Writing History as Restorative Justice

I do not know how else to describe the joint interview/discussion between the poets Sophia Terazawa and Mai Der Vang. Two refugees confronting the past that brought them to America. A sample to get you thinking:

And for me, the seed for this book was honestly heartbreak. I had my heart broken pretty badly in 2017 and was very lost, and [searching for] a language to look at that heartbreak and where it came from. I keep going back to a statement James Baldwin once made in an interview, saying that you can always think your heartbreak is the worst in the world but then you just read a novel and you realize that it’s not—it’s the heartbreak of humanity. 

Once I started to think about my own heartbreak as part of a larger state of humanity, I realized that the way I feel and operate in this world is out of what I’ve inherited from my mom. Like my mom being heartbroken by her country. Or being heartbroken by her family or her people. Essentially that’s what a refugee is—it’s the ultimate form of rejection, right? You’re rejected by the land that you’re from; you’re rejected by your own history. So I was able to enter the book in that way.

Can we not relate to these ideas and then act upon them in way that helps humanity heal its trauma - if not heal, then with coping? 

One last thought:

I wholeheartedly agree—anyone who writes channels something or someone or some aspect outside of who they are. Sometimes that’s when you look at a poem and you’re like, “I don’t know who wrote this. This is not what I would normally do.” I was raised in a family that practiced and continues to practice shamanism where much of that healing comes from being able to step outside of yourself and connect with something beyond you. I feel we do that as poets. We tap into something that is trying to create a space to be heard again whether it’s our ancestors or some energy that demands justice for what’s happened. Those are the shadows that stay with us until, like you said, we go and cut off the head of the thing and purge it of all that it is. Before it finally can be put to rest.

sch

 12/11/21