I’d like to take a brief respite from covering the weekly headlines describing the disastrous domestic policies of the Trump administration, as well as the overall continuation of murderous foreign policy in the interests of the United States to speak to my fellow collegiate writers who have chosen to major in English. This message, by extension, can also be applied to other writers who have yet to enter a university program or operate outside the academy.

Your work is valuable. Materially, financially, and laboriously, valuable. The writing you do, if you do it well (and you should if you are so determined to write), is needed. There are untold conversations that do not occur on the Internet or in real life without your voice expressed through written word. I do not speak of political writing alone---the art that I have seen from countless writers of color, who persist despite the mass exploitation of their labor, is simply beautiful. And that’s what you are, my dear writer: you are an artist. There can be debate about the quality, the relevancy, the immediacy, of your art, but while not all writing is art, all writing indeed has the potential to be. I’m not here to tell you how to market yourself, how to justify your art to those who have no interest in the value of your work. Too many better writers than I have done the work that can aid you in that very real concern.

No, my dear writers, I am simply here to tell you that your command of the English language (and not exclusively this language at that) is a concrete skill that helps develop your identity. You are just as much a professional as any lawyer, doctor, businessperson, or scientist. For what is the contemporary world without writing? What is the Internet without articles, papers, or editorials?

In ages past, in some indigenous cultures surviving today, they have oral historical practices. But we do not have such a gift in our own culture. We have you, the writer. So go, writers, and write!