first teaching position was at Crenshaw High School in South Los Angeles. I left the field of teaching to work in a pathology lab at Harbor UCLA Medical Center. I spent three years studying the effects of alcohol induced hypoxia due to binge drinking on the liver of rats and mice. I left the field of research and returned to teaching to answer a calling. After my experience at Crenshaw, I wanted to reach students earlier in their academic careers. I received my preliminary teaching credential in biological sciences from UCLA Center X with a Social Justice emphasis. I taught at Bret Harte Middle School in South Los Angeles for 12 years. I am currently teaching at Emerson Community Charter Middle School in the Westwood area of Los Angeles. I believe that everyone can learn if given a fair opportunity. I try to instill a love for learning and a need for students to stay socially aware.
Our spaces have changed due to the current situation, as have our concepts of rooms, events, and conversations. But as we step into Zoom sessions, chat rooms, or House Parties, and as we prepare to go out into the world again, here are some good things for us to remember as white people moving in spaces that aren’t all white.
I get where it comes from. I grew up the youngest in a white family with two older brothers, so there was always competition for attention at the dinner table. I learned that if I could be clever enough and say the thing loud enough and get my opinion out, I would win. Not win, but be seen.
This need to talk continued as I grew up white in American classrooms. Teachers reward the answerers, those who raise their hands and say the thing all the way. By the time you get through high school, you know the grades are there for “class participation,” showing interest, registering your opinion. And through college. And into the job world; if you’re at a table, you’d best be heard if you want to be seen as a member of the team. By the time we’re adults, it’s ingrained in us. “Be assertive.” “Register your opinion” “What do you think? Say it while you have the chance.”
We’re so good at saying the thing. Being heard. Letting the powers that be know we are the smart one. We are all over social media registering our opinions daily. When something big happens in the news, there’s this urgency inside to be heard from. I’ve felt it, that same squirm in my belly that came when a topic would come up at the dinner table. Or in a meeting.
But what we missed was that in our various classrooms, colleges, and jobs, this is not what people of color have experienced or what they’ve been taught. They were silenced, ignored, brushed off daily and, over time, taught that there was no reward for speaking up; it would get you corrected, silenced, ‘splained to, or a combination of the three. If you are a white woman reading this, you’ve experienced some level of this brushoff from men. We all have. Imagine it being the relentless message in every space you occupy. Understand we’re experiencing a different operational reality from our friends of color. I’m working on paying attention to this.
Allyship series by Atlanta artist Danielle Coke @ohhappydani on twitter and instagram.
It happened again. I’m certain if you’re reading this, you’ve been in a space where this happens. The white guy got a hold of a mic.
The overall thrust is that the publishing machine of the US is not only white dominated, but only promotes white writers, even when they’re telling stories of people of color. Flatiron Press’s kajillion dollar promotion of the problematic American Dirt pushed the conversation to a head.
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, a poet and activist, the founder of Women Who Submit, put together in very short time a crackerjack panel to talk about these issues, including Christopher Soto, Myriam Gurba, Romeo Guzman, Roxane Gay, and Wendy C Ortiz. All of these people have expertise in the publishing industry.
When Xochitl opened the mic up to questions after the panel, she gave a very clear reminder to the room that this space was being held for writers of color, children of immigrants, latinx writers.
And that white guy got up. He’s an agent and proceeded to ‘splain the publishing industry and statistics to this panel of experts.
Here’s where you can chuckle and say to yourself, “I’m not that guy,” and pat yourself on the back. But my question here is, instead of letting a roomful of people politely wait for this man to say his piece that adds nothing to the conversation, to let the guy bogart the mic from a roomful of people for whom that microphone was intended, what can white people do?
I was going to holler, “not your microphone, sir” but I sat there thinking: this isn’t my event, I came here to be quiet, listen, and amplify. But how many times have the BIPOC in the room had to carry a white guy like this?
I made up my mind to talk to the guy after the event ended. But when I got up, this agent was handing out his card to writers of color. Maybe this was a gatekeeper who saw the problem and could get writers’ books out there. I realize now I should have waited until he was not handing out a card and still had those words. Not that this guy, who had been clearly told who that microphone was for was necessarily going to learn, but I will work to do better next time.
Handling these guys takes a lot of energy, but it’s work BIPOC are tired of doing. We need to step in where we can, stop that guy from instinctively bulldozing and not listening. I ‘m working on this.
And, I’m hoping, as you’re reading this, you understand that the tickle in your belly, the squirming in your seat, your inner need to absolutely say the thing is best subdued in these spaces. When you walk into a reading or a conversation where people of color are well represented, which people of color have created, I’d urge you to appeal to the other things I hope you were taught growing up white: how to be a good guest, how to not speak until spoken to, how to be respectful of the experts onstage.
Allyship series by Atlanta artist Danielle Coke @ohhappydani on twitter and instagram.
We are products of the systems we grew up in and if you’re part of the dominant culture in this country, even if you are waking, even if you read all the things out there and feel pretty “woke” (please don’t call yourself that, you aren’t) there’s still a lot of work to do.
Stick around only white people? Put yourself only in comfortable situations? No. This does nothing but put you out of touch with the world, the country, the city you’re living in. It also makes you an active participant in a system your forebears created, and that system is not equal.
It is your responsibility as a member of the dominant society in this country to be aware of the system you’re in, fight for justice where you can, and listen to non-white people tell us how it is for them. Because only they know.
And where you can, where you have influence, create spaces for people of color. Even if it’s only at work or in your extended family. Even if it’s only online.
And just don’t be the asshole where that space has been created.
I’m still learning, but here are some tips on how to be a better ally, for that is what you’re working on.
Pay attention to the space you’re in. Any space at all where there is a person of color, recognize and allow that person to speak. Shush your white buddy who doesn’t get it. This lack of listening can happen at dinner tables, cocktail parties, receptions and in office meetings, and in Zoom sessions. Don’t be party to it.
Pay attention to the conversation you’re in. Is your opinion really going to enrich the conversation, or are you simply feeling that tickle in the belly, squirm in the seat need to be heard? Was your opinion actually asked for? If not, stay quiet. Your opinions are valuable, but they do not need to be everywhere all the time, they have their space. Save it for later.
Is your sudden need to express an opinion because everyone is weighing in? Is there a dogpile going on? Can you stop said dogpile?
Has the space been created for people of color only? Don’t be afraid to reach out to a friend of color to ask that question before attending. There are spaces you don’t belong.
Has the space been created for people of color to have a voice? If you are welcome there, your role is to sit, listen, and amplify on social media. Tweet that stuff out; good poetry, things said, amazing moments, tweet it with credit to the person who said it. You’re helping your white audience (if you are white you likely have a few white folks in your feed) see the conversations that are taking place. They can learn a lot from people in spaces they might not get to.
Amplify books, articles, poems, short stories, essays, and art by people of color. The systems in place in so many of those worlds only push the white version. Help your fellow artists, writers, poets, journalists, friends out. Retweet, share, and get excited about anything you genuinely liked–be as loud as you can!
If there’s an opportunity to step in to talk to a white person (live or on social media) when your friend of color is doing some heavy lifting. Ask that friend of color if it would be helpful for you to do so. “Can I handle this asshole for you?” You can do the explaining, references, give that person articles. Better yet, you can take the conversation to a sidebar outside this person of color’s feed. Because it’s exhausting for them. Also, THAT white guy does better when they’re in private conversation. Sometimes when they feel they’re being called out publicly, they go toxic. The object is to shut them up off your friend’s feed and out of their day.
Listen and learn. You are not woke. You are learning things, but I promise, you are not woke. My family has 300 years of benefitting off a system built on slavery and land theft, grown on laws and systems put in place to benefit their own. Inequality that takes 300 years to build runs in our fiber in ways we don’t understand. Keep listening, keep learning and get involved in the community where you live.
If you consider yourself a feminist, please understand that women of color are functioning under a different operational reality than you. If you’re a white woman, yes, you have experienced oppression, but again, that absolutely having to say the thing can make you unwittingly drown out voices of color around you. Be conscious of the spaces in which you are traveling and make sure you ‘re adding to the conversation, not talking over anyone.
There is work to be done, and it is not up to people of color to be the only agents of change. As Roxane Gay said in the #DiginidadLiteraria event, “It is not encumbent on writers of color to fix a problem they did not create.”
Kate Maruyama’s novel, HARROWGATE was published by 47North. Her short work has appeared in numerous print and online journals and in several anthologies, including Women Who Submit’s own ACCOLADES. She is a member of the Diverse Works Inclusion Committee of the Horror Writers Association and teaches in the BA program at Antioch University Los Angeles and for inspiration2publication among other places. She writes, teaches, cooks, and eats in Los Angeles, where she lives with her family.
“Ask your heart, from time to time, what is most important right now, in this moment, and listen very carefully for the response.” –Jon Kabat-Zinn
When I learned that my students would not be returning from spring break, it was like a shovel to the side of my head. I was jolted; cortisol ran through my body for days and weeks, and I had a constant, throbbing headache. I was asked to move my teaching, my content, my carefully designed community-building designed activities, online. Many of us found ourselves in the awkward and terrifying position of being told to stay still, and yet be heroically productive. Like the students, all my plans were interrupted, and my writing utterly side-lined.
I wavered between being frozen with inaction and indecision or distracting myself with constant movement: more dishes to make or bake or stockpile; more articles to read; audio books; an online course; youtube exercise clips; zoom meetups. Not still, not listening, just being certain there is noise and action and activity to crowd out stillness, thoughts and doubts and, in particular, fears.
That inner editor, that tireless nag, relentless reproachful, reminded me that other people were writing their wry think pieces, their touching essays, their profound poetry. Other writers signed agents; agents made deals, sold books. My inner editor, eyed me disdainfully, as if to say, “Why not you?”
In the meantime, I considered that “last days” have passed, without my even realizing it at the time: the last meal at a favorite restaurant, the last purchase at an independent shop, the last recognition of a student’s presence before they return to their home state or country. The last physical classroom meeting for this semester.
My husband was let go from his job; I heard from friends and students: their job losses, a ruined relationship, weddings delayed or dissolved. Financial hardships, moving away, moving back home, relatives on the frontlines.
I needed to be still, and ask my heart, and listen.
My heart said, it is okay to mourn.
I gave my inner editor the day off, the night off, the week off, the quarantine off. Shh, I told her. There, there, there.
*
We are humans, we are elastic and we accommodate the wonderful as swiftly as we do the unpleasant. We adapt. We are now a month or so into this odd world. Or three and half years, depending on your reference point.
We are in a holding pattern, in my case with its particular comforts and concerns. My home is cozy; in order to visit my 80-year old mother I can not see my children. My daughter is a cashier at a grocery store; people I know are suffering.
In one particular highly effective habit from Steven Covey’s iconic text he gives a Venn diagram and explains, where our area of concern overlaps our area of influence, therein lies our greatest power. I have tremendous anger and anxiety for so many current political outrages and utterly avoidable tragic outcomes, but that is far, far out of my area of influence.
What, out of so many concerns, lies within my influence? My words on the page. My interactions with and responsibilities towards my friends, family members, students, community. Where I invest my time and money. My attitude towards this situation.
What does my heart tell me now?
Out comes the printed draft with all my annotations, it is time to continue my revisions. I bite my tongue against the harsh words I have for my husband, borne out of spending so much time together. I connect and loop in with my friends and family. Put a colorful top and a cheerful face on for the zoom classes I teach. Reach out to the struggling students. Send money to people and causes in need.
The county announces a two week extension to our physical isolation. My doctor friend assures me it will be extended again. And again.
Disturbingly, thoughts of the future creep in. How will I survive in a summer like this without students, who give me so much meaning and purpose? Like millions of others, I wonder, will there even be a fall semester?
Stop! I shift gears, and ask my heart, what does it want, for the future?
My heart is very clear. It wants a tomorrow quite different from the yesterday that preceded all of this chaos. A yesterday where so many were struggling and financially subjugated.That makes me pause and reflect, now, looking to the future, what will we bring to tomorrow, to make this world anew?
Désirée Zamorano is an award-winning short story writer and the author of the critically acclaimed novel The Amado Women. A frequent contributor to the LA Review of Books, her essays and short stories can be found at Cultural Weekly, Catapult, Huizache, and Kenyon Review.
I had something else in mind for today’s column and had found someone write it. She wrote a beautiful and important essay on allyship, but that was done over a month ago, and so much has changed since then. So like so much right now, that essay will sit and wait.
We occupy this strange place right now. The world as we knew it sits just outside our view, and we can’t see out on the other side yet, can’t quite make out the horizon. We are stuck here with our thoughts, our words, our works-in-progress, ourselves.
If there was ever a time to remind ourselves to breathe, it is now. I find myself forgetting as I scroll through the news or zone out watching anything-but-the-news.
WWS member Lisbeth Coiman is sharing a poem a day, and Xochitl Julisa Bermejo shared Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese” yesterday.
Or listen to music.
Xochitl shared “You’re the Best Around” from The Karate Kid the other day.
Or write a poem.
There are still many ways to connect.
Whatever you’re doing, hang in there. Maybe submit something, or maybe just breathe.
Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. Publications include: Through Eyes Like Mine (2010), Overdue Apologies (2012), and I Tried (2019). Excerpts, essays, and poetry have appeared in Catapult, Meridian, Kartika, Hippocampus, Compose, Linden Avenue and elsewhere.
Noriko Nakada writes, blogs, tweets, parents, and teaches middle school in Los Angeles. Publications include: Through Eyes Like Mine (2010), Overdue Apologies (2012), and I Tried (2019). Excerpts, essays, and poetry have appeared in Catapult, Meridian, Kartika, Hippocampus, Compose, Linden Avenue and elsewhere.