Publishing
I’ve been sitting at my computer wondering if it’s selfish to be staring at the screen, searching for the perfect word, when our democracy is under threat? What is my role in times like these; what can writers do?
Searching for writers’ impacts in previous eras I think first of the long, difficult sojourn of African Americans, for whom every decade of their four hundred years on this soil has been perilous. But part of the resilience they built came from inspirational writing, like the early twentieth century poet James Weldon Johnson’s Lift Every Voice and Sing. Set to music, the iconic poem became the “Negro National Anthem,” sung at African American school assemblies, churches, and public celebrations or gatherings to mourn. The poem/song doesn’t shrink from trouble—“Stony the road we trod/Bitter the chastening rod”—yet the chorus rises melodically into a great rejoicing, to “resound loud as the rolling sea” with the singers “facing the rising sun of our new day begun/Let us march on till victory is won.” Every time I’ve joined others in the rousing chorus, the optimism, no matter the context, has been infectious.
Women of all hues, subject to continual abuse and attack, have also created a long history of literature encouraging resistance in the face of trauma. Maya Angelou’s poem Still I Rise is a beautiful example: “You may trod me in the very dirt/But still, like dust, I rise.” It goes on recounting atrocities, but always countering them with the steadfast refrain: “Still I Rise.” Alice Walker’s Celie in the novel The Color Purple shows another woman who, beaten and scorned all her life, not only survived, but thrived. Marge Piercy, Doris Lessing, Audre Lorde, Agnes Smedley, Grace Paley, and countless others created characters who demonstrated, by their toughness, a capacity for survival. Others, like Delores Ibarruri (“La Passionaria”) in civil war Spain, wrote memoirs. All of them were touchstones for me when, as a young, poor, single mother, I wasn’t sure how to go on. Readers can draw on their strength again now, during this time when we need inspiration.
I think of this art when I ponder whether I should be siting at my desk, or busily raising support for undocumented immigrants, or Muslims or Jews targeted by rising intolerance. Not that both activities—writing and activism—are mutually exclusive, but I wonder if I can’t make my greatest contribution through writing. “What is literature which does not save nations or people?” asked Czeslaw Milosz, the late Polish poet and patriot.
Our work need not be explicitly didactic to accomplish this. We don’t need to preach or exhort. Any writing that moves people, giving them access to the world of another, will open their hearts. And thereby compassion. Viet Thanh Nguyen, the author of the novel The Sympathizer, recently wrote, “Through identifying with characters and people who are nothing like us, through destroying the walls between ourselves and others, the people who love words—both writers and readers—strive to understand others and break down the boundaries that separate us.” If we writers create honestly, from the core of ourselves, we will touch readers. Paradoxically, in our solitary labors we can reach out to form a common bond. For whatever our genre, we are truth tellers, reaching deep inside for soul truths.
When we write from our own centeredness and express that integrity, most readers will respond in kind. When we write with love—even if we speak of terrible deeds—that tenderness will shine through. A recent study by cognitive psychologist Keith Oatley from the University of Toronto confirms what readers have long known: "When we read about other people, we can imagine ourselves into their position and we can imagine it's like being that person. That enables us to better understand people, better cooperate with them."
Author Lynn Hunt, in her book Inventing Human Rights: A History, even argues that our commitment to equal rights stemmed partly from expanded literacy. Fiction helped readers identify with oppressed people.
Today, in a culture that trades in slander, “post-truth” and “relative truth,” we need empathy-inducing writing more than ever. Some of us will write new visions for our culture, with paradigm shifts that liberate imagination. Others may focus on daily moments of beauty—the flight of an egret or the slippery dives of a river otter—reminding readers that their own quiet moments in nature can be a meditation, bringing sanity to their lives. Some writers will author new histories, giving us a roadmap to the future. Others will document a slice of our world as it is—like Anne Frank’s candid diary showing her reality, still shining in all its horror and hope seventy years later. Whatever form and subject matter we choose, honest writing helps create human connection. Such writing melts the numb places inside readers, expanding their capacity for empathy.
Not only can we writers make a contribution to others, we need to write for ourselves. As Maya Angelou once said, “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” When we sit alone searching for the right word, the right sentiment, the act itself grounds us. We come from a sacred and honorable tradition, the truth-telling writers. Let us rejoice and do our part, “Facing the rising sun of our new day begun.”
Well, you see Karoline, that's the problem, so many people actually believed the absurd lies like that. If you look at Obama's record, the Truth, you can't help but notice that: He got the economy back on its feet again, (even after George Bush totally destroyed it and caused millions of innocent people to lose their homes and life-savings.) Obama has created millions of jobs, set up health care for everyone (did you know that before the Affordable Care act, ERs all over the country were being forced to shut down because so many people had noplace else to go. The reality is like, if you owned a restaurant and you were obligated by federal law to give everybody who came there everything they needed, and almost nobody ever paid their check, at some point you have no more money to buy the food with. Trump isn't even thinking about this, he doesn't EVER think about human beings, only power and money, and this is the tragedy. And he is such a shameless liar - He and all Republicans are now making a game out blaming Obama for not fixing everything in the world in 8 years, after THEY spent 8 years destroying it. And then for all the Obama years, while ALL the Republicans truly did everything they could to prevent him from doing anythingat all, they simply refused to cooperate with anything, refused to pass anything, or DO anything. And they repeatedly loudly blamed Obama for the deadlock!!!! How insane is that? This is so disturbing to me. And this is the Republican classic stance - "Less government regulation is good! We take the people's money and keep it, for our own uses, or pass it on to the richest people, and do FEW or NO services for the poeple of America who paid those taxes! We as a country have got to wake up and put down our techno-toys and devices, and look around us. There's a real world out there that almost half of the population don’t even see. We need to wake up,and stop letting egomaniacs like Bush and Trump (who is truly certifiably psychotic) use divisiveness and every kind of prejudice and craziness to “divide and conquer,” That is the genius of this man, and one of the cardinal signs of the sociopath: r=they always accuse someone else of doing the evil that they themselves are actually already doing, setting up smokescreens of lies ahead of them to make the path easier for themselves. Wake up, that’s all I’m asking. Look and see. Look up/Google “How to spot a sociopath.” Open your eyes and read it and judge for yourself.
Today's NY Times features a front-page story by President Obama on the value of reading. He says that reading novels gave him "the ability to get in somebody else's shoes," and affirms how "invaluable" that experience has been for him as president.
Please do not assume that we are all shocked and stunned at the election. Most of the country is not. I proudly support Donald J. Trump as president. People are trembling in fear and he hasn't even taken office. After 8 years of the failed Obama administration I look forward to the next 8 years with President Trump! The left wing lunacy is getting tiresome.
It CAN Happen Here
The American so-called “democratic” so-called “election” has shocked and stunned the world. I too have found this bizarre turn of history beyond my ability to bear. That this could happen in what has been a democracy shakes me profoundly. We have leapt into the abyss of mindless, godless violence, irrational hate and war, unaware that this could ever happen here. It IS happening. We are at the trembling brink of it. An irrational, power-mad dictator is already taking actions, (illegal ones because he is not yet sworn in) to start a third world war, apparently for the fun of it, and to show us all that he can. He is eagerly planning greater nuclear proliferation, and inciting countries worldwide to do the same. He is not a rational person, and his psychotic arrogance is more than dangerous, it is deadly.
Once again, “our government” has placed the LOSER of a so-called democratic election –WHO LOST BY THE LARGEST MARGIN IN HISTORY to be given to the loser of an election, into the seat of power, against the will of the people and to the shock and horror of the rest of the world.
There have been dictators before, but not here. There have been other hideous murdering madmen, many – Adolf HItler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Idi Amin, Benito Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, all the ISIS wave of mindless hatred. All of these men were sociopaths. But not here. What they did, and stood for, has always been, up to now, what the U.S. has stood against, as the polar opposite of what we believe in.Now we have joined those tragedies too. We have “chosen,” even thought it was against the will of the majority of the people, to give absolute power to a sociopath who has no allegiance toany established rules, and no regard for human life.
The purpose of this, I know, is Life’s way of waking us up, and it will be a terribly painful waking. There was so much to be done, and we didn’t do it. Now an utterly dehumanizing dictator (unless the Grace of God somehow unexpectedly intervenes) will take over one of the most powerful nations of the world and PLAY with it like a video game, with no intention to serve anyone but himself, and no desire but to glorify himself, and to destroy all the other “players” and to “win.” If this sounds extreme, please Wake Up. Start by reading the truth of the matter, and realize that this person is not going to change or suddenly go sane.
And so, in fear and dread and sorrow, I asked myself, What can I do? What can I, myself, possibly do? And The answer was the same one as yours – tell my truth, my story, and let the love and humanizing of it reach whatever hearts are willing to receive it, and use it in their lives to make better choices than these that now darken the skies ahead for all of us, for years, perhaps decades, to come.
We have started down the path of death. All our news and entertainment media show it – nothing but bloody guts and murders and mutilations on every channel, 24 hours a day, including commercials. We have chosen violence, war, hatred and rage of the most demonic kind, such as we have never experienced in our history of having been so blessed and free. But Freedom is too easy to poison and misdirect, and all sociopaths are masters of deception and manipulation. The deranged Emperor Trump is already moving forward as fast as possible (even though illegally) with his actions of destruction of everything the American people have built in 300 years. He cares nothing about humanity, why should he care about law?
The voters could not stop him. We can blog, and we can talk, and we gather together to seek ways to survive this. At best, millions of us will lose our homes and our livelihoods and even their lives to one man’s insatiable greed, as he toys with global politics and upsets world trade balances display show his godlike power.
And so, Here we go, all of us, willing or not. If you are someone who prays, pray that Spirit/God/UniveralConsciousness/Allah/The Source, or whatever sacred name you know to call upon the grace of your soul’s highest power and loving protector, will find some way that we as human minds can’t see. In the meantime, we must do what is ours to do. Seek your mission, if you don’t already know it, and do commit to your highest work here. Whatever you can do to bring more of honesty, integrity, kindness even in the smallest simplest ways, do it. Love whoever you can, and forgive who you can’t. This is what we can do, and must do, to add more of that and less of hate to the world we must all live in together.
I have my work to do, my small part of whatever shall be the future for humankind. I turn again to that, and keep my own soul’s promise to d
I too have found this bizarre turn of history beyond my ability to bear. That this could happen in what has been a democracy shakes me profoundly. We have leapt into the abyss of mindless, godless violence, irrational hate and war, unaware that this could ever happen here. It IS happening. We are at the trembling brink of it. An irrational, power-mad dictator is already taking actions, (illegal ones because he is not yet sworn in) to start a third world war, for the fun of it. He is eagerly planning greater nuclear proliferation, and inciting countries worldwide to do the same. He is not a rational person, and his psychotic arrogance is more than dangerous, it is deadly.
From Psychology Today, via the internet:
"What is the definition of a sociopathic personality? Antisocial personality disorder is characterized by a lack of regard for the moral or legal standards in the local culture. There is a marked inability to get along with others or abide by societal rules. Individuals with this disorder are sometimes called psychopaths or sociopaths."
https:/
Once again, "our government" has placed the loser of a so-called democratic so-called election -WHO LOST BY THE LARGEST MARGIN IN HISTORY to be given an election, into the seat of power, against the will of the people and to the shock and horror of the rest of the world.
There have been dictators before, but not here. There have been other hideous murdering madmen, many - Adolf HItler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Idi Amin, Benito Mussolini, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, all the ISIS wave of mindless hatred. All of these men were sociopaths. But not here. What they did, and stood, for has always been, up to now, what the U.S. has stood against, as the polar opposite of what we believe in. Now we have joined them. We have “chosen,” even thought it was against the will of the majority of the people, to give absolute power to a sociopath who has no regard for human life.
The purpose of this, I know, is Life's way of waking us up, and it will be a painful waking. There was so much to be done, and we didn't do it. Now an utterly dehumanizing dictator, unless the Grace of God somehow intervenes, will take over one of the most powerful nations of the world and PLAY with it like a video game, with no intention to serve anyone but himself, and no desire but to glorify himself, to destroy all the other "players", and to "win." If this sounds extreme, please Wake Up. Start by reading the truth of the matter, and realize that this person is not going to change or suddenly go sane.
for a detailed picture to compare that will make your blood run cold: http:/
And so, in fear and dread and sorrow, I asked myself, What can I do? What can I, myself, possibly do? And The answer was the same one as yours - tell my truth, my story, and let the love and humanizing of it reach whatever hearts are willing to receive it, and use it in their lives to make better choices than these that now darken the skies ahead for all of us, for years, perhaps decades, to come.
We have started down the path of death. We have chosen violence, war, hatred and rage of the most demonic kind, more enormous than we have ever experienced in our history of having been so blessed and free. But Freedom is too easy to poison and misdirect, and all sociopaths are masters of deception and manipulation. Trump is already moving forward as fast as possible, even though illegally, with his actions of destruction of everything the American people have built in 300 years. He cares nothing about humanity, why should he care about law? I entreat you to read this, all who are not afraid of the truth, and make your own judgement. http:/
The voters could not stop him. We blog, and we hope, and we gather together to seek ways to survive this. At best, millions of us will lose our homes and our livelihoods and even their lives, to one man's insatiable greed as he toys with global politics and upsets world trade balances to show his power. And so, Here we go, all of us, willing or not. If you are someone who prays, pray that Spirit will find some way that we as human minds can't see. In the meantime, we must do what is ours to do.
I have my work to do, my small part of whatever shall be the future for humankind. I turn again to that, and keep my own soul's promise to do it.