This year, we asked the writers published in these pages to reflect on their own process, and their responses reveal more about the act of writing—what it feels like to think on the page, to struggle with sentences, to scavenge for new insights—than I could possibly render, so let me start by deferring to their voices.
Madisen Fong offers the analogy that writing her essay was like “trying to figure out the schematics of a labyrinth by walking around inside of it before being handed a map.” A similar image is presented by Alana Markel: “And so the essay became more like a sand castle, one that I had to keep destroying and reshaping until I finally walked away from it, and let nature do its thing.” Other not-so-flattering descriptors were used to characterize the course work: “disorienting,” “intimidating,” “difficult,” “frustrating.” And yet this frustration, this surrendering to doubt, seemed to be generative rather than debilitating.
Another, almost paradoxical, pattern emerges in these reflections. Jacqueline LeKachman observes: “Writing about the coronavirus . . . was empowering as it proved to me that, although the virus is unpredictable, I have the power to choose how I respond to it.” In the same way that unpredictability gives rise to feelings of empowerment for LeKachman, Fathia Kamal illustrates how the stress of “subject[ing] fifteen other people at the unholy hour of 9 a.m. to eleven pages of a rambling essay so they could throw every one of their critiques at [her] in real time” resulted in a boost of “confidence.”
Here we see an important, and often forgotten, dynamic between doubt and direction, between feeling lost and finding something new. Perhaps Markel says it best: “I reached a new understanding of what it means to have freedom in writing, to give myself the permission to not know, or more so to know and then change my mind.” And so maybe writing is as much about not knowing as it is knowing, about self-interrogation as it is self-proclamation, about listening to others before setting sail on the often hot air of one’s own presumptions.
And now we arrive at a third pattern that comes not only from the writers’ reflections, but also their essays. Two of the essays in this collection have the words “listen” and “hear” in their titles, and several more highlight the importance of acknowledging, hearing, and listening. Whether it be exposing the racist history behind Trump’s politicized labeling of “the Chinese Virus” or sorting through the caustic noise of social media’s “cancel culture,” or struggling to see the humanness in those who treat you as less than human, we find in this collection, again and again, a plea to stop talking, stop arguing, stop assuming and to begin to listen. As Liberty Guillamon reflects: “. . . the most valuable and meaningful part of this process was the realisation that debate and discussion is meaningless if we do not allow ourselves to properly consider the opinions of others, if we make snap judgements based on limited sources.” Or, as Caitlin Mulvhill points out: “. . . it was important for me to not insert myself into a conversation so that my own voice did not overshadow those who need to be heard.”
One final way Mercer Street underscores the value of listening to those voices that often go unheard is in its line up of authors. Not only are all the writers in this collection women, but almost half are international and a majority are women of color. In turn, we find an array of styles and genres, from the research essay, to the op-ed, to creative personal inquiries—each urging us, in its own way, to disentangle our opinions and judgements from the systemic biases that shape them.
We often conceptualize writing as an act of talking. We see this perhaps most clearly in the terms we use to introduce quotes: he states, they say, she argues. But I would encourage you to imagine writing as an act of listening—to those who disagree with you, to those voices who are often the least loud or have the smallest platform, and, most importantly, to your own voice—or rather, that voice behind your public voice, the one that is still curious, still doubtful, and eager to know and see more.
As my own way of modeling engaging with new voices, I think it’s important for me to not end this note on my own. So let me leave you with Olympia Spivey’s thoughts on writing her deeply personal essay about facing death and loss during the coronavirus: “This piece is my wrestling with why it was that I needed to write, and why it is that we always must carry on writing, listening, and creating dialogue with one another. I think that now, more than ever, it is crucial that marginalized young voices continue to speak back to the society that has harmed and forsaken them so deeply, and I believe that there is wholeness, justice, and healing to be built there.”
Jono Mischkot
Editor of Mercer Street
Director of Writing in the Disciplines