Are You Listening? (Chauna Intro) (06/13/2020)

Are You Listening? | The Weekly Atticus

June 13, 2020

A recap of the week's writing at Atticus Review. Submit to our Flash CNF Contest. Introduction by Chauna Craig.

I overheard my 18-year-old stepdaughter on FaceTime tell my husband, “This year we just don’t know what’s going to happen next.” Words expressed in fear and frustration as the two of them discussed whether she would come to his family’s reunion. The logical, literal part of my brain wanted to point out that there is never a year (or even a moment) when we can actually claim to know what will happen next, but I knew better. All my reading and writing life has taught me that words stand in only imperfectly for everything that hasn’t yet found adequate expression. 

I shut up, I listened.

When I did, I heard my stepdaughter not actually trying to anticipate what would happen next, but struggling to express her shock and grief at all that had already happened, was still happening.  She is a young woman of color whose first year out on her own at college ended abruptly with her stuck in quarantine with her younger siblings in a small apartment in Chicago. People she knows have contracted COVID-19. People she knows have rallied at Union Park and joined the March for Justice while she followed on social media. She didn’t want to talk about updating the traditional family scavenger hunt with face masks; she only asked, “Why are we even doing a reunion this year when people everywhere are dying?” It was not a literal question, and the lack of an answer hung heavy in the air.

The next night, my son, who starts high school this fall, was lounging on the couch reading Angie Thomas’s

On the Come Up

. I asked if one of his teachers had assigned it, and he raised his eyebrows at me, paused, then said firmly, “No. I picked it out myself.” Had I just assumed my teen son, who is white and prefers YouTube to books, would only read about Black lives if he had to do it for school? I had. And when he started to tell me that he’d first read

The Hate U Give

(how did I not notice that?) and how the George Floyd murder and ensuing protests reminded him of that, I heard myself interrupt to tell him my recollections of Rodney King and the LA riots.

I heard

myself

. I shut up, I listened. 

And when I did, I heard a young man jolted into a new awareness of racism, someone who doesn’t need assignments or instructions from the adults in his life to expand that awareness and try to understand what other people experience and why it matters. He knows the power of books. He chooses to read them. If he has any questions, he’ll probably text his stepsister and not an adult with so many answers to give that she can’t hear what he’s really asking.

Part of growing in confidence as a writer is learning that you have something to say.

Write what you know

, we keep advising beginning writers. But part of growing in wisdom as a person is learning that sometimes it’s more about what you need to hear. Your writing challenge this week (if you want one) is this: write three questions to which you have no answers. Let those questions hang heavy all around you. Then listen.

Thanks for reading. We’re glad you’re here.

Chauna Craig

Creative Nonfiction Editor

ATTICUS NEWS

Have you sent us your CNF, yet?Deadline July 26th. Only $10 to enter.First Prize: $350; 2nd: $100; 3rd: $50.All pieces considered for publication.Judge: Nick FlynnSUBMITCheck out Nick's latest memoir HERE.

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