Bearing witness as writers, readers, and editors

Photo courtesy of cottonbro studio/Pexels

In my final articles with The Lamron, I’ve been thinking a lot about what the work I do at Geneseo—as an editor, as a writer, as a student of language and literature—means to me. Throughout my time as a comparative literature major, one central understanding has really galvanized me: writing offers us agency. The craft, regardless of discipline or form, acts as witness to our experiences, visions, and interpretations, and this is something we will always need. We need to be seen.

The necessity of testimony and recognition, though, is not simple and the consequences of their lack fall heavier on some rather than others. It is precisely this nuance that has motivated my thesis research in the last year of my undergraduate career. I have been centering my research around historical novels from Africa and the Caribbean with the intent of demonstrating the genre’s value in exposing and providing agency to voices that are typically erased in colonial narratives. 

Practicing this kind of thinking asks many things of me: what does testimony mean to a people enduring genocide? What does it mean to a state fighting for recognition? To individuals whose lives are flattened in the historical record with only a few sentences?

One of the biggest things I’ve taken away from my literature courses and my one history course is the power that texts have to do justice to a story and to the subjects of a story. Writing in recognition of events that the conquering perspective attempts to muddle, obscure, or erase altogether is an act of resistance and does the daring work of reassigning ownership of the narrative to those who lived it, especially when looking at texts produced in regions where colonization bore and continues to bear heavy influence.

Exploring texts and thinking about the power they hold has had a huge influence on my short time working with The Lamron. Writing for a newspaper, however small it may be, at a time when journalists face arrest and censure in this country and near-certain death in places like Palestine for telling stories and making things visible puts what I’ve learned about narrative in my classes and in my research into the painful, often bloody context of our time. It’s impossible not to think about my own role as a witness and as a storyteller of sorts.

If you’ve followed any of my articles in The Lamron, you’ll know that I’ve spent the majority of my time in news and opinion, and this is certainly not by accident. What mobilizes me is the care with which other journalists and authors craft stories and invest in the humanity of the people in those stories, especially as their capacity to do so becomes limited or threatened under an authoritarian shadow. These sections have been so important to me because I felt they were the best spaces through which to engage with stories that I felt needed visibility and recognition, even if I could only contribute to that in my own small way. 

In the novels I have read for my thesis—which, if you’re looking for some excellent books to add to your to-read list, are The Farming of Bones by Edwidge Danticat, Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and I, Tituba: Black Witch of Salem by Maryse Condé—the authors use their literary spaces not only to portray the experiences of often violent, traumatic historical circumstances, but to imagine more; through fiction’s lens, they create complex, deeply human relationships; they use spirituality and belief as the infrastructure for real-life stories; they incorporate native languages; and, most importantly, they portray the subjects of these histories as the very people who shape them. The narrative is not imposed on them—rather, they act as drivers of that narrative, even when facing hardship, oppression, and violence.

All this to say that writing gives me hope. Even as I get dubious glances in response to my professed aspirations in editing and publishing, even as I learn of more and more writers facing threats to their work and life, I am certain of one thing: the need for testimony will always exist, and so too will the need for writing—especially writing defined by its compassion and humanity.