Community Voices
February | March by Selena Ching (from the APAture 2017 exhibition)
We’ve extended open invitations to some of our community members to contribute to our blog. Today, IWL fellow, Jenny Qi, writes about grief and finding community as a part of this year’s Interdisciplinary Writers Lab.
“Don’t worry about taking space”
by Jenny Qi, PhD (IWL 2020 Fellow)
It was much easier to write before I dared to call myself a writer. I came to writing in my late teens and early twenties through grief, so my initial writing was more compulsion than practice. After my mother died, words were simply the strongest thread keeping me attached to a world in which I now had nothing, and the rest of my life yawned empty before me like a blank page.
I didn’t think of writing as taking up space. I didn’t think about what I was doing at all until suddenly, after a few years and publications, I became self-conscious about my grief and the overexposure of my personal life. I’m still not sure what happened. Maybe it was an older writer’s casual observation that I shouldn’t write about myself until I’ve had a career worth writing about. Maybe it was my Tumblr post going viral in a bad way. Maybe it was my dad’s snide remarks or a comment about dead mom poems or floundering in my post-academic life. Maybe it was the election and everything that came after. Whatever it was, I found myself doubting everything I said and did for a few years leading up to IWL. Even as I kept writing and applying for fellowships such as this one, a small persistent voice in my head said the personal is unprofessional, told me not to be so embarrassingly vulnerable, asked why I deserve to have a voice. I felt so much shame, I was even ashamed of my shame.
As the pandemic escalated this year, I became emotionally paralyzed. The onslaught of ever-worsening news seemed so much more important than anything I could feel or write, so at first, I didn’t do either. I retreated within my apartment, revisited childhood hobbies and collected all the houseplants left behind by acquaintances fleeing the Bay Area. I stayed inside and watered my succulents, my Chinese evergreen, my newly acquired bird of paradise.
Between the nearly 200,000 U.S. deaths from COVID-19, near-daily deaths at the hands of police, and wildfire smoke choking West Coast skies, there’s so much to grieve these days, it boggles the mind. I was pretty lucky, so who was I to say anything? But who was I to stay silent?
The piling griefs and anxieties of this year have made it difficult for many people to create; for me, they manifested (in addition to compulsive doomscrolling and getting into plants) in a sense of unworthiness and renewed social anxiety. Many times during IWL, I had to steel myself to speak up, in a way I have not done since I was a child, and my anxiety was worsened by the impersonal nature of Zoom. But whenever someone shared their work in class, the others typed out lines they enjoyed in the chat and gave thoughtful feedback. If anyone betrayed signs of insecurity, the rest of the class cheered them on. Our instructors were accessible and kind and made writing feel fun again. Over the course of the fellowship, we have gotten to know each other as best as we can over Zoom, and the warmth and care of this community has proven to be such a light in the darkness of this year.
At the beginning of our last class, it was my turn to get feedback on my essay, and I worried that it was unfinished and maybe too long and might take up too much time. As I fretted and then silently worried that my fretting was also self-indulgent, one of the fellows HoneyB said in the chat, “Don’t worry about taking space. You put the work in, and we can’t wait to hear.” I was so touched I wanted to cry.
Although IWL has officially ended, this year’s cohort has continued to gather virtually, and I’m feeling rejuvenated and grateful for the expansiveness and kind attention of these like-minded peers, particularly during this harrowing time. I’m also resolving to keep speaking up, even if I’m still afraid. The day of the apocalyptic orange skies throughout the Bay Area, we had an informal Zoom writing/check-in session. Not surprisingly, we got no writing done this time; instead, we talked about the weather, the origins of our names, our houseplants. In the middle of the pandemic, on a disconcertingly dark day, it was unexpectedly lovely to make small talk with new friends.
It was just before IWL began that someone gave me my most impressive houseplant, the bird of paradise. I kept it in the living room in medium indirect light, because it looked nice there and was easier for me to water, and it did just fine. Last week, I moved it into the bedroom, right next to the sunniest window in the apartment, and within a few days, a new leaf that had been wrapped tightly around the stalk for months unfurled in all its lush green glory. In the midst of all the gloom, I’ve been thinking about this all week, in awe of what just a little more light can do.