Recently I have been feeling that there are transparent but solid walls in the universe, blocking people from one another. As visible as each of us thinks we are or want to be, no one is noticing us. Am I wrong? I’m of an older generation and technology amazes me and tires me. Are we so overwhelmed with sound bites and word bites and to due bits that everything is a blur and we can’t function in time and space? I know I feel that way sometimes.

As much as I sometimes yearn for a telephone call or a visit or even an e-mail, I have to ask myself who am I calling, visiting, e-mailing? And, when someone calls or visits or e-mails me, do I take the time to appreciate them, absorb them, respond to them—or do I feel they are intrusions? Is there something or someone I am afraid of? Does insecurity have something to do with isolation—the lack of self-esteem? Instead of appreciating space, do I berate myself, do I fear it’s because I’m no good, not a teacher, not a writer, not a friend?

I recently read an interview in the journal pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture, issue #3. Reading this interview, particularly a dialogue between Marta Maria Miranda and Rane Arroyo, I cried. I cried because there are few words or images I have come across that express the loneliness I often feel. Once an interviewer asked me what was something people didn’t know about me. My life is pretty much an open book, but I responded, “they don’t know how lonely I am.”

Marta and Rane articulated for me what I knew, but couldn’t put into words. I am not lonely so much because of lack of relationships (I am lonely despite close relationships), but because of who I am and will always be—some other.

The loneliness of being “other.” Rane wrote to Marta: “I only wish you were my friend when I was younger. One thing we don’t talk about in discussions of race and gender is the profound loneliness we must endure—and, perhaps, conquer.”

Marta wrote, “What a profound sense of connection exists within the acknowledgement of the loneliness that we share as ‘other’ regardless of what group we are in or out of at the moment.”

She also wrote: “Only parts of me get connected, lots of my selves are left behind, lonely. There is an underlying sense of deep depression I feel underneath my outward cockiness and my rage when I stop fighting, arguing, and teaching. I feel very lonely, sometimes hopeless, and most of all deeply hurt.”

I believe writing saves lives—connecting our stories, knowing we aren’t alone-- but who has the time to write? In order to write, do we need to be strong willed, ignore e-mails, phone calls, community events? I believe we do. I also believe, however, that participating in grassroots events and/or attending them is just as important. I know I need community to support me/to remind me my work as a writer/teacher is important—don’t we all? I also know I haven’t written anything for maybe six months—and what was the last event I attended? Juliana’s play at Mixed Blood Theater? No, I think it was Split Rock instructors reading at the Split Rock Soiree the end of July. I know which events I tell myself I’m going to, then don’t. Why didn’t I go to the Peace Island benefit reading? I planned to go, I was looking forward to going.

A recent publication reading (Anya Achtenberg, STORIES OF DEVIL-GIRL and my book, HOW TO WRITE A SUICIDE NOTE serial essays that saved a woman’s life) at Amazon Bookstore reminded me to not look back but forwards. We may send a hundred e-mails announcing our events, and maybe two people show up (or more, as was the case)—but those two might just be the most important two people to enter our life/and you theirs. And, as I was, we might just be blessed with family attending our readings, and finally know our words, our stories are not imagined. Yes, I am really Black, I didn’t make it up. Here’s my cousin whose mother wrote “white” on his birth certificate, then crossed it out and wrote “Negro.” My sister, now, is checking to see what her birth certificate says. Worlds open, family happens, community embraces us—I am able to write again after months of silence.

Nikki Giovanni once said to me not to be so hard on myself. Good advice. Don’t be hard on yourself. I do the best I can. We do the best we can.

I try to let go of the empty spaces, not be sad or hurt or lonely because of them. They are a blessing really, a time I could write. I also try to appreciate and acknowledge the work of others, and therefore the busyness of others, that does contribute to saving my life, as I hope and know my work contributes to the well-being/the survival of others.

We are all busy doing what we need to do-- loving our partners, our families, our children, our grandchildren (isn’t it on this most intimate level that love, and justice, and peace can blossom)—and working to pay the rent, squeezing in time for creativity, squeezing in time for friends. It’s okay to squeeze. We have to pay the rent, we have to eat—too bad necessity takes so much of our time, but it is what it is and better than being homeless and hungry. But don’t we know, don’t we feel the energy, the spirit, the connections of the love that is everywhere—it is everywhere.

I am trying to let love overwhelm whatever isn’t love. I am trying to write and share what love I have. I am trying to embrace your writing, your love. But, we all know there are limits, there are boundaries, there are time outs. It’s okay. It’s okay. I believe we are all striving to do the best we can to save our own lives, and each others. The world is big, so big. As we tell the babies—you are so big, so big. The largeness of it all can be frightening, can be overwhelming. But, we can love one baby, one person at a time—and the world knows and is changed.

Sherry Quan Lee
August 26, 2008 Rough Draft

Anya and I will be reading at the University of Minnesota Bookstore, September 17, 4:00 p.m.

www.SherryQuanLee.com

Recently I have been feeling that there are transparent but solid walls in the universe, blocking people from one another. As visible as each of us thinks we are or want to be, no one is noticing us. Am I wrong? I’m of an older generation and technology amazes me and tires me. Are we so overwhelmed with sound bites and word bites and to due bits that everything is a blur and we can’t function in time and space? I know I feel that way sometimes.

As much as I sometimes yearn for a telephone call or a visit or even an e-mail, I have to ask myself who am I calling, visiting, e-mailing? And, when someone calls or visits or e-mails me, do I take the time to appreciate them, absorb them, respond to them—or do I feel they are intrusions? Is there something or someone I am afraid of? Does insecurity have something to do with isolation—the lack of self-esteem? Instead of appreciating space, do I berate myself, do I fear it’s because I’m no good, not a teacher, not a writer, not a friend?

I recently read an interview in the journal pluck! The Journal of Affrilachian Arts & Culture, issue #3. Reading this interview, particularly a dialogue between Marta Maria Miranda and Rane Arroyo, I cried. I cried because there are few words or images I have come across that express the loneliness I often feel. Once an interviewer asked me what was something people didn’t know about me. My life is pretty much an open book, but I responded, “they don’t know how lonely I am.”

Marta and Rane articulated for me what I knew, but couldn’t put into words. I am not lonely so much because of lack of relationships (I am lonely despite close relationships), but because of who I am and will always be—some other.

The loneliness of being “other.” Rane wrote to Marta: “I only wish you were my friend when I was younger. One thing we don’t talk about in discussions of race and gender is the profound loneliness we must endure—and, perhaps, conquer.”

Marta wrote, “What a profound sense of connection exists within the acknowledgement of the loneliness that we share as ‘other’ regardless of what group we are in or out of at the moment.”

She also wrote: “Only parts of me get connected, lots of my selves are left behind, lonely. There is an underlying sense of deep depression I feel underneath my outward cockiness and my rage when I stop fighting, arguing, and teaching. I feel very lonely, sometimes hopeless, and most of all deeply hurt.”

I believe writing saves lives—connecting our stories, knowing we aren’t alone-- but who has the time to write? In order to write, do we need to be strong willed, ignore e-mails, phone calls, community events? I believe we do. I also believe, however, that participating in grassroots events and/or attending them is just as important. I know I need community to support me/to remind me my work as a writer/teacher is important—don’t we all? I also know I haven’t written anything for maybe six months—and what was the last event I attended? Juliana’s play at Mixed Blood Theater? No, I think it was Split Rock instructors reading at the Split Rock Soiree the end of July. I know which events I tell myself I’m going to, then don’t. Why didn’t I go to the Peace Island benefit reading? I planned to go, I was looking forward to going.

A recent publication reading (Anya Achtenberg, STORIES OF DEVIL-GIRL and my book, HOW TO WRITE A SUICIDE NOTE serial essays that saved a woman’s life) at Amazon Bookstore reminded me to not look back but forwards. We may send a hundred e-mails announcing our events, and maybe two people show up (or more, as was the case)—but those two might just be the most important two people to enter our life/and you theirs. And, as I was, we might just be blessed with family attending our readings, and finally know our words, our stories are not imagined. Yes, I am really Black, I didn’t make it up. Here’s my cousin whose mother wrote “white” on his birth certificate, then crossed it out and wrote “Negro.” My sister, now, is checking to see what her birth certificate says. Worlds open, family happens, community embraces us—I am able to write again after months of silence.

Nikki Giovanni once said to me not to be so hard on myself. Good advice. Don’t be hard on yourself. I do the best I can. We do the best we can.

I try to let go of the empty spaces, not be sad or hurt or lonely because of them. They are a blessing really, a time I could write. I also try to appreciate and acknowledge the work of others, and therefore the busyness of others, that does contribute to saving my life, as I hope and know my work contributes to the well-being/the survival of others.

We are all busy doing what we need to do-- loving our partners, our families, our children, our grandchildren (isn’t it on this most intimate level that love, and justice, and peace can blossom)—and working to pay the rent, squeezing in time for creativity, squeezing in time for friends. It’s okay to squeeze. We have to pay the rent, we have to eat—too bad necessity takes so much of our time, but it is what it is and better than being homeless and hungry. But don’t we know, don’t we feel the energy, the spirit, the connections of the love that is everywhere—it is everywhere.

I am trying to let love overwhelm whatever isn’t love. I am trying to write and share what love I have. I am trying to embrace your writing, your love. But, we all know there are limits, there are boundaries, there are time outs. It’s okay. It’s okay. I believe we are all striving to do the best we can to save our own lives, and each others. The world is big, so big. As we tell the babies—you are so big, so big. The largeness of it all can be frightening, can be overwhelming. But, we can love one baby, one person at a time—and the world knows and is changed.

Sherry Quan Lee
August 26, 2008 Rough Draft

Anya and I will be reading at the University of Minnesota Bookstore, September 17, 4:00 p.m.

www.SherryQuanLee.com

Friday, August 22, 2008, 7:00 pm, at Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, 4755 Chicago Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55407. (612) 821-9630 or http://www.amazonfembks.com/ �?Founded in 1970, Amazon Bookstore Cooperative, Inc. is the oldest independent feminist bookstore in North America.�?

Check out Sherry's and Anya's Web pages:

http://www.sherryquanlee.com
http://anyaachtenberg.com/

Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts
6666 East River Road, Fridley
TEN MINUTES FROM DOWNTOWN MINNEAPOLIS
Directions:
From I694 take the East River Road exit. Head north on East River Road (from the West, this is a right turn; from the East, a left turn). Go through 4 stop lights. After the fourth light, prepare to take the first left turn; you will see a small brown sign for Banfill-Locke on the right side of East River Road, and a left-hand turn lane will put you right into the parking lot. The center is an old white farmhouse with a sign in front; enter off the parking lot in the back.
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Recently a writer told me she has about 300 hits a day on her blog site. Amazing. I am sure it helps to write more frequently than the once every two or three months I manage to write something. And, I’m sure it helps to be a little less self-conscious about one’s writing—it’s about communication, not about how good you write, isn’t it? (How much bad criticism has kept us from good writing?)

Last fall I taught a workshop for women of color focusing on how writing saves lives—our own, and others, based on the book I’ve been writing for the last six years, How to Write a Suicide Note: serial essays that saved a woman’s life. This blog site was part of the workshop, a way for the writers to get their stories beyond the page, to share them, and to have the opportunity to hear other women of color stories from across the country, maybe even the world.

How does one measure success? Although we reached a few women writers outside of our class, even we as a class sometimes failed to participate. But, we believe in what we started, and though we may be slow in gaining momentum, we haven’t quit. For me, sometimes life gets in the way, and that is more important than the writing. In other words, for me, I write to live so when I’m alive and living, life takes precedence!

Of course, sometimes I can do both, like now because I’m writing on my lunch hour and writing is a pleasant activity between bites of my sandwich and tortilla chips. Of course, my mind is wandering and my writing is unfocused, but I know I have something to say that I will eventually get around to saying.

Serendipity! I’ve always loved that word. Microsoft Word thesaurus also suggests: chance, fate, destiny, karma, providence, luck, fortune, coincidence, accident, and kismet. But, I believe there is more to serendipity than serendipity. I think one must plan for it. Be aware. Be ready. Know that destiny relies on hard work.

I have written a book. It started out prose, but I couldn’t write prose. It became poetry. The class I taught was multi-genre. Currently I am teaching a workshop on bookmaking. In-between I queried a publisher and received a book contract. Serendipity, yes. But, also hard work.

The hard work is about surviving. About working on relationships, as well as working on the writing. Here is a quote from the intro of the book:

It has taken me six years to complete How to Write a Suicide Note: serial essays that saved a woman’s life. It is memoir, a writer’s guide, and a guide to living.

It has taken me six years to write because I don’t follow any how-to- write rules, I follow my heart, my head, and my gut; I follow my emotional and intellectual needs. I don’t write every day, nor do I want to. I want to live.

Saved me and continues to lead me toward love. How to Write a Suicide Note is about writing through and beyond historical trauma and my everyday remembrances of it. It is about discovering where trauma originates, why it has subjugated me, and how I am letting it go. It is about acknowledgement of the trauma, about anger, about grieving, about saying goodbye--about endings, and, most importantly, about beginnings.

I discovered, after I sent the proposal to teach a class on producing a chap book, and/or a poetry manuscript, that there were few resources on how to do it.

What does the map of your life look like? Are there stop signs, detours, back roads, freeways, and tunnels? Do you travel one particular road over and over again? Are you writing that one story over and over again? Does your collection of stories need closure? Is closure possible?

In this mentorship, we will explore the healing power of poetry as memoir. Initially, we will examine the stories that navigate your life in order to discover the theme of your memoir. Your theme will be your writing prompt to gather more material. We will discuss poems belonging in your book, but emphasis will be on overall theme, organization, format, and production. This mentorship is for poets (who may sometimes write prose) interested in completing a chapbook or manuscript draft.

I am teaching mostly from my recent soon-to-be-published experience—serendipity? Creating, learning, and teaching almost all at the same time! I did discover Phillip Gerard’s book, Writing a Book that Makes a Difference and have found it helpful, even if it isn’t necessarily about writing poetry. I am also relying on other poets’ experience, local poets who are willing to come to our class and tell us from A to Z how their book entered the world.

I guess what I want to say is, I hope you will gather your notes/your poems and write the book that saved your life. Produce a chap book, or query publisher with a longer manuscript. Find a way to put closure to a part of your life that needs closure, while at the same time sharing your stories with those of us who are in need of hearing them. Loving Healing Press is the publisher of How to Write a Suicide Note. This publisher has never published poetry before. He said my story needed telling and he would do what he could to make it happen. With a name like Loving Healing Press, how could I say no? The publisher is serious about stories that matter. Also, on the publisher’s Web site there are interviews with writers about writing, including one last fall with Anya Achtenberg whose novella, Devil Girl, will be published by Loving Healing Press this spring. Anya is also the writer who first told the publisher about my book.

Serendipity? Hard work? Luck? Who you know? I think it’s a lot of each.

We, last fall’s women of color writing class, continue to welcome stories from women of color on how writing has saved your life, as well as stories regarding your experience with having your work published, as well as any resource information regarding how to put together a chap book or manuscript. I am enjoying teaching a class on bookmaking and think the act of collecting one’s stories and poems is an act of resistance, an act of saying “I am here, I am here, I am here.�? And, an act of sharing that can make a difference to someone who is listening and needing to hear what you have to say.

I am not going to worry about this blog entry, whether or not my writing is Writing 101 correct. Sometimes it is more important to just write and get it out, than to spend the time revising. Not to say revising is often necessary, worthwhile, rewarding—and, yes, fun!

Sherry Quan Lee

Color Theory for the 21st Century: Beyond the Pure
Readings by Writers of Color

MARCH 13, 2008

Curated by Sun Yung Shin
Every second Thursday

7:00 PM at Patrick’s Cabaret

3010 Minnehaha Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55406

Katie LeoKatie Leo is an adopted Korean writer, actor, and educator. Her work has appeared in 60 Seconds to Shine: Monologues for Men, Talking Stick Vol. 13, Journal of the Asian American Renaissance, and HardKore, a lit mag out of Koreatown, Chicago. She also has work forthcoming in the anthology, Belonging: Words and Images of Home. She is an MFA candidate in writing at the University of Minnesota.

Arlene Jiyoung Kim, a 2nd-generation Korean-American, grew up in the DC area, graduated from Brown University in 1995, and worked in Seattle as an editor for MSNBC before moving to Minneapolis. She is currently in the University of Minnesota's graduate writing program for poetry.

call for applicationsSpring 2008 Writer-to-Writer Mentorships
**Deadline Extended**
Application Deadline: Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Download the Application Form (122KB PDF) Writer-to-Writer is an adult mentorship program that gives advanced writers the opportunity to reach their next level of artistic development. Writer-to-Writer creates intimate relationships between artists; participants meet regularly throughout the semester, with one established writer mentoring four to six advanced writers. Mentors act as artistic catalysts and partners, providing each mentee with artistic feedback and professional guidance. Each Writer-to-Writer session culminates in a public reading and reception in which mentees and mentors read from their bodies of work.

go to: http://www.intermediaarts.org

신 선 �? Sun Yung Shin
http://www.sunyungshin.com/

I wish I had written this when I was still laughing. Humor can help us heal. I would like humor to be part of this blog entry, but I’ve stopped laughing. My recent relationship experience has moved me from humor to disappointment to sadness to confusion to loneliness to denial to writing. I want to write angry so I can have closure and recuperate. Ha!

I think this blog entry is a safe place to be angry. I think it is also a place to feel part of an understanding community, a place to not feel so alone. I hope you will comment on this blog entry if you, too, as a woman of color, find relationships to be troubling, taking too much time and energy from the work we need to do, and never the happily ever after that some of our friends have been lucky enough to enjoy (I want to hear those stories too). What does race and class and age and sexual orientation have to do with our relationship woes?

Have you ever ventured into the online dating phenomena? Were you lonely enough to take a risk? Did you put your profile, your photograph online? Did you, with great expectation, write to and meet the maybe next love of your life? Did someone write to you? Did you know the two of you had little in common, but you felt good that someone actually wrote to you? Were there signs that said run and run fast, but you chose to tell yourself, well, but,s/he is interested in me? Are there signs, clues along the way that we have missed because we have been desirous for too long of someone to love/someone to love us?

Yes, I have women of color friends who have met their current partners online and they are very happy and I am very happy for them (but, did you ever notice how when your friends are happy you don’t see them as often). Are they the exception, rather than the rule? Do the newspapers and magazines ever print articles about the dates from the dark side?

Is my inability to attract and keep a good person in my life the fact that, as online date #1 said, I am a racist, sexist bigot? He a fan of Freud, who, from what I could understand of his philosophizing, basically believed it's women's fault they are raped; and he who enjoyed pornography, but tried to justify it and keep me at bay by saying he only viewed it when he wasn’t in a relationship. I was foolish enough to argue with him for too long before I decided, as always, I don’t want to try to educate them. Foolish, and, yes, ashamed. How long do we linger because either evil is well hidden, or we pretend not to see it. Here, #1 is getting less than a paragraph of my time.

But, was he right? Am I too race, class, and gender conscious? Am I unrelenting, uncompromising? Unwilling to accept racism or sexism for the sake of love? YES. I can compromise a football game, a hike in the woods (as long as I don’t see a worm) —I can give a person some leeway as I expect them to give me the same. But, I can’t ever be with a misogynist, racist, homophobe. Unfortunately, it sometimes takes me awhile to notice what I don’t want to see, or if I do notice, I often spend too much time pretending / hoping I’m not really noticing what I know to be true.

Online date #2 (we met once for lunch): a man of color who reads and writes poetry. He went back to school in his thirties, earned a graduate degree (so did I). My friends were suspicious--which prompted me to ask #2 if he had ever been in prison. Yes, he had shot someone. I only got the truth by asking question after question. He said he never lied to me. Is omission of truth lying? I wanted to be with this man who had elevated himself from what was probably a horrific or at least complicated childhood, as many of us have had, but are we ever able to lose who we once were? His means of controlling his past behaviors seemed also to be his way of trying to control the behaviors of others. Online #2 and #3 were both recovering alcholics. Both were slow to acknowledge it. Is it important? As a woman of color who grew up passing for white, grew up believing marriage to a white man and children were the future I must strive for, can I ever truly be a colorful woman loving only women? Can I ever love anyone or let anyone love me? Am I too judgmental, too unwilling to take a chance? My friend says I close doors too quickly. I think, I don’t close them quick enough.

Girlfriends ask, why aren’t you searching for a relationship with another woman? I searched. Online, in my age category (on a particular day on a particular site) there were three women. All wanted white woman (or maybe it was two out of three)--including the woman who was taking classes in Eastern spirituality. (Not to say there aren’t men online who only want white women and/or who want younger women—or only want women of color!—we all want what we want.)

Someone asked, am I hanging out where the lesbians are? Where are they? I went to the Metro and Lucy’s when they were open, but most of the women were young--I am soon to be sixty years old. I do not deny my bisexuality (though others may think I am not). But, it’s complicated. I go to bars to dance, but not very often. Also, I am a girlie girl and like other girlie girls who do girlie things like shop, and….okay, I’ve written myself into a corner here and I need to write myself out. Apologies. What I’m trying to say is I don’t want to date a woman/or a man who is into kayaking, camping, etc. I’m still in a corner. Identity is complicated. I don’t want to go kayaking, or camping. I’m just saying, I just happened to notice all the men and women online who like the outdoors. I’m just saying, I’m not one of them.

And, yes, I’ve dated people of color; sometimes the trauma we live with/have lived with makes for traumatic relationships. There is much more that needs to be written about this.

Online #3. A hunter. He thought that because I was a feminist I would be against hunting. I’m not, though I’m against guns! Was this an early sign that he was already looking for an escape, that he didn’t want me to take the relationship too seriously?

What I didn’t want was a long distance relationship (been there, done that), but even though #3 traveled, he managed to see me once a week or once every two weeks which worked for me. What I liked about the relationship was it wasn’t one of those heart pounding love at first sight affairs. It was about companionship, about an intimate dialogue of similar and dis-similar interests, and, well, read between the lines.

Three months into the relationship, and I am trying to keep this short, not in real time, I was invited to vacation with #3. I said, yes. We talked for two hours a day planning the vacation, both excited to see each other again. We drove three hours from the airport to our destination being chatty, chatty, chatty. We had a lovely and relaxing three days. On the fourth day, the ex-girlfriend calls. A day after I arrive home, I know the ex-girlfriend is not an ex, but is and has been the girlfriend for the last eight years except for the time #3 was caught cheating on her before with a woman younger than his daughter (and who knows how many times he wasn’t caught cheating).

This story doesn’t deserve too much of our time. However, when I say there were no signs, I mean I didn’t notice any signs. For Christmas he gave me a beautiful silver necklace and earrings. They were ravens. (#1 had also given me a bird necklace.) I am a Chinese Blackbird; I am intriqued by birds. Did I question the description that came with the jewelry-- The raven, the “trickster�? the “Big Man.�? / “His antics were often motivated by greed, and he loved to tease, to cheat, to woo and to trick�??

Ladies, flashbacks keep erupting in my mind. Early on, Mr. Raven said he had only met in person one other woman online, and she was black. Was he seeking woman of color because he thinks we are _________? And what about the fact that I am open and honest about loving women? Is this a turn on for men, not an acceptance. Do women loving women make men angry? Do they want to get back at us by hurting us? Did the fact that I am poor suggest to him that he could buy me? Even though his (ex) girlfriend said, in so many words, that he was needful of a sugar mama; he, when I said I had no money to offer to pay for dinner or a vacation, replied that he was old fashioned and please don’t mention it again, so I didn’t. And what about the interest he had with my poem, “China Doll�?? Was that a sign too? A challenge to him to make me eat my words? Did he ever like me?

China Doll

I am not a China doll. I am not a Geisha slut. I am not. Oriental. Exotic. Eastern. Fantasy. I’m not. I wear my mandarin collar, my frog closures for me. Because I can. Because I am. I wear my silk, my brocade. I am beautiful. Delicate. Okay, some stereotypes were me. Silent. Passive. Accommodating. Were me. Exotic. Were me. Were me.

What am I really trying to say here? I am a bad person? No. I’m trying to say as important as trust is to relationships, sometimes I shouldn’t have been so trusting.

Or, am I really trying to say my identity is too complex and I might as well stop believing anyone can love all of who I am? Should I be happily ever after with someone who likes my appearance, but not my writing? My writing, but not my children? My children, but not my sexuality? My sexuality, but not my sense of humor?

NO.

My sister said that we’ve all cheated, everyone cheats--and at our age we all have herstory/history. She asked me if #3 breaks up with his girlfriend, would I see him again. I hadn’t considered that possibility. But then, I admit, I considered it for a few minutes—he was a nice guy before I knew about all the lies. I believed he truly liked everything about me.

Okay, I am no longer considering it. Women continue to hurt not only themselves, but each other. When will we stop?

I have friends who continue to look for a partner online. Why should we stop looking for someone to love, someone to love us? But, are we too impetuous? Have we lost faith in serendipity (I met someone at a gas station, two weeks later I was getting him out of detox).

Thank goodness I have girlfriends who hug me, who cry with me, who laugh with me, who love me, who understand--well, will we ever understand--who have experienced the complexity of how being a woman of color affects our chances of being in a healthy relationship--of being happy ever after.

Also, Thank goodness, I am a writer--we can all be writers. We can write until we feel safe again, feel confident again, feel we can love again, feel someone can love us.

For now, I must keep writing.

Sherry Quan Lee
1/16/08

Happy new year if I haven't seen you yet in '08!

I wanted to update all of you on my upcoming local Twin Cities poetry readings.

I'll be reading all new work, and all readings are free and open to the public.

Thanks! Cheers,

SY

----
Sunday 1/20 5 p.m. @ Magers & Quinn with other winners of the What Light contest / Mnartists.org / Walker Art Center / McKnight.

Friday 1/25 7 p.m. @ The Loft with Korean American poet Lee Herrick from Fresno, California (with his debut collection This Many Miles From Desire) and local Lao writer Bryan Thao Worra. It's a freakishly unusual all-Asian-Adoptee lineup--all of us with first books in '07!

Thursday 2/14 7 p.m. @ Patrick's Cabaret -- I'm hosting two stellar U of M MFA students / Korean American poets Katie Leo, also a playwright and performer, & Arlene Kim / for the monthly Writers of Color Reading Series through SASE/Intermedia Arts. Co-sponsored by Patrick's Cabaret.

Thursday 2/21 7 p.m. solo for the 14th Annual Fireside Reading Series through the Friends of the Library @ the Hamline Midway Branch Library, 1558 W. Minnehaha Avenue, St. Paul. There will be coffee, cookies and cider, provided by Ginkgo Coffeehouse. Supported by Micawber's Books.

Tuesday 2/26 @ 7 p.m. with Korean American superstar-poet Ed Bok Lee in conjunction with the visit of Korean Studies scholar David McCann from Harvard University. Sponsored by the Consortium for the Study of the Asias at the University of Minnesota.

>½Å ¼± ¿µ Sun Yung Shin
>http://www.sunyungshin.com/

Each will present incredible work from their 2007 debut collections of poetry!

The event is free and there will be food and refreshments, door prizes and a chance to meet the authors:

Lee Herrick was born in Seoul, South Korea and adopted at eleven months. He is the author of This Many Miles from Desire.

His poems have been published in the Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Berkeley Poetry Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Many Mountains Moving, The Bloomsbury Review, MiPOesias, and others, including anthologies such as Seeds from a Silent Tree: Writings by Korean Adoptees. He has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and was a 2000 Los Angeles Poetry Festival Award finalist.

In Skirt Full of Black, Sun Yung Shin employs the techniques of investigative poetry and collage to craft a nuanced, unique language for navigating the politics of gender, ethnicity, and identity. As she spins new myths from Christian and Buddhist traditions and bestows new connotations upon the characters of the Korean alphabet, she gives voice to the spiritual and cultural hunger of those caught between the two.

Bryan Thao Worra's On The Other Side Of The Eye is the first book of Laotian American speculative poetry and is a journey to the hidden edges of the universe and the human soul, examining secret wars and ancient kingdoms, myth, history, science and dreams, drawing on over 17 years of his work that has appeared internationally.

It’s been over a month since I’ve written anything. Everyday I say I am going to write, but I don’t. It is my responsibility to write; I feel I’m not doing my job when I don’t. But the truth is, when I’m not writing I’m living.

Sometimes living means creatively stretching the paycheck. Means eating that last can of soup in the cupboard before going to the grocery store. Going to the grocery store means rent, the electric bill, or the phone bill will accrue late charges, again.

Sometimes living means time and energy spent trying to explain I am not a nobody, a nothing. Means confronting people who trample me because they can, because they are privileged and powerful. Means even if I lose, I win because I am not silent, not passive. I can be who I am even if I can’t change how other people choose to identify me.

However, sometimes living is remarkably enjoyable and I want to inhale every breath of it, not write about it. There are plenty of unashamedly, self-satisfied writers that write happy all the time.

I have a friend who wears a hearing aid. He doesn’t pretend to hear when he doesn’t, but sometimes he hears what he thinks he hears which isn’t always what was said. He was surprised when he heard me say I write “happy.�? I laughed. What I said was, “I write snappy.�? I write what some people don’t want to hear, but I unwittingly write it with small jabs of humor.

I suppose I could write happy, but I’d rather be happy than write happy. To be happy I have to write all that other stuff that women of color are so good at writing—those difficult stories that save our lives!

There are always exceptions to my own rules. This morning I went to the grocery store. The temperature was 15 degrees below zero wind chill; the roads were icy. I was hungry. There was no meat in my freezer (or food in my cupboard). For several days I had been hungry. Last night and this morning I obsessed about wanting to eat steak.

I bought the cheapest steak amongst very expensive steaks. I bought the smallest steak. I bought a nine dollar steak. I also bought pork chops and chicken. I bought broccoli, but passed on the tempting sweet potato fries, and potato chips. I passed on the strawberries and raspberries too (which cost as much as meat)! I purchased my food with money I borrowed to pay bills. I was happy. I am happy. I am writing happy.

It’s the morning before Christmas Eve day. I’ve eaten bacon and toast for breakfast. I am drinking last night’s coffee. And I am dwelling on a question asked of me during one of many early morning holiday phone conversations. A question I felt inadequate to answer, though I knew the answer. How is a woman of color different than a white woman? How am I different than a white woman? What are the issues that separate us?

I remember the chocolate chip frozen cookie dough that I bought at the store—another luxury. I am happy, but decide to interrupt some of my “happy�? space to answer my friend’s question. It was a heartfelt question, not at all disingenuous. He is interested in who I am and is not obnoxious or confrontational.

The question reminded me of a college class I was asked to teach. Students were assigned my book, CHINESE BLACKBIRD, as a text. They were having difficulty understanding intersectionality. How did race, class, and gender impact my stories? I was asked to explain. Although I understood intersectionality on an experiential level, I struggled to articulate the concept in theoretical language. I tried to visualize it by drawing a diagram with my name circled in the middle of the page. Other words came quickly—Mother African American Father Chinese relationships retirement gender church teenager education race death class German work children, etc. I made copies of the diagram and gave one to each student. Then I told them a story beginning with: before I was born

My Chinese father emigrated from China to the west coast of the United States when he was eleven. He sold vegetables from the back of a truck. He also went to school, participated in sports, was artistic, went to community college—then he jumped a train for Chicago and eventually ended up in Minneapolis and met my mother, a black woman who was handing out towels in the bathroom of a popular Chinese restaurant. Father wanted a boy. Girls in Chinese culture were considered worthless—of no monetary value. Father left his four daughters and the son Mother was pregnant with for the red haired woman who was also pregnant. I was five years old and fatherless. Mother became Mother and Father. I had neither the experience of being Chinese nor black. I was Scandinavian; passing for white. I attended the Lutheran church and sang in the choir. In fourth grade my Sunday School teacher asked if we should allow black people to be members of our church. I was confused. The answer was no. My mother had an eighth grade education. But earned a high school and business degree when she was fifty-eight years old, when all of her children had graduated from high school. We were raised on welfare and love. Raised on Government subsidies and my mother’s sewing. We were sheltered. We were disciplined (State Fair yardsticks broke on my behind). There was music and dancing and my oldest sisters’ boyfriends. We were afraid of snakes, and dirty ol’ men. I lived in the same house, the same neighborhood for eighteen years.

I asked the students to draw lines from my name to the other words on the diagram that related to who I am. Hint: there could be more than one line from one word to others. When they finished, there were lines everywhere. My story couldn’t be told without the intersectionality of the many aspects of my identity.

The first wave of white feminists tended to analyze discrimination of women based solely on gender. Women of color feminists recognized multiple and intersecting discriminations. How could white women not recognize class differences? And what about race?

My five year old world changed from a Chinese want to assimilate white father centered environment to a black female headed passing for white environment living on welfare Salvation Army white dolls for Christmas environment knowing how to play Mah Jong but not knowing Chinese beyond colorful tiles and chow mein environment having to use lemon cream to keep my skin light environment having to wear make-up to keep my skin masked environment relatives only can visit at night so no one can see they are black environment can’t go to high school football games because there might be a race riot environment to men in white sheets haunt me and still do today environment.

To better understand intersectionality an internet search provided clarity:

CENTER FOR WOMEN’S GLOBAL LEADERSHIP
http://www.cwgl.rutgers.edu/globalcenter/policy/bkgdbrfintersec.html

The UN and Intersectional Discrimination“

Central to the realization of the human rights of women is an understanding that women do not experience discrimination and other forms of human rights violations solely on the grounds of gender, but for a multiplicity of reasons, including ages, disability, health status, race, ethnicity, caste, class, national origin and sexual orientation. Various bodies and entities within the UN have to a certain extent recognized the intersectionality of discrimination in women's lives. However, the structures of the UN do not necessarily support the implementation of such an understanding. . . .

A definition of intersectional discrimination

An intersectional approach to analyzing the disempowerment of marginalized women attempts to capture the consequences of the interaction between two or more forms of subordination. It addresses the manner in which racism, patriarchy, class oppression and other discriminatory systems create inequalities that structure the relative positions of women, races, ethnicities, classes, and the like. Moreover, intersectionality addresses the way that specific acts and policies operate together to create further disempowerment. For instance, race, ethnicity, gender, or class, are often seen as separate spheres of experience which determine social, economic and political dynamics of oppression. But, in fact, the systems often overlap and cross over each other, creating complex intersections at which two, or three or more of these axis may meet. Indeed, racially subordinated women are often positioned in the space where racism or xenophobia, class and gender meet.�?

What does all this have to do with me?

My mother: hid her black identity to live in a white neighborhood so her children could hopefully live lives isolated from racism; work opportunities were limited by Mother’s eighth grade education, being a black woman, having five young children to raise on her own; etc. Class. Race. Gender.

Me: a mixed race don’t want to pass for white woman writer moving from one relationship, one house, one job to another running from prejudice and discrimination from racism and sexism only to encounter both over and over again earning a graduate college education in midlife earning less money in a lifetime than a white husband without a degree could earn in a year.

Sometimes I am happy. Sometimes I believe love is possible. Sometimes I believe my next lover will love all of me even though I know I am too much to love.

Sometimes I eat steak.

Women of Color: Please click on comments to add your story—how does intersectionality impact your life?

This is not a Dear John Letter. This is a love letter. A love letter to you—or to me—I’m not sure, won’t be sure until the writing is done, until the process has exhausted itself, until the book has been written and on the shelf. The process has not always been the same, will not always be the same. I didn’t understand change until the last sentence presented itself. The future is not found through consistency.

To write is a process, a journey; to live is the same. The process for one poem, one story, one book is never the same. Change is the only truth. Process depends on overall character. Depends on the heart of the book, the blood flowing.

To end a relationship is a process. What worked for the last ending, won’t work for the next one, for this one. Won’t work to end our relationship. Our hearts and blood are thick and thin and tired. The process of who we are goes back several generations. We are connected in ways we will never talk about, not connected in ways we say we are.

Our relationship, like plastic, won’t disintegrate. It is possible to light a match, to set fire, to melt, to liquefy. It is not possible to write the last chapter. It is not possible to disappear. This chapter I am writing is the first, another first chapter, another beginning. There are no endings. We will gain composure, solidify, contaminate.

I need a new process.

I need to mix glass with stone with sweat. I need to break down, to sever, to turn to salt, to slice, to mash, to grind, to speak, to sing, to sway, to leap. I need to set aside stale processes (ustable again, maybe, recycled, maybe), but unworthy of this journey, this cycle, this new beginning. Now, yellow brick roads, poppies, tin men, straw men, and cowardly lions won’t lead me away and towards. I need a new list, a set of rules, funky aphorisms. I need jasmine and eucalyptus. I need solitude, silence. I need jazz.

I need a photo. A self-portrait of the person I want to become; the person I already am. I need a photo of me locked in a frame that breathes, that flows, that fluctuates, yet remains stable. I will throw away splintered frames with cracked glass, fading photos. I can condense, simplify, and adjust to one photo, one me.

You are not in this photo. And, you are not stored in a closet in a cardboard box. You will never be recycled, again.

You should have been there last winter when I grabbed a young man on the street who merely said hello. I was hungry and ate and sipped a glass of red wine.

You should have been here this fall when leaves turned without you, when I traveled to New Orleans and trumpets blared.
This is about lonely; this is about love.

This is about driving to the woods for a fix of your skin, for conversation, for definition. Desperation.

This is about a five-mile radius you live in; I live far away with no amenities except diversity, which is oxygen, not a well with soft water.

This is about painting ceilings, fixing cars, watching movies, riding bikes, and eating Sushi; about things lost.

This is about family and dogs and neighbors; about exclusion.

This is about history, about Scotch, about coffee, about sex, about cigarettes, about the future, about nursing homes.

This is about ministers and priests about fantasies and horrors; what we desire, what we despise; about velvet trousers, about heavily starched shirts.

This is about the sting of what I thought I could never have, the bite of knowing it still doesn’t fit; the ache of pretend.

This is about not being mean. It’s about metaphor. It’s about getting at truth without spitting. It’s about a new way of writing; a new way of living. It’s not about story; it’s about understanding story. It’s about kindness. It’s about love that comes to the surface then descends, then comes to the surface, then descends. It’s about what gets in the way of love. It’s about goodbye. It’s about hello. It’s about the lost art of letter writing. It’s about not knowing how to end, but being ready for the next beginning.

It is not about anger. Not this time.

Sherry Quan Lee, Copyright, Excerpts from How to Write a Suicide Note: Serial Essays that Saved A Woman's Life

It is the white man lovers who haunt me
I go to bed with them, they lie right next to my writing table,
I take their stories into my mouth, let out

Jesus Christ, Oh My God, Jesus, Jesus

incorporate their semen
into my secret
heart

is it the slow release of him that calms me, the easy
natural flow, neither of us in control
of disappearing?

Because it is so easy to do,
do I return again, and again?

or is it because it’s hard? Each thrust

A memory,

A sign,
An acknowledgment.

Is it beautiful, this time? Or just
a needed moment
to remind me?

I awake knowing of a woman.
She is brown,
She is soft.
She loves me.
I keep my legs crossed, not ready
to give birth to her song
which is sad, which is honest.

Is it because I won’t sing with her
that I can’t let her pass?

I am not afraid.
Just haunted by dead birds.
It is not about love though, is it? Nor

is it about chance. There’s a mystery
here, but I can solve it, if not in this poem,
in another.

There is something about the white
the man
that is familiar,
ancestral;
that clings to me like the black bird
in the choke cherry tree.

The woman pushes
forward
unplugging a passage;

water will break
when it’s ready

the flood is coming,
it’s coming,
it’s coming . . . . . . .

Hold on.

©Sherry Quan Lee
April 12, 2003