The small lawn in front of my daughter’s high school is a jumble of sporadically-tended vegetable gardens, a big poorly painted rock, a stick sculpture of a turtle, and a mosaicked wall. Last week on that cluttered bit of land, while students headed to the bus stop and crossed the street to the library, ICE agents tackled a school staff member and pepper-sprayed the onlookers.
Even in the moment, agents accused the gaping students and the teachers trying to protect them of obstructing justice. This control of narrative played out far more tragically earlier in the day, when agents shot a woman point-blank while she was trying to drive away. Within minutes, a peaceful protester steering her car away from agents became a domestic terrorist.
Two murders happened in swift sequence—one of a young white mother standing up for her brown neighbors, the second of the truth.
Alissa Raffa, an author acquaintance of mine, signs her books, “Write or be written.” As 3000 masked ICE agents patrol my city, snatching the people who serve as teacher aids and sell us our mangos and reroof our homes—as I wonder what I can do to stop this travesty of an oppressive government, I’m remembering Alissa’s pithy advice, only with a twist. Others will bend events to their advantage whether we write them or not.
I’m confident saying this because who among us hasn’t spun a narrative in our own favor? I repeatedly catch myself lying on the page. But memoir, practiced with intention, humbles us before the reality of our experiences. Writing, and especially revising, is a means of uncovering emotional truth. Alissa’s dictum reminds us to write as a form of resistance but also engage in the humbling, eternal quest for the truth. Writing helps us practice reverence for what really happened, both the facts and their core import.
We need to write our stories as a way to oppose to false narratives. We need to ceaselessly seek the truth of our personal experiences. The authenticity of our country’s narrative depends on it.
–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew
PS: If you’re wondering how to find accurate news about Minnesota or how you can help, please check out my update to family and friends here.