Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni and Matthew Shepherd
Today, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni came to the University of Minnesota, Morris, the small, public liberal arts college where I teach creative writing and first-year writing and coordinate the service-learning program. I had the opportunity to meet with her and two of my students for an hour to talk about writing and, later, to hear her give a public reading and lecture.
I love Divakaruni's novel _Queen of Dreams_. Admittedly, it is the only one of her 14 books that I have read (though after her reading tonight, I will certainly be reading more). It is a beautifully written book that resonates with the topic of this blog--writing, spirituality, and social justice.
When reading Divakaruni's novel, it is clear that she is as much a poet as she is fiction writer. Her sentences are lyrical and heavy with vivid imagery. I use the word "heavy" intentionally, because when reading _Queen of Dreams_, I felt I was part of a world that was dangerous and oppressive, full of secrets and weariness and responsibility.
The book is about a topic close to my heart, and one which many of my students have asked me about in the private conversations I described in my first post yesterday: how to live out multiple identities with integrity, and how to do the work which one is meant to do in the world. In this novel, Rakhi, the main character, struggles with what it means to be a mother, an ex-wife, a daughter, and, in the end, an Indian-American woman in a post-911 world. She struggles with her mother's gift of dream-telling, a dream she did not inherit, and her own gift of making paintings. What these gifts mean, and what responsibilities the gifted hold, are key themes in the novel.
The novel at first seems to revolve around the intimate world of Rakhi's family, her struggle to understand her Indian heritage through the memories of parents who will not talk about their past. But the landscape of the novel unfolds (as all our private lives, at one time or another, unfold) until it seems to hold an entire history of migration, of violence against women, of post-911 violence against anyone suspect of not being a "real" American. Ultimately, Rakhi discovers the redemption available to her in the music of her heritage--and in those old melodies come to life in modern sounds.
The night after I had finished the novel, I found myself thinking, strangely, about the night Matthew Shepherd died. At the time, I was living in Tempe, Arizona, and I attended an impromtu memorial service on the mall at Arizona State University. I remember weeping and weeping, kneeling beside a professor of mine who was wracked with grief for this young man neither of us knew. I remember how scared I was after the service as I walked back to my apartment. I had never before (perhaps stupidly) been afraid of the dark. In fact, as a child, I had somewhat cherished the silence and privacy of the nighttime, the chance to lie alone in bed and think and think and think and then to fall into a dream that was full of color and light and, sometimes, meaning. I rarely had nightmares when I was child. That same love of nighttime stayed with me into my adulthood.
But I digress. That night, as I was walking, I thought about how sad it was that there had been no one at the memorial service who represented my other identity, my Greek-American identity. Since coming out, I'd lost my connection to that community of richness and color and light, of incense and song and dance, of language full of idioms so musical and personal I sometimes weep now when I hear them spoken out loud. People representing other faiths, other ethnic groups, had been there to show solidarity--ministers and civil rights activists and immigrants and people of color and...
And then I saw him, a large, Greek man wearing the cloak and tall, black hat of a Greek Orthodox priest. I knew right away that he had been there, standing somewhere in the crowd, but had not spoken. Why not? Who was he? (Later, I would learn he had been asked to leave the priesthood because he was gay, but on that night, he was simply a Greek priest I didn't recognize, someone who had been compelled to come to the service but not strong enough to speak for the people he represented, my people, the very people who no longer affirmed me because I was a lesbian).
I longed to talk to him, to say something in the language I was sure we shared as our first language, our heart-language, but I was afraid. I would have to demand to know why he had come dressed in his priestly robes but hadn't been strong enough to speak. I would have to out myself to one of a handful of priests in the area--and I wasn't ready just yet to get turned away officially from the churches here. I was still an interloper, going some Sundays to take communion, to smell the incense, to sing the songs, to pray.
Then, just as our paths shifted away from each other, I heard the man humming the Greek mourning song. Roughly translated, it goes like this: "May your memory live forever, my beloved brother, where there is no pain, no suffering, but life everlasting." It is a song of both anguish and survival, a song pure and sweet and frantic in the rise and fall of its simple melody. And upon hearing it, every grief of my life came to the surface, and I began to weep again, this time from a deeper place, a place that held no anger, no guilt, no fear--just pure, immeasurable grief. But then something else happened, too: every rupture in my life seemed to heal, to bleed and bleed into our mourning song until there was no blood left, to give itself up for this blond, skinny boy whom so many in my cultural community would likely say did not deserve to be remembered.
I went home and wrote a poem in memory of Matthew Shepherd. For months I revised and revised and revised it until I was ready for others to see it, and ready, at the same time, to out myself to anyone who might read the poem.
I wanted to do more, but what could I do? When that moment of transcendence faded, the fear came back. Even now, I cannot walk alone at night without being haunted by terror. I felt guilt, too, for how little I could do, for how safe I was, for how much I had. I wanted to go back into the closet, to use the darkness as a place to hide instead of a place to rest.
And so I did the only thing I could do: I wrote the poem, and I sent it out. It turned out to become my first published poem. Since then, I have published several other poems that I consider to be brave poems. I have tried to do as much as I can as an advocate and support person for young GLBT people who are coming out or struggling with hate or loss or loneliness, but nothing ever feels like it is enough.
But what is enough? Perhaps at times it is enough to pay attention to the synchronicity we find around us, to recognize each gift. A book, like _Queen of Dreams_, that helps us to think more deeply about the questions we are living. A visiting writer who says what we need to hear to keep on writing. (Chitra said so many wise things today, including a reminder that one purpose of good literature is to learn to see the world from multiple perspectives, to alleviate prejudice and hate). The memory of an old, Greek man humming the ancient mourning song that connected my identities, losses, and fears so clearly and deeply and concisely that I can feel them and hold them in my heart without feeling I am being pulled apart.
I love Divakaruni's novel _Queen of Dreams_. Admittedly, it is the only one of her 14 books that I have read (though after her reading tonight, I will certainly be reading more). It is a beautifully written book that resonates with the topic of this blog--writing, spirituality, and social justice.
When reading Divakaruni's novel, it is clear that she is as much a poet as she is fiction writer. Her sentences are lyrical and heavy with vivid imagery. I use the word "heavy" intentionally, because when reading _Queen of Dreams_, I felt I was part of a world that was dangerous and oppressive, full of secrets and weariness and responsibility.
The book is about a topic close to my heart, and one which many of my students have asked me about in the private conversations I described in my first post yesterday: how to live out multiple identities with integrity, and how to do the work which one is meant to do in the world. In this novel, Rakhi, the main character, struggles with what it means to be a mother, an ex-wife, a daughter, and, in the end, an Indian-American woman in a post-911 world. She struggles with her mother's gift of dream-telling, a dream she did not inherit, and her own gift of making paintings. What these gifts mean, and what responsibilities the gifted hold, are key themes in the novel.
The novel at first seems to revolve around the intimate world of Rakhi's family, her struggle to understand her Indian heritage through the memories of parents who will not talk about their past. But the landscape of the novel unfolds (as all our private lives, at one time or another, unfold) until it seems to hold an entire history of migration, of violence against women, of post-911 violence against anyone suspect of not being a "real" American. Ultimately, Rakhi discovers the redemption available to her in the music of her heritage--and in those old melodies come to life in modern sounds.
The night after I had finished the novel, I found myself thinking, strangely, about the night Matthew Shepherd died. At the time, I was living in Tempe, Arizona, and I attended an impromtu memorial service on the mall at Arizona State University. I remember weeping and weeping, kneeling beside a professor of mine who was wracked with grief for this young man neither of us knew. I remember how scared I was after the service as I walked back to my apartment. I had never before (perhaps stupidly) been afraid of the dark. In fact, as a child, I had somewhat cherished the silence and privacy of the nighttime, the chance to lie alone in bed and think and think and think and then to fall into a dream that was full of color and light and, sometimes, meaning. I rarely had nightmares when I was child. That same love of nighttime stayed with me into my adulthood.
But I digress. That night, as I was walking, I thought about how sad it was that there had been no one at the memorial service who represented my other identity, my Greek-American identity. Since coming out, I'd lost my connection to that community of richness and color and light, of incense and song and dance, of language full of idioms so musical and personal I sometimes weep now when I hear them spoken out loud. People representing other faiths, other ethnic groups, had been there to show solidarity--ministers and civil rights activists and immigrants and people of color and...
And then I saw him, a large, Greek man wearing the cloak and tall, black hat of a Greek Orthodox priest. I knew right away that he had been there, standing somewhere in the crowd, but had not spoken. Why not? Who was he? (Later, I would learn he had been asked to leave the priesthood because he was gay, but on that night, he was simply a Greek priest I didn't recognize, someone who had been compelled to come to the service but not strong enough to speak for the people he represented, my people, the very people who no longer affirmed me because I was a lesbian).
I longed to talk to him, to say something in the language I was sure we shared as our first language, our heart-language, but I was afraid. I would have to demand to know why he had come dressed in his priestly robes but hadn't been strong enough to speak. I would have to out myself to one of a handful of priests in the area--and I wasn't ready just yet to get turned away officially from the churches here. I was still an interloper, going some Sundays to take communion, to smell the incense, to sing the songs, to pray.
Then, just as our paths shifted away from each other, I heard the man humming the Greek mourning song. Roughly translated, it goes like this: "May your memory live forever, my beloved brother, where there is no pain, no suffering, but life everlasting." It is a song of both anguish and survival, a song pure and sweet and frantic in the rise and fall of its simple melody. And upon hearing it, every grief of my life came to the surface, and I began to weep again, this time from a deeper place, a place that held no anger, no guilt, no fear--just pure, immeasurable grief. But then something else happened, too: every rupture in my life seemed to heal, to bleed and bleed into our mourning song until there was no blood left, to give itself up for this blond, skinny boy whom so many in my cultural community would likely say did not deserve to be remembered.
I went home and wrote a poem in memory of Matthew Shepherd. For months I revised and revised and revised it until I was ready for others to see it, and ready, at the same time, to out myself to anyone who might read the poem.
I wanted to do more, but what could I do? When that moment of transcendence faded, the fear came back. Even now, I cannot walk alone at night without being haunted by terror. I felt guilt, too, for how little I could do, for how safe I was, for how much I had. I wanted to go back into the closet, to use the darkness as a place to hide instead of a place to rest.
And so I did the only thing I could do: I wrote the poem, and I sent it out. It turned out to become my first published poem. Since then, I have published several other poems that I consider to be brave poems. I have tried to do as much as I can as an advocate and support person for young GLBT people who are coming out or struggling with hate or loss or loneliness, but nothing ever feels like it is enough.
But what is enough? Perhaps at times it is enough to pay attention to the synchronicity we find around us, to recognize each gift. A book, like _Queen of Dreams_, that helps us to think more deeply about the questions we are living. A visiting writer who says what we need to hear to keep on writing. (Chitra said so many wise things today, including a reminder that one purpose of good literature is to learn to see the world from multiple perspectives, to alleviate prejudice and hate). The memory of an old, Greek man humming the ancient mourning song that connected my identities, losses, and fears so clearly and deeply and concisely that I can feel them and hold them in my heart without feeling I am being pulled apart.
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