Heroship

All my life, I’ve wanted to be a hero. 

I’ve wanted to be brave, to do the things that no one else could do. I wanted to be a voice for the timid, strong arms for the weak and weary. I’ve always wanted to blaze through the world like a comet, casting light about like thunder throws around sound. 

I always wanted to think that I’d be the one to hide the Jewish family in my attic– that I’d be on the bus headed south, helping register people to vote. I knew I had it in me. I just thought that I lived in a time where those sorts of skills and offers weren’t in need anymore. 

Tonight, they are. 

I am a geek, so I follow a fake President on twitter. And tonight, he said, “Let there be no mistake: We are fighting the civil rights battle of our time.” 

Now, I know there are battles. There are battles all over the world. And there is so much that my small body and my aching heart want to do. And so often, the world seems like such a large place where the injustices loom like warped shadows and I am small, I am small, I am so small. 

But I am so much bigger than their meanness. And if I am going to be born into this world as white and straight and American and middle class and Judeo-Christian, then by God, I’m going to take that privilege and leverage it so that this playing field gets a little more even. 

I am afraid of this world sometimes. I am afraid of the meanness and the spite and the spit and the sheer pettiness and I’m afraid of other people’s fear and I’m afraid of hurting and being hurt; I’m afraid of the ugliness. 

But I am beautiful. And oh, so is so much. There are hearts in this world that are beating with pulses of light so bold and terrible that they rival the sun. I believe in the beauty and the love in this world. I believe that the goodness will rise to the top. I believe, I believe, I believe that one day, love is all that will matter. That it will win. That it is the higher law. 

I believe that love is stronger than fear. I believe that love is bigger than hate. 

I believe that this is the chance that we have all been waiting for to prove it. 

We are a generation that will rally and cry about the sanctity of YouTube and Tumblr, and yet we allow things like Amendment 1 to be passed. We allow Congress to strip funding from health care for women and children. We are bigger than that, we are stronger than that. Is that to be our legacy? We stirred the pot to save LOLcats and videos of toddlers dancing to Beyonce but we will not move our feet and raise our voices and beat back the darkness so that families can be together, to that women are safe, so that children can learn to read? 

Who are we? What kind of giants will we become?

We are more beautiful than this. We are more powerful than this. 

I want to be a hero. All of us want to be heroes. And here is our chance. In this day, in this hour, in this moment, we can stand up and open our mouths and we can say, “I do not believe in the power of hate and fear. I will not let it control us.” 

I believe in beauty.

I believe in beauty. 

I believe in us. 

Is the political publishable?

A few nights ago, I was participant in the kidlitchat over on Twitter, and the conversation turned to politics and writing and social network.

Some people think that it’s imperative to keep your political and social and perhaps religious views to yourself or a private sphere, and to especially not talk about those things on your Facebook, Twitter, blog, etc. You never know who’s reading it, they say.

Exactly.

I don’t agree with this (see my last post for proof). I don’t believe that because I am a writer, I am half a person, with no views or opinions that might be considered controversial.

Writing itself is both a personal and political act. Writing for publication is a public act– and of course there are responsibilities that come with that. But when I write, I am telling you a story, and I am also invariably infusing myself into every word and every line. And if you can’t tell that I am a feminist, a humanist, someone that believes that every life is worth living and caring for, that greed and classism are repulsive and that war is the ultimate crime against humanity, then you must be reading someone else’s work. That’s not to say that people don’t have their own interpretations of works, but I think it’s fairly obvious. For other authors as well– for any author that writes about class, sex, characters of varying backgrounds and race.

Of course, this sort of self-identifying– as a feminist, as a humanist, as a liberal thinker– means that maybe not everyone will want to read what I write. That’s their prerogative, and frankly, if they did read it, they probably wouldn’t like it. And that’s fine. Really, really.

And I also find something thrilling in politics (probably why I watch CSPAN early Saturday mornings, and my favorite television show EVER is The West Wing). The fight of good versus greed, dueling ideologies, betrayals and machinations and intrigue– it makes for a good story, I think.

Other people see this, too. Some of the most successful and well-known children’s books are about extremely political issues– Harry Potter, Hunger Games, The Giver. Because political doesn’t mean “right versus left” as we see it in the US. These are books that tackle larger issues that affect whole societies– issues of class and socioeconomics, who deserves what and why. Issues that children and YAs explore in their own lives each day– albeit perhaps on a smaller scale than the conflicts that envelope entire societies, as in the books mentioned above.

There is no shame in politics. Opinions are not something that need to be hidden away– but that doesn’t mean that people are going to agree with you, or that you don’t have to deal with the consequences of making those opinions known. But, that’s just my opinion.

Hard things

I know that I live a fortunate and privileged life.

I know that I am white and heterosexual and middle class(ish) and young and attractive. I know I’ve had a good education, a good support system, a thousand and one chances to do things that other girls like me can only dream of.

And I don’t meant to make light of any of my opportunities or the grievous lack in opportunity faced by any other person on this planet when I say: This has been an awful week to care about the things I care about.

Borders has gone bankrupt.

Reading Is Fundamental, along with several other literacy programs, is operating under the threat of 100% of its budget being cut.

Some Congressman from New Jersey (Scott Garrett, 5th district, Republican) has decided that libraries don’t need to be funded anymore, either. (Luckily, the American people know better than him.)

Texas, arguably the biggest library system in the country, is getting its funding cut to tiny pieces. Among other states too numerous to mention.

The saddest part about all of this might be how HARD I had to google to find this information.

I don’t think I need to go into all of why libraries and literacy are important– if you’re reading this, you likely already know a thousand and a half reasons. Like how libraries provide services to the public that are invaluable in such a difficult economic climate, like tech classes, job search help, a place to use the internet (and, as someone who has a very close family member out of work, I can personally vouch for how much of a godsend the library has been for her). Libraries provide classes, story times, community space and events, and books! Books! Books for the free taking!

And there are the less savory reasons. When I worked at a large, urban children’s library, we had kids who would come in after school, or who would get dropped off on the weekend by their parents and they would spend the whole day with us. Was this ideal for us or the children? No. But if they were with us, on our computers or in our stacks, that meant they were safe– they weren’t out roaming the streets and getting into trouble. The library was a haven for them, and I’d have it no other way. If you need help, or answers, or peace, there are two sure places to find it, I think– in a church and in a library (some might even say they’re the same thing).

And I certainly don’t need to talk about literacy. We know why reading is important. So let’s explore how literacy saves us money. Since that’s all that anyone cares about these days.

Low literacy is linked to $73 million in health care costs each year. To quote from a study conducted by Pzifer, “adults with low literacy generally have less health-related knowledge, manifest poorer control of their chronic illnesses, are less likely to receive preventive health services, and are more likely to be hospitalized.”

“Forty-three percent of people with the lowest literacy skills live in poverty; 17 percent receive food stamps, and 70 percent have no job or a part-time job.”

For penal inmates who receive literacy training in prison, the recidivism rate is 16%. For those who do not receive literacy training, the rate is 70%. One statistic cites this as costing tax payers $25,000 a year for an adult offender, and double that for a juvenile.

And here’s a whole fact sheet on how literacy helps to prevent teen pregnancy.

And with that, I’ve made my own perfect segue.

I’m also a woman.

I don’t like to complain about it. It’s actually kind of rad. Some other people don’t think it’s kind of rad, though. Some people seem to hate me and my body for no reason at all, except that my body is not their body, and by trying to exert control over myself, it makes them feel better, more affirmed in their powerful masculinity. And I’m calling bullshit on that.

Some people want to defund Planned Parenthood, and other family planning organizations, to make it harder for women and men and children to stay healthy. Despite the fact that for every $1 spent on family planning now, $4 is saved in future costs.

Some people want  to make it legal to kill anyone who wants to harm a fetus– including an abortion provider, or, in theory, that fetus’s own mother. (Granted, this bill has been “set aside”, but the very idea that someone once thought this was a good idea gives me chills.)

Some people want to make it so that hospitals are allowed to let a woman die, rather than perform a life-saving abortion. To “protect the consciences” of hospital workers. Because it’s less of a bad thing if a woman dies. Women are expendable.

Some people want to change the language of sexual assault laws so that victims of sexual assault crimes (largely women) are no longer called victims, but “accusers,” a word which carries such shameful and negative connotations you might as well change the law to call them liars and be done with it.

Some people even want to go so far as to redefine rape so that the only people who are really raped– really, really raped– are those who are “forcibly raped.” Nevermind that all rape is forcible, whether or not the woman is drunk, drugged, underage, mentally impaired, or unconscious. And despite significant public outrage at this, and the promise to retract the language (as if that makes having had the idea any less repulsive), the language still remains in the bill.

I was going to try to avoid having political discussions here. But I have opinions, and I find it impossible to withhold them, especially when it comes to things that I love so dearly, like books, like children, like women’s rights and health.

And so I’m forced to ask the question: why do people hate what I love?

Is what I love and care for so small? So unimportant?

Or is it because what I love is so vastly important to improving the lives of everyone, and not just a certain subset of old white Congressmen, who would like to think that poor people who have to use the public library and dirty dirty sluts and vagina-havers just don’t deserve the same rights and privileges as them?

Because that’s the message coming across. These two issues combine into a vicious cycle of torn-away rights and poverty.

I won’t stand for it. I hope you won’t either. Please, write, call, contact your Congressperson and Senator.

Where does the love begin?

I’ve admitted already that I don’t know much about writing except that I want to get better at it.

Luckily for me, I do know a lot about the other side of that shiny coin– I do know a lot about reading.

You see, I’ve been doing it since I was three years old. My mother used to write me little stories (“My name is Christina. I have a cat named Rosie.” Plotty, they were not, but they were mine) which I would then read and illustrate (insert horribly misshapen picture of a cat here). In kindergarden, I got to skip nap time and take a book out into the hall and sit with the “Reading Grandmas”, a group of retired volunteers who would let me read aloud into a tape recorder. They said to turn the pages extra loud, and extra close to the microphone, because it would make my mother happy to hear.

And then, for the Christmas between turning 7 and 8, I got a Babysitter’s Club book. Claudia and Crazy Peaches. And my life exploded.

The summer after third grade, I was grounded from reading. Apparently, it was the only punishment that actually had any effect on me. Mother packed up all of my books and sent them to my cousin’s house. I, being inventive and having read about as much in a book, smuggled a few volumes into my room and hid them under my pillow with a flashlight. And then, whenever I was at my cousins’, I would sit in their room and read my own books. “You’re not allowed to do that!” they would say, but I would calmly turn the page and carry on as I liked.

Mother also says she took a book from me once, when I was reading and not listening to her, and she tore it right in half. Apparently I burst into tears, though I have no recollection of this event. I think it must have been so traumatic that I blocked it, suppressed it deep down under layers and layers of memories. (And not to worry, Mother was chastised by her own best friend– an enabler of mine– and she has never committed an act of litocide since.)

I am a reader. I cannot think of a time when letters and words held no sway over me. Mother also says when I was very small, two or so, I would sit on my Father’s lap on Sunday mornings and help him with the word find, and listen to him read the comics. Books have been my family for as long as my parents have been my family, and I’m so very grateful for it.

And I will admit– sometimes, when I really think about this perfect place that appears when reading a book, that plane of the mind that is so wholly consumed with imagination, I get teary. I cry. I cried for Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn just tonight because it is beautiful and it is me and I’ve never seen myself reflected so perfectly in another’s work.

And when I think about children not being able to read, not being encouraged, not having a steady stream of books passed on to them from neighbors and friends and grandmothers and tired, resigned mothers, it breaks my heart. And to think of the ones who think that they don’t like to read! Granted, not everyone is a reader. But I do believe that there is a A Tree Grows in Brooklyn for everyone– that one book that will touch and draw out your soul in a way that no movie or song or game can do.

Why do I want to be a writer?

Why does a person want to be a mother? Because she loves children, she wants to make them for her own.

Why do I want to be a writer? Because I love books, and I want to make them for my own. I want to write the stories that I want to read– stories about strong girls making hard choices, learning, struggling, and getting up again and again and again when the easiest thing would be to stay lying down. I want to create worlds that are full of possibilities, and to show the wonder in our own plots of earth; to enable imagination and to create spaces of unguarded joy and catharsis.

I want to create something worthy of being read, of being invited by a reader to share myself so intimately and yet so universally.

I have lofty goals.

Start over again

Bonjour, my dears.

In the past, I have blogged.

And in the past, I have not been very good at it.

But, in two weeks I turn 25. This, for those of you who are not mathematically inclined, is a quarter of a century. And while I intend to age gracefully, I admit that I am having a bit of an existential crisis at this point in my life.

Because, I’ll admit it: I like my life. I’m pretty awesome. I have a great job, and a fancy grown up apartment, and a cat, and a 401K.

But I feel that a person without goals might as well be dead. And so, for the new year, I’ve created a few non-binding resolutions for myself. Now, granted, it’s mid-February, and not exactly the time of year to be chattering on about resolutions.

But there are other goals, too. I want to finish a first draft of a manuscript this year. I want other people to read it, and tell me what’s awesome and what’s not. But writing, you see, is really hard. And sometimes (like right now), you get to a point and you look at the page, and you think to yourself, “This would be a really good time to start that blog again.”

Ahem.

In all seriousness, though, that is what this blog is going to be mainly for: kicking my own ass.

Because sometimes, you really want to write– but what’s in front of you just isn’t working. You need a break. You need to step away. But you still need to write, you still need to work those muscles and stay in the habit and not fall off any wagons at all, etc.

I don’t propose to know very much about writing. Most of the time, I feel like I’m drowning in imaginary inky seas. But I do know that you need to do it every day. You need to make it a job, so that it really does become a job– you really do become a writer– and then writing isn’t just that thing you sometimes do.

I don’t ever want it to be that, because I really enjoy it. And I do feel that I’m getting better at it all the time. I found an old manuscript excerpt from 2008, and that really did help to ease any fears I might have had about my own stagnancy. Because now is better than then. And when is going to be better than now. And I will keep getting better, and I will learn how to finish things, and then I will be accomplished and happy.

No. No, that’s not the way it works. But I will always continue to challenge myself, and this is the challenge that’s here, now.

So, sweet blog and dear readers, here is what I will say: By the end of 2011, I will have finished the first draft of the tentatively titled IMMUNITY.

There, I said it.

Looking at it, I kind of want to throw up a little bit.

But what is life without high stakes?!