May is a liminal month, stuck in the dewy interstices: buds and blossoms, winter jacket and shorts.
Beaming pride and grave concerns. I turned in my seniors’ grades yesterday.
Creative writing classes are more intimate than most college classes, especially my nonfiction workshops where young writers reveal themselves on the page in autobiographical writing. They write of their families, who are fish mongers or immigrants from South Korea. They chronicle their struggles with depression, drugs, fear of coming out to parents, or recovering from traumatic experiences. They share their knowledge of things like beekeeping, skateboarding, comic-book history, otaku, marching bands, touring with their own bands, and traveling on the cheap. They chronicle their work as line cooks, security guards, cashiers, bus drivers, servers, Lyft drivers, and paralegals. They are my entrée into current slang, fashion trends, music, movies, comicons, even video games and the occult. One semester I had five “out” witches in my workshop.
I’ve always said my student-writers’ fiction is the finger on the pulse of culture. Over a decade ago, coming-out stories were common. For a while, there were at least a few best-friend-coming-out-and-coming-onto-you stories each semester. Vampire stories went on way too long, mutating into werewolf stories, then zombies. Fantasy is still hip, not that they’d describe it as such.
Dystopic stories had been waning lately. But now . . .
Fiction. Nonfiction. The space between.
This year, my seniors are stuck. Quarantine is loosening, but the pandemic persists.
Now that they finally have a moment to look away from their computer screens, it may be hard to absorb that their efforts educating themselves have been worth it, especially if a different job is not immediately forthcoming.
Here’s the touchstone I hand back:
Education matters. Education transcends.
Congratulations, Writers!
Congratulations, Class of 2020.
Keep Writing.
–KLB
