On Writing and Writing about Writing

I was asked to read ... a text this week. It was flat, bland, uninspiring, safe. The text attempted to reach an audience that doesn't exist, using signs that lead to nowhere. It was safe. It was academic-ish. It would offend no one, nor inspire anyone. I gave some feedback -- safe, uninspired, uninterested because the text is uninteresting. That's the way it is sometimes ... texts passing in the night as uninteresting, unengaging, as the Palace Guards -- form, and some purpose, but largely immaterial to one's real life.

Then I sat with a student today and he shared a paragraph response to the Students' Right to Their Own Language statement, which I have all students read at the beginning of the semester. Actually, only the first 8 pages for the first week, and that discussion keeps us busy for several weeks later. It's a difficult text for first year students, but with only a few days in the course, this student comes up with this in his writing journal:

29/08/2014- ENGL 1301- Reflection on SRTOL Statement

From what i read about this article days ago it really was interesting and made go into a lot of thinking. I asked myself, “why ?” why on gods earth was not this language statement released when it was around our parents and possibly to their parents to be more of how writing should be in their time of education? but from reading the first eight pages of the statement, it made me said “ we can have the reality of what this world should be like, yes we can”. it still bothers me the fact that from what it seems its like the stuff being taught to us on what not to say or what to say in writing i felt enslaved and despite the fact of other people who have their way of communicating from where they came from or what they can endure, i'm not sure if  we really put out our voice. i would enact my rights by all means no matter how much as off topic (but not to an extent) on what i can relate, and say what i want to say cause after all we are given freedom of speech but it seems that it has not been used these past years.      

The energy builds in the second sentence and continues through toward the end, and that energy dissipates too quickly at the end -- it's obvious he's trying to end the journal entry too soon, though he has more to say. Students to often thing they've "written enough" when in fact they have so much more and when prompted, will talk about their own text for another half hour. Indeed, my conversation with the student quickly lead to a discussion of the corruption of corporate Hip Hop, how previous writing instructors had stifled and belittled his voice, his family history and how family dynamics affect one's engagement with institutions like colleges, and more. This single paragraph needs to be expanded to another seven or eight. But for now, it suffices. Note how he immediately links the STROL not only his own education/civic experience, but equally to that of his parents and grandparents. What has happened in his family's experience where writing has been dampened, erased, hidden, washed away, ridiculed, silenced? For a moment, like the hint of glow from the ember of an old fire, the student sees writing as a liberatory experience not only for himself, but for generations before him. I didn't teach him that. He taught himself that.

And it's much more interesting, engaging, real, honest, and palatable than the other writing mentioned. Yes, it has those mechanical errors, and I'm tired of arguing with the old guard about correctness and what English is. But that central image of writing as an enslavement caught me in the gut. The student is African-American, and that allusion is too strong for me to touch right now. I'm still emotionally bruised from #Ferguson and its aftershocks. But he used it. He claims that others' deliberate enforcement  about "what not to say or what to say in writing" is a form of enslavement. I couldn't write that. I don't have the backbone to write something like that. You may say it's hyperbolic, that it's the enthusiasm of youth. But I would counter that if you, as audience, have lost that passion for writing, then neither hyperbole nor "reasonable" writing are going to touch you anyway, so hands off.

If for one hour a student reads a real text -- one that moves the world for him -- and he reacts by writing a single paragraph with sentence boundary problems and some phrases that confuse me and capitalization errors, but comes to a conclusion through the meaning-making effort of writing that language is a tool of control and that now he might have a tool to respond ... that's a text I can read and feel my soul nourished. Give me the sentence boundary problems any day. At least this writing has life in it.

I admit, I get excited by my students' writing, when it's real, honest, revelatory. My colleagues don't share my enthusiasm. They want Percy Shelley reincarnated. To hell with Shelley. Give me an adolescent black man writing about writing as enslavement, and I'll get back to you.


Be strong, and courageous.
Dixi et salvavi animam meam
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