Why Do This

At the end of last year, I found myself weighed down by all that was happening in the world. My phone was filled with footage of the genocides and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Sudan, Myanmar, and China. The brute force of capitalist greed, hatred, and white supremacy dulled my senses to the roars of holiday cheer. It felt like (and still feels like) a luxury to plan, to rest, to write. I have wondered why and how we write in times like this. Why create?

I don’t have a good answer for this. I think that my struggle with the question is crucial to my artistic process. I can only tell you how I keep approaching the question.

I keep educating myself. The poet Black Ice said (on Def Poetry Jam): “I’m tellin you/you learn so much, money/when you just open up a book and look inside/that’s where they hide the evidence.” I use social media for its democratic potential: like, share, and comment to keep the algorithm fed and hungry for more of the same content so no one’s voice is silenced on my watch. I call and email my elected officials.

And, I think about what writing does. What scholarship does.

I do not believe my task as a writer is only to chronicle beauty. Sometimes it is to witness the ugliness, to condemn it. I do not believe my task as a scholar is simply to dissect or to warn. Sometimes it is to hope, to dream.

I continue to write. I continue to research – even on the days it feels senseless – because this is the way I contribute to the making of justice.

I founded Inquiry because I thought there might be hunger for editing that doesn’t dull the pain, silence the rage, obfuscate the ugliness of the world, or further dispossess people with opaque language. Let me know if you’ve got a project that needs my help to make you sound more like yourself.