This brilliant interview with Rebecca Stolnit has been on my mind for an entire week. The way she breaks down genres, defies labels placed on writers, challenges new writers to be engaged in the interesting and urgent issues of our time, and places importance on the pleasure and elegance of writing, even when discussing gender roles, the environment, culture, and politics, is powerful and encouraging.
I've always wanted to identify myself as a writer, but often struggle with where exactly my words and interests would best fit. Essayist? Novelist? Short story writer? And as much as I enjoy writing about nature, women, and the human experience, I feel an equal pull to address the social and political challenges that surround us today. Can I really be a young mother who enjoys the quiet pleasures of a domestic life, and also a voice for feminism, sustainable agriculture, and immigration? Can my words be both beautiful and powerful? Humane and engaging? Tender and persuasive?
Stolnit gives this example of Henry David Thoreau:
"I think he’s a great example of someone refusing the categories: he thinks about leaves changing color and he also thinks about, and talks about, and cares about, slavery and John Brown and the war on Mexico. In the introductory essay to Storming the Gates I write about the way he’s so insistent that when he got out of jail the morning after that founding act of civil disobedience, he went huckleberrying. It’s an insistence that pleasure and commitment, landscape and politics, the big and the small can and do coexist."
It is possible to do both. The big and the small can and do coexist.
The entire interview is fascinating and full of great insights. I found her thoughts on activism to be particularly moving. If you do read the interview, let me know what you think; I would love to hear your thoughts.
3 comments:
"the big and the small" just made me think of how adults and children coexist... Seemingly incompatible views on life and methods of living and yet we need each other. It's like ... Hope and responsibility. oh! or that episodee of Modern family... y'know the one about punkin' chunkin. Yeah. It's like that.
You were in my dream last night. Do you know if you are having a boy or a girl. Cause in my dream it was a boy and his name is Isaac:)
Hi, is a true life experience is not designed to convince you its a personal health experience, sometimes medical doctors take a different approach about herpes treatment. i has been stocked in bondage with herpes for two years and four months i has tried different means to eliminate this sickness because it surely has distract me even with the world, and i was told there is no cure, but only medicine for treatment all the possible ways i has tried was treatment, two months back i did some herpes research and i found amazing testimonies concerning natural herbal cure, and i go for it through the email address from the post just to give a try of herbal treatment, and i found it grate without delay i got cured with natural treatment from doc Twaha herbal cure his cure are powerful and shows out excellent result. and i think everyone suffering with herpes and others symptoms should also know about this cure from, drlregbeyen10000@gmail.com or WhatsApp him +2349038518881 thank you
Post a Comment