On names
Restorative Community Project Session 7:
Authorial tone is often a lonely enterprise, marked by its single genius narrative and first-person account. This is especially true of a certain autobiographical genre in which the reader is, by definition, keenly aware of the author’s singularity. To the dissent: co-authored texts represent but a tiny fraction of all literary output, with an overwhelming majority of authors since the premodern period choosing to write by themselves as opposed to with a shared pen. To compose from the first person then feels like a quintessentially antisocial activity, in that, it is antithetical to a certain communal literary sensibility that makes room for the author and her company in any given rhetorical space. The apprehension for such a style makes sense however; “too many chefs in the kitchen” being the common adage, as it were. But I cant help but think it is a shame; even writers, I think, deserve company; for what is more lonely than the subject, I?
Maybe it is because of this sense of authorial loneliness that I recently found such crisp satisfaction to Yanyi’s The Year of Blue Water. Semi-autobiographical and fully devastating, The Year of Blue Water recounts Yanyi’s rather sordid relationship to her poetic production and trans body; with page-after-page of lyrical vignettes that exfoliate like tiger balm on dark skin. While the queer marriage plot and trans canon is often set to a tradition of isolation and lonely repression, both features not entirely foreign to the subject at hand, Yanyi does more by placing her meditations in a community of first-order friends always named but never properly introduced. Meaning, the reader knows that she writes to and fraternizes with a certain "Michelle," "Julie," "Doreen," and "LiZhen," but never with a precise knowledge of who they are. But thats the thing, Yanyi reminds us that we don’t need to. The comfort of names and their company is in the knowledge that they are there, that they exist, that the author is not alone, and for all of this to be enough.
Today, I write from such a place. To you, the following names will be much like those that populate Yanyi’s verses, in that they will be named but never fully acquainted to the reader. These are the names of the other wonderful activists, neighbors, sisters, friends and strangers with whom we, Collective Climb, shared space last weekend in our Participatory Action Research Project. For to just thank you did not feel quite right. I wanted to, if just in this gesture alone, somehow show the growing community that is underway thanks for the charismatics and pathos of our youth: Adam, Imani, Kyle, Toyce, Ramier. We are lucky to have you. May you find company in just each other's name. For I certainly have.