Four Writing Lessons From Natasha Trethewey
On January 24th, the KSU Honors College held a twenty-year anniversary lecture. There, Natasha Trethewey, the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer of the poetry collection Native Guard, spoke of her personal experiences of growing up in the 1960s and 1970s Deep South as the daughter of a white man and black woman.
Among her many influences, Trethewey quotes Seamus Heaney, a prominent Northern Irish poet, the most. Heaney once said, “If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way,” and it is crucial not to only relay Trethewey’s words, but to explore how someone can apply these lessons to their writing, whether the project is fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, or an academic essay.
Language is Vital and Carries Transformative Potential
Though large words are often associated with academic writing, language can be accessible and still carry weight, as Trethewey proves with her clear and impactful poetry. Trethewey states, “Language is a kind of play with something vital at stake.”
“Something vital at stake” is the most important part because, essentially, language carries the ability to deepen knowledge, change minds, and moves others to action. This can be done with metaphor, but it can also be done by possessing powerful subject matter that presents itself as valuable and urgent for the reader.
How can this help my writing?
A thesis is an argumentative claim, a dynamic statement that takes a side and can be both defended and challenged. It needs to be compelling to not only gather attention, but to propel the reader forward. Because of this, it is important for a writer to ask themselves many questions while considering the core of their work.
What are you arguing, but most of all, why is it important?
Why should anyone care?
What impression do I want to leave on the reader when they’re finished reading? What emotion? Enlightened? Surprised? Haunted?
What is at stake and so vital that you need to address it with immediacy and clarity?
Language Challenges Established Truths
Trethewey writes to fill in the holes of Southern canon. She crafts narrative that are there all along, but they are forgotten because of historical amnesia and the rampant idealization of the “moonlight and magnolias” of the Antebellum South, a romanticization that focuses on the lives of white people rather than those they enslaved.
How can this help my writing?
When writing, it can be hard to feel original. There is even a term for this coined by Harold Bloom: the anxiety of influence. It feels as if every era and issue has already been written about in greater detail than anyone else can achieve.
However, when doing research, it is important to ask what perspectives are missing. Years ago, Trethewey realized, in reading prominent Southern works, that the voices of a biracial woman of color or a black man who served in the American Civil War are unheard, which spurred her to create poetry to make up for this dearth. Though much has been said about the South before, during, and after the American Civil War, Trethewey engages this subject in a fresh way by writing about experiences neglected by the world at large. In this way, a writer can bring to light current issues not covered in the media at large, issues the writer or student is passionate about, so their importance does not scatter into the wind.
However, Using Established Forms Is Okay
In poetry, a refrain is a repeated phrase, and Trethewey stresses the importance of repetition. It catches attention, much like the chorus of a song repeats so the listener can remember the verse. Though Trethewey creates original narratives, she does so in forms created by and perpetuated largely by white male poets, such as the villanelle, the pantoum, and the sonnet. However, this acts as a way to set a claim on these forms and create narrative inclusion. Not only that, but structure helps create a coherent narrative for the reader to follow.
How can this help my writing?
When writing an essay, all the supporting points should ultimately lead back to the main point, or the thesis. The thesis acts as a refrain in that, though the writer should be careful not to recite it too much, it is seeded throughout the paper.
For an essay, while the five-paragraph model often learned in high school is discouraged, a great way to structure a paragraph is the MEAL Plan: Main idea, Evidence/Example, Analysis, and Link to your thesis. This will help in outlining your paper if you can identify when you introduce specific ideas (the Main idea of the paragraph), what cited evidence you can use as backup for this idea (Evidence), what you have to say to break down this evidence and convey what it means (Analysis), and, in the end, tie this into your thesis so the subject does not feel disconnected from the rest of the paper (Link).
One could also add a “T” to this formula: the transition. It is a good idea to write a transition sentence at a paragraph’s end so the reader does not grow confused by an abrupt change in ideas. The reader’s step from one point to another should be seamless.
For creative writing, particularly fiction, a main conflict can serve as the thesis in that like an essay’s supporting paragraphs should ultimately lead back to the thesis, each story scene should serve to address and elevate the conflict coursing through the entire narrative. If this does not happen, the reader may grow confused or disoriented because the story lacks a concrete and logical progression.
Ruin Can Be A Pathway to Innovation
Writing can be a means of release or a way to infiltrate difficult topics. “Homo sapiens are the only species who suffer psychological exile,” Trethewey says, adding, “Quarreling with others is rhetoric while quarreling with ourselves poetry.” Among the racism Trethewey faced as a child of miscegenation, or interracial marriage, she also dealt with her mother’s murder when Trethewey was nineteen, an experience that created recurring scenarios of thinking about and dreaming of her mother.
She speaks of her devastating trauma by asking, “How could I be so close and not be destroyed by it?” For her, writing became a compulsion because the stories of those oppressed and lost would go unheard if she did not step in and craft her poems.
How can this help my writing?
Writing is a practice used not just in an academic setting, but addiction recovery programs, trauma therapy, and other experiences implement writing as a means for someone to find catharsis, or emotional release. In his poem “The Harvest Bow,” Seamus Heaney asserts, “The end of art is peace,” and the byproduct of exploring issues that hurt in any sort of writing, even in an academic setting, helps an individual develop empathy and not just understand themselves, but understand those they lost and the world. More than anything, grief and trauma need to be spoken; one needs to tell the story of those who were mattered and were lost so they are never forgotten.
If a thesis asks, “So what?” and “Why does this matter?”, the conclusion of an essay asks, “What next?” or “What now?” Rather than being mired in technicalities, a good place for any writer at every level should be to think of writing’s transformative potential, and how this synthesizing of ideas not only engages the writer, but it can create passion in the reader. Trethewey moved the audience to tears and assured that her stories of survival, grief, and love are not forgotten. This is the power of writing, and it is accessible to those with experiences or concerns waiting to be heard.