Writing for an imaginary homeland
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Jennie S. Bev
Everything starts with words. Throughout history, every iconic individual of any degree of importance in the society has at least one book and multiple short pieces written by, inspired by, or dedicated to him or her. Every major event and phenomenon is likely to have some sort of written record as well.
After all, written words are repository of histories, thoughts, feelings, and efforts in maintaining and creating new paradigms. They are testimonies of human civilization’s ever-changing nature and search for ultimate understanding through various tangible and intangible means.
Words are both edifices and crystal balls.
According to Mary Pipher in Writing to Change the World, good writing facilitates the making of connection in a way that inspires openheartedness, thinking, talking, and action. It widens the reader’s understanding of the world, and empowers and inspires them. And writers who write away from their homeland might be those who are guilty for the crime of being distant and receiving accolades for see things in a magnified manner as if looking through a telescope so powerful like one on the Canary Island of La Palma.
Salman Rushdie in Imaginary Homelands uttered it well, “It may be argued that the past is a country from which we have all emigrated, that its loss is part of our common humanity. Which seems to me self-evidently true; but I suggest that the writer who is out-of-country and even out-of-language may experience this loss in an intensified form. It is made more concrete for him by the physical fact of discontinuity, of his present being in a different place from his past, of his being ‘elsewhere.’ This may enable him to speak properly and concretely on a subject of universal significance and appeal.”
He added, “But let me go further. The broken glass is not merely a mirror of nostalgia. It is also, I believe, a useful tool with which to work in the present.”
Broken glasses create beautiful mosaics. This, I believe to be true.
With memories from the past, recent experiences from the present, and hopes for the future, writing for a faraway homeland gives a glimmer of longing to be present in the most visible manner. It is as if shouting to fellow countrymen and women, “Look, I am here. I’m with you. I share your joy and your pain.” And as put forth beautifully by Joyce Carol Oates in The Faith of a Writer, as we all have gone through childhood, it is an opportunity to soak in the marrow of our bones and to condition our interpretation of the universe by exercising our control of environment and response to it.
Or, perhaps even for a few selfish reasons, as George Orwell once pointed out bravely in Why I Write.
First, sheer egoism. Every writer desires to be seen clever, to be the talk of the town, to be remembered long after demise, and to share with those who bullied us in childhood the sweet revenge of success. Along with other top crust of the society, writers want to be acknowledged as agents of change. To be important.
Second, aesthetic enthusiasm. Writers use words to shape perception, particularly the perception of beauty, and it is almost impossible to find any writer who does not place significance in the firmness of good prose and the rhythm of a good story, despite his or her style and guidelines being used.
Third, historical impulse. Writers have strong desire to see things as they are, to find out true facts and store them in a time capsule for the use of posterity. Their works are accretionary.
Fourth, political purpose. All writers have a yearning to push the world in a certain path, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. Thus, it is safe to say that no piece of writing is free from ideological and philosophical biases. And it is also safe to say that all writers are politicians in their own right.
Of course, those are what Orwell believed, which I also believe to some degree. As a non-fiction writer who has written no nonsense how-to articles, straight-shooting journalistic pieces, to reflective-contemplative philosophical essays, I write with a purpose. Sometimes they are intended for informing, sometimes for shaping opinions, and more often than not for sharing with the world what I see through my lenses and think with these grey cells.
As a writer who writes away from her faraway homeland, certain things are imaginary. Yet the presence is real. The meaning is not transplanted from a faraway land to be adopted without any reservation, but to be considered an abridgment.
As a writer, I give a choice to my readers and it is likely to be genuine and unique. After all, I write for an imaginary homeland from a faraway land. And broken glasses create beautiful mosaics.
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Jennie S. Bev is an author and a columnist based in Northern California. She can be found at JennieSBev.com. This article was published by The Jakarta Globe with its version.
