Excerpt from Interview:<\/p>\n
Ernest:<\/p>\n
For you, and some other writers including myself, writing saves lives. And\u00a0How to Write a Suicide Note\u00a0is persistent on this point.\u00a0One poem in the book specifically indicates\u00a0[Because] Writing Saves Lives.\u00a0Since\u00a0you also\u00a0teach writing, did you ever include writing as therapy in your lessons?<\/p>\n
Sherry:<\/p>\n
I taught a workshop\u00a0Writing to Save Your\u00a0Life,\u00a0an interdisciplinary workshop for Women of Color. Some of the students from that workshop\u00a0continue to write and share their stories. One of the students later taught a similar workshop, and she and another writer in her workshop (which I co-facilitated) are now managing the blog I started in conjunction with the first workshop! So, yes, in my classes, I introduce my belief that writing can save lives. However, writing as \u2018therapy\u2019 connotes something different\u00a0for me:\u00a0 it conjures\u00a0a feeling that we need to be fixed.\u00a0Instead, isn\u2019t it the world that needs to be fixed?\u00a0We must keep ourselves alive! Keep our stories alive! So together we can make a difference. I believe writing can be a necessary part of therapy, but therapy needs to be facilitated by professionals. While there are professional art therapists\u2014I am not one.<\/p>\n
There are many women of color writers who have saved my life. Their stories familiar-the anger, the pain, the confusion, the loneliness, the abuse, the struggle, the triumph, the beauty, the passion, the creativity, and the love. I use the work of other writers such as Jungian therapist Clarissa Pinkola Est\u00e9s as well as my own\u00a0writing, as writing prompts. I encourage students to write the often very\u00a0difficult\u00a0stories that allow them to let go of what needs to be let go of, in order to keep going!\u00a0\u00a0 Here\u2019s a quote from Est\u00e9s that I find inspiring:<\/p>\n
\u201cCreativity is not a solitary movement. That is its power. Whatever is touched by it, whoever hears it, sees it, senses it, knows it, is fed. That is why beholding someone else\u2019s creative word, image, idea, fills us up, inspires us to our own creative work. A single creative act has the potential to feed a continent. One creative act can cause a torrent to break through stone\u201d? (Women Who Run With Wolves,\u00a0Ballantine\u00a0Books, 1992, page 299)<\/p>\n
I will never forget the angel I met at a Split Rock writing workshop. After introductions and at the end of the class she came up to me and asked if I was\u00a0the\u00a0Sherry Quan Lee that had read at the Loft some seven or eight years before. She went on to recite some lines from my poems! We might never know when we have touched someone\u2019s life with our words, but our words can be transformative!\u00a0 I keep some of the letters and notes from people whose lives I have touched. It is not narcissistic. It\u2019s what I return to when I wonder what my purpose in life is. When I wonder if my life\/my writing matters.\u00a0 When I\u2019m feeling low down. The kind words others have written to me save my life time and time again.<\/p>\n
In Shay Youngblood\u2019s\u00a0Black Girl in Paris\u00a0(Riverhead, 2000), Eden says:<\/p>\n
“…and between my tears words began to bloom on the page, one after the other. Words crowded each other, trying to lead me out of despair. I was exuberant. The maps I’d made were guides to my interior. I remembered all the places I’d been, all the things I’d seen, and I caught them in my imagination. Jimmy was with me and Langston too. I wrote to understand where I had been, where I was going, to make sense of the world that had led me to the small room on the edge of the abyss.”<\/p>\n
Writing by colorful women writers has kept me alive, along with my own writing. Writers like Audrey Lorde, Joy Harjo, Evelina Galang, Toi Derricotte, Nikki Giovanni, Cherrie Moraga, Gloria\u00a0Anzald\u00faa,\u00a0Wang Ping, Linda Hogan, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Eden Torres, bell hooks, Maxine Hong Kingston, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Ana Castillo, and others have given me the courage to discover who I am as I continue to map my life through writing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Excerpt from Interview: Ernest: For you, and some other writers including myself, writing saves lives. And\u00a0How to Write a Suicide Note\u00a0is persistent on this point.\u00a0One poem in the book specifically indicates\u00a0[Because] Writing Saves Lives.\u00a0Since\u00a0you also\u00a0teach writing, did you ever include writing as therapy in your lessons? Sherry: I taught a …<\/p>\n