Pico Iyer, the transnational, British-born, California-raised author, writes about this haunting and perpetual state of “in-between-ness.” When Iyer traveled to India, people there saw him as a “Westerner” because of his American accent, clothing and mannerisms.  Yet, when he flew “home” to California, or England, Caucasians often asked him (and I am badly paraphrasing here): “No, seriously, where are you really from?”  Like Iyer, my identity has always felt malleable, porous to the nth degree.  Although I derive no comfort from feeling separate from all “Imagined Communities” (Benedict Anderson’s phrase), I believe that my in-between status has nonetheless allowed me to retain a critical view of the cultures and beliefs that swirl around me.  And the things that hold me together, what keeps me feeling “whole,” is my girlfriend, my relationships with both my parents and my small group of friends, and my true sanctuary, the place I go when existence is shit and nothing but death runs in the nightly news: I escape into moving, socially-conscious literature. 

One of the hallmarks of great contemporary literature, the kind of literature that revives me whenever I feel that life has become mechanical and meaningless, is that it promulgates those emotional truths that resonate throughout humankind, regardless of race, social status, or geography.  To take one example: Hubert Selby Jr., author of Last Exit to Brooklyn, wrote about the types of people that you would normally want to avoid meeting in unlighted, trashcan-lined alleyways—sociopathic drug dealers, pimps, military veterans inflicted with terminal rage, heroin-addicted prostitutes, aimless, hardened thugs who beat their girlfriends.  And yet, without preaching, or apologizing for their self-destructive behavior, Selby renders heartbreaking accounts of spiritually broken people, and these stories burned indelible images into my mind. 

Writing as a self-acknowledged fallible human being, I realize that it is hard for us to detach ourselvescompletely from the invisible influence of culturally ingrained ideologies. However, we can try our best—like the great, celebrated writers around the world—to transcend provincialism or blind allegiance to a flapping nylon flag, and bring attention to human suffering by lending a literary voice to those who cannot or will not speak out due to myriad inhibiting circumstances.  James Joyce did this beautifully in Ulysses, when he criticized British imperialism in Ireland, while simultaneously exposing his own country’s poor treatment of women, Jews and other disenfranchised groups on Irish soil.  I’m no Joyce, but I am inspired by writers like him who seek to shine a light in places where it would not be the most politically advantageous thing to do. 

When I write of affecting literature, I am writing about entertaining and vivid short stories, novels, plays, poems and essays—significant, heartfelt, sometimes satiric, and oftentimes rebellious narratives that show me the complexities of humanity in all of its horror and beauty, and that implicitly and explicitly question stereotypical assumptions about social and ethnic groups.  While some might look at my publication record and debate this claim, I consider myself a writer, and I hope to emulate those authors who have left their mark on me: Richard Yates, Flannery O’Connor, Raymond Carver, Andre Dubus, Kenzaburo Oe, Zora Neale Hurston, Joseph Heller, Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Ralph Ellison, Michael Chabon, Yukio Mishima, Vladimir Nabokov—there are simply too many to name, and I apologize to the living and the dead, those authors that I slighted for not listing here. 

As David Minter eloquently wrote in The Sound and The Fury: A Norton Critical Edition, great “works of literature enrich our lives by stretching our capacities for thought and feeling.” I join my sisters and brothers in arms—writers who think and feel,who rise above the limits of material experience through their appreciation for superior storytelling with subtly-infused social themes. So, I continue my education as a writer through the close analysis of exemplary works of fiction and other expressive forms of writing, and I write. 

 

Since I’ve survived a deranged woman’s attempt at converting me to the Church of the Insane, given up crafting homicidal puppets, relinquished my M-16 and requisite behavioral programming, and took up my true calling, I continue to seek out the art that both eases and feeds my rebellious, fractured, multi-vocal spirit. Although I consider myself a cultural nomad, I still feel as if I am a part of a “community” of committed writers who, despite their diverse styles and personal experiences, all share one undeniable trait: their enduring dedication to one of the world’s highest art forms—creative writing.