There are times, and this one is as big as that abyss that opened up in 2016, that I have no words. Or more probably, I’m afraid to speak because if I did, the rage would just never stop coming.
I’m grateful that when I can’t find the words to express my own overpowering emotion, there’s always an author, or poet, or musician, who can.
Listing the precise things about this atrocity that Margaret Atwood nailed in her classic The Handmaid’s Tale would mean posting the entire book.
But this was the scene that came instantly and vividly into my mind:
By the time Luke came home I was sitting at the kitchen table. My daughter was drawing with felt pens at her own little table, where her paintings were taped up next to the refrigerator. Luke knelt beside me and put his arms around me.
I heard, he said, on the car radio, driving home. Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s temporary.
Did they say why? I said.
He didn’t answer that. We’ll get through it, he said, hugging me.
You don’t know what it’s like. I feel like someone cut off my feet. I wasn’t crying. Also, I couldn’t put my arms around him.
He was still kneeling on the floor. You know I’ll always take care of you.
I thought, already he’s starting to patronize me. Then I thought, already you’re starting to get paranoid.
I know, I said. I love you…
Then I remembered something I’d seen that afternoon and hadn’t noticed at the time.
The army. It wasn’t the army. It was some other army.
From Chapter 28, The Handmaid’s Tale, by Margaret Atwood
At times like these—and after decades and decades of at least gradual progress toward a more equitable society, it is frightening how many times like these there are—I don’t reach for comfort reads, or binge on mindless television. I need the rage of great artists. I want the cold, precise portrayal of the evil it takes for a zealot minority, including two credibly accused sexual predators, to eliminate the bled-for, died-for rights of a majority of the population, with those of numerous other populations next on the chopping block.
I’ll be watching movies like Spotlight, to vicariously experience the true-life work of dedicated writers against a monolithic patriarchal evil.
I’ll read Atwood’s The Testaments, and start from the beginning and re-read my way throughToni Morrison.
For historical context and analysis I am grateful for the almost daily missives from the awesome Heather Cox Richardson, whose phenomenal Letters from an American you can subscribe to here on Substack:
And to counter the privileged ignorance of those carrying signs smirking “I am the post-Roe generation” I will read and reread Amanda Gorman, and rewatch and rewatch this:
Today I’m taking the day to post resources and action suggestions on my Facebook page.
And tomorrow I’m going back to my book, in which I continue my F--- you to anyone who says writers shouldn’t write about politics. The only people I’ve ever heard that from is people who pretend they’re not being political when they tell me I can’t be.
All writing is political.
Rage. Rest. And then write your heart out.
Alex
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Alexandra -
What a beautiful and salient response to this current crisis. As a white male raised by a single mother and two very progressive-minded older sisters in the 1960s, I grew up quite cognizant of the plight of women in our society.
At 66 years of age, it is no shock to me that our society has devolved while the antediluvian predatory European White Male syndrome that has dominated the world for thousands of years continues to proverbially enslave any human being that does not share their gender, race, or religious beliefs.
Rage is the appropriate response. No more sitting on the sidelines with all the hand-wringing and hopes that somehow things will change for the better. They haven't and never will until responses disquiet the world these powerful men and their minions occupy with an obscene impunity.
Mahatma Gandhi wrote the template for channeling that rage and bringing powerful white men to their knees by adopting the wisdom imparted by Henry David Thoreau in his iconic essay, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience. Gandhi's own observation regarding the struggle against oppression is instructive:
"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it–always."
I have been working on a new novel that I’ve been stuck on (the writing part) but whose characters and story are in my conscious mind on a daily basis. It started occurring to me that maybe this would be best written in screenplay form, as a limited series, and I’ve just started writing a pilot episode and finding that it’s flowing pretty well. I haven’t written a series, though I have a detailed outline of one for another novel (actually a trilogy of novels) that I created with your writing book in my hands. I feel like that trilogy as an ongoing series has some potential, and I think this one might also be best on the screen vs novel. I’ve been doing a lot of writing of flash pieces, mostly creative nonfiction, and publishing them, and have a creative nonfiction chapbook out on submission at 4 presses right now. Have thought of signing on for one of your writing room workshops as I definitely find that having a structure and accountability to a class or group is super helpful. I was in an ongoing writing group that focused on flash and experimental forms from the first month of Covid until last month, and they’ve finally taken a hiatus, so I’m floating a bit and need to find something to dig in on, especially with all that is going on right now politically.