Sabrina and I had a lot of ways to fill in Generation F . . . FIGHT, FORMIDABLE, FEAR, FOUND . . . and finally: FULL. I thought I was going to write about using my writing to fight. In the end, we both wrote about finding/coming to terms with our full selves.
I grew up mouse-quiet, mouse-meek, a go-along-to-get-along girl, a “good” girl, a seen-but-not-heard girl. I was silent when I should have spoken. This isn’t a thing to be proud of, and I’m not proud of it.
Writing ended my silence. I wrote things I didn’t say out loud, told stories I never told: the first time I was called a nigger, the night I was raped, the acceptance of my inability to have children. And when I wrote, I found I had more to say. And more . . . And more. Silence stopped being my default position.
I am anything but silent today. My written voice has been loud and sustained. The steady drumbeat of devaluation and death that has been the storyline of black and brown communities calls up my voice again and again and again.
I recently wrote a piece for a reading with the theme “Backslide.” I struggled with the theme at first, uncomfortable with the negative connotation that came to mind when I thought of the word. Desperate, I went to Google, hoping to discover an obscure meaning that would offer positive inspiration. I was surprised to find page after page of religious websites. I clicked on the first one, and what to my wondering eyes should appear but definitions of backsliding that resonated powerfully:
Revolt
Refuse to harken
Rebel
Suddenly, backsliding looked like something to which I could and should aspire. Biblically, of course, it’s all bad—backsliders were folks who “refused to harken” to religious rules. Okay, fine. But is that always necessarily bad? Questioning authority—speaking up instead of keeping silent—can be exactly the thing that saves your life.
I thought about quiet, go-along-to-get-along me, and all the ways the stress and damage of my silence has manifested in my health, in my bad relationships, in my fear of embracing my anger, and all the ways silence was a way of denying who I really was, of hiding.
But no more. I have become a proud backslider. I have—to paraphrase my favorite of the religious definitions—refused to harken and turned a backsliding shoulder and made my ears heavy that they should not hear. I have become my own authentic, un-quiet, angry, rebellious, refusing-to-harken self.
One. Hundred. Percent.