creative writing "nontraditional" response paper

The Salt of the Earth


We are of this world, born into it, giving birth to it. We carry the world with us wherever we go, as to never forget our place in it. We are lovers and we are fighters. We are healers and we are destroyers. We are workers: teachers, doctors, diplomats. We are mavericks, miscreants, and martyrs. We see the world, know the world, but the world does not always see us, the world does not always know us. We are women.

We are young, and in our youth there are rules imposed upon us, rules that do not remain constant. We just want to play, we want to have fun, but we don’t find it. Instead our cousins, our uncles, even our fathers and sometimes our brothers let us know where we belong. We think we are beautiful, but they let us know that this is our curse. They touch us and kiss us and rub our private parts, and we can do nothing. We cannot say no. Instead, we grow to know that our beauty destroys us, hinders us, betrays us. Instead we receive attention for all the wrong reasons. We cannot paint pretty pictures or frolic through flowing flowers. Instead we are forced to give up ourselves, and we do not understand. Our cousins embarrass us, our uncles abuse us, our fathers break us. We are young, and already we do not trust this world.

We grow older as mirrors reveal horrors that wait to happen. Now we have breasts, we have boobs, we have tits, or we have do not; sadly it does not make a difference. It does not make a difference because we have vaginas, we have pussies, we have cunts, and as fear mounts we cannot run away from these truths. We have already been run through, beat down, punched, kicked, and we have been left alone to reflect on why this is so. It is simply because we are who we are, and we are left to face this world, to turn our heads, to close our eyes, to shut our ears, and to think that somehow, things might be different.

We have grown older still, and now we are in control of our own destruction. We have been fucked, and we have fucked. No longer are we precious, innocent, we have learned the order of things, and now we take our fragile lives into our own hands. Trust has long since disappeared, and now we simply survive. So now we do the fucking, even if we are only fucking ourselves. This is what our cousins, uncles, fathers wanted, and now it is ours to dispense. We figure out that money is to be made, drugs to be taken, and often times shelter to be found. We have conditioned ourselves to this, to the world, to the way things are and must certainly be. We have lied to ourselves, and we have found fear where power seemed to stand. We have been pushed, and we have pushed back. We wonder if we will ever win.

We are elderly now, and we have been educated. We have a lifetime to look back on, and we choose to reflect, because we can still look forward. We remember trust, broken like so many battered ribs, arms that would hold back, legs that tried to run away. We remember fear that swelled like purple bruises under eyes, on thighs and backs; like bellies at ages 13, 14, 15. And we remember life, the product of broken trust and swollen fear and we pause. We remember the stories we never heard that could have maybe prevented these atrocities, these horrors, these challenges. And we are relieved, because now we know these stories, tell these stories, are these stories. We are of this world, but we shall bear a new one. We are women.


__________
to have never written from a female perspective, the biggest challenge, the greatest task i could take on was to attempt to speak as all women. this was the culmination of chinese, japanese, indian, and arabic short stories about women, the religious and philosophical study of sex, and seeing the century project presented today, all of it at the forefront of my every thought these days. i realize how encompassing using 'we' is, and that obviously this in no way is the entire female perspective, but there was something completely cathartic about writing this and that i wanted to share it, and to put it out there as a piece of literary merit to be criticized or enjoyed, maybe both.


gag me with a spoon, right?




-march fourth twothousandandnine

 

Hi horace,
While there were parts of this I liked, I would like to see it re-written in the past tense from the POV of the old woman looking back on her life.

I felt that sometimes your lists of events were kind of generic and didn't evoke the kind of emotion that you were striving for. Switching the POV to a personal history and giving some details to the abuse, touches, fucking, shame would be more effective and leave a more lasting impressionl(in the eyes of this reader at least).

I like the way you ended though.
Good to see you are still writing,
Peace,
A.

 

Wait, so you're a man and you wrote this? I'm confused.

Also disagree with the above poster about the past tense - the past tense is rarely a good choice for interesting narrative. Present tense is much more accessible and creates a sense of immediacy.

But I agree with him/her about adding more specific details.

 

Most of this is really cliche and borderline sexist, but that's bound to happen when you're trying to write 'the history of women' in a few paragraphs. Actually, you've made pretty much every mistake that a man writing about a woman could make.

First of all, you've suggested that women are creatures to be pitied. All this misery, all this victimization... is that what you think women are all about? What's all this about fathers 'breaking' their daughters??? So what, every family is a boys' club? If anything, I'd say that mothers are tougher on their daughters, and fathers are tougher on their sons.

Second, you've also made men into villains. How typical is that? Look-- the only victims are the ones who let themselves be victims. Historically, there were just as many expectations placed on men as on women. It's not like women are a slave race or anything... and it's not like inside every woman there's this brilliant astrophysicist ready to save the world. Some women like being 'girly'. They like cooking and shopping and being a good mother. And there's nothing wrong with that, just like there's nothing wrong with women wanting careers. The early feminists got recognized because they were 'attacking men'... but really, the point wasn't that men deserve all the blame for keeping women down, it's that traditional gender roles are limiting for both sexes.

Third, you seem preoccupied with sex, and even more disturbingly, with separating female body parts from the people to whom they are attached. Women aren't just men with tits and vaginas. It's more cohesive than that.

I can tell by the language you're using here that you obviously think you're writing something wonderful, inspiring and uplifting... but mostly, all of that repetition and 'chant'-type writing makes the content harder to absorb... which in this case, is probably a good thing.

I can also tell by your sentiments that you think you're some kind of crusader and that this kind of thing is going to impress women everywhere-- but I really have my doubts. Women tend not to be impressed by the c word, or the obvious objectification of their bodies (and even worse, their individual body parts)... and I have to question your inclusion of various molestations and injuries as well. So what, being a woman is all about being injured and molested??? That's sick.

 

1) this is good. all writing good or bad should provoke thoughtful discussion. this is definitely not the best thing i've ever written, and if i even attempted to find the "best" thing, i'd be apprehensive to label it as such. i had a writing assignment to complete, with a specific "prompt," if you will, and i chose to use the one that i did, the first person plural.

2) though clearly hostile, i can see each point you make and how you arrived there. so i "made pretty much every mistake that a man writing about a woman could make." clearly, i was predisposed to that by not being female. i tried to "justify" the "we" of the story, and looking at it now i realize how problematic it is, as i had an inkling while writing it. because i cannot force you to do anything, i would like to invite you to take a look at the century project (link provided above), which is controversial in its own right. with that being said, even though those other factors were inspiring (the stories, the philosophy, the religion), it was pretty much the century project that was the catalyst of this piece. if anything, now, i would say that the "we" are the women in the century project. however, this is also problematic, as not all of those women had this, or these, stories to tell. but, the majority of them did. as a guy, seeing these women in their truest form, and reading their stories, well, i'm not going to apologize by being deeply affected, nor for the catharsis i felt in writing this piece based on what i saw and read.

3) you can't please all the people all the time, case in point, feminism in general. so i made many generalizations, all of which were stigmatized further by encapsulating them in the entire female perspective by using "we." obviously, both in a writing sense and as social commentary, this was and is a big problem. but, going back to point 2, everything that i wrote had basis in real women's experiences. but, again, as noted, those women are not all women, and, as you've pointed out, the biggest problem with feminism that i've come across is that a lot of women are incredibly comfortable with the way things have been dealt for them. case in point, muslim women who feel the veil liberates them more than removing it ever could.

4) i can see where you'd get the idea that i would be considering myself "a crusader" of sorts, but this could be farthest from the truth. in reality, i wrote this piece for me, because i was deeply affected; yeah, sure, i guess some people should just keep their sentiments to themselves and never speak what the feel, but i don't want to live in that world. as i mentioned, not only did i take this on as catharsis, i saw it as a challenge (one that i apparently, indubitably so, failed), a way to branch out, to try new things writing-wise. i tried to present that point with the footnote, and sure, yes, it sounds very hoity-toity, elevated, and with overly-sophisticated diction, and in reality that's just a strange problem i always have. sure, i may have failed grossly, but if everyone was afraid to be criticized, scared to go out on a limb, then nobody would try new things, and things today would be entirely unsatisfactory.

5) to preempt further criticism as a result of this very reply, having gone back and reading it, still, i can see how it sounds like i'd be defending myself, in a self-satisfying, self-chivalrous sort of way, and i'm honestly not. i am not william shakespeare, i am not william burroughs, i am not rabrindranath tagore, gabriel garcia marquez, yasunari kawabata, yeats, shelley, byron, or anybody even, simply, with a piece of published work. but if i never thought i could be, if i never tried anything new, if i never wrote a failed piece of writing provoking thoughtful discussion as well as criticism, well then i might as well stop trying altogether, because surely all this trying must be for moot.

6) probably repeating myself, i guess that happens, i'm not trying to justify this piece as it is, but i am trying to justify writing it. the triteness, the generalization, the cliche, yes, those are unforgivable, but taking on a challenge, investing emotion even if for the wrong reasons, being brave enough to present it not only to a class of "writers," but to whoever may read it, i think that's justifiable.

so thank you for your thoughtful critique, because it too is justified.

 

A thought: women are now overrepresented (if that's the right word) in the field of literature, so is there any need for a male writer to write as a woman?

I'm just wondering about this because I feel like very often people try to write from a female perspective for what one could call The Wrong Reasons - out of guilt, out of a desire to prove that they can, for example.

I'd also be interested to know whether other Writers Forum users believe that women are any better at writing men than men are at writing women.

 

Some men can definitely write women-- Milan Kundera springs to mind. Probably because he's a manslut.