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Expressing Social Consciousness Through Writing
by Thomas Kilduff
Our Spring '08 Writer's Life series evening on "Expressing Social Consciousness through Writing" was devoted largely to writing that reflects the authors' political principles.
Amy Hoffman read from her recent memoir An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News. Louise Dunlap shared her perspective as author of Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change and Charles Coe, author of Picnic on the Moon, talked from a poet's perspective, replacing Richard Hoffman, who was ill. Socially conscious writing, all panelists agreed, can run one of two ways: preaching to the choir (inspiring your core audience) or extending your readership to try to change minds and hearts. Each author spoke about effective ways to get your point across and healthy ways to handle criticism.
Amy Hoffman: Editor of the Women's Review of Books and author of two memoirs, An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News and Hospital Time, Hoffman said: "I've always been taught to take social responsibility seriously." Her mother advised that if Amy were to see something, anything unjust, "it's as if it's being done to you." Hoffman came from a Jewish family in Rutherford, New Jersey, in a blue-collar neighborhood, the oldest child of six. After arriving in Boston in 1973, she had "found a political home in feminism." For four years, she worked at Gay Community News, a Boston-based radical newspaper with an international readership. "We explored in its pages," Hoffman said, "the depth and complication of coming out."
Louise Dunlap: Dunlap combines writing and activism with her first book Undoing the Silence: Six Tools for Social Change Writing, which came out in 2008 and is already into its second printing. The title comes from her memories of growing up in the repressive 1940's and 50's and "all that silence we experienced in that period." Dunlap first began her political life in the free speech movement of the 1960's, then taught at UMASS Boston in the 1980's and M.I.T. in the 1990's. She's recently taken trips to see devastating environmental degradation in New Orleans and the grim reality of violence against women in South Africa. Dunlap, does however, believe ignoring problems will only make them bigger − which is why she takes solace in writing.
Charles Coe: Poet Charles Coe, who is NWU-Boston Chapter co-chair and works for the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a local clearinghouse for artistic and literary grants, asked the audience: "For whom do you write? Are you trying to influence people or are you preaching to the choir? Sometimes the choir needs to be inspired to experience a sense of community and connection."
Tips/Observations
- When it comes to socially conscious writing, Coe said, "All politics in personal."
- "Be truthful," Hoffman said, "it requires a lot of courage to take a stand on certain things."
- Dunlap said: "You need a community when the going gets rough." She also recommends YES magazine, a positive-approach monthly publication for a left-wing audience.
- "You want to give the reader a takeaway" (e.g. a resource list of like-minded individuals or organizations, contact info for the reader's legislators, a list stating "what you can do to help").
- Coe concludes: "If you're not willing to write whatever the truth is for you, then take up another activity."
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