Lost in Translation
On criticism, culture (work), and community
I have recently had reason to pause and reassert an ethic about how I engage social media, community, and criticism:
“Death of the Author”
I used to try to write to convince others of my humanity, I used to write hoping to bring people closer to me. Sometimes it worked and sometimes I was met with dull silence. Words were lost in translation again. I have decided in recent years that that is not a good motivation for writing. At least for me.
I’ve learned from philosophy about the “death of the author,” or this idea once words are shared “authorial intent” loses salience. This is important, especially as we can note the importance of this journey for words in revolutions and deconstruction.1
Still, as a Black woman who writes, I understand writing as cultural work, a term I first learned from Elizabeth Alexander’s The Black Interior. This work often involves discerning which community we are speaking to, with, and for at all times so that the relationship between our intent and our impact finds a healthy harmony or tension.
The Vocation of Writing as Cultural Work
It should come as no surprise to my readers that I read Alexander’s description of “Cultural work” as a vocational statement for the Black woman who writes:
“Culture is one way I take in the world and venture beyond my boundaries, where I often find politics as well as an aesthetic choice so deep I experienced it in my body, where I shift and have sometimes shifted others through my own writing and teaching.”
She goes on to say,
The work I do is culture work, and culture is what calls many of us into the conundrum of the public sphere. Culture and politics need not present and either/or proposition of politics is restored to its original meaning — "of the polis," the village, the community. Sometimes we encounter truths in culture not necessarily verifiable against census records or the voting rules. Sometimes in culture we find what we are hoping for before we have been able to articulate or enact it.
There is something here, something I am holding on to between intention and impact and what it takes to shift culture with words. At the center for me is community. When I write, I ask the question of “who” because gentle landing for me also includes an ethical concern for how words can transform.
They can cut down or build up. They can imprison and liberate.
The book I am holding has been floating around my Twitter timeline and has been on my wishlist. I am excited to dig into it. It joins a number of books on my bookshelf that inspire me as a writer. Though I haven’t read it yet, my face lights up reading the names of the women included. Over the years I’ve come to appreciate this about Black women and our cultural work: we have written communities into existence.
The term ‘misfits’ takes on dual notions; a misfit is one who looks at life differently. Many, however, are misfits because life looks at them differently…”
—Michaela Coel, Misfits
When I started the Dear Soft Black Woman podcast, I didn’t have the framework to think of it as cultural work, but I knew I was addressing a misfit-ness that did not seem to have a place in mainstream conversation.
I now understand my role as a cultural worker, and as defined by Alexander, that work has happened in community with others who are resisting the division between culture and politics. Those who saw the truth of a soft approach to life as a necessary path to liberation, long before #softblackgirl and #thesoftlife became commonly use hashtags.
This poem was written in consideration of Michaela Coel’s Misfits, which is a tremendous inspiration to me as a contemplative and creative Black woman.
I write for those who are still apologizing for the presence of their bodies in the world.
I no longer want to be the girl who trembles before the overwhelming presence of
White supremacy as it reaches up from breath to air to imagination to skin and to bone.
I write for my wholeness, and for the journey of self-love that begins with the truth
that I don’t have to earn love from anyone, including myself.
I look back and wonder how I got here and see only trial and error,
sometimes more error than anything else, yet, still—
I write to join the voices of Black people who wish to be seen in their softness.
I write for the version of me who did not know she would be here, like this.
I write for the version of me who held on to the hope that she would.
I write for the parts of myself that are still coming together.
I write for the ways I'm still coming apart.
I write to create a place I can fully belong
I write to affirm my journey home.Prophetic Cultural Work
We often misunderstand the role of prophecy and prophetic speech. Some think of it as a form of fortune telling and others just think it’s an adjective for being bold and loud.
But I root my understanding of prophecy in the imagination of the misfit who understands the necessity of cultural work to upend the strongholds of oppression in favor of the marginalized.2
Some people think they are doing this by speaking in ways that overpower and overwhelm the voices of the marginalized. I would argue that they are not doing cultural work or prophetic work if it requires doubling down on their intent over the harmful impact on the cultural bodies they claim to care for.
As a writer, I refuse the binary of “words vs action.” Some people say “Actions speak louder than words,” and while it is true that they do, words can still express truth in ways that create community.
That all being said, I hope these words land in a way that challenges as well as liberates—and if they do not, I know who I am speaking to and with and I look to them to find my way back to the work that matters.
Landing Tracks [ft. shame-free self-promotion]
Take a moment to consider how words have impacted your life, and consider what community those words have formed for you. Do the actions of those communities align with the principles you want to live by? What needs to change—what is said or what is lived? How can you contribute to that change?
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Where would we be if we privileged the authorial intent of the constitution when it said, “we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal….”
Christian readers, look to Amos and Jeremiah, to name a few.
I give my strongest applause to this
I love this, Rose. And your poem is beautiful.