WHAT MATTERS TO ME IS STORY<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been six months since my memoir in verse, Septuagenarian<\/em>, debuted.\u00a0 I think about this as another Minnesota poet, and another, and another has released another book of poems.\u00a0 I think about how different our voices are. How different our techniques. I am less about craft and more about subject. Perhaps because I was told I didn\u2019t learn how to write in graduate school,<\/em> I didn\u2019t want to prove them wrong.\u00a0 Or, perhaps, because I was told that what I wrote about wasn\u2019t trend<\/em>y, I did want to prove them wrong. Trendy<\/em> not why I write, but that what I write matters (if only to me).\u00a0 As Deborah Keenan said about my book:<\/p>\n Sherry Quan Lee writes with a purity of intention.\u00a0 She has no interest in certain kinds of poetics that conceal, or only honor, adornment.\u00a0 She has her gaze on the long sweep of her personal history.<\/em><\/p>\n What matters to me is self-awareness and healing and to know and accept that I am strong\u2014that I am okay. What matters to me is story. And knowing that mine is only one story, but stories intersect no matter how different they may seem, at least that\u2019s been my experience.\u00a0 Sometimes it\u2019s a similar time and location, a tragedy, a celebration, gender, culture, sexuality, race, age\u2014family.<\/p>\n Yet, since publication, I have seldom opened my book to read what I had written.\u00a0 Out of fear or out of closure I\u2019m not sure which, maybe both.<\/p>\n Recently I finally let go of dollars to find a streaming service where I could watch Queen Sugar.\u00a0 I am on Season 4.\u00a0 Every episode of the entire series has my emotions roller coasting as I come to it from my history and my experience. Nova is an activist, an artist.\u00a0 She wrote a memoir telling family stories, divulging secrets.\u00a0 Her family is unforgiving.<\/p>\n Beginning seven years ago my sisters one by one turned from me.\u00a0 If there was an excuse it was, to me, senseless; one sibling yelling she hoped my writing friends took care of me.\u00a0 One sibling saying my highs and lows were too much for her.\u00a0 And one sibling refused to come up with an excuse.\u00a0 Were they afraid of my truth-telling?\u00a0 Was I wrong to share our stories? Did my writing have nothing or everything to do with the separations? Two of my \u00a0three sisters gave me permission, the other sister I respectfully left out of my books.\u00a0 I even changed my last name (another kind of separation).<\/p>\n I hope Nova and her family can reconcile and forgive.\u00a0 Yet for me, separation feels healthy, but sad\u2014I can\u2019t stop grieving.\u00a0 Is truth-telling for a greater good if the truth be told continues a history of separation?\u00a0\u00a0 Does a writer\/an artist have control over what they write? Are we born to disrupt?\u00a0 Can our souls\/our spirits handle the repercussions, the displacement?<\/p>\n My most recent book struggles with the theme of separation.\u00a0 The separations that have cursed my family. Black families\/slave families were separated by the auction block, if not that assigned duties and \u00a0gender were other forms of separation.\u00a0 A female slave assigned to house duties-including the duty of fulfilling the master\u2019s sexual improprieties.\u00a0 And from those liaisons, babies of various skin colors\/mixed-race babies\u2014my great-grandmother–added another dimension to the separation of families. Black men were lynched.<\/p>\n Separation was created by laws that kept Chinese immigrants, who came to work in America as cheap labor, from bringing their wives.\u00a0 West Coast Japanese were separated during WWII most in internment camps, some joined or were drafted into the armed services, others were able to attend college in Minnesota.\u00a0 My Chinese father joined the Navy because he wanted to, leaving a wife and two young daughters\u2019 home in Minneapolis while he fought the Japanese from a ship out at sea.<\/p>\n My story is complex (as yours probably is too):\u00a0 poverty, passing, fear, anger, divorce, addictions–separations.\u00a0 Each poem, each book releases and sets aside who I was to create space for who I am.\u00a0 Yet who I was has a way of creeping into who I am so I will never be free enough to be happy; but I am emotionally healthy which comes from years of learning, of therapy, of listening, of reading–of truth-telling. Minnesota is a choir of many voices, many songs; poetry. Colorful\/diverse writers inform me, connect me, keep me from becoming idle, from being satisfied. Keep me alert.<\/p>\n Maybe today I will open my book, Septuagenarian<\/em>, and re-remember a life I have lived.\u00a0 73 years-old.\u00a0 I have no regrets.<\/p>\n Sherry Quan Lee<\/p>\n \u00a9 September 6, 2021<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WHAT MATTERS TO ME IS STORY It\u2019s been six months since my memoir in verse, Septuagenarian, debuted.\u00a0 I think about this as another Minnesota poet, and another, and another has released another book of poems.\u00a0 I think about how different our voices are. How different our techniques. I am less …<\/p>\n