by Jehana Silverwing
Lately, I have been immersing myself in the world of essay.I find essay, especially autobiographical or philosophical, to be of utmost importance -- to read and touch the "other", to grasp something of commonality and of distinctions, to comprehend (in whatever limited fashion) experiences other than my own. It is an enriching experience, to read words fashioned and styled into a creative endeavor (all books are creative in that the author picks and chooses what to say, and how to say it -- an ultimate "fictionalizing"; just as [practically-speaking] all books are non-fictive in that they express something somehow of importance to the author).
It is this window, grasped non-linearily, that makes the world of essay and autobiographical essay appeal to me. Slices of life, and of thought, and of emotive awareness -- I may share some of these perspectives; others may well be alien except for the pure humanness that the person writing ultimately conveys.
Perhaps I came into this appreciation through the world of APA's (Amateur Press Associations), wherein a small group of people write about related (or un-related) topics, comment on each other's topics, comment on each other's comments, and send all these writings to a central mailer/organizing editor who collates these writings together and mails them out on a periodic schedule one lump sum to the contributors. (Internet mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups sort of serve this function, but the time scale is different, yielding an overall different [rushed?] feel to the end result.)
In traditional cultures, since people tended to share a common history, the focus is/was on the "we" -- this is the story of who "we" are, how "we" came to be, "our" creation myth, "our" history and "our" currency as a people. There were individual tales, too -- the great hunter, the great warrior. I suspect there were tales about the great craftsman, the great craftswoman, the gatherer, the mother, the priest/ess. Being of a different scale, they were not as likely to have been directly recorded.
In today's world, we move around a lot more noticably. Our essays reflect this. (This is neither better nor worse, it simply IS.) From these essays, we can make some progress towards understandings of our own experiences, in a way not entirely dissimilar from the way traditional peoples learn to understand theirs.
I notice in my compilation of books of essays that I have the tendency to collect material written by people on the "edge" -- that is, people dealing with cultural diversity, living in worlds where internal and external cultural conflict takes place. I suspect that a lot of this reflects my own formative years: a childhood spent in New York City born of white Kentuckian parents in a dominantly-Jewish apartment building, being schooled with fellow Catholics who were essentially all Cuban or other Carribean Hispanic. Currently being a Witch and a Pagan in a Christian society, a deist in a material society, a lesbian bisexual in a heterosexual society (where many of the lesbians have little time for bisexuals) -- I hence have a calling towards books of this nature, to understand other perspectives on cross-cultural communications and perceptions. Because we act on perception, these perceptions are a form of reality.
In addition to the metaphoric and/or metaphysical discoveries I make in these readings, I learn what it is to express my own story, warts and all. Most of these writers do not write out of some exalted idea of perfection -- either of themselves or of their ideals. (The ones that do fail to interest me.) By their examples, regardless of whether I personally may agree or disagree with conclusions they may reach, I learn to express my own truths, and examine my own cultural ambiguities. In many ways, I am a silent woman; many of us have learned while growing up to keep our emotive needs to ourselves -- the school of hard knocks. Who you are can and will be used against you. These differences, rather than being accepted and enjoyed, become black holes of dissonance, sucking in one's personal energy, and setting one off on a cycle of anxiety, depression, disassociation, and wall-building. But the best of the essayists attempt to break down the walls -- whether by filing out little chinks and crevices, or by wrangling with wrecking balls. They show us how they percieve, even how they discover and learn. They seldom speak of universals, but of where they themselves have been, and what meanings, if any, they derive from their experiences. Sometimes, the pure recitation of experience speaks for itself. Sometimes, inferences and messages are drawn, as an experience may well transform the writer. Certainly, the experience has marked the writer well enough that he or she takes the trouble to record it.
Proceeding through bookstores, I seldom see a shelf labelled "Essays". Typically, I find a section of "Biography/Autobiography". Unfortunately, biography typically tends towards dry recitations of aspects of someone's life, without capturing their motivations except in second, third, or fourth-hand manner. Frequently these books yield more information about the writer than the obstensible object of study. (This is especially true in the case of those "kiss-and-tell" biographies.) A good autobiography wherein the writer allows her or his perceptual processes come to the fore truly deserves its own shelving category.
There is a power in the first person, whether singular or plural. I was there. We were there. This is what I/we witnessed. This is the story I/we tell around the campfire, late at night -- passed down through oral generations in an era apart from books; or, directly transcribed by ourselves, in our voices, today.