December 5, 2024
by Angela Jackson-Brown, fiction faculty
As a fifty-six-year-old Black woman who grew up in the rural south, I have witnessed a lot of challenging, seminal moments in my lifetime. I was forced, even in the early 1970s, to pee in a Coloreds Only bathroom because Jim Crow was still flying around wreaking havoc in spite of what the laws said. I was not allowed to attend kindergarten because the white woman in my community who taught the only privately run kindergarten “politely” informed my father that she “did not teach Negro children.” And when I was a senior in high school, my guidance counselor took it upon himself to submit me for trade school scholarships only, even though I was a straight A student, because he thought a trade would benefit me more than an academic degree.
I have seen a lot. I have written about a lot. As a historical fiction writer, I have researched our country’s history dating back to the 1700s to the present, and at times, it is exhausting work. There are times when I want to flee from writing about our country’s tumultuous past, but I came to the realization that highlighting our past is a task that is important, not just for the sake of retelling these stories, but for shedding light on those atrocities we might be inclined to repeat as a society.
We are now entering into a new season—a season that scares many of us. As writers, we must fight the impulse to quiet our pens. The times we live in are fraught with political unrest, climate shifts, wars, and so many other mind-boggling challenges, demanding that those of us with brave souls write truth to power. The literary oracles of the world must take it upon ourselves to write stories that can help heal the land and educate the people of the land. As writers, we must confront the difficult, the controversial, and the uncomfortable.
For those of us who are part of marginalized or disenfranchised communities, it is even more imperative that we tell our truths, and we not allow anyone or anything to stop us. I understand how scary that proposition can be. I know that what I am asking us to do, puts many of us in vulnerable positions. But some of the greatest writers to take pen to paper, such as Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, Gwendolyn Brooks, Lorraine Hansberry, and so many more, unflinchingly told their truths and the truths of this country and as a result, they made an indelible mark on the world, one that has lived long after their deaths.
Fearlessness in writing is one of the greatest acts of self-liberation and activism a writer can experience. We live in a world that is quick to cancel the voices of those who speak out the loudest, so it is understandable if we are hesitant to write our truths or the truths of what we see going on around us. It’s understandable that we would opt to choose safe when what is needed is courage. It is understandable that we would allow our pens to grow silent when what is needed is for us to scream from the mountaintops with our words.
So many of us struggle with the fear that our work is not good enough or that we have not earned the right to call out injustice, but in the words of the Jewish scholar from the first century BCE, Rabbi Hillel, “If not me, who? If not now, when?” I want to believe that literary freedom will always exist for us. I want to believe that there will never come a time when our voices get silenced, but unfortunately history and the writing on the wall says we are already living in those times. According to PEN America, “there were 10,046 instances of book bans in US public schools between July 2023 and June 2024. These books are ‘often challenged for having inappropriate or sexual content, violence, sexual experiences, or sexual health.’” After closer examination, it is often that these books are guilty of nothing more than amplifying voices that others would like to see silenced. So the times we fear are here. We can run from the challenge of being truth tellers, or we can face it head on and declare ourselves literary warriors.
Writers throughout history have taken on the mantle of being agents of social change. Writers of all backgrounds have used their pens to expose the social injustices of their times, even to their own detriment. Warrior writers have reimagined worlds that no longer promote racism, sexism, and classism, thus allowing us all to see a future where little Black girls like me can grow up and become a writer and professor of creative writing.
I am the daughter of a sharecropper. You should not know about me. I am the great-granddaughter of enslaved people. You should not know about me. Had there not been visionary writers like Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Octavia Butler, or Alice Walker, there likely would not have been an Angela Jackson-Brown. We all must write as if we are beacons of light, guiding the next generation of writers to their inevitable destination. We must tell ourselves that somewhere out there is a young, up-and-coming writer who just needs to see us stare adversity in the face and write about it.
Dear friends, we must be willing to take risks, to defy societal norms, and to be visionaries. Fearlessness is a necessity if we truly believe the future of our dreams is within our grasp—and if not our grasp, the grasp of the generations to come. The world is changing on a daily basis, and we must embrace the fact that the stories that live inside and around us will help to shape the future we are rapidly moving toward. We mustn’t be afraid. We mustn’t give up. We mustn’t be disheartened by the things that scare us. Instead, we must write without ceasing . . . without hesitation. Without fear.
We must write.
Angela Jackson-Brown is an award-winning writer, poet, and playwright. She is the author of several novels, including Untethered, When Stars Rain Down, The Light Always Breaks, and Homeward. Her poetry collection, House Repairs, won the 2021 Alabama Authors Award in poetry from the Alabama Library Association. She was a finalist for the 2022 Indiana Authors Award. Her short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Louisville Review and Appalachian Review.