Meditations upon reading Willie Edward Taylor Carver Jr.'s Gay Poems for Red States:
Everyone
has a story. Everyone has pain. Everyone has fear. Everyone gets scared.
Everyone has doubts. Everyone has obstacles. Yes. Some people’s obstacles and
pain are objectively, measurably worse than others. Being unable to walk in a world
built for walking people. Being black or brown in a society so deeply based on
whiteness that white people never have to think about being white. Being LGBTQ+
in a world where every religion every society is grounded in the idea of
male/female dichotomies and relationships. Being non-Christian in a society that is
drenched in the forms (if not the deep ways) of Christianity. These are objective
obstacles. But they are not the only obstacles. They are not the only pains.
Everyone
has a story that should be heard. No one story should be privileged over
any other story. Giving others the right to be heard, to be seen does not silence
other stories. Stories can co-exist. So much of what we see now feels like people
whose stories have been privileged for hundreds of years, are feeling that
somehow their story will be erased by new ones. They won’t be. The fear is baseless.
We are all richer by having more stories, more flavors, more colors, more modes
of being.
The
best thing about hearing more stories, is suddenly discovering that there are
many, many people out there with similar (and yet unique) stories. Women discovering
“me too” was a revelation. Adults finding similarities to others childhood stories
and realizing, ah, that’s why I was different as a child (previously
undiagnosed neurodivergence, or PCOS, or gender dysphoria, or many other
obstacles).
We
learn about others from their stories. We learn about ourselves by being free
to tell our stories and by seeing little pieces of ourselves, our emotions, our
fears, our anxieties, in the stories of others. Our enemies have stories. We
need to hear our enemies’ stories too. We have to know them as people with
stories. We do NOT have to privilege their stories over ours, but their stories
have a right to exist.
Everyone
has a story.
A
good society is one that is open to all the stories.
