In the MFA program, the essay is essential — the Swiss Army knife of form, empowering a writer to tackle all manner of subjects through all manner of style.  One can whittle and maim, uncork spirits or cut out a heart.  It is safe and unsafe, something with which you might even trust a child, but not without first explaining the danger of what can happen with its misuse.  For a creative nonfiction writer, the essay is a rite of passage, like the overnight field trip in the fifth grade — sleep-away camp, where you’re forced to confront and explore all the wonders and anxieties of your newly expanded world.

But in the literary marketplace, essay is the sweater vest, the SNL-spoof of NPR (Delicious Dish, anyone?).  At its best, it seems to be viewed as the narrow humor section of the bookstore, à la the great David Sedaris. At its worst: the faded, silk-flowered storefront in a dying Midwestern town.  No, we essayists are told, best to characterize your work as an autobiographical novel, a series of linked stories, or gonzo journalism if you can pull it off — something that might actually sell.

Except in recent months, I’ve noticed a change in the tide, or rather, what feels like a geologic shift: Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams is a summer blockbuster in both the independent and popular markets.  Her collection, featuring essays that examine human pain and how we handle one another’s pain, made its debut on the New York Times bestseller list (among other bestseller lists) this year, and has been noted by Poets & Writers, The New Yorker, and NPR as a book to watch out for — almost unheard of for this particular genre.

How has she done this?

Notwithstanding Jamison’s compelling topic, I think what we’re seeing is something bigger — something specific to the form.  Not just the essay, but the personal essay: the form that weaves personal narrative into its history and research and facts.  And personal story is the element with which Jamison has particular skill.  Her work speaks directly to us, bridges a connection through our shared vulnerabilities.  Like a camera in a documentary, she says: look at this person’s condition, now take a look at mine.  Feel what we feel, experience our stories, let them tingle with your own.  Then pull back and see how they fit the bigger puzzle.  In so doing, Jamison has made relevant our own little earthquakes.

Turns out our hunger for connection is greater than our desire to be entertained.

Or maybe it’s just our fatigue with the increasingly formulaic approach to literature.  Chick Lit.  Vampires.  50 Shades of Sex.  Maybe we are just weary from the staging that’s required of us in this reality TV culture: cultivating Twitter and Facebook perfection while our souls are tiring out.

Our souls are tiring out.

Jamison herself says, “When you write, you do the work of connecting that terrible privacy to everything beyond it.”  That’s the power of the personal essay: its careful reconstruction and examination, even wrestling of something studied to weave a complex tapestry of people and places and experiences and desires — the threads of which readers will recognize from their own lives.  Recognize and lean in, because something about it thrums.  Awakens a familiar smell.

With the arrival of The Empathy Exams, I dare say the anxiety I feel about calling myself an essayist — even to an agent — has subsided, perhaps even evolved into something more like pride.

photo credits:

The Empathy Exams book cover courtesy of NPR.org

Sweater vest nerd image courtesy of derfmagazine.com

Leslie Jamison headshot by Colleen Kinder, image courtesy of publishersweekly.com

The post Making Essay Cool: The Power of Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.

Thank you, Dean Tuchinsky, Justin, Annie, Robin, Stonecoast faculty and staff, friends, families, graduates and distinguished guests.  I am so honored to be standing up here tonight and especially humbled to represent my fellow and extraordinarily talented Creative Nonfiction graduates.

We have shared so much with each other and I feel so privileged to have gotten a glimpse into each of your experiences and truth-telling journeys.  I want to thank our families especially, for supporting us through the all work that comes before our literary work — be it research… or therapy… or in my case, both.  And I specifically want to thank you for providing us with good material.  For the record, all writers use their families for material — CNF writers are just more forthcoming about it.

Now, as a member of this incredible group, I feel it is my duty to clarify a common misconception that is held about the Creative Nonfiction genre and CNF workshops here at Stonecoast:  We do not — I repeat, DO NOT pass tissues around the table when we workshop.  It would have been nice, though, because — and I know this may shock some of you — I am… the CNF Crier.

I’d like to think of it as a position of honor, like a Town Crier, except that instead of wearing a fancy pirate hat and carrying a bell to deliver important proclamations, I have this ridiculous head of hair and carry snacks and actually cry.  Sometimes during workshop.  Once in front of faculty (if Deb Marquart were here, she’d be nodding her head).  I am, unfortunately that one who feeds the cliché.  You know, the image of Creative Nonfiction writers that depicts us gathered around the table, burning candles, doing deep yoga breathing, confessing our deepest sorrows.  The stereotype that sometimes saddles this genre with the unfortunate reputation of ‘therapy over craft,’ of ‘confession above literature.’

Well lucky for us, this is Stonecoast.  And at Stonecoast, nothing rises above literature. Here, literature is the medium not just for telling stories, but for challenging unfair stereotypes, for lending voice to the voice-less, for advocacy and activism.  And for creative nonfiction writers, these stories are not just true, they’re often personal, and —whether through literary journalism, or memoir or essay— wrestle difficult issues like freedom and oppression, racial and sexual discrimination, love and grief, abuse and neglect.  So yes, what we deal with stirs emotion.

Perhaps that’s why I, and undoubtedly other Creative Nonfiction writers, feel the distinct and pointed pressure to pay particular attention to our craft.  To pour all of our intellect into the rhythm of our sentences, the vibration of our imagery, the lyricism of our prose.  It has to be good, because… well, you know.  We’re telling stories that are true, and when they’re about us, we haven’t anything behind which to hide.  Not the structure of a sonnet or the made-up name of a fictional character.   This makes some of us feel a little more sensitive, a little more exposed.

Now, as the CNF Crier, I feel a certain duty to the other genres to do some nation-building around this issue — become an ambassador, if you will, to the virtues of being a Crier.  So I will share with you some of my own daily Stonecoast affirmations:

1.        Crying makes you sexy.  It’s true!  Everyone looks good when they cry, and this is especially true if you have blotchy, freckly skin like myself.
2.        Crying serves as an important function in the ranking of an academic program.  For instance, the more of us who cry after the blunt trauma delivery of Rick Bass-kicking wisdom, the more the legend lives, right?  Tough faculty = tough program = high marks, which benefits all of us.  Faculty, administration: you’re welcome.
3.        Crying serves as an excellent ice breaker between fellow students.  Better than stickers or drawings on your name tag.  Trust me, when you’re a Crier, everyone knows who you are.

But in all seriousness, what I’m talking about is vulnerability — something with which Creative Nonfiction has specific experience and particular advantage, because again, our stories are often personal.  And I think the vulnerability in our stories is what makes readers lean in.  Vulnerability is what bridges the gulf between two otherwise separate groups until they’re close enough to admit of each other’s conditions: “Hey, yeah, — me, too.”  The authenticity of our stories is what connects us, what becomes the building blocks for community, the agents of social change.  And this, my writer friends, cuts across all genres.  There are no genre boundaries around the human condition.  No mutually exclusive ownership of longing, pain, empathy and love.  — Which brings me to my final affirmation:

4. Crying reveals what a supportive and nurturing community we have here in Stonecoast.

Last residency, I stood up in front of several of you at Open Mic to read a short piece that I had written about my family.  I’d had plenty of practice in writing through what Creative Nonfiction writers call “the hard place.”  So I thought nothing of standing up in front of my peers to read something revealing about my youth.

Well, writing through the hard place and reading through the hard place are two entirely different learning curves.  And I was not nearly far enough along when I stepped behind the podium.

For those of you who weren’t there, I’ll summarize: I started to cry.  But what really happened is that I tried to restrain a surge of emotion that felt a little like stomach-pounding nausea with the urgency of childbirth.  I panicked, so when I glanced up and saw Trevor the Timekeeper doing his little dance, I gulped and said something like, “So maybe I’ll just… stop?”

But everyone in that room was listening, leaning in, urging me to finish. I looked at Trevor.  He looked at me with serious eyes and —like we were in a Rocky movie or something— gave me one pump of his fist that said, Go on.  You can do it.
— Which I did, and when I finally finished, it was for more than just myself.  That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?  That electricity between storyteller and listener, between writer and reader.  Electric moments generated by the current of vulnerability in our work.  So my parting words to you: Don’t be afraid to cry a little in your work.  There will be a family —in whatever broad sense you define— waiting to embrace you.  The first one will be your Stonecoast family.  Congratulations and thank you.  I love you all.

The post On the Virtues of Crying: A Graduation Speech appeared first on Mary Heather Noble.