Back from the Grave

On writing and other things

Writing can feel lonely, but recently, I read about how it doesn’t have to be. A couple of weeks ago, I shared an essay with my writing group, and some of us relished the early lives of several great luminaries who gathered well before they became famous. The article centered on an image and the history behind the writers and the group they formed. The picture is striking, a black-and-white photograph of African American women writers who corralled themselves into a literary community, what they referred to as The Sisterhood. The essay, the Power of Sisterhood, was published by the novelist Kaitlyn Greenidge in Harper’s Bazaar. In the text, Greenidge charts how these women—Alice Walker, and Toni Morrisons, among others—came to form a community and write for each other. Greenidge doesn’t just speculate about the group but speaks about how she engages in such practices. The Sisterhood wasn’t just about being the only one, but as Greenidge writes, “The Sisterhood, at least at its start, rejected the myth of the one and only.” This stuck with me, but it also felt familiar. Other writers have been concerned with what it means to think about the craft above the clout.

Recently, Dan Sinykiin’s essay in the Los Angeles Review of Books spoke about his intellectual journey from wanting to be a great novelist to simply wanting to write. In the text, he laid out how the fiction of a meritocracy is nearly absent in the literary world but that the significance of writing isn’t about seeking recognition but about being motivated by the aesthetic. He writes: “Find writing you love and follow it. Make those writers your writers. Read each other, publish each other, create literature that speaks from where you are.”

Finding that place—both intellectual and physical can especially be difficult for writers from the working class, but it doesn’t have to be impossible. Last month, I read Tara K. Menon’s “Parents and Sons” essay in The Nation on Édouard Louis's writing, class ascension, and principled politics. Menon writes:

Louis has established himself as part of a new group of bold and uncompromising voices on the French left; the three men, together and separately, write and speak often and urgently about the needs of France’s working class. Louis doesn’t just write novels; he pens manifestos, attends rallies, and participates in protests.

This is the type of writer I aspire to be, one that is not just gaining acclaim but one who is self-conscious about navigating the world that I came from (the working) and the world where I want to be (where everyone has some dignity). I don’t want to write; I want to explore, discover, and be curious about the world I have inherited while making it slightly pleasant for the people around me.

Since submitting the first complete draft of my manuscript Captive Contagions, I’ve been reading, writing, and reflecting. (I will have to do some edits soonish.) I’ve even begun a custom of taking twenty-four hours off from the week, where I neither check my email nor do any productive labor. (I am adopting aspects of Jenny Odell’s How to do Nothing into my life.) As such, I’m rediscovering Berlin and trying to find the perks of the city, its layered history, and how people feel invigorated by the urban forests. Over the weekend, my partner and I hosted a party where our Berlin-based friends gathered and engaged in gregarious debates about German foxes, experimental films, and the 27% increase in Berlin housing in the past three months. We did what we did best, ate and laughed, and enjoyed each other’s company in a way that lit a fire in our hearts—with some fervent empathy. After five years of living here, Berlin has become my home, but it isn’t just that—this is where I am learning to write, live, and agitate.

An Announcement

I was in conversation with novelist and filmmaker Tsitsi Dangarembga for the lit.Cologne festival in March to discuss her latest book, Black and Female (Faber, 2022). Her novel, Nervous Conditions (1988), was the first book published by a Black woman from Zimbabwe in English. During our conversation, we spoke about her prose, her ability to take her readers into her world with chilling detail, and her feminism. Danarembga spoke about her literary inspirations and what it means to write literature while living on the African continent. In the meantime, you can find an excerpt from her book, Black and Female, in Granta Magazine. The video isn’t uploaded yet, but I will share it when available.

Tsitsi Dangarembga and me. lit.Colgone, March 2023.

A Word

In mid-January, I wrote a short essay for the London Review of Books entitled “On the Subway,” where I dated myself by referencing Le Tigre, but that’s okay. You might enjoy the essay if you also have critiques about the rise of policing in New York City. The text explores the subway, the mayor, and the over-policing of the city. If you haven’t already read it, I highly suggest you read James Forman’s Locking up our Own, Elizabeth Hinton’s From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, and Jordan Camp & Christina Heatherton’s Policing the Planet.

The final paragraph of “On the Subway” articulates my nostalgia, which has taken some air from my emotional wounds. I write:

Nostalgia distorts the past. As the novelist Mohsin Hamid has put it, ‘we are drawn like lovers to the unreachable past, to imagined memories, to nostalgia.’ Returning to New York last year, I was drawn to memories of when I first lived there in 2008, and the subway, with all its defects, was one of the things I loved about the place. It was a microcosm of the city. Now, filled with police, it felt like a ghostly shell of one of my many homes.

In February, I published a text in gal-dem, an excerpt of my Preface on Black Feminist thought for Fugitive Feminism, initially published in Silver Press. You can get the book directly from Silver Press.

A Read

Zadie Smith’s “The Instrumentalist” was a great take on generational shifts and what it means to be out of sync with modern trends. Although I am a millennial, some of her comments might be a premonition for what is to come. Some weeks ago, I devoured Deborah Levy’s memoir, Real Estate, flooded with nuggets about motherhood, aging, and home. Her reflections about home and how a writer navigates and tries to find a place in the world hit close to home. She writes, “Real Estate is a tricky business We rent and buy and sell and inherit it, but we also knock it down.”

I hope that we can all be secure in the homes we create.

With love,

Edna Bonhomme