Becoming Human: A White Person’s Reckoning with Race

Book Review: Debbie Irving’s Waking Up White and Finding Myself in a Story of Race


As a life-long lover of books, it feels particularly special to stumble across a book that profoundly shifts my world view, my approach to life, or my thoughts in a new direction. Waking Up White was one such book.

As a woman from a lower-middle class family situated in the beautiful, rolling hills of North Carolina, I’ve struggled with the stereotypes I grew up with, having relationships with people of color—including a best friendship with a woman of color in college, and through a job in which I faced data and stories that clearly showed racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Before reckoning with my own race and history, I experienced the sting—the Zap Factor—of conversations with this best friend, who praised Malcom X (someone I had learned was a terrorist) and tried to explain how she was watched in stores (I wondered what she must have been doing wrong). As I read through the chapters, I found myself breathing a sigh of relief and feeling encouraged that there is a way out of racial tension. By understanding ourselves a little more fully, we can find harmony with others who are different from us; and in embracing those differences, we will co-create a future that is more successful, beautiful, and rich for all of us.

In her book Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race, self-described WASP Debby Irving recounts her liberating, yet heart-wrenching coming to terms with racism: “Racism’s ultimate grip on me came not just from my conditioning to ignore it but from the inverse story that I was told about it.”

In this memoir-like account, Irving walks readers through the process of her transformation from a white person with no racial identity to having a profound sense of her history, privilege, and role in supporting anti-racism. Rather than lecture readers on what she has learned, Irving takes us deep into her journey. Her step-by-step account allows readers to reflect on their own journeys and invites them to embark on their own personal transformations. While some readers may be offended by her criticism of white culture, Irving’s commentary provides a contrast to her long-standing perception of white culture always being “right.” She offers no critical analysis of other racial or ethnic groups. The focus is inward, self-critical, and at times, uncomfortable.

In telling her story, Irving describes key themes or revelations that are common to the white experience. Each chapter provides an insight that builds on the next. She explains the failure of “color-blindness” and how she perpetuated racism by being unaware of the benefits brought by her skin color, and writes about “Robin Hood syndrome,” defined as “‘dysfunctional rescuing,’ helping people in ways that actually disempower them.” Her numerous examples of this syndrome may help altruistic white people recognize where this may come into play in their own civic engagement or volunteerism.

Irving introduces an idea she calls the Zap Factor––the sting of discomfort and embarrassment that occurs when white people experience misunderstandings or recognize their own ignorance during cross-racial conversations. By labeling these experiences and providing concrete examples from her own life, Irving enables readers, particularly white readers, to finally understand why their interactions with people of color may be uncomfortable and seemingly unproductive.

Irving also delves into the “dominant white culture” and elucidates the values and character traits that America’s dominant white culture has retained from early colonists. While these traits may not fit every white person, the underlying message is critical: There are cultural differences that impact cross-racial interactions. White people who are cognizant of their own dominant cultural traits while being sensitive to the cultures of people they interact with, will experience a greater degree of progress and partnership.

As Irving’s recount of her own racial enlightenment progresses, she lets go of labels and tells more personal stories. Later lessons seem to be still fresh and not quite established in her vernacular or approach. She describes a moment in which it became evident that her socialization as a white person remained so embedded with cultural differences her conversations still had the power to alienate people of other races and ethnicities. At the same time, when she realizes a mistake or blunder, Irving is able to model vulnerability and transparency. Concrete examples from her own life allow readers to share in her embarrassment and confusion, while also allowing them to identify with her efforts to overcome life-long blocks to wholehearted relationships with people of other races and ethnicities.

Irving doesn’t attempt to smooth over any of her experiences, and empathetic readers will struggle, particularly if Irving’s experiences resonate with them. But the book ends with a powerful, refreshing call to action: “Self-examination and the courage to admit to bias and unhelpful inherited behaviors may be our greatest tools for change. Allowing ourselves to be vulnerable enough to expose our ignorance and insecurities takes courage. And love. I believe the most loving thing a person, or a group of people, can do for another is to examine the ways in which their own insecurities and assumptions interfere with others’ ability to thrive.”

Waking Up Whiteis a moving story of reckoning, a kick in the pants for readers who have become discouraged or indifferent to issues of race, and a tremendous tool for the person seeking to understand and eliminate racism. It’s a story about reclaiming our humanity. When the fabrications of race are exposed for what they are (constructs of power) and what they have caused (dehumanization of people, death, injustice, and unrest), we are freed to recognize the humanity in our fellow brothers and sisters, to collectively mourn the devastation that has been caused, and to collectively build a better future that works for all of us.


Dr. Melissa Neal is a proud North Carolina native who endeavors to make a unique contribution to the world, through writing, relationships, and her work. Professionally, she is a public health expert who specializes in creating effective criminal justice systems and healthy communities. From establishing a nonprofit for justice-involved families in rural Tennessee to conducting national research and justice reform activity in Washington, D.C., she has long worked to improve the intersect between the criminal justice system and community health.

Dr. Neal obtained her doctorate in public health from East Tennessee State University. She currently works for Policy Research Associates, a national firm providing technical assistance to criminal justice and behavioral health systems. She is a commissioner on the North Carolina Commission on Racial and Ethnic Disparities and is a member of the Race Matters for Juvenile Justice leadership collaborative. She and her husband, with their two dog rescues—Rufus and Greyson—live in Cornelius, NC.

Novels in Progress: Axel Dahlberg’s “Schmed”

Chapter 1

Mom buried Dad in his half of the cemetery plot they bought together then sold her half. Probably one thing you gotta know right up front. And that I had no say. Like a lot of crap when you’re a kid, you got no say. And you got no clue, mostly. But as far as I can measure, things broke from there. Unless you really want to dig stuff up, then maybe our little family tree was rotting from the inside before Dad’s accident. Mom didn’t know it then, like I didn’t know how far all this would chase me into my future. One thing about my family, we figure stuff out. Usually after it’s all mopped up and no one’s left standing around. But we get it. Mostly.

One thing about me, I’m not special. A regular kid from a regular place. Every kid you’ve never noticed. Standing in line behind you, watching you not seeing me. I’m not gonna tell my name or what I look like. None of that matters as much as the truth. And you can’t know where I’m at now because there’s still guys looking to do me bad. I’m that kid you heard about from the news. The one people saw running from behind Valhalla after it burned—the only time I shot a guy. But not my fault. Honest. You’ll see. I’m setting things straight so you’ll know I wasn’t such a menace like they said. One thing I learned, the ones who tell the tales make their own stories, and they’re never yours.

This is the most honest story I know how to tell. If you’re gonna make sense of anything, you gotta know stuff that never made the news that evil summer when Minneapolis screamed and bled as they started building that Mall of America. People I knew had stuff to do with that goddamn monstrosity—crap you’ll never hear about at Camp Snoopy. People died. Maybe my story will help you look the hell out for crap that slams into your life when you think it’s just another Thursday. Any of this could have happened to you, even if you don’t believe me.

Maybe the best place to start is that night.

Charlotte Lit Year Three—Year of the Tree

“Looking Up to Heroes,” Crista Cammaroto, 2008. cristacammaroto.com

On Friday, May 4, we’re throwing a garden party to celebrate Charlotte Lit’s 2nd birthday. Join us for a stroll around the gardens of Wing Haven’s Elizabeth Lawrence House as we kick off Year Three—Year of the Tree. We’ll have food from La Tea Da’s, drinks, and delicious sweet treats courtesy of our friends at Sunflour Baking Company. Charlotte Lit teachers Bryn Chancellor (Sycamore) and Martin Settle (Maple Samaras) will read from their latest (tree-titled) books, and artist Crista Cammaroto will display pieces from her stunning collection of tree art. (If you arrive early, you might be lucky enough to purchase one of them.) And everyone goes home with a tree seedling, courtesy of Trees Charlotte. Tickets are $50. Click here to purchase yours.

Our official birthday was February 19, so we’re just a little late celebrating—but with good reason! Since last February’s birthday party at Copper Restaurant, where we kicked off our year-long celebration of renowned author Carson McCullers, we’ve hosted dozens of classes in virtually every writing genre, held community conversations and staged readings based on McCullers work, graduated our first group of Authors Lab students, celebrated six rounds of 4X4CLT poetry+art poster series, collaborated on events with a number of arts organizations, including CPCC’s Sensoria Festival, brought the NC Arts Council’s literature fellows to town for a wonderful evening of readings in The Light Factory, hosted Charlotte Lit members for Open Studio writing hours every Tuesday and Thursday…and the list goes on.

More important than any of the things we’ve done or any of the events we’ve hosted, however, are the friends we’ve made in the last two years. To all of you who have become members of Charlotte Lit, attended our classes, conversations, and events, added your energy to our Open Studio sessions, donated your time and dollars, or told your friends about the cool center for literary arts over in the Midwood International and Cultural Center—thank you for helping us “spread the words.”

We couldn’t do it without you, and we wouldn’t want to.

We need you back this year, too. The best way to help Charlotte Lit is through membership. If you haven’t already, please take a moment to renew your membership. If you’re not sure whether or not your membership is current, just email paul@charlottelit.org.

Special thanks to Janet Miller for helping us plan our birthday party and to all of you who plan to celebrate with us. Can’t wait to see you!

Cheers!
Kathie

Writing as Life?

What have I learned from writing, from life as a writer, and from hanging out in the wonderful community of other writers?

1. Persistence trumps talent every time.

2. If you’re waiting on the muse to show up before you start working, you’re wasting valuable time. If you’re not where you’re supposed to be (with pen or keyboard at hand ready to work), how do you expect the muse to find you?

3. There are no born writers…or painters or race car drivers or bankers. They all work at it.

4. Everyone is creative. The lucky ones recognize it and enjoy it. The unlucky or doomed believe whoever lied and told them they couldn’t create. Everyone is creative and can develop and enjoy what calls to them, whether it’s writing or cooking or gardening or juggling or…

5. There is a special place in a very bad place for those who tell little kids [or big kids] they can’t paint or write or cook or sing or dance or color trees purple. No one has the right to take that away from another person. No one.

6. If someone ever told you that you that you couldn’t do something but you liketo do it, don’t listen to them.  Do it any way.  Don’t worry that you won’t get rich or famous doing it…what’s that got to do with enjoying it?

7. When creating anything, the first draft should be fun. Quit thinking so much. Stand on the edge of the pool, hold your breath, and dive in. The real work starts when you come up for air – and that will be fun, too.

8. How do you know you’re doing it right? If you’re a little bit afraid.

Show up. Pay attention. Play. Be grateful. Be generous. Enjoy.


Cathy Pickens’ first of five mystery novels, Southern Fried, won St. Martin’s Press/Malice Domestic Award for Best Traditional Mystery. She has written a mystery walking tour, Charleston Mysteries (History Press), and numerous articles and case studies. At Queens University of Charlotte, she was named the Wireman Professor and won several teaching awards. She has served as president and on the boards of national mystery writers organizations and as president of the regional Forensic Medicine Board. Currently, she works with former inmates on starting their own businesses.

Find Your Place: Literary Events at This Week’s Sensoria Festival

Charlotte Lit is a proud partner for CPCC’s fantastic Sensoria: A Celebration of Literature and the Arts, April 6-15. We’re honored this year to present with Sensoria the Irene Blair Honeycutt Legacy Award to Maureen Ryan Griffin, and to have U.S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith as our featured poet for our 9th 4X4CLT Poetry+Art poster series.


In March 1999, CPCC featured Anne Lamott, author of the classic writing how-to Bird by Bird, as part of their annual literary festival. It’s a date I’ve committed to memory because I was there in the mid-morning audience, my two-month old son nestled in my lap, while my oldest two children were in preschool. As a brain-fried new mother, I was desperate for words, for meaning, for support of the notion that writing was a worthy and necessary endeavor. The theme for that year’s festival was “A Sense of Place: Writers in Community” and being there opened the door to the local writing community for me. These 19 years later, that baby is a freshman in college and the literary festival has grown into the 10-day Sensoria Festival, but that sense of welcome and community remains.

George Saunders, winner of the National Book Award and the keynote lecturer of last year’s festival, called Sensoria “one of the very best of its kind in the world.” There are a multitude of events—film screenings, opera, theatre, music, and more—across six CPCC campuses, but writers and readers should take note of the following opportunities to connect with the literary community:

Monday 4/9, 10:30 am at Tate Hall, Central Campus: When Literature Becomes Myth: Celebrating 200 Years of Frankenstein. In last week’s Litmosphere, David Poston beautifully enumerated why Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s novel is relevant these 200 years later. Leslie Klinger, editor of the New Annotated Frankenstein, speaks about the landmark science fiction novel at this talk.

Monday 4/9, 6 pm (reception), 7 pm (reading) at Tate Hall, Central Campus: Irene Blair Honeycutt Legacy Award Presentation and Reading. Charlotte Lit is honored to co-sponsor this award, named after Honeycutt who was an early and enthusiastic supporter of our organization. This year’s honor goes to Maureen Ryan Griffin, a poet and non-fiction writer, who in her work as a writing coach has propelled her students to a deeper understanding of the art. Join us in celebrating her contributions to the literary community. Sweets deliciously provided by Sunflour Baking Company.

Tuesday 4/10, 9:30 am at Levine Campus: Local Author Spotlight–Bryn ChancellorAuthor of the Oprah Magazine Top Pick Sycamore, UNCC Professor, and Charlotte Lit instructor Bryn Chancellor discusses the craft of writing. This event caps off Levine Reads, a campus-wide common read initiative.

Tuesday 4/10, 11 am at Levine Campus: Writing Workshop: Framing Our Experience: A Life in Pieces. Inspired by a micro-memoir workshop led by Charlotte Lit’s December 4x4CLT author Beth Ann Fennelly, CPCC English faculty members Jaime Pollard-Smith and Elizabeth West invite participants to explore the genre of creative non-fiction by writing small, vivid scenes drawn from daily life.

Wednesday 4/11, 8 pm in Pease Auditorium, Central Campus: Irene Blair Honeycutt Distinguished Lecturer: US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith.

“As all the best poetry does, “Life on Mars”first sends us out into the magnificent chill of the imagination and then returns us to ourselves, both changed and consoled.”  –The New York Times Sunday Book Review

Tracy K. Smith, author of four poetry collections including the Pulitzer-winning Life on Marsand the just-released Wade in the Water, reads and discusses her work. Just appointed to a second term as US Poet Laureate, Smith’s mission is to bring poetry to rural communities. Charlotte Lit’s April 4X4CLT poetry and art poster series— featuring Smith’s poems, along with art by Isaac Payne and Felicia van Bork—will be released and displayed at this event. Smith will read a second time on Thursday 4/12, 11 am in Halton Theater, Central Campus.

Thursday 4/12, 9:30 am in Tate Hall, Central Campus: Regional Author Spotlight: Jon PinedaPineda is a core faculty member of the low-residency MFA program at Queens University and is the author of poetry, memoir, and fiction, including his latest novel Let’s No One Get Hurt.

Thursday 4/12, 3 pm (Artist’s Lecture) Tate Hall, Central Campus and 6:30 pm (Opening Reception) Ross Gallery, Central Campus: Featured Visual Artist Felicia van Bork: color + color = spaceIn her “How to” series, van Bork uses her own torn and cut monotype prints to create large-scale collages, two of which are featured on April’s 4X4CLT poetry and art poster series. In the afternoon, van Bork discusses her artwork which will be displayed in an exhibit opening that evening in the Ross Gallery.


Lisa Zerkle’s poems have appeared in The Collagist, Comstock Review, Southern Poetry Anthology, Broad River Review, Tar River Poetry, Nimrod, Sixfold, poemmemoirstory, Crucible, and Main Street Rag, among others. Author of the chapbook, Heart of the Light, she has served as President of the North Carolina Poetry Society, community columnist for The Charlotte Observer, and editor of Kakalak. She is the curator of Charlotte Lit’s 4X4CLT, a public art and poetry series.

Pardon This Intrusion: Frankenstein 200 Years Later

Leslie Klinger, editor of the New Annotated Frankenstein, discusses When Literature Becomes Myth: Celebrating 200 Years of Frankenstein at CPCC’s Sensoria Festival. Monday April 9 at 10:30 am, Central Campus, Tate Hall.  Free.


Two centuries after Frankenstein first appeared, we need to remember how eloquently the creature speaks. Not the monster who debuted on stage in 1823’s Presumption, or the Fate of Frankenstein, the one whose film history began with the 1910 one-reel Frankenstein from Thomas Edison. Hundreds of films, TV shows, stage plays, even musicals have followed them, from James Whale’s 1931 classic through Universal Studios’ upcoming remake of The Bride of Frankenstein. Granted, they have given us some of our most enduring cultural tropes: the mad scientist, the grunting monster, the torch-wielding mob. But they have drowned out a remarkable voice, one we need to hear now more than ever.

That voice belongs to the creature of Mary Shelley’s novel, published anonymously on January 1, 1818, and never out of print since. It is the voice of an articulate autodidact conceived by a girl a few months shy of her nineteenth birthday, motherless herself, displaced from family and proper society because of her elopement with a married rakish flake, creating what she later called her “hideous progeny” while holed up under rainy skies darkened by the global ash-cloud from Mt. Tambora’s eruption.

It is the outcast who faces Victor Frankenstein on the sea of ice and speaks the most moving words in the novel, the one who has by then found an abandoned book satchel containing the essential Romantic Era reading list and uses Paradise Lost to plead a case that convicts us all to this day. Speaking to his creation for the first time, Victor greets him as “Devil,” but the creature is far ahead of him: “I expected this reception. All men hate the wretched.” He proceeds to tell his wretched tale, beginning with the night Victor brought him to life and promptly abandoned him.

“I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel,” he says, and Paradise Lost informs his tale and underscores the novel’s indictment of society. Steeped as she was from childhood in the great intellectual tradition, Mary Shelley knew very well the key scenes in Paradise Lost: Adam coming to life in the sun-drenched Garden of Eden, able to open his mouth and name every creature which presented itself to him, Eve so enchanted with her beautiful reflection that she almost refused to leave it. By contrast, the creature describes waking to darkness and cold. When he tries to imitate the sounds of night birds, the “uncouth and inarticulate” sounds he makes frighten him into silence. In contrast to Eve, the creature sees his reflection only after he has been admiring the De Lacey family from his hiding place. He has come to appreciate beauty, and with that understanding has come the recognition of how hideously he has been made.

Even Satan had his fellow devils, but the creature has no one; worse than that, he has read the great Miltonic explanation of the chain of being and found himself utterly excluded. When the creature makes his attempt to be included, when he approaches blind father De Lacey, his first words to another human being are “Pardon this intrusion.” Of course, at this point De Lacey’s children return, immediately assume a monster is attacking their father, and chaos typical of the movies ensues.

From that moment until the creature meets Victor, the series of mishaps and misdeeds that follow lead him to confront Victor and make the argument that he should have his own Eve. “I am malicious because I am miserable,” he says. He lays the blame for that misery at the feet of Victor, who created him and fled; that blame also lies on the man who shot him after the creature had saved his daughter from drowning (a scene turned around horribly in the Whale film), on the villagers who drove him away with stones and sticks, even on Felix De Lacey for assuming instinctively that because he was hideous he was evil. Give me a mate, he asks, and we will go to the wilds of South America. There, as he has learned from his reading, he and his mate will find the better Eden in each other’s arms. Victor is moved by the argument, at least until the moment when he aborts his second creation and puts the novel’s tragic conclusion into motion.

Jill Lepore’s recent New Yorker article points out how the creature’s story resembles a slave narrative, connecting it to Mary Shelley’s reading about slave rebellions in Haiti and the West Indies and also to the life of Frederick Douglass. The comparison is apt with regard to both the extraordinary way Douglass obtained his education and to his struggle to assert the full humanity of people of color to a society which considered them savage children. Lepore points out that in James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein, the monster is lynched. I think it is even more telling that in Mary Shelley’s novel, the creature has internalized society’s condemnation and decides to immolate himself.

Charlotte Gordon’s Romantic Outlaws, a parallel biography of Mary Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft, makes a fascinating case that both were hampered and unappreciated by the men in their lives: as thinkers, as writers, as full equals to the supposedly progressive and revolutionary men with whom they were intimately associated. Through her creature, Mary Shelley also speaks out against patriarchy, certainly against how the Miltonic chain of being justified the prevailing political and economic hierarchy—and hierarchy within families—as God-ordained.  Though the creature measures himself against Adam and Satan, I see him as similar to Eve, sent to gather food while the angel Raphael warned Adam of Satan’s designs. Like the creature eavesdropping on the De Lacey family (the pun is unavoidable) Eve is forced to obtain knowledge only by subterfuge, then judged as fallen by those who did not deign to teach her.

Mary Shelley’s novel has serious flaws: improbable plot devices, overwrought and silly dialogue, and a neophyte author’s attempt to make it everything from moral fable to philosophical argument to travelogue. But it is intricately and artfully presented through narrative framed within narrative, and at its heart the creature speaks what he rightfully calls the most moving part of the tale.

Today, even if the mob is carrying tiki torches or the stones are cast on-line, the creature still confronts us on behalf of anyone who is labelled Other, who is blamed, exploited, excluded or forced to assert that his or her life matters. Read the novel, or read it again, through the lens of the 21st century. Heed the voice of the creature.


Gastonia poet and writer David E. Poston taught for thirty years in public school, at UNC-Charlotte, and at Charlotte’s Young Writers’ Workshop. His work has appeared in journals and anthologies such as Broad River Review, English Journal, Pedestal, The Cape Rock, The Southern Poetry Anthology: North Carolina, and Kakalak. His poetry collections are My Father Reading Greek, Postmodern Bourgeois Poetaster Blues, and Slow of Study. He served on the steering committee for Charlotte Lit’s Carson McCullers centennial celebration in 2017 and currently serves on the boards of the Friends of the Gaston County Public Library, Gaston Literacy Council, and Charlotte Writers’ Club. He teaches writing workshops for Hospice and other venues and will talk about Frankenstein or Paradise Lost to any group that will listen.

UNCC’s Literary Festival Finds a Home in the Heart of the City

When I moved to Charlotte in 2015 for my teaching position in UNC Charlotte’s Department of English, I discovered the campus isn’t what you’d call centrally located. Built north of the city on affordable farmland after World War II, the university has become a thriving urban institution, but a sense of remove from the city—physically and figuratively—persists. When I first met with Charlotte Lit and folks from other colleges and organizations to chat about supporting and building the literary arts, I came away with the feeling that UNCC was, well, a little out of the loop, in part because of its distance from the heart of Charlotte.

I knew I wanted to bridge this divide, to bring UNCC into the literary fold. This would help fulfill my college’s mission of community engagement but also my own. Literary events have enormous power: they give us joy, unite us, let us express our shared humanity, and show us how writing and art can sustain us, especially in times of change and upheaval.

Enter UNC Charlotte’s Center City campus, a gorgeous building located smack in the middle of Uptown, adjacent to First Ward Park and a quick stroll from the 7th Street Market and light rail station. Not only does Center City have a wonderful space, but it is committed—in spirit and, importantly, in funding—to programming community events. The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences hosts its “Personally Speaking” series there, and my department had launched the Center City Literary Festival in 2013 and 2014, so the seeds of possibility were planted.

In 2017, the Center City Literary Festival was reborn.

The free public festival includes daytime and nighttime events. During the day, we feature children’s authors along with fun kids’ activities such as creation stations (coloring, crafting, and character-building) and scavenger hunts. In the evening, we welcome award-winning authors for a reception, readings, discussion, book signings, and socializing.

We are committed, within our budget, to inviting renowned and emerging writers. In 2017, we were fortunate enough to bring prominent poets Nikky Finney and Eduardo C. Corral and fiction writer Dustin M. Hoffman; we also are dedicated to showcasing a UNCC or local writer (I was part of the 2017 festival). Here is what one attendee shared afterward:

“The whole experience delivered such a surprise gift—I hadn’t expected to be so deeply moved. The writers reconstituted my writing will—threw buckets of water my way—and reminded me how dehydrated I’d become. The presenters reminded me that language is how we reconnect with ourselves. When we make the effort to articulate those pieces that make us uniquely human, our words ‘ping’ others. Collectively we learn that we’re not alone—we get ‘re-membered.’ Isn’t that a big part of what writing’s all about? Nikky spoke of how writers ‘save’ something. I know that last night saved a part of me.”

The 2018 festival on Saturday, April 14, 2018, will offer another terrific evening lineup: Jill McCorkle, acclaimed fiction writer who this year will be inducted into the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame; poet Gary Jackson, winner of the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and other honors; Hannah Dela Cruz Abrams, prose writer and winner of a Whiting Award; Paula Martinac, UNCC creative writing instructor and Lambda Literary Award-winning fiction writer; and Siobhán Campbell, a poet and critic serving as the Spring 2018 Kingston Visiting Writer at UNCC.

With the completion of the light rail, we hope to diminish the physical divide between campus and city and offer more events on our main campus, which is vibrant in its own right. For now, we hope you’ll join UNC Charlotte for a great day and night of literature set against Uptown’s luminescent skyline, right in the beating heart of the city.

Details:

Center City Literary Festival
Saturday, April 14, 2018
UNC Charlotte Center City Campus
320 E. 9th Street, Charlotte 28202

https://centercitylitfest.uncc.edu/

https://www.facebook.com/CenterCityLitFest/


Bryn Chancellor is a 2017-18 North Carolina Arts Council fellow and an assistant professor of English at UNC Charlotte. Her novel Sycamore, an Indie Next pick, an Amazon Best Book of 2017, and among Bustle‘s Best Debuts of 2017, is out now in paperback.

Immutable Laws of Writing #2: An object in motion stays in motion

An object in motion stays in motion (and an object at rest stays at rest).

Sir Isaac Newton said this first, and not about writing. Still, writing is a natural act, possibly a force of nature, and is just as subject to physics as everything else. Applied to your writing, the “object” in question is the work you are producing. (Be it understood that we’re not talking here about writing as the mere act of putting words on paper; rather, we’re talking about writing that is becoming a finished work.) Applied to a work in progress, then: your writing both requires and benefits from momentum. Let’s break out those two key bits.

Requires momentum. Any piece of writing of any substantive length—short story, novella, novel, screenplay, stage play, epic poem, etc.—cannot continue forward unless you work on it regularly. Long works have many threads and themes, schemes and schemas, and other moving parts that need to be fresh in mind while writing. This is not to say you can’t take a break from a work; breaks can be good for your writing. But just try to finish a novel that you write in fits and starts, or even one that you write regularly but overly-spaced, such as writing it only on the weekends. It’s hard enough without adding that complexity.

Benefits from momentum. When you are working on a project regularly and with momentum on your side, your writing is likely to be more efficient and perhaps also better. Consider: the longer it has been since you last worked on your project, the longer it will take to: a) bring all the components back into your head; b) have a good sense of what to write next; and c) maintain all the voices: yours, and those of your characters. When your work has momentum, you slip easily between characters, you have your story threads and themes in mind, you know what has and has not transpired, and you know—this is important—what to write next.

Robert Heinlein provided these and some other rules of writing. The emphases are his:

1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you start.

My Immutable Law of Writing #1 (“the words aren’t going to write themselves”) echoes RH’s first rule. My second supports his second: if you mean to finish, you must finish. And you do this by respecting (or, if you prefer, taking advantage of) the laws of physics.

Here are three pieces of practical advice for keeping momentum.

1. Write something you love. 

Don’t select a writing project because you think it’s trendy or easy to get published or will make you tons of cash. Write a story that you truly want to tell. That love will feed your momentum. You will write because you have to see how it comes out. (This will also sustain you later when you are in the eighth round of revisions and you hate the book more than you have ever hated anything.)

2. Make the forces (even the negative ones) work for you.

Fully expressed, Newton’s First Law is: “An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force” (italics mine).* There are throughout your non-writing world “unbalanced forces” that conspire against you and your writing, even if (usually) unintentionally, almost all of which come down to commitments that require your time: jobs, partners, children, sleep, lawns that insist on growing, and so on. How might you make these forces work in support of your writing?

Perhaps: Use lawn mowing time as thinking time, for working out plot points and other story details; car pool to work so that you can write while someone else drives; enlist your family members as co-conspirators, to help by doing research or editing; establish family creative time: while you write, others practice their instruments, or blog, or fold origami, or what have you; get up 30 minutes earlier (you won’t miss it) and write 500 words while there are no distractions; or quit something that you’ve been meaning to quit, something that takes up your time, transferring that time to your writing.

3. Allow your self occasional breaks from the project. 

Short ones. Take Sunday off, maybe, but then back to it on Monday. Can’t fight physics, might as well make it work on your behalf.

——

http://www.physicsclassroom.com/class/newtlaws/Lesson-1/Newton-s-First-Law

The Grounded and the Floating

Zadie Smith reads as part of the Lenoir Rhyne Visiting Writers Series in Hickory on Thursday, March 22 at 7 pm. Free, but tickets are recommended. Call the box office at 828-328-7206.


In Zadie Smith’s latest novel, Swing Time, two girls in a London neighborhood bond over what they have in common—their brown skin and a love of dance. Tracey has all the talent, and “her body could align itself with any time signature, no matter how intricate,” but her family life is more erratic, less motivated. In comparison, the unnamed narrator’s family is stable, and her mother in particular aspires to a better life. The narrator shares her love of old Hollywood musicals with Tracey, teaching them both something about not only the art of dance, but also about race and appropriation. Through this pastime we see the narrator, even as a child, holding back from full engagement, filtering the world through a more analytic detachment. Tracey, however, is all in—in her dance moves, emotional outbursts, or sexual forays in the schoolyard. Inevitably, as they enter adolescence, the two girls grow apart, but never completely sever their fraught relationship. Tracey dances in a chorus line before her life gets side-tracked, while the narrator becomes a personal assistant to a globetrotting do-gooder music celebrity.

Smith addresses the parallels between dance and writing explicitly in “Dance Lessons for Writers,” an essay in her collection Feel Free published earlier this year. From dance, Smith says, writers can learn lessons of position, attitude, rhythm and style. In both the novel and the essay, she compares Fred Astaire to Gene Kelly. Astaire is thin, elegant and aloof, never breaking into a sweat, appearing to float above the floor without effort. Kelly, on the other hand, shows his exertion and muscularity. For Smith, the two dancers exemplify the difference between “the grounded and the floating.” Gene Kelly provides a metaphor for “how the prosaic can turn poetic, if we work hard enough,” while Astaire’s movements are more literary, “poetry in motion.”

In writing workshops I’ve attended, instructors sometimes talk about “floaty-groundy” in terms of plot or characters, with a meaning that’s a little different from Smith’s. Groundy plots have a definite timeline, and their characters have clearly focused desires. A floaty character may lack identifiable goals, and a floaty plot may veer off course or meander. Think Hunger Games or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo vs. Lincoln in the Bardo or even Seinfeld. For me, the floaty-groundy dichotomy has more to do with my orientation as a reader. Do I know exactly where I am in time and place? Are there sensory details that keep me tethered to world of the story? Do I know what the character is doing in the moment? If so, then I think the passage is grounded. But I also want fiction and nonfiction I read to engage with ideas, and I want characters to have rich interior lives – floatier elements. Contrast these first sentences for back-to-back chapters early in Swing Time:

“If Fred Astaire represented aristocracy, I represented the proletariat, said Gene Kelly, and by this logic Bill “Bojangles” Robinson should really have been my dancer, because Bojangles danced for the Harlem dandy, for the ghetto kid, for the sharecropper—for all the descendants of slaves.”

“A Sunday in late summer. I was on the balcony, watching a few girls from our floor skipping Double Dutch down by the bins. I heard my mother calling me.”

Floaty vs. groundy, right? For me, good writing balances the two. In revising my own writing, I often notice when something is too focused on ideas and not enough on the nitty-gritty of the world I’m building, or when I’ve written a perfectly serviceable description of a subway ride, but the character does not seem to have a thought in her head. I think of Tracey in Swing Time as the more grounded character, like Gene Kelly, more comfortable in the corporeal, in effort and emotion. The narrator, like Astaire, remains cerebral and detached, perhaps more of the mind than the body.

While Tracey the erstwhile dancer never rises above her hardscrabble life in council flats, Smith’s narrator never makes a lasting connections to anyone or anything. If our fiction is to succeed at a high level, we must allow our characters (and our work as a whole) to engage with ideas, while also firmly grounding them in the world of our imagining.


Kristin Donnalley Sherman lives in Charlotte, where she works as a writer, editor, and writing coach. She’s published both fiction and nonfiction, and is currently at work on two novels. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Barrelhouse, Silk Road, Main Street Rag and Flashquake, and she has won or been a finalist in numerous contests, including Elizabeth Simpson Smith Short Fiction, the Writers Workshop Memoirs, the Reynolds Price Fiction, River Styx Micro-fiction, and the Press 53 Open Awards for Short Short Fiction.

At Least I’m Not a Dancer — An apologia

“We seldom realize, I think, how very much we really are in the hands of
the dictionary. We think certain thoughts; we have certain experiences; and
then language, with its hard and fast boundaries, says, “You shall not say
that wonderful thing—you shall only say this—and we find on paper the pale
lifeless shadow of the thing that came to life in our soul.” — Emmet Fox

 

Writing is my weakness and it’s a nerve-wracking practice, but I can’t
help it—my blood is so doggone noisy, I have to write stuff down to make it
quiet. Plus my genes are always quarreling inside of me, not to mention all
those environmental and socioeconomic factors that contributed to my need to
scribble words onto the page. Carl Jung knew what he was talking about when
he said: “Nothing so promotes the growth of consciousness as the inner
confrontation of opposites.” Back in 1954, I plopped into the world, the
fourth child and baby girl of a profoundly sober Christian Virgo mother and
a sad, alcoholic dreamer of a father. And for the first fifteen years on Planet Earth
there was a whole lot of shaking going on.

A mother, they say, is the first book a child ever picks up and the last
one they put back on the shelf. Sounds right to me. I suppose then that a
father is the second book picked up and the next-to-the-last one put down.
Ever since I can remember, I’ve been fascinated and appalled by how unalike
my parents were. I spent years worrying about their lives and ignoring my
own. But when I finally got down to peeling the sweet Vidalia onion of
myself to its pungent core, a writer emerged, shrugged her shoulders and
said, Well, at least I’m not a dancer—which is a good thing because I lack
the grace for that muscular art.

My love affair with words began early. In first grade, I met twenty-six
lifelong friends—letters that were sometimes big and sometimes small
according to where they found themselves in a word or a sentence.
Miss Graham, my teacher was an up-to-date old maid who smelled like pickles. A
phonetic genius, she dredged my imagination for interest in Dick, Jane and
Spot, who led quite boring lives because they were forbidden to do anything
that required more than six letters just so I could learn to read. And for
some reason, the words settled into my fat brain like orphans who’d found a
good home without even trying. The part I liked most about learning to write
was erasing. I loved the way it smelled when I rubbed the pink end of my big
fat pencil across the cheap lined paper, exterminating mistakes easily, and
brushing them onto the floor as if they never occurred.

Twenty-five years ago, I wrote this sentence in my journal: My life is
about three things: words, love, and human beings. The grandiosity of that
statement surprised me, but now I understand that it wasn’t grandiose at all—it was a simple
profession of faith. Writing has helped me become a more decent person than I would have
been otherwise. It has helped me separate who I really am from my ego.

Another reason I became a writer was to honor silence. I have always wanted to make sense
out of my precarious life. As a child, I was quiet. I observed. There seemed to be something
hidden in everything I saw. My senses told me there was something Else. I could smell it. I could
feel it. Sometimes, I could even taste it. But I could not name it. But when I learned to listen to
this voiceless force, I discovered I had a voice deep within me.

“May God forgive me this sin of speech,” Nietzsche once wrote, and even
though he lamented that he was only a poet, I believe language was his only
earthly salvation. Indeed, it has been mine.  One of the most important
things I have learned to do as a writer is to acknowledge that other, bigger Author, who
sometimes shows up for work when I sit down to write. Some writers call it inspiration.
Some call it God.  I call it the Holy Spirit

Maybe it’s just Silence full of Itself, inviting me to . . . dance.


Published by South Carolina Review, January 2007

Karon Luddy was born in Lancaster, SC, the fourth of six children of hardworking, salt of the earth parents, and moved to Charlotte in 1976. During a midlife renaissance, Karon resigned from Apple Computer to pursue her lifelong passion—literature. In 2005, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Queens University, yet poetry has been a constant in her creative life. 2007 saw the publication of her first book of poetry, Wolf Heart (Clemson University Press) and her first novel, Spelldown (Simon & Schuster). Karon is currently working on a poetry collection, Circling God.