Thick in The Words

My Creative Nonfiction teacher, Ms. Tamara Jeffries, one of the most brilliant teachers and people I know, has these sayings that she likes to use, and most of them I forget, but one stuck with me. She told us that she wants our writing to be "thick on the page". We need to FEEL our writing. It needs to be beyond surface level analysis.

Sounds easy, huh?

I know, I know...I'm being sarcastic.

But her advice is what I strive for in all my writing, whether I knew it or not. I want my writing to jump out at you on the page. I attempted that as I prepared to write my first memoir ever. I don't believe it turned out so well, and a part of the problem is that I tried too hard. Yes your writing should always be intentional, but I slapped on so many things about myself that it turned into a healing piece for me. I forgot about the reader. I tried to be thick but ended up being thin. So instead of going to the store and buying everything I see to make my refrigerator full, I'm going to essentially buy the things that will make me healthier, so I can live a richer life. So that my story will have a purpose, existence, instead of doing nothing but being my prayer to God. Who wants to read that?

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For Writers Who Have Considered Rewriting When Gender is Enuf

http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2010/09/for_colored_girls_trailer.html

http://clutchmagonline.com/newsgossipinfo/tyler-perrys-for-colored-girls-gets-november-release/

For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow is Enuf

I was 16, maybe 17, when I was first introduced to this choreoplay by Ntozake Shange. When the rainbow is enuf...how powerful those words were to a 16-year-old girl struggling to find acceptance within herself can't even be described. One of the resident writers that I was fortunate enough to have as a teacher in one of my classes at Young Chicago Authors first introduced me to the book, and later gave it to me as a present. I was touched. I was moved by it. The way that the play is written is just simply amazing.

So when I heard that a movie was going to be made from an adaptation of the book, of course I was excited. When I heard that the director was Tyler Perry, my happiness decreased. Not because of his past work...that is a whole different blog post. I was upset because yet again, a man was chosen over a woman to direct a movie that is about women. Whether it was done deliberately or not, this has happened more times than it should.

THen that made me think--is it wrong for Perry to direct this story just because he is a man? Would a woman be more qualified to direct it solely based on her gender alone? Although For Colored Girls isn't a creative nonfiction piece, the same decisions about whose story is it to tell, and WHO should tell it still remain across mediums.

The story will of course be different since Perry is a man.

Or will it be? Gender isn't a degree in a sense that it doesn't reward one a higher level of intelligence. I don't think that it is in my place to come to the conclusion that Perry's version of the story would be different and, I'll admit, inferior to Shange's simply because he's a man. I think that their own personal experiences will determine how the story is interpreted, but Perry may relate to Shange's characters better than she can if he has experienced it firsthand and she didn't--he'll not only understand it, he'll feel it.

Storytelling is an art form, one that I think anyone can possess. Great storytelling does take time to develop, and I am very interested to see the result of Perry's development.

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That Old Thing Back

An interview that I have yet to see wasn't what caught my attention. I, like many other people in my generation and the one before me, treat The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill as a Bible of some sorts put to beat sung by an angelic voice- that which belongs to Lauryn Hill. Although that album was released in 1998 (12 years ago) and Hill has yet to have an album to reach its success, her name still starts a flurry of conversation, partially because of the privacy that she has set aside for herself.

The music journalist Toure' recently did an interview with her for Fuse Tv,and although I have not seen the interview, I first heard about it via Twitter. Hiill's words weren't what caught my attention, as I stated earlier. It was what was said by someone else that really got me.

In my Creative Nonfiction class on Tuesday, we discussed why people may hide things or not share them when writing. As writers, do we even have the right to do that (pun intended)? You have a responsibility, I believe, to tell your story, to share things about yourself (we were discussing our upcoming memoirs that we have to write as our first major assignment, so this is why I feel that leaving out things is not right).

The comments that really made me stop and think were said by Vernon Mitchell, Jr. (@negrointellect), a doctoral candidate in history at Cornell University. He wrote:

"I think we want "that old thing back" so bad that no matter what she did, it likely wouldn't measure up. I could be wrong...maybe I am. We won't ever "hear" Lauryn Hill again, until we let go of what she did in the past..."

I'm not the only one who worships The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, her debut album. Hill is held to a very high standard in hip-hop, neo-soul, R&B, etc. In fact, her album was listed by Rolling Stone as one of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Songs like "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill", where she sang,

"My world it moves so fast today, the past it seems so far away & life squeezes so tight that I can't breathe...And every time I try to be, what someone else thought of me, so caught up I wasn't able to achieve..."

really helped me grow into a confident person. But that's beside the point. Mitchell's tweets are one of the reasons, I assume, that Hill retreated behind the spotlight, why she shied away from people like me, who live by her lyrics- we expect too much from her. When we relinquish the Lauryn from 12 years ago, we can get to know the Lauryn from today.

So in this situation, is her hiding parts of her story acceptable? When I say hiding her story, I'm referring to releasing new music. If and when she does decide to release new music, does she even have to be as personal as she once was? When you are in a different place in your life, do you have to write the same as you did previously? Do you owe that to your audience?

I guess that in Hill's case, she should just take her own advice. Make up her own mind to define her own destiny.

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Becoming Butterfly

As I am writing this blog post, a butterfly lands quietly on the window of my car. At first I didn't notice it, but it became harder to ignore as it flapped its wings ever so gracefully, oblivious to the fact that I am watching it. I became excited because I absolutely love butterflies and what they represent. I love how they are originally caterpillars and then transform into butterflies. My favorite saying is "Just when the ccaterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly."

In my Creative Nonfiction class, we have been assigned the task of writing different forms of creative nonfiction--memoirs, essays and more. In "Keeping it Real", Lee Gutkind, the godfather of creative nonfiction, writes about the different ways to make creative nonfiction beautiful. You can use facts, the backdoor approach, reserch--whatever necessary to tell the truth, to tell a story.

This butterfly landing on my car has a story, and as a writer of creative nonfiction, I have the assignment and responsibility of telling stories like it. I know that the butterfly cannot literally speak to me, but in other ways, it is indeed telling me a story, creating its own memoir in these moments that it shared the same space with me. And it is my job to listen, to take heed to it, to write, to observe, to feel. I get it now. Creative nonfiction isn't a made-up story genre for journalists who are tired of the inverted pyramid. Its for writers who find something that they are interested in, learn it, essentially become it, and tell the story of it.

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