Write 1 paragraph on something you learned about writing’s relationship to social change—perhaps using a favorite text as a guide, with the wisdom of hindsight.
The theme I’ve definitely been following throughout the course of the quarter – as I’m sure I’ve probably talked about once or twice in class – is the use of abstraction, or alienation, by a narrator in a story. This, in relation to what kind of empathy and closure the writer wants the reader to feel, becomes a technique to agitate readers. In not allowing for full closure, or perhaps leaving something missing for the readers, the writer allows for the reader to fill in the gap. Thus, the reader becomes active in the writer’s movement for social change. And yet, this relationship is certainly complicated by who the writer is, who the narrator is, who the subject/s is/are, and who the readers are. How does the writer consolidate their own social positioning with their narration of a story that may or may not be theirs in a way that acknowledges the social positioning of the story’s readership? There are a lot of moving parts, and it’s a tricky line to navigate. If the writer is to employ the tactic of alienation, what parts of the story does the writer make abstract, foreign, or difficult to relate to, so their audience cannot fully empathize, but isn’t just left confused? I’m certainly thinking of Keene’s piece in Counternarratives, where the narration of Carmel’s story feels ever so slightly cold and distant, and yet readers who certainly cannot completely understand her story are able to fill in those gaps to think critically yet sentimentally about Carmel’s story. I’m also thinking of Agee and the dilemma he actively struggled with in being a privileged, liberal white man trying to accurately yet powerfully portray the struggle of the tenant farmers. Perhaps his own self-conscious narration and thus self-alienation is supposed to have readers also feel self-conscious and alienated. And I’m thinking of Layli Long Soldier’s creative use of form. Her poems are alienating in two critical ways: their structures defy common poetic forms, and they tear up a government document, while maintaining familiar political/legislative language. “Whereas” comes to mean something different for us, because she takes what is such a formal word in government documents and forces us to think critically about what it is used for through alienation.
Write 1 question you have about writing and social change that emerges from your work in the course.
How do we, as writers, juggle the weight of implications in the story we are telling, while staying true to our personal stakes in the narration as well as closely monitoring what stakes our readers get to have in our work?