White Girl in Black Face

“You are visible, and you’re about to become a lot more visible.”

So read the opening paragraphs of my 2010 astrology report from Eric Francis, and I took it seriously. It was true. I had just begun working on a memoir which would broadcast my story to the world. Of course, I could decide what to include and what to leave out, but at some point, I knew I wouldn’t be able to hide. I also knew that there would never be a book (or at least a publisher) if all I did was skim the surface, listing the events of my life like an encyclopedia. Meadow Braun. Born 1976. Delivered newspapers. Member of Hackett Hawks cheerleading squad. No, that wouldn’t do. I was reminded by my writing mentors that I would have to go deeper. “Show, don’t tell,” they repeated like broken records. Readers want details, emotions. They need to know your motivation. They need to know exactly what everything smelled like. They need the situation and the story.

Part of my story is that I have always been terrorized by my own visibility. As a child, I longed to shield myself from the judgmental gaze of my friend’s mother who questioned whether I had gone to a “proper” Girl Scout camp; from classmates who asked if they could “boing” my hair; from Jewish Community Center swimmers who wondered aloud if I was Israeli as I sat in the lifeguard chair and twirled my whistle around bronze fingers; from my own parents and grandparents who watched intently as I opened gifts on Christmas morning, waiting for my reaction; from the eyes of the boy who motioned at me and said “she ain’t got no pussy” while I waited in line for the high dive wearing my new black swimsuit which exposed my thirteen-year-old belly and back. I felt painfully visible when people asked what I was, what kind of name I had, whether I was adopted. And then I felt invisible when NYU decided to trim down the two ethnic groups I had chosen on my application from Black and Caucasian to just Black because, as they said, they didn’t have space for both. Visibility comes along with misunderstanding and abuse, and it has always been an issue for me as I struggle to form an identity that defies expectation without apology.

But if visibility is so painful, why do I write? And why, of all things, do I write memoir?

The truth is, I don’t think I have a choice. I write because I need to. Sometimes, like Joyce Carol Oates said at her reading earlier this week, I write out of desperation. Sometimes, writing is the only rope I can grab and I hold onto it for dear life until there is ground under me again.

I read once that Michelangelo didn’t think of himself so much as sculpting a figure as releasing the one that already lived within the stone. It was as if he didn’t so much create the sculpture as reveal it. Maybe writers are like this. Maybe we are born with words wrapped around us like a cloak and as we write, we shed that cloak, little by little, until we are left stark naked and exposed.

Exposure is always the risk we take when we write. It is inevitable. Some people treat me poorly when I am exposed and try to shame me into covering up. Sometimes I do that myself, anxiously attempting to swallow the words that I have shared just moments before. The “publish” button might as well be called the “panic” button, because that’s what I do after clicking it.

But the anxiety passes, and I keep writing.

Once when I was drawing myself, I began crying. My first instinct was to stop as I could barely make out my own face in the mirror. But I continued, and drew myself through the tears. The resulting contorted lines of ink were closer to me than anything I had drawn before. I write because I am committed to that kind of authenticity. I write because I fight fire with fire. I write because the arrangement of words on paper makes order out of chaos and gives the pointless purpose. I write because even though I may not enjoy the experience of being seen, there is some pleasure, and perhaps some value, in being recognized for who I really am.

And now, a question for my readers: Why do YOU write? If you aren’t a writer, what do you do in your life that exposes you? Do you try to avoid doing it?

Thanks, as always, for reading and especially for subscribing (wink, wink).