September’s book display theme, Memoir
which are narratives written from the perspective of the author
was inspired by an idyllic week spent making memories through the craft of writing.
This summer, I had the great fortune to be selected to participate in the Center for Black Literature’s Wild Seeds Retreat for Writers of Color. This year’s cohort gathered at SUNY Polytechnic in Utica, New York to immerse ourselves in instruction provided by writers in three genres – poetry with Johanna Sit, memoir with Jamiyla Chisholm and fiction with Jeffery Renard Allen.
Jamiyla Chisholm’s memoir, The Community, is riveting and the author, journalist and educator is no less than that herself. Members of the memoir group – my genre of choice- worked closely with Jamiyla and achieved a deeper understanding of our stories and the practice and craft of writing within the space of a week.
My fellows and I learned to observe and critique without conflict and to revise with feedback in mind – but with permission to accept or reject it. We wept, we laughed and whooped in the way you do when you are in a space of freedom. We walked (so much walking) and ate and marveled at deer approaching from the nearby wood. Some of us partied while others reveled in the solitude wrought by being removed from daily life and circumstance. By week’s end we erupted in thunderous applause for one another during final readings and laughed and cried some more for words that were transformative to both author an audience.
Stop by the library to peruse a selection of memoirs from our collection, on display just inside the library’s entrance, through the end of September. For more information about Wild Seeds, visit the webpage for the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College.
