the writers

There are opportunities, from time to time, to see and meet influential people here at Yale - leaders in their fields. I write a little, so I started going to see the writers when they did readings and interviews. The writers I’ve seen so far are Ada Limón, Vijay Seshadri, Terrance Hayes, Alison Bechdel, Roxanne Gaye, Sheila Heady, Natasha Trethewey, Dasha Nekrasova and more.

Before I kick this rats nest let me say that I’m not an English Literature major. I haven’t done “close readings” of these authors' works or performed any literary analysis. What follows are just my opinions or what I’ve overheard (and much of that I disagree with).

After the readings and greetings, I hang back in the crowd to hear reactions. Many of the Yale students attending these events want to seem intellectual and subversive - at the same time, they don’t want to be polarizing or say things that their peers will disagree with. I’m appalled at how little credit is given to writers for their earlier, groundbreaking work.

Some crowd reactions included: Roxanne Gaye “is so 2016,” Ada Limón’s presentation seemed “sanitized and censored.” Jia Tolentino, “no longer staking out controversial spaces.” Much of the criticism was that these authors were freer, as nobodies in their basements, to rage against the system but they’ve since been corrupted, tamed and rendered vapid, as it were, by the financial ties of fame.

At a reading by Terrance Hayes, he discussed the criticism that the “classics” represent the “white cannon” and don’t include alternative perspectives. Terrance Hayes argued that the “classics” are such because they present universal truths and that, like science, you don’t have to erase things to include new things.

I’ll cut to the chase - here are the three authors whose events impressed me the most:

Sheila Heady
Sheila Heady did a talk on her creative process. Which normally I’m pretty skeptical of because I’ve seen some vague, wishy-washy answers - but Sheila shared it all. She had spreadsheets detailing the time she spent writing, graphs on time spent researching, and even pictures of her desktop arrangement (which says a lot about someone). She was so open and vulnerable - almost indifferent to judgment - it was refreshing, honest and endearing.

Some days she would write for 2 minutes and on others for 10 hours. I think it showed that the creative process can be messy and we’re not failures if we don’t set out writing time every day.

Natasha Trethewey
I have a complicated response when listening to people read aloud about terrible things that happened to them - I question their motives, purposes and intentions. Natasha Trethewey however, used it as background for a discussion of her relationship to poetry and writing. It was beautiful to be in that room, it was inspiring rather than being provocative.

Dasha Nekrasova
On the flipside I absolutely loved Dasha Nekrasova who’s all about being a provocateur. Her event was chaotic and crazy. It was a Yale Political Union (YPU) event, and I don’t know what those people are on, but there was yelling, objections, people getting up, she was skipping around the stage. At first, I didn’t realize it was a debate because it had a freeform look and I came in a minute late, from chemistry class - but I liked her a lot in the debate format. I plan to attend more YPU events in the future.

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