#nice essay

[schoolhater]

Our Autofiction Fixation (Published 2021)

Why do we assume that a work of literary fiction must be based on its author’s life?

There is something backhanded about using authors’ personal statements as a Captcha tool for verifying the emotional resonance of their work. This tendency reached a nadir with the conversation around Kate Elizabeth Russell’s “My Dark Vanessa,” in which the author, facing unfounded allegations of plagiarism, felt compelled to restate publicly that she, like her protagonist, was a survivor of sexual abuse. An author working in good faith can’t win at this game. If she is forced to confirm that her material is autobiographical, then she risks forfeiting both the privacy and the power of transfiguration that fiction promises. If she denies it, then she surrenders a badge of authenticity that she may never have wished to claim in the first place, and lays herself open to accusations that she is appropriating the pain of others.

[walkermargaret]

I held the misconception that a queer relationship—one that, in theory, eschews gendered, heteronormative power dynamics—would be inherently radical. I thought that it would have more compassionate roots, that racial dynamics would be more thoughtfully negotiated, because, again in theory, we have a shared struggle. We understand internalized shame and erasure. What I’ve found is that people are just people. Even queer, trans, non-binary, pansexual, polyamorous, well-read, uniquely gifted, allegedly radical politic’d people can be real shits. Queerness is not necessarily synonymous with radical non-oppressive ethics that translate to generosity and care for the people in one’s community. Perhaps, those qualities have more to do with being a decent person and less with identity politics.

Francesca Ekwuyasi, “Soft Jaw”

[walkermargaret]

Perhaps in living alone, she like me, experiences self-voyeurism, self-narration, self-spectatorship more sharply than ever before. Doing domestic things like the dishes or dumb young things like ordering takeout while perhaps still drunk the next morning. Both versions of me, since living alone, have settled into a one woman show that I star in and attend, that I produce and buy a ticket, but sometimes fail to show up to, because as it happens, living alone has only further indulged the woman — me — who cancels a plan to stay in and excitedly ad-lib doing nothing at all.

Durga Chew-Bose, “Since Living Alone”

[walkermargaret]

When the Orlando Pulse shooting happened, I broke into pieces. Then, I saw Alton Sterling shot, and the pieces turned into dust. That is a unique magic trick that I only know from being a Black queer person. The universal skill that I see in the Black queer community and other people who exist at intersections is the ability to find joy in survival. Observers call it strength and resilience, but it is a part of our DNA and conditioning. Our other skill is the ability to find delight in our transgressions. Even after we are made aware that reactions to our subversiveness can be brutal, can lead to our arrest, our deportation, our death, we continue to delight in not giving into the mainstream culture. This method of coping with trauma operates like clockwork, too. We move forward, moment by moment. Despite the heinous state of the world, we are going to live.

Myles Johnson, “A Clockwork Trauma”

[fromward]

It’s going to be a New Year soon. You don’t have to learn German.

The Plath Resolution, Carrie Frye, 2014