Embrace the Process!

Most of us are familiar with the writing process at some level. Whether you are a writer or an English professor, as I am, you have - no doubt - used the writing process in some form in your personal and/or professional lives. From brainstorming ideas for a project, outlining main ideas, attending to details of a task, tweaking those details, and reviewing the overall workflow, you have, indeed, engaged in some form of the writing process. My students dread the process; they prefer, instead, to do what I call flash writing: write it in a flash, and turn it in! I get it; I’ve been there, but have you ever considered how similar the writing process is to life itself?

Think about it: Our ideas start forming from the day we are born based on our immediate environment, and our closest interactions foster early language skills. Simple articulations - like mommy, daddy, good, yes, no, bad, dog, cat - function as bullet points in the early development of our outline, if you will, of how we see the world. We enter kindergarten as the earliest draft of ourselves; and we revise this draft, arguably, for the rest of our lives, but especially throughout our teenage years. We enter college, or the work world, as the best draft of ourselves, and we spend the rest of our adult lives - hopefully, but no judgement, polishing this version of ourselves.

Wherever you are in your “process,” embrace it as just that, a process. You didn’t become this version of you overnight. Whatever goal or resolution you set for yourself, approach that as your revision process; the prefix “pro” indicates favorable steps (process) toward some measurable goal (progress). Wherever you are in your process - whether writing a book, working on a project, or preparing for an interview or even a hot date - remember: Good work takes time; so embrace the process and all of the drafts you reveal along the way. Your audience awaits!

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In Memory of bell hooks

Photo Credit: Monica Almeida, The New York Times, December 15, 2021

Once again, I enter the new year offering posthumous thanks to one of my muses. At the beginning of 2019, I bid farewell to author and playwright Ntozake Shange in “An Open Posthumous Letter to Ntozake Shange, Author of For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide” and in 2020, I honored the legacy of Toni Morrison in “Thanks for the Memory: A Posthumous Letter to the Late Toni Morrison.” Now, as we begin 2021, I am compelled to write this posthumous thank-you note to literary and feminist theorist/activist bell hooks, ne Gloria Jean Watkins, who gained her angel wings on December 15, 2021. Following is my posthumous note of thanks to hooks, my muse:

Dear Professor hooks:

I remember the first time I met you. I introduced you at our Women’s Studies symposium in March of 2003. You complimented me on my outfit – a suit with which I refuse to part, even some 19 years later, because I shook your hand while wearing it, REALLY; it’s my lucky suit, thank you! Your soft, nasaled “Hi; nice suit,” accompanied by and equally firm but soft handshake: Pardon me, Professor hooks, but you had me at “Hi.”

You see, although this was the first time we’d share physical space, I “met” you months prior in my Introduction to Women’s Studies course when I “Theory as Liberatory Experience.” Admittedly, my first impression was of your intentional use of lower case first initials in your first and last name, a choice even more impressive because you chose this pen name in homage to your grand mother, Bell Blair Hooks, and to emphasize “the substance of books, not who I am” (Risen). From your humble spirit would flow more than 30 books, from her debut Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981) to your later works, like The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love (2004), which collectively examine the silencing of black female voices as a result of sexual objectification, skin color, body weight, and heterosexism. You challenge the power of the white male perspectives, championing, instead, authentic representations of black women; and you do so in a tone that remains conversational, while firmly rooted in scholarship. I often write as if I am in conversation with you, particularly as your book, All About Love, informs much of the framework for my scholarship on African American women’s narratives.

So it was on that crisp December morning, when I awoke to the news of your passing. “Damn!” I thought. Another Queen silenced. Fortunately, I have but to look at my collection of your works, my consequential scholarship, and that of others both in the academy and in the community for inspiration. For that, I thank you!

Until we meet again,

Dr. Ondra Krouse Dismukes

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Credits:

Dismukes, Ondra Krouse. “An Open Posthumous Letter to Ntozake Shange, Author of for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow is enuf.” The Linguistique Mystique, January 26, 2019.

---. “Thanks for the Memory: A Posthumous Letter to the Late Toni Morrison.” The Linguistique Mystique, March 6, 2020.

Risen, Clay. “bell hooks, Pathbreaking Black Feminist, Dies at 69.” The New York Times. December 15, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/15/books/bell-hooks-dead.html. Accessed 9 January, 2022.

Thank you, Langston Hughes!

“What happens to a dream deferred?” asks Langston Hughes:

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore –

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over –

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

O does it explode? (268)

“Harlem:” one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite authors. I admire Hughes's use of simile to create imagery in asking what seems a rhetorical question, “What happens to a dream deferred?” Yet, he dares to ponder it, and so should we.

Thank you, Mr. Hughes, for comparing deferring our dreams to such unappealing, unattractive, unpleasant, unsavory, and just plain unwanted images – a dry, sun-cooked raisin; a festering sore; odorous rotten meat, crusty treats, and saggy loads - and forcing us to reflect on our dreams. Such vivid imagery calls us to see deferring our dreams as something bothersome, even burdensome; and this is especially important in 2021, amidst a socioeconomic trend current media calls “The Great Resignation,” where people are resigning their jobs in record numbers as indicative of the major lifestyle changes in our current COVID-19-epidemic-conscious climate (Fox). Penned just over 50 years ago, the four seemingly rhetorical questions Hughes asks challenge us, perhaps, to adjust our perspective: to see our dreams not as dry, but firm; not as festering, but in need of care; not as rotten, but ripe; and not as crusty, but as ready to realize; and here are some tips to help you along your journey:

1) Acknowledge the dream! We all have a dream or aspiration – a certain job or career, spouse/partner, or activity; what’s yours?

2) Articulate the dream! Write it, and make it plain for you and for Spirit.

3) Let it explode! Let it out; follow your dream.

4) Allow Spirit to lead you! Be quiet, seek clarity, and embrace the process.

5) Pay it forward! Your journey to achieving you dream is your testimony; share it, and inspire others, just as Spirit is inspiring you by placing the dream in your heart in the first place.

Now, as we blast into 2022, may the questions Hughes asked us over 50 years ago take root in our hearts, and may all our dreams come true!

Credits:

Fox, Michelle. “Another ‘Great Resignation’ Wave Is Coming in January, MUSE CEO says: Here’s How to Prepare.” CNBC. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/27/another-great-resignation-save-is-coming-in-january-muse-ceo-says.html. 27 December 2021. Accessed December 27, 2021.

Hughes, Langston. “Harlem.” Selected Poems: Langston Hughes. New York: Vintage Books, 1974. Print.