-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 texts that shaped my ideas about writing and social change were Italo Calvino’s “Exactitude”, Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas, and Anne Boyer’s The Undying. Italo Calvino’s “Exactitude” helped me face some of the difficulties in discussing social problems. With the advent of social media, many people, including myself, have only fragmented ideas of what they are talking about, and often argue about different matter believing that they are discussing the same subject. “Exactitude” made me realize the importance of using the exact expressions to precisely describe the matter at hand. Reading “Exactitude” made me believe that it is essential to use language with precision when writing for social change, as using language in a vague manner could result in presenting the problem vaguely and incoherently.

If “Exactitude” taught me about using language precisely, Layli Long Soldier’s Whereas taught me about grasping the confinements of language itself—her poems made me aware of the “manacles of English” and how a poet could try to shatter them. Dissecting the formal language allows her to venture out of the linguistic structure and expose the violence behind the formal apology. Long Soldier’s work taught me that the structure and the language of written material is as important as its content, and that utilizing structure is a conscious choice for writers writing about social change.

The Undying by Anne Boyer taught me the importance of viewing a social problem in a larger scale, taking into consideration the social structures that cause the problem. Her refutation of the pink ribbon campaign and the consumption of breast cancer patients in popular culture made me realize that writing should not stop at raising awareness. Instead of isolating a specific problem and turning it into an object for sympathy, writing should unearth the causes that people fail to see and make the readers face them.

-Write 1 question you have about writing and social change that emerges from your work in the course.

Throughout the course, I have always wondered the effectiveness of writing in facilitating social change. Writing is affective in raising awareness about a given social problem, and making a reader feel compassionate about it. However, as Anne Boyer pointed out, raising awareness and making the problem visible is not enough if it fails to visualize the structural aspects that cause the problem. How can writing facilitate structural change, if it leaves the readers, the individuals, to act upon what they felt through the writing?