Writing is meant to inspire us whether it is writing ourselves or simply looking deeper into our world. But sometimes it is hard for me to be able to put pen to paper. At times like this, I like to look towards people I admire to remember why I love writing in the first place. Below are some of my favorite authors whose work is truly amazing!
1. Meena Kandasamy
“In place of a firing squad, I stare down the barrels of endless interrogation. Why did she not run away? Why did she not use the opportunities she had for escape? Why did she stay if, indeed, the conditions were as bad as she claims? How much of this wasn't really consensual?
Let me tell you a story. Not mine, this time around.
It is the story of a girl we call after the place of her birth, lacking the integrity to even utter her name. The Suranelli Girl.
Forty-two men rape this girl, over a period of forty days.
She is sixteen years old.
The police do not investigate her case. The high court questions her character. The highest court in the land asks the inevitable. Why did she not run away? Why did she not have the opportunities she had for escape? Why did she say, if need, the conditions were as bad as she claims? How much of this wasn't really consensual?
Sometimes the shame is not the beatings, not the rape. The shaming is in being asked to stand for judgment.”
- Meena Kandasamy, When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife
2. Fred D'Aguiar
There's an imperative to make sure you distinguish fiction from the fact, because if the fact is doing the work, why did you do fiction? And once you raise the question of why-why do fiction? - then you have to answer it in your text as a kind of enactment of the answer.
- Fred D'Aguiar
3. Trista Mateer
“I still remember you
as a little girl
who overwaters plants
because she doesn’t know
when to stop giving.”
- Trista Mateer
4. Oscar Wilde
“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian GrayWho knows? Maybe one day someone will write your name in one of these listicles!