Toni Morrison’s “The Site of Memory” made me think of an essay by Siri Hustvedt, “Three Emotional Stories”–where she argues that “memory and the imagination partake of the same mental processes.” She offers quite a bit neurological research to support the claim.  If it’s true, what becomes of facts? One point Morrison makes is that facts are “publicly verifiable.” It seems to me that the creative nonfiction writer deals in the facts Morrison describes, along with other, more personal facts–the fact that I feel this or remember that or did something. Hustvedt suggests that “writing fiction is like remembering what never happened.” If memory and imagination overlap to the degree Hustvedt suggests, what might this mean for nonfiction writing?

The full essay is on our “More Readings” page. In the meantime, I’ll paste the abstract here. Also, I encourage you to send me readings to post–anything you think would interest the group.

Hustvedt’s “Three Emotional Stories” (abstract)

Hi all,

In preparation for this Wednesday’s workshop, please remember to do the following:

1. Select one idea or story you’re considering writing for your final piece. If you’re torn between several ideas, try leaning into the intuition we’ve been talking about this semester. Which one seems like more fun? Or has a little more spark (or Woolf’s “shock”). Go with that.
2. Draw a map of the story or narrative. Ideally, this is done by hand, but if digital is your preferred media that’s okay too. Be playful and creative here, there is no wrong (or “right”) answer. Maybe the map is topographical. Maybe it’s a treasure map. Maybe you’re like “I have only a vague idea of what I’m writing about” so the map is just one word leading to another, or a really chaotic etch-a-sketch. This is unbelievably low stakes, so use this as an opportunity to lean into your creative instincts.
3. Bring your maps to class on Wednesday, we’ll use them for the exercise.

Can’t wait to see em’. -Aly

1)
The truth is that your body is never the same again after having children. But when does anyone’s body remain the same from one day to the next? Cells multiply and die constantly, no matter the way your body is used on this earth. According to researchers at Stanford, a body is almost entirely brand new, cell-wise, every 7-10 years. Things like pregnancy and giving birth just demonstrate much more visible and rapid change.

2)
What was different? For the first few days after giving birth, she felt like she was walking through water. Her legs were unattached from her body as she willed them to step one after the other, leading her to the bathroom while the urine leaked from her jelly middle and into pools on the floor around her feet.
What was different a year later? Those same legs were doing roundhouse kicks against a boxing bag, her arms with a quick right jab-left hook, her abdominal muscles tight and visible under her skin as the liner in her underwear caught what was now only occasional leaks.

Unclean :

Ms. Fley, can you help me put the earring back in?  “I… uh.m. mmmm… I don’t know.  Just, I don’t know… my nails are too long.” How do I say weirded out, without saying weirded out? Oh, just tell her it’s unsanitary. “Any bed she lies on while her discharge continues will be unclean, as is her bed during her monthly period, and anything she sits on will be unclean, as during her period.”

There is a stench coming from your head and shoes. “STOP”, turn around then come back in. YOU know better than to walk in here with shoes on… said every Asian mom I’ve known. “Infectious bacteria can attach to your shoes when you’ve been walking outdoors, in public restrooms, and other places with high concentrations of pathogens. Pathogens are organisms that cause disease”. In between messy and neat I see the sprawled out outside-clothes in my friend’s room, the wrinkled spots in my lover’s room, the mice. Mice apparently cause diseases too. What is good? What is clean? You shall not eat any of their flesh, and you shall not touch their carcasses; they are unclean to you. I moved here and began eating unclean meat. I have made my seats unclean through being messy. In July, my new favorite bakery racked up 66 points for sanitary violations that included fly infestations, personal inadequate cleanliness and contaminated surfaces. There were signs from the owners saying they had closed due to plumbing issues. What is good? What is clean? But the voice spoke again: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.”

My mother was too busy working and my father had been out of my picture for a decade. My brother spent his time studying or playing basketball with his friends while I stayed in our tiny little apartment, wrote silly little poems, and daydreamed.

So when my classmates asked if I wanted to ride around the park together, I lied and said I was hanging out with my family.

I didn’t want to tell them I never learned how to ride a bike.

In theory I know how to do it: Grab the handlebars. Swing right leg over the seat. Sit down. Push down with right foot against the pedal to start moving forward. Plant your left foot against the left pedal and follow the movement. Keep your balance.

That’s it, right?

I hated my best friend’s boyfriend. There was a constantly-rotating list of things – demands, ailments – that always seemed to bend our plans to his needs. He never asked if I liked the music he blasted in the car. But when I stood at the top of the pocked rock cliff over the ocean, looking down at his head and shoulders bobbing in the rolling water, he shouted instructions to me. Encouragements. Jump when the water is low because it’ll be high by the time you land. Here, right here, where it’s deepest. And, when I surfaced after the jump, feet tingling, heart pounding, the first thing I heard was a whoop from him and then, over and over, the word yes. 

It wasn’t that I had no idea why she would marry him. He was rude, yes, inconsiderate, also yes. He didn’t share many of her interests, and his seemed limited to whatever he felt like doing at any given moment. We didn’t have the words for it then, but I think the kids call it “main character syndrome” now. When my best friend told me she was getting divorced, I was relieved. But when she cried, and said she still loved him, I remembered him cheering me on when I jumped off that cliff in Hawaii and I didn’t have to lie when I told her I understood.

Apologies that this is a day late, y’all. Work got the best of me. Look forward to reading your work!

You dress yourself in sparkly strawberry lipgloss and a form-fitting, diamond-studded Bebe top (not the translucent one, which would be gauche). Maybelline waterproof mascara. Meet your girlfriends out front after mom drops you off in her Suburban, you’ll catch a ride home. Inside, the music has already begun. You snag a spot in the second row, stage right, where you will see others, but more importantly, be seen. Somewhere in pews there is a boy because there always is. You mouth the words projected onto the auditorium screen and glance across the room, searching. Some kid wails on an electric guitar. The keyboard swells, the youth pastor preaches, dirty blonde hair slick with gel. You fiddle with your King James Teen Study Bible. Every Thursday night, sitting pretty at the First Assembly of God.

—

Thursdays was Youth Group. I straightened my hair, glossed my lips, wore bright tops with an appropriate-enough neckline. Sat toward the front so that David, our youth pastor, would take notice, be proud. He’d bound across the stage, gesticulating like one of those inflatable balloons at car dealerships, we proclaim in the name of Jesus!, his dirty blonde hair unmoving, slick with gel. And me, armed with my leopard print Bible case, scrawling earnest notes I would never read into the margins of my King James’ Teen Study Bible. When it came time for alter call, when the keyboard swelled and David called us to repent and invite Jesus into our sinner hearts for the 25th time in Jesus’ name I knelt on the plush carpeting, sobbed shoulder to shoulder with the same girls who stood guard outside of the junior high restrooms so I could vomit Frito pies. Lifted my palms toward the sky and rocked just like the pastors’ kids. I wonder now if it was only me, or if we all were dying to be told that we were good.

The storm was hitting the next morning. A loudspeaker blasted a recorded message from a police car passing by our house: “Attention Long Beach Residents, there is a mandatory evacuation in place. As of 10 am tomorrow, October 29^th, you must leave the city.” It repeated down the street. There would be no one to help you if you get stuck. I starred at my room in disarray, I knew I had to bite the bullet and contact my mom to take us in. I resisted all day because I knew she didn’t want us there – she had begun the renovations on her home, and we would somehow inconvenience her. It was like her not to see what was staring her in the eyes in the hope that it would go away.

***

A Tropical cyclone was cutting a right turn in my head after days and days of news reports on tv. A big white swirl hovering over the east coast and on top of my house imprinted on my eyes when I closed them. On a loudspeaker startling me with a blasted recording: “Attention, Long Beach residents…” My heart sank into my stomach. Everything was suddenly real as if before it was just a hypothesis – a hypothesis I just expelled from my mind with a more favorable certainty: everything will be all right. My mom taught me that: to not see from my eyes. It was like her to not see what was staring her in the eyes. To not see me.

It’s For You

1. I always told people I quit drinking on my own. That wasn’t entirely true. “Yeah my parents are splitting up and I’m pretty depressed. I’ve actually decided to quit drinking. I think it’s making me more depressed.” A phone call from a friend. Not a best friend. Not an acquaintance. Just a friend I never see who needed to vent. Sometimes those are the best friends. Quit drinking. Quit. I offered my condolences to him about his parents (his dad had been my second grade teacher.) Suddenly this phone call from a not best friend and not a stranger made all the difference in the world to me. It was 2020 and something just clicked. To this day he doesn’t even know what he did for me. Will I ever tell him or will I just stay at a friendly, safe distance and wait for him to call.

2. You did not expect this phone call would make you sober. Sometimes advice from a nagging therapist, your family, and loved ones is just too familiar. Familiar is fine but you need to welcome the unexpected, the uninvited, the party crasher who makes your night memorable and shakes shit up. A passing ship that throws a life preserver. Sometimes you need to reach out to an old friend you never see who won’t judge you or react because they only know the idea of you. Who are you? It did not concern him entirely and that’s okay. You knew then who you did not want to be anymore. Will you tell him this? No. Maybe. You did not expect this phone call to change you.

Julia Kirsteva can be hard to read. If you understand her primary terms, you’ll understand the basics of her theory, at least this one.  See basic definitions below.

As you read Kristeva, think about how her theory  speaks to Woolf’s and Hustvedt’s in various ways–but also to Questlove, Hayles, Freud, and Gay. How might we learn something about our own writing, about how we generate ideas and language, by thinking through connections among the ideas of these writers. If they are far-flung from each other in terms of style, where can we find contiguities in their thinking? How do their ideas help us understand the dynamic between intuition and intention? Or fact and play? What might Woolf’s ‘shocks’ or Kristeva’s ‘thetic’ add to the conversation?

Come to class having made two connections–between any of them–that you think it would be interesting to discuss as a class. Also, bring any and all questions.

Note: We’ll have about forty minutes to work through these ideas, so it will be sort of like speed dating. But we can always come back to them (if a second date seems worthwhile).

Chora — A pre-linguistic state, or “non-expressive totality”outside “the symbolic order” (in an infant, “oriented toward the mother”)

Semiotic — Nonverbal signifying systems–“a distinctive mark, trace, index, precursory sign, proof, engraved or written sign, imprint, trace, figuration”; also gestures.

Symbolic — A system of language that catches the subject in a (patriarchal) order, often referred to as “the symbolic order”; note: the subject always both participating in the semiotic and the symbolic

Thetic — A rupture or break in the symbolic order; these ruptures are inherent in participation in the symbolic order