FINDING THE STORIES, WRITING DESPITE BANNING

What does it mean to find story when you are the one who is oppressed?

What does it mean to find story when you are the one who is barely surviving in your own life?

When your mother cries to sleep every night because she can’t find a job, pay bills, fix the furnace. When the food she feeds you comes from  the government line even though she’s too proud for that, too smart for that, too strong?

What does it mean to find a story full of magic when you are dying for magic in your own life?

When your body doesn’t work the way other kids’ bodies work? When your body gets used in ways it is not supposed to be used?

When people make fun of your clothes, your sex, your gender, the way you say your s’s, the shade of your skin, the curl in your hair, your last name, your first name, the way you see letters backwards, the way you see or don’t see at all, the way you learn?

What does it mean when there are these stories out there – these magical truths – these enchanted people and places when you are just barely managing to survive?

It means there are tiny life lines.

It means there are little pieces of help.

Story is powerful. We’ve know that for forever.

Books are burned and banned because people fear them.

Books are powerful because they are information wrapped up in empathy, they are reflections of our world as it is, how it was and how it could--it should-- be.

And people fear that.

Instead of coming together to celebrate the enchanted, they attack it, call it evil, ban the ideas that do not match their own and say that they are doing what?

Protecting us, the children, the enchanted, the country, the people, the stories.

We do not need that kind of protection.

Hey, thanks for listening to Carrie Does Poems. These podcasts and more writing tips are at Carrie’s website, carriejonesbooks.blog. There’s also a donation button there. Even a dollar inspires a happy dance in Carrie, so thank you for your support.

The music you hear is made available through the creative commons and it’s a bit of a shortened track from the fantastic Eric Van der Westen and the track is called "A Feather" and off the album The Crown Lobster Trilogy.

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/eric-van-der-westen/the-crown-lobster-trilogy-selection