Let the Wrongs Make You Write (Chauna Intro) | The Weekly Atticus (05/18/2019)

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Recently, a former student of mine (I’ll call him Alex) responded to a Famous Writer’s tweet from his own lived perspective: “Feels transphobic.” The Famous Writer’s tweet had mocked a young right-wing commentator, implying that because his voice in an interview didn’t sound as expected, i.e presumably not low and “masculine” enough, “So much about him makes sense. Poor lil fella.” It was the kind of cut that a lot of people would chuckle over before scrolling on. Alex didn’t laugh or move on, and he (predictably, because this is social media after all) became the target of accusations that he was “performing wokeness” and was perhaps self-loathing and transphobic, likely racist, supportive of the right, and simply a “motherfucker.” He was freaked out by the attention and texted me, despairing about his ability to exist safely in public spaces: “I’m wholly unwelcome in all spaces if I’m being authentically me.” When I first had Alex in a college class he identified as a queer woman, relieved for any measure of visibility after life in a rural, homophobic community. I attended his wedding to a proud, out lesbian, and when he sent an RSVP to my own wedding, Alex warned he might look very different. He’d started testosterone, confident in his emerging identity as a trans-man, but wary of the rejection he’d already experienced from family. I share those details here as context for his current crisis of feeling that he has no public space in which to be himself. In Alex’s life he’s been assumed to be all kinds of identities that don’t fit: straight, lesbian, cisgender female, cisgender male, and, now, even transphobic and right-wing. The Famous Writer’s offhand tweet implied that a voice with a higher register is not masculine and/or adult, that it cannot belong to a “real” man. Intended to dismiss an aggressive celebrity conservative whose ideas are oppressive and harmful, the tweet attacked the man's personal traits instead of his ideas, and had the effect of reminding trans-men like Alex that they are often not perceived as real, that they do not therefore exist.I told Alex I was proud of him for asserting the wrongness of this tweet. I too was disappointed that the Famous Writer (also, strangely, a former student of mine) didn’t or wouldn’t recognize her own careless reinforcement of the idea that trans lives don’t count. When Alex admitted that he felt unwelcome even in the public discourse of feminists who recognize (in theory anyway) the intersections of oppression, my advice to Alex was what it’s always been: “You need to write about that.” And I didn’t mean writing on Twitter.Sometimes that advice—write about it—seems too easy, and it probably could be interpreted as dismissive, as in “go scribble about this elsewhere, in your own journal where I don’t have to hear about it.” But I’m still a believer in the power of write about it, whether privately or publicly, and I want more writing in this world that extends beyond a private journal entry or a social media post. Those are short cuts, first thoughts. I want those thoughts extended into richly detailed, sometimes messy essays that help me understand and appreciate the richly detailed, always messy lived experiences of human beings. I’m still the kind of reader who wants to listen and learn and be reminded how language matters, that words, though so often used to hurt or erase, also have the power to value, soothe, change, transcend and transform. When Alex suggested he didn’t belong as his authentic self in any public space, I was reminded of Krys Malcolm Belc’s flash creative nonfiction, “On a Day So Searingly Hot My Mother Goes Swimming, My Father Does Not Invite Me to a Tom Petty Concert.” This essay captures a similar feeling concentrated in a single day in which the writer explores the idea of discomfort, including his own, as he is seen by others in a pool wearing swimming trunks and sports bra, his very existence challenging his father’s ability to make a place for him. This essay won an award in our very first creative nonfiction contest last year and was subsequently reprinted in the Atticus Review Print Annual Volume 2 because of its power to stay with us. The essay insists on the writer’s existence as it is and pulls us briefly into the writer’s own complex waters where we share the awkwardness, the feeling of wrongness, the painful attempts, the enduring bonds of love and the need to be seen. Belc lives authentically in this essay in a public space because he did not adhere to neat public narratives of any life or identity but delved instead into the texture of his own. He brought his readers in to listen and to learn.Feel you’ve somehow been wronged by this world, but it’s too complicated to explain? Write about that. Feel you are somehow inherently wrong? Write about that. And when you feel you’ve got it as right as you can, send it out. Maybe submit it to this year's CNF Contest. We at Atticus Review still believe that your voice matters, both literally and metaphorically.Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here.Chauna CraigNonfiction Editor

ATTICUS NEWS

Impress us with your glorious mess!Send us your best for our 2nd Annual CNF contest...Deadline is July 21st. First prize is $400!Final judge is Ira Sukrungruang.

THIS WEEK AT ATTICUS

All your'n angry diatribes don't belong to us. Let's just readFeral Town by Adam Gustavson...and then go drinking.WINSLOW

BOOK REVIEWA DOORWAY BETWEEN WORLDSA Review of THE DAVIDS INSIDE DAVID by Sarah Wetzel from Terrapin BooksReview by Jane Medved"Like the great artists she admires, Wetzel is continually painting and pretending, observing and imagining, traveling through time and space."READ ON

FICTIONGONE GONE GONEby Dan Crawley @danbillyc"Steve climbed through what used to be the front windshield. Shards of glass scattered out over the mud and melting snow, looking like gleaming chunks of peanut brittle."READ ON

POETRYFOR A FRIEND WHOSE OLDER BROTHER HAS KILLED HIMSELFby Tom Daley"You willforget him in your prayersbut he will ripen into your dreams,gently defiant, remorselessas a nightshirt about to be stashedin the cabinet under the sink"READ ON

NONFICTIONLEAN ON MEby Whitney ChenThe latest in our series Superunknown: Stories About Songs"For the first time in a long time, I felt a deep loneliness. Back at home, I had a web of people, threads strengthened through years and years of loyalty and devotion. Here, I started anew. Friendships slipped through my fingers, washed away by an inability to align schedules."READ ON

FILM REVIEWGOING OUT ON A HIGH NOTEAllyson Larcom, with a farewell to Broad City and the search for a new female friendship comedy."The other thing about Broad City that made it so special is that shows like it that focus solely on deep, loving friendships between two women are still, unfortunately, few and far between."READ ON

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