Being the Boat
On the limits of stories; plus, a writing prompt!
Dear reader,
After reading Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets by Kyo Maclear, I have been reflecting on story and narrative as forms that we use to shape our histories, our individual lives, our collective experiences, and our political desires.
I have also noticed while chatting with coworkers, guests, and new friends as a barista that I am full of stories. I surprise myself because I realize that I am only 31 years old and I have lived. I do not mean to suggest that I have lived more than anyone else. I’m just saying I can hear my inner self speak back to me, Okaayy damn, you got stories!
Stories about:
that time I was heartbroken in high school and went to the movies by myself in the early morning to see For Colored Girls. I was on the A train afterward, crying in an empty cart, when the ex that I was grieving walked up to me to greet me and disappeared swiftly, probably to clear the air of pity—for my sake.
how later that day, I went to the office of a non-profit that supported me as a student. I sat down to chat with two students who were in the class below mine and attended the same boarding school as my ex. I told them about the moment described above (the movie, the crying, the ex) and noticed that they seemed uncomfortable. Is this TMI? What is going on? Turns out one of them was currently in a relationship with that same ex. *melting face emoji*
work-place abuse, like the time I walked up to my outdoor classroom in the Dominican Republic to find the Director/Principal already there with all of my students. He asked me to leave, so I, um, walk away from.. my… own… class(?) to sit somewhere random and let my anxiety take over. What the fuck is going on? He comes to get me whenever he is done doing whatever he was doing to reveal to me that he has been facilitating a venting session with my class (also my advisory). I was to meet with him to discuss their complaints.
living in Salcedo with my friend Tay as my next-door neighbor, struggling with limited access to water, going on weekend trips to Cabarete, teaching under trees and in empty warehouses in the heat, and loving it all (except for my boss).
and more work-place abuse (and a terrible discipline system for students) in a brand new charter school in South Seattle, which led to a successful unionizing effort that I was proud to facilitate and support. At the time, my salary was $41,000, which meant I qualified to low-income housing in a gentrifier building and started working my first barista job on the weekends—all while I navigated the stress of my first year of teaching in the U.S., which truly kicked my ass. At the end of that year, just weeks after the union was established for all three schools in the network and the leadership was informed, they left. They left! It seems to me that they could not handle paying all of their teachers a decent wage, guaranteeing a proper lunch, and hiring to replace every single person (except one) who would not be returning to teach at my school after the summer… but this is me speculating.
how B and I got together the first time and the second time and what we both had to negotiate both times while grounded in immense trust and truetrue love.
why my best teaching experience (by far) was at a district middle school in SeaTac, WA.
moving to East Harlem from Seattle and leaving after three months and all the deception (landlords) and threats of violence (insecure Caribbean men) that led to that decision. That’s how we ended up in Jersey City.
And more.
In addition to those anecdotes (which I shared purely for your entertainment, lol) , I also have story arcs that help me sort of summarize my life, such as:
a journey toward a more grounded sense of self
a lasting commitment to liberation, disruption, and protest
a love story
my path to writing as through my love of books, and now newly committed to poetry through the ways that motherhood opened up my life.
What are yours?
What are the overarching stories of your life so far?
I have recently—and serendipitously—come across a few different texts that are challenging the ways I have seen stories be prioritized.
Maybe you have come across this quote by Joan Didion:
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.”
It perfectly summarizes what so many other writers say about story: how it is in our nature as human beings, its role in healing and survival. And I agree, and I cannot write about stories without honoring everything indigenous people have to teach us about the art and power of storytelling. N. Scott Momaday writes,
“Stories are realities lived and believed. They are true.”
That believing in certain stories is what makes them true.
At the same time, as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi writes, stories can also be tools of destruction. We are all witnessing an example of that now through the ways that Zionism, Islamophobia, and racism spin a narrative that attempts (and fails) to justify an occupation and the genocide of Palestinians.
What gives a story the potential and power to destroy?
Last month, I read Kyo Maclear’s memoir Unearthing. I got really into it because of the family mystery that fell on her lap and really enjoyed her lyrical descriptions all throughout. This book helped me realize the ways that devotion to a story does not necessarily align with real life, how the urge to find or define a story keeps us from truly living and being with the mess and mystery of life. She struggles to find the answers to complete the story of her conception and the life her mother lived before she was born. Life’s circumstances make it impossible for her to “complete” the story. She writes,
“Story is not the only means of remembering our lives.”
Then, she keeps circling back, searching for an expansiveness beyond story that hold the brokenness of life and memory:
“I remember a therapist friend once saying: there is always a moment when the storytelling breaks down and a client’s need to impress falls away and that is always when the work really starts: when the storyteller moves out of the room.”
What do certain personal, familial, and national stories help us avoid?
I cannot help but think of the ways that politicians capitalize on any moment to weave a narrative: Trump “gets shot,” a hero; any Democrat runs against Trump, a hero. Stories simplify, and because they do, they can be wielded to manipulate an entire nation, a cushion for false promises that we seem to have just accepted as part of the political process. I have recently been most frustrated by the ways that people are using Trump and Project 2025 to pressure people to vote for the Democratic Party at all costs. We can’t let it get worse. If WE put him in office, he will surely keep the seat of power for as long as he can. The U.S. will become unlivable for so many of us.
What about the people for whom the U.S. is already unlivable? What about the so-called felons who are locked in a cage for years and then released into a society that persistently denies them a job and basic decency? What about the people working full-time jobs and living in their car? The person who lost their home because of medical debt? The single mother who cannot get anyone to help her make rent?
The U.S. is already unlivable for me, unlivable for my husband who gets paid way too little to get between his patients and the police, to advocate for inmates under his care who are being dismissed by everyone who crosses their path from prison to hospital. Unlivable for all of us who are tormented by the fact that the U.S. probably sent more bombs and warplanes to Israel just yesterday, that more people will die under more rubble because of our government’s support for this genocide.
There seems to be no amount of people who are already marginalized, ignored, and dismissed and for whom this system is already unlivable that will make everyone else care enough to organize and do something about it.
But because of The Story dominating the minds of people who cannot think outside of the box of a two-party system, we are not using this opportune moment to show the government that 3rd party nominees are not just there to push the left; they can actually be competitors. They can actually win, if we vote for them. And then there would still be hard work demanded of all of us.
*deep breath*
People choose their stories, are sometimes really loud about it and carry them to the grave.
As an alternative to that, I offer this wonderful excerpt from Unearthing:
Fugitive is also a word for a mother who will not be planted as a character in a book. A mother, full of narrative, who will always resist narrative custom and conventions.
When we are done visiting for the day, I ask my mother to finish the following sentence in as many ways as she can. I begin, “Without a story…”
“Without a story?” she says.
Finish the story, Ma.
“Without a story…” She opens her mouth, closes it, opens it again. “Without a story, we have to find another way to settle down… Without a story, we are okay… We will still have rice. Without a story, it’s up to you to keep yourself in shape. Without a story, we make it up. Without a story, we are a boat.”
A boat?
“Yes! A boat. A boat going around and around, rowing through the water.”
Then she laughs.
I want to row through the water. I would rather be with the dissonance that punches me in the stomach every day. Maybe that is why I find myself most devoted to poetry.
In an interview with The Creative Independent, the writer & poet Madeleine Cravens spoke about the role of arc and plot in her poetry. She said,
“When I realized what I liked to write was poetry, there was this disjunction between being someone who [has] a deep love of story, but who can’t really write in a way that makes a story happen. I see the book [Pleasure Principle] as sort of emblematic of this frustration of really wanting story, wanting cohesion, but what happens when you can’t produce that or you’re not really even living in a way that is conducive to that kind of completion?”
Story as an attempt at completion, and completion as comforting.
I have been so irked by a podcaster who uses a surprising amount of oxygen to defend Biden (because he’s not Trump) and claims to be all for “burning shit down.” “I’m one of y’all, forreal! But what’s the plan? ‘Burn this all down.’ Then what? Give me a plan, and I’m all in!” I roll my eyes because (1) that’s not how it works (and I wish everyone would read about the history of revolutions), and (2) write up this much-needed plan for us then, since you’re one of us.
I am frustrated while also recognizing that she is so scared (and says so herself). She almost seems newly scared and wrapped up in fresh fear. Well, my fear is stale and pretty grounded at this point. I already know what our government is capable of because I understand history, and I am fully right here in the present. My fear and grief are here to stay.
I want to tell her and all of us:
Consider what we make possible when we let the story break down.
What opens up when we stop forcing ourselves to stick to a story?
My answer: the poem.
And Ruth Irupé Sanabria’s poem speaks to this:
Ars Poetica
Story takes her skin. Story takes her bones.
She finds her toes and her fingertips.
When she speaks, like salmon running,
the dead and the living converge.
The river of memory rocks
the hunger of claws and tongues.
Electricity swallows itself back
through its double-prod picana,
bullets dislodge themselves from
their chore of destroying
the same day over and over again,
and from the caverns of fear and revision,
skin resurrects the skin.
Each sentence closes in
like the crawl of split skin
sealing its red, wet avulsion.
The enormity of the pending night scares the seven assassins on trial.
They understand that in hell, they will eat their own throats.And here is another poem (medicine for the dissonance):
Late Prayers
By Jane Hirschfield
Tenderness does not choose its own uses.
It goes out to everything equally
Including rabbit and hawk.
Look: in the iron bucket,
A single nail, a single ruby—
All the heavens and hells.
They rattle in the heart and make one sound.Writing Prompt: Refusal
List 10 stories that show up in your life, how you think about your life, how you think about your family, how you think about your history, how you think about the future, etc. Summarize them each in a few words, unless your intuition has another plan.
Choose one that really stirs you up and free write for 10 minutes in response to the following questions:
What do you like about that story? What do you hate about it?
How long have you been carrying it? Where do you carry it?
What sounds, smells, textures, tastes, and images bring this story back into your body?
How does it comfort you?
What do you question now?
What remains incomplete?
Fill in the blank:
Story takes ______________________________
Story gives me back my ____________________
Story’s truth is ___________________________
Story’s lie: ______________________________
When this story fall into pieces it looks like ________________
Work with what you got, and make a poem/essay/whatever. Feel free to send it my way!
In solidarity,
Yomalis
