Category Archives: Controversy
“Starving”
We’re all hungry for something more
And not just enough jumbo-sized pizza
Or calorie-rich milkshake from McDonald’s
Or another side of cheese-and-bacon fries.
But instead for the light at the end of the tunnel
That was foreclosed in the recession,
for the fingertips that brush our hair back
When we fall asleep in the passenger’s seat,
and for the words no one ever says
That could disrupt the void of silence
Fill the aching pit our stomachs reveal
When we realize we want something else, something more.
They say the whole country’s obese,
So the question is:
For what are we so desperately starving?
Submerged: Part Seven (Fin)
General Bates let us sleep in a tent with Jaime, though we used our own blankets. The summer air clung so fiercely to our skin, though, I could not keep covered. Instead, I lay shirtless against the ground, studying the seams along the interior of our shelter.
“You’re angry, aren’t you?”
“Maybe. Just disappointed. I just– what are we going to do?”
Ethan shuffled. “We can give them the seeds, the medicine. Some of it. We don’t need it, and then we can go back to our island. We can just–”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“About what?” He breathed heavy beside me, and in my side-vision, his chest rose and fell rapidly.
“About needing to register. What were you running away from?”
“I– if I were living like that, where they accounted for everything you did? You don’t know how nice you have it out there in the marsh. You’ve never lived in a city, not like they’re like now. We’re all rats, scrambling on top of each other for some sunlight. And men patrol the streets and beat you if you say anything to them. That’s what passes as police.”
“That’s why you left?”
“I left because I had heard about something else, something simple. I thought maybe if I stole that boat, rowed out to sea, I’d find something better. And I did.”
I resettled against the ground, soothed by the crescendos and decrescendos of Jaime’s snoring. “There have never been simpler times. Never civilized either. It’s always been difficult: existence. Whether you’re stuffed in a polluted city, mired in poverty, or stuck out on an island, rooting through the ground for a vegetable to eat, something to kill and clean. No life is simple, and it never has been that way.”
*
When morning came, I tracked down General Bates and showed him half of our supplies. If Jaime might return us to our island, I told him, he could have our supplies. Some of the stronger medicines and the seeds too. Hemp seeds and corn, though I kept the majority of the rice seeds– I could plant rise in the marsh, harvest every year. I kept a lot of the allergy medicine as well and a pocketful of pain-killers. The general took the rest gleefully, shuffling from the tent to wake up Jaime.
Jaime waddled crankily from his tent. “You want me back on the road again?”
“Sure, sure. Take these two back where you found them. Or wherever they might want to go.”
“Do you have a boat?” I asked. “We could also really use a boat.”
The general shook his head. “We need all of our boats. Now, get out of here before I take the rest of the stuff you hid from me.”
Once loaded back into Jaime’s truck, we sped down the road, crisscrossing through empty highways and abandoned interstates. He allowed me this time to sit in the cab, leaning against the window, my forehead pressed flat.
“Still torn up, thinking you was going to be a rich man?”
I ground my teeth, watching the pine trees as they vanished behind us, the truck picking up speed. “Rich? No, maybe not. Maybe so. Not so sure I ever believed that plan could have worked– I should realize the world has changed. It also changes, even when you’re not a part of it, and it keeps churning on. All that time away, you don’t realize what happens, what happens to everybody else, the whole world. Places disappear, and people do too. Entire societies collapse, and new ones rise. Back when I was a boy, we never thought we’d live like this, constantly at war. Sometimes, it’s not just land that gets submerged, but the past and your perception of the present. If you think you know what’s going on, pretty soon the water’s up to your neck, and you don’t know anything anymore.”
He nodded along politely.
As the hours passed, I scanned the trees for our boat, a way to get us home. I prayed to encounter none of the soldiers Jaime described, a barricade along the highway. Looking back through the window, I could see Ethan wiggling his head in the wind– only the second time he’d ridden in an automobile, so he told me. And then I kept watching the road, dreaming of my island and my home and my marsh and that little boat, about paddling back out to Charleston and exploring the city lost. I didn’t belong in the land of the living, but instead at the bottom of the sea, in that city of ghosts.
Fin
Submerged: Part Six
The truck woke me, its trembling motor roaring in my sleep. Again, the underwater dreams, those lucid moments beneath the surface of consciousness, drowning in the ceaseless churn of a storm. Then I could make out above the hollow crash of waves a burping, mechanical clatter that unglued me from sleep and sent me bolting upright, staring into white-bright headlights.
“What the hell’s goin’ on here? Why you sleeping by the road?” A man stared back at us, his lips puckered at a peculiar angle and his eyebrow cocked. His skin was black as the soil, his clothes tattered. He stood beside a shuddering, rusted truck.
I clawed my throat for words, but none came. Ethan spoke: “Is that a truck? You driving a truck?”
The man reached into his cab, turning off the motor and flipping off his headlights, leaving us into the dim illumination of early morning. “It’s my truck. Personal business. None of your concern. Who y’all fighting for? Soldiers?”
Clearing my throat, I stood up, pushing the blankets off of me and limping toward him. He was a massive man, though old, wearing a broad plaid shirt and jeans caked with mud. “We’re– we’re headed to Atlanta.”
“Alright, so what? You’re gonna walk there? Where are y’all from?”
“We live not so far away. On an island.”
He nodded. “How long?”
I looked to Ethan. “I’ve been there, well, about eight years now.”
“Then you don’t know– it’s illegal to live out here now. Radiation zone, they’re calling it.”
“I– I haven’t seen any radiation.”
“You can’t see radiation.”
“But I never felt it or nothing. I mean, there are fish. Birds and snakes.”
The man snorted. “Best not tell them that, they’ll come root you out of your island. It’s been illegal for more than three years ago.”
Slowly, the gears of mathematics churned in my brain: how long had Ethan lived with me?
“You never told me that,” I said, turning to him.
He shrugged. “What do you think I was running away from? They wanted to register everyone, otherwise you’re not considered a citizen, don’t got no rights.”
I thought about this for a moment. “You said there was some sort of soldiers?”
“Couple, running around these parts.” He shrugged. “The Continental Army, sweeping through pretty often.”
“Another rebellion going on?”
He nodded. “I’m running guns to an encampment fifty miles up the coast. Stole some canisters of gas, so we have a few trucks making trips through roads where the army left alone.”
“We need a ride, if you can spare it.”
He gestured to the bed of his truck, where a pile of black guns lay. “You can ride back there. Got any way to repay me?” I rifled through the bag and tossed him a bottle of Oxycodone. He checked the label, then watched me, startled. “This stuff real?”
“Pretty real. Can we get a ride?” He nodded to his truck, and we gathered our blankets, stuffing them into a bag and hopping aboard.
*
Five hours we bounced against his back windshield, metal guns sliding across the bed beneath us. Guns made me nervous, though the smugglers carried guns for protection; men would kill each other with these weapons, to claim sovereignty over land that was being slowly covered by the ocean. Their military encampment looked like a small village of pop-up campers and trailers shipwrecked on concrete blocks. The man driving us, his name Jaime, stepped out of the truck and approached a tent big enough for a circus show. A moment later, a stocky man with iron-gray buzzed hair stepped out, wearing shredded Army greens and old combat boots.
“You the stragglers he found on the road?”
“We’re on the way to Atlanta,” I explained.
“You don’t want to be traveling the roads. There’s a war going on.”
“But there’s always a war going on. Isn’t there someone to buy what we have to sell?”
“Sell? With what? What do you want? Food? Guns?”
“I don’t know,” I said, feeling incredibly naked in front of the men filing out of the tank. “Money.”
“What’s the use of money? Jaime says you live in a swamp.”
“‘Spose that’s true.”
“You live in a swamp, and you don’t know what’s happening.”
“It doesn’t matter, damn it. I just– I just–”
Another man spoke up. “He said you gave him medicine. What do you have?”
“I– I don’t have anything. Nothing I can give away for free, I mean.”
The Army guy grinned, knuckling the toe of his boot into the dirt. “You can’t just come into a rebel camp, say you got medicine, and not share it. Why would you want to go to Atlanta? That’s dangerous.”
“I have things to sell– more medicine. We’ve been living on an island, but we wanted– we thought–”
“No one to sell it to.” He paused. “I’m Bates, by the way. General Bates, if it please you. Commanding officer of this outfit for the Free States.”
I began to grow frustrated. I didn’t care about their petty rebellions and lurches for power, their killing and bombing and gassing. Once I sold the seeds and medicine, I could buy a new boat, return to my island. Get as far away from this disaster as possible.
“Alright, General Bates. Just point us in the right direction; we’ll be on our way.” I began to back away from the truck, eyeing Ethan, clutching the duffel bag tight to my chest. “Which way to Atlanta?”
“Told you, you don’t want to go near Atlanta, less you want to die. Whole place is devastated. That’s why we moved out to the coast, the Continental’s have closed in on us. And Atlanta– that was blown apart a year ago. Nothing left but radiation and a black hole in the ground.”
My grip on the bag loosened as his words sunk in– the war. Because of the war, there would be no one to shell out millions for seeds. We wouldn’t sell a thing, and everything we’d hoped for had been destroyed by a nuclear bomb twelve months before we began searching.
Poem: “Sacred”
I could warn you that this poem contains language
But every poem does.
Don’t be fooled by the peach fuzz:
I swear like a sailor,
Still scarred like a failure.
The sacred won’t always do,
But the profane sounds perfect.
Because sometimes life stinks like shiitake mushrooms.
Sometimes, you fudge up.
Guillotine’s pressed against your neck.
Everything’s darned to heck.
Everyone you know is a bloody boat-licker,
Lick-spittled, tarnated butt-kicker.
Language shapes thoughts which forms actions
Which reflect reactions, cause gee wiz
Ain’t those rules just Cheez n’ Crackers?
Egad! The moral pressures of Catholic school
Have us screaming in the streets, wondering
What the Dickens we should say
In polite company, in a polite way,
Around the dinner table.
Sometimes, we’re not able to express ourselves
But by thundering blasted obscenities
At the top of our lungs.
Confound it, I’m done with the doggone bull-hockey!
Nothing you can say will shock me.
Just tell me your stories and your truth,
And it won’t matter what buggered words you use.
“Sea King”
You are King of the Sea, I said
and I King of the Sky.
Don’t you see me, see my wings?
See how I soar? See how I fly?
See how I launch myself from pedestals,
flapping wings of wax, of ambition and manmade edifice.
See how I can fly?
And he I imagine is an underwater king
though he spends most of the time
gliding across the tide on a battered surfboard.
I imagine him peaceful, innocent, yet fierce
like a sea turtle clutching a trident.
He sits aloft coral reefs, sprints across the backs of Great Whites
and can communicate with sea horses like Aquaman.
It was Sunday, the waves unsure, the sky cold and clear
Later, I could see the stars, and I pretended I could name each one
as if I had named them myself.
He explained, in his childish manner, about the rap industry and then
his theory of art
For a quiet boy from Long Island, a placid surfer dude who wanted to become a doctor,
you do not expect for him to care so deeply for art.
But on that Sunday, we reeled him into our nightly chaos
into our vices, into our storytelling.
And he explained, how art should asymptotically close to nature.
That Art should be a reflection of reality, of one’s perception.
Then we pretended to be great artists too, boldly shaping faces
sketching dinosaurs in top hats in the margins of our biology notes.
I drew an illustration of he and I
He the King of the Sea
Me the King of the Sky
See how I fly? I asked
And you’re in the waves, exploring the deep
as if in dreams, in sleep, you’ve been talking
searching for something to say, whether it be just a word or a sentence
See how I fall? I asked. See how I fall?
I don’t see nothing at all, you said, nothing at all.
And I said, keep searching, just keep seeking.
The Case for “Drug Safety Education” Reform in Public Schools
{The statements expressed in this essay are the sole opinion of the author, Derek Berry, and do not necessarily reflect the philosophies of all of the harm reduction groups discussed}
In fifth grade, I won an essay contest for D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance Education), a program devoted to keeping kids from abusing drugs and alcohol. The essay, I read in front of my entire fifth grade class and their parents, probably making them deeply uncomfortable with righteous statements of abstaining from smoking cigarettes, forgoing the consumption of alcohol.
I do not believe I even mention “drugs” in the essay because the thought of abstaining from them never occurred to me: only homeless parasitic liberals used drugs, and I lived in South Carolina where I rarely encountered this breed. (To be fair, DARE has addressed my most serious concern of prescription drug use that I address below, and I have nothing against D.A.R.E., only wish to criticize its approach).
What strikes me about the program is how the officers and teachers attempting to divert us from a life of drug abuse: just say no. Nancy Reagan pioneered the “Just Say No” campaign in the 1980′s, becoming perhaps the most influential first ladies of her time. Not only is this approach slightly rude (Just Say NO THANK YOU), its notion that feeding horror stories to children about drug abuse will deter them from experimenting with drugs is deeply flawed. For more information on “Just Say No,” visit reaganfoundation.org.
Fact: Since 1990 a reported 20.5 million people have used marijuana in an average year.
(http://www.drugscience.org/Archive/bcr4/2Usage.html)
Statistic: 40% of Americans over the age of 12 have tried cannabis sativa (marijuana).
(http://www.soberlifeinc.net/js/modalbox/content/g.htm)
Now, this statistic is mighty misleading because cannabis, of course, might be considered a milder drug than many people actually consume, but it gives a good idea to how effective the “Just Say No” philosophy is. If a majority of American school children went through this D.A.R.E. program and still experimented with one of the drugs that were advised against, what other drugs might they try? Despite cannabis being relatively harmless, its use often help guide users into use and abuse of harder, more dangerous drugs.
What I would like to propose is certainly not an obliteration of drug awareness education but rather a more realistic approach to educating our kids about drugs. In many middle schools, groaning school children sit through Sex Ed classes, where the philosophy has shifted from “Abstinence-Only” education to “Protection” education. Teachers and administrators realize the reality of teenage sexuality, that many teens will not abstain from sex and without the proper knowledge, could end up impregnating each other and transferring potentially life-threatening STD’s.
Naturally, I am aware that sexual education also is lax, that despite efforts information is not always transmitted in the most effective means. What proponents of sexual education have done right, however, is take into account that a portion (even if not a majority) of teenagers will experiment sexually with more than one partner and without the know-how to protect themselves, they could end up in serious trouble. We need to admit to ourselves that American youths do indeed indulge in drugs and if we want to save them, we have to be honest with them. We have to educate them.
(http://ssdp.org/resources/facts-and-statistics/)
This approach has worked more effectively with alcohol education. The College of Charleston where I attend requires each student to complete an Alcohol Edu course online before attending for the semester because they have grown aware that students break the law, that students will drink alcohol whether the law permits them to or not. Many students approach drugs with the same mindset, but during the Alcohol Education class, the only drug mentioned was marijuana and only briefly. (It made some comment about knowing what ingredients are in the brownies you eat on campus).
There grows a serious problem here, one that we prefer to ignore. The more we delude ourselves that kids will not experiment with dangerous drugs, the larger chance we take. We’re metaphorically throwing two hormonal teenagers together in a room without a condom and telling them to “not do anything bad.”
We must equip the next generation with the knowledge they need if they do experiment with drugs because to not do so is the marginalize a great portion of the younger society, to basically say that while we care about helping prevent alcohol poisoning, we have no intention of preventing drug overdose.
A brief anecdote if you will permit:
I attended a party one night and had left my bag in my friend’s bedroom. When I entered the bedroom to retrieve the bag, I found a girl laying on the bed transfixed on the television.
“Are you okay?”
She nodded very slowly, and I approached her, asking again, “Are you okay?”
“Just a little high.”
“On what?”
She didn’t say anything, just shrugged, then pointed to her IPhone on which remained residue on a crushed-up white substance (it turned out to be molly, a drug growing in popularity among the alternative scene: pure MDMA, though it is often cut with things that are not MDMA including heroin, speed, or methamphetamine. To find out more about this drug, go here.)
“How much of that did you take?”
Another shrug.
“How much? Are you okay?” She certainly did not look alright and if then I had been informed as I am now I might have sought medical attention, but she exhibited no signs of overdose. Rather, someone had helped administer the drug, then left her alone while she experiencing a mood-altering drug for the first time.
“It’s okay. The guy who sold it to me said it was basically harmless. I wouldn’t overdose.”
Fin.
Let’s talk about some of the immensely major problems we encounter in this story. A young girl trying a drug for the first time did not know what drug she had tried, had not inquired what the drug might have been cut with, and she was unsure how much of the “basically harmless” drug she had snorted.
Here’s a good rule to keep in mind: you can’t trust what a dealer says. Even if he’s your friend, your uncle, or your pediatrician (we’ll get to prescription drugs as well), you should educate yourself on the drugs you’re taking. You and you alone are responsible for using a drug sensibly, if you choose to use a drug. After all, if McDonald’s isn’t willing to tell you what’s in your chicken nuggets, what makes you certain that someone you don’t know that well will be honest about what your ecstasy is cut with?
Because of the lack of drug education, many people don’t know what a lot of drugs even look like. They do not know what various drugs might DO to
them when snorted, injected, smoked, parachuted, huffed, or eaten. My personal theory is that many people experiment with various drugs to “experience what they feel like,” but if people knew more clearly their full effects and also the dangers posed by various drugs, they could avoid seriously harming themselves through experimentation.
While there is no single great resource completely backed by scientific research yet, there are still resources to educate yourself about drugs. Even if you do not personally experiment with drugs, you should be aware of the effects of drugs and what to do in the case of an overdose. It is also important to know what different drugs might do when taken together (an especially lethal idea, mind you).
My most-trusted resource is erowid.org, a website devoted to proliferating this knowledge to the general public. For each drug that exists is a page listing statistics, researched effects, and chemical properties. Be able to identify whether your friend or acquaintance might be experiencing an overdose or even a “bad trip” from psychoactive drugs.
Just as important as it is to know how to prevent these events is the knowledge to deal with them if they happen. Remember that everyone has a different body weight and build, meaning that different amounts of a particular drug will affect individuals differently. If more credible sources existed as to how one should take drugs safely and what to look for, we could avoid much of the grief surrounding drug addiction and overdose.
Another good resource is dancesafe.org. Dance Safe is an organization devoted to helping people take safer drugs. On their website, you can buy drug-testing kits with which one can delineate the contents of the pills one might be taking. For more information about what drugs might be cut with and how, visit their website.
I learned about this organization and much of this information through a school group SSDP (Students for Sensible Drug Policy) which each week helps educate students about safe drug use, the war on drugs, and progressive legislation in drug policy. We do not condone or condemn drug use, only hope that through spreading knowledge about how to use drugs safely, we can decrease the rate of overdose among our generation and generations to come. Our organization is also committed to end the War on Drugs, a subject about which I will elaborate on in future posts.
Fact: More American are arrested for marijuana each year than for all violent crimes combined.
(Students for Sensible Drug Policy)
There’s one more important piece of the puzzle that must addressed: legal pharmaceuticals.
When we do teach youth about drugs, we focus on drinking underage and the abuse of illegal drugs. In fifth grade, I often rolled my eyes when officers told us of scare stories of people addicted to meth or heroin. Today, naturally, I believe meth and heroin addiction are very serious, but at least this is viewed as a problem by the American population. What often escapes our notice is the widespread addiction to narcotics.
Another Fact: The most commonly abused drug among high school seniors are prescription and over-the-counter drugs.
(http://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/topics-in-brief/prescription-drug-abuse)
Narcotics, opiates, and amphetamines all share addictive qualities, but because we receive prescriptions for them from doctors, we assume they are inherently safer to take than drugs that are illegal. Several pain-killers (such as Oxycodone and hydrocodone) prove to be as addictive as morphine, and because these drugs are seen as “legitimate,” patients tend to abuse them.
What’s just one more pill, right? You’ve just undergone surgery, so you begin taking more and more pills, building up a resistance to their effects. You take more. You try to stop taking them, but you feel so terrible without them (this is you going through withdrawal), so you renew your prescriptions. Doctor says to take two a day, but only two pills never works, so you take three, four, five. Your new prescription runs out, and you can’t renew it, so you start buying painkillers from a fifteen-year-old down the street. You’re just dealing with pain, with stress, right? You’re not actually addicted.
This is why pharmaceuticals become so widely abused. Because of the intense stigma on illegal “uppers,” many students snort Adderal recreationally. They pop a Vivance before a night of essay-writing as “a study enhancement.” Just take one more for the final exam, and then you’ll never do them again. But addiction sneaks up on you like that, dropping the trapdoor from under your feet before you get the chance to realize you’re standing on top of it.
In our drug awareness classes, we should address these problems. We cannot tell them “Do not do drugs or you will die.” They might try marijuana, then wonder, “What else did they lie about? How safe are drugs?” We need to educate youth on specific drugs, how to use them sensibly, what their effects are, and what drugs are potentially lethal, even pharmaceuticals. Too often as well, we find a kid who might be “too jumpy,” and we begin feeding him pills he could potentially abuse or even sell to his friends for them to abuse. And that sort of madness, that zombie mentality of “saying no” to certain illegal drugs, “saying of course” to legal pharmaceuticals, and never seeking information about the drugs we’re consuming– that leads to the overwhelming rates of overdose we experience.
While D.A.R.E. has addressed this and does at least offer some counsel about drug abuse, these resources should be more widely available and apparent to both youth and their caregivers.
I will conclude with a plea: begin treating drug abuse with the same amount of realism we apply to alcoholism. It can happen; it can happen to you; your friends might be addicted; your grandma might be addicted. If you’re a student at the College of Charleston or any other university, I encourage you to take the first step to help reforming drug safety education by perhaps visiting your local chapter of SSDP.
At CofC, we are currently petitioning to change the Good Samaritan Policy to apply not just to victims experiencing alcohol poisoning but drug overdose as well. To differentiate over who is important to save and who is not is a cruel determination forced upon us by the stigmas surrounding drug use that do not apply as evenly to alcohol consumption. The Good Samaritan Policy allows students on campus to call Public Safety for help if a friend is experiencing alcohol-related sickness, and neither the victim or Samaritan will face criminal charges; a member of SSDP is pioneering the change to this policy to include overdose victims as well.
For more information concerning the Good Samaritan Policy, refer to {http://studentaffairs.cofc.edu/policies/amnesty-policy.php} or contact me to sign the petition. For information, find me via Facebook or on campus. The SSDP meets at 6:30 on Wednesday on the second floor of Stern.
For more information on drug use and experience, check out erowid.org.
For more information about preventing drug abuse in raves, visit dancesafe.org.
Please consider my points carefully as we move forward in a world where drug chemistry is ever-changing; what one drug might do or might be made of can change within a week. Delineations of drugs crop up often, and we must stay ever vigilant and knowledgeable of what is out there to avoid future generations from experiencing the same overdose rates as we have.
Other Sources:
Thrift Shop Culture: An Investigative Look
Derek Berry here, with the cultural news of the day.
Thrift Shops have taken over the clothing industry, with the popularity of Goodwill and Salvation Army on the rise. Brand-name stores, however, have not been amiss at the rise thrift shopping. Victoria’s Secret has opened its own thrift shop in its Miami location, and thousands have flocked to pay the same prices for less organization.
Teens and cougar moms waited outside the store for hours to snag the deals. Victoria’s Secret has introduced many new lines of clothing including “Thong with an awkward hole in it,” “Ironically Ugly Sweater Lingerie,” and “Bras that don’t quite fit right.” The Sweater Lingerie sold out within minutes, though no one bothered with the thongs which were shoved under the sweater lingerie in a metal-wire-mesh bin positioned directly in front of the entrance.
Other clothiers have adopted the trend by eschewing mannequins or even dressing them in mismatched outfits, drawing Salvador Dali moustaches onto their faces. American Eagle has considered changing its mascot to the Dodo Bird. President Michael Ennis comments, “Well, the Eagle is a stylish, mainstream bird that we didn’t want to be connected with any longer. Dodo’s? They’re extinct. There’s nothing as retro as being extinct.”
Abercrombie & Fitch clothing lines have attempted previous reboots, but apparently no one knows the difference between a moose and an elk.
Clothing stores have not been the only businesses affected by the
influx of thrift-shop-madness. Video stores have begun replacing their DVD and Blu-ray collections with VHS versions of various Tyler Perry films. Furniture renters such as La-Z Boy and Rooms-To-Go have opted to sell slightly broken tables and couches, lamps without any bulbs, and several variations of Praying Hands statuettes.
This is Derek Berry, with your cultural news report of the day. We will keep you updated on the culture as it changes, but for now go to your nearest Goodwill, buy shoes that are too tight, and keep “poppin’ tags.”
Must You Experience Something To Write About It?
J.K. Rowling never attended a school for wizards and witches, or at least that is the common theory. Surely, if wizards did exist, might they be outraged that a simple Muggle speaks for their struggles, their experience? What is an experience, or rather “the experience” of any certain group? Maybe Rowling need not fear backlash from wand-wielding cloak-wearers, but what about writers who write outside of their experience?
Not every crime writer started out as a detective or cop or anything more than a college graduate. Beyond the need for clearly explaining the real world aspects of jobs writers may not have, they may approach a lifestyle they have never approached. Generally, when I pick up a book by Toni Morrison or Maya Angelou, I can expect their depictions of growing up black and female in America to be accurate. Of course, those experiences do not encompass everyone’s experience, but they make a good representative example.
But what about when I write about being a black female in America? Could my words be taken just as solidly as theirs? After all, it would merely be a representative experience, right? The problem arises that I don’t know what it’s like to be black or female, and although I could research “what it’s like” and read endless books, I may never really know. That’s okay: I’ll write about it anyways.
Because no one can put their feet in everyone’s shoes. We can do only what we can, right? If I only wrote about bookish middle-class white males from Aiken, South Carolina, I might as well write a memoir. All that Write What You Know tripe, it rings true to a certain extent, but it can seriously mangle creativity. And if you never attempt to replace your eyes with the eyes of another, you’ll never learn their perspective.
I thought about this dilemma while outlining a new story about gay homeless teens in New York. I’m not gay, and I’m not homeless. I’ve never even been to New York, but I still think I can write the story. Of course I’ll do research, just like I did research when Is tarted my newest novel about boxing. I did not know anything about boxing culture or rules or even dress, but I learned. You read and read and talk to people who know what it’s like to be whoever you’re writing. Often, I base my stories off of real-life events or ideas or groups, but I don’t pretend to be an expert in any of them.
Surely, Thomas Harris never ate a single human being before penning Silence of the Lambs.
When I began In Lickskillet, one of the characters seemed to be half-black, half-white. There was no reason for it, but that’s how he looked in my mind, and I didn’t shy away from addressing his perspective. Maybe I was wrong, and maybe I assumed many egregious things, but I tried.
There is no gay experience or black experience, only the stereotypical ideas about such experiences. Either there is only one experience (the human experience) that we can all understand, or there are infinite experiences (meaning none of us will ever fully understand one another). My job as a writer is to try to understand, even though I know I can’t.
What do you think? Should authors tackle difficult subjects they’ve never encountered firsthand or act more like journalists?
7 Habits of a Highly Successful Secessionist
A satire
My good fortune found me sitting down with famous Southern writer and political analyst Henry Cotton III, author of 7 Habits of a Highly Successful Secessionist. He is renowned for works such as A Southern Guide to California: Into the Eighth Circle of Hell, The Five People You Will Meet in Georgia, Chicken Soup for the Confederate Soul, Eat, Pray, Secede, and Three Mason Jars of Moonshine: One’s Man’s Mission to Promote American Values in a Liberal Land.
His newest work follows the efforts of anti-Obama protestors calling for the secession of 20 U.S. states. It focuses on how by seceding from the Union and creating a new Constitution based on allowing the minority vote to choose the presidency, these states will display what real democracy looks like.
Derek: Mr. Cotton III, what do you think spurred the recent secession movement?
Cotton: Well, Derek, Texas was basically its own country anyways. So, allowing it to break off and swim somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean seems like the best way to settle our differences. As for the rest of the states, it is our divine right to reject our government when we disagree with it. What do you think the Revolutionary War was about?
Derek: Or the Civil War?
Cotton: No, the War of Northern Aggression was not about rejecting government. We were attacked. Our values were attacked. We protected them.
Derek: I see. What are the chief complaints of the states involved? Why would they want to leave the United States.
Cotton: Well, recent research has brought to light that democracy has not been carried out in this land. For example, when a majority of electoral votes goes to somebody I don’t like, there must be a real glitch in the system, especially if that happens twice. For decades, real Americans have suffered attacks on our freedoms and rights. Just the other day, I went down to the Piggly Wiggly, and what did I see? Two men holding hands, infringing on my rights to be a heterosexual.
Derek: How unfortunate, sir. Well, what other reasons might you have?
Cotton: I know you think I’m just some ignorant hick, but I think that we have every right to secede if we want to.
Derek: No doubt. It’s actually in the Constitution. ““Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,” one portion read, “that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new Government.”
Cotton: That’s right. People say we’re unpatriotic, that we don’t know what we’re talking about, but if we disagree with the federal government, we actually have every right to secede.
Derek: If enough states leave the Union, will they form their own country, do you think, or will they continue on, each state as a separate, sovereign entity?
Cotton: I imagine a new nation with rise, one that our Founding Fathers imagined, one where we can carry guns to church without harassment. And anybody don’t like it, they can move up North to Yankee-land. We have survived long enough in enemy territory, ever since the Usurpation of Lincoln in the 1800’s.
Derek: Well, I thank you for your time, and I hope everyone buys his new book 7 Habits of a Highly Successful Secessionist. It’s a thrilling read about how you too can secede from the union!
Resume For A Job You Don’t Want
Education
2005 B.A. in Art History, Phoenix University
2006 A Week of Yoga Classes
Perfected the “breathing position”
Job Experience
June 2005- August 2005 Entrepreneur
Operated and financed a local-run Lemonade Stand
- Manufactured lemonade
- Sold lemonade
- Hand-painted signs
November 2010-February 2011 Beer Brewer
Operated homemade brewery
- Manufactured Eagle Tears Brew beer, an All-American corporation
- Financed beer brewery from parents’ basement
- Did I mention it’s made of Eagle Tears?
March 2011-Present Couch Model
Volunteers at local Rent-a-Room modeling furniture
- Displays how one might look laying, sitting, sleeping, standing, or dancing on couches
- Acts out daily functions of potential couch users
- Test-runs furniture to insure safety about damage, bullet holes, wine spills, etc.
Related Experience
September 2005-October 2010 Sociological Research
Lived as “homeless” and “impoverished” as well as “unemployed” for sake of personal sociological research
- Life experience
- Educated in the “University of Harde Knocks”
- Can carve weapons from nearly any piece of trash
- Expert scavenger
March 1997 Grew Beard
First person in Freshman class of high school to grow facial hair
Talents
Burps ABC’s
- Once performed for Mrs. Harris’ first grade class during recess
Can Beat Mario World 3 in Less than a Day
- For reference, call Tommy Hulligan. He didn’t think I could do it.
