Novels

"Certain artists of our time, casting a serious look upon what surrounds them, devote themselves to painting wretchedness, the abjectness of poverty, Lazarus's dung-heap. This may belong to the domain of art and philosophy; but when they paint poverty so hideous and degraded, sometimes so vicious and criminal, do they attain their end, and is the effect wholesome, as they would have it."
(George Sand, The Author to the Reader (I.), The Hunted Pool, translated by Frank Hunter Potter)

The question of content dogs the ethical writer aware that words have power and stories shape reality. There are ethics in storytelling, seasons that define when each story can be told, and societies responsible for certain knowledge. Everything is not everyone's domain.

I was raised with this knowledge: it is a shield I walk behind. I was also raised under the influence (colonialism, alcoholism, mental illness and domestic violence). When I encountered the work of radical women of color feminists I felt like I was given breath and in that breath, life. Audre's writings in Sister Outsider and Dorothy's work in Skin pushed me to confront, publicly, what I was ashamed of, in myself and in my family. I've come to understand that life is not an either or, but a balance between each point on the line that defines what seems extreme to some and normal to others.

"When it comes to wars you can never tell who is going to lose their life."
(José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon)

Welch's Fools Crow, Beckett's Molloy, Gertrude's Three Lives each speak eloquently to and about poverty, both hideous and degraded, but their purpose is neither vicious or criminal. Their end is not to exploit. They do not raise themselves above the world of their work. They take their place within and set a place for you to join them.

During the siege of Leningrad 750,000 people starved in 900 days. When Anna Reid began her archival project many of the younger generation had a sterile notion of the siege and felt it represented the strength of the people and their survival. They were aware of what they had been told: people came together and made it through, alive, mostly. We should honor their fortitude and forget the rest. The survivors themselves knew more. The siege was a "cold, cruel, time when people lost their personalities, relationships broke down, people broke down, [and] turned into beasts."

"There was nobody who escaped death completely."

"Your world becomes smaller and smaller: the apartment, water source and food shop."

These survivors wanted Reid to comprehend and reveal the scope of the damage and the nastiness of that moment. They wanted her to tell their story so that we could not forget it.

"What determined whether someone lived and died?"

After the siege the survivors knew: " A great work had ended, impossible deeds had been done. We all felt that. . . But we also felt confusion. How should we live now?" (N.B.: the images in this link are formidable and dreadful.)

This question informs my work inside and outside of the archives, among the stories I am a part of, and the stories my stories are related to. Sometimes our worlds feel small: the apartment, water source and food. And sometimes we must remember to step outside of what we know and what we are afraid is true and write.

"Except that it still has not been established whether it is the novel that prevents the man from forgetting himself or the impossibility of forgetfulness that makes him write novels."
(José Saramago, The History of the Siege of Lisbon)