to hell with the correctness of being defensive

 v

TO HELL WITH THE CORRECTNESS OF BEING DEFENSIVE

 

Within the past 30 years, sundry writers slide openly or secretively into the posture of begging. It is a good signal that some younger writers ( those under 60) are again having fearless conversations about the sorrows and joys of writing and publishing in the United States of America.  Writing has seldom been easy.  And in 2021, the difficulty of putting the Self on the page has intensified.

 

It is a good signal that some younger writers differentiate defending the Self against attacks from the Self's being defensive for the sake of fitting in, of being acceptable.  The signal harkens back to essays in The Black Seventies (Boston: Porter Sargent Publisher, 1970), edited by Floyd B. Barbour.  Of special interest is "The Death of the Defensive Posture: Towards Grandeur in Afro-American Letters" by Lance Jeffers.  The "relentless kind of honesty" Jeffers championed is becoming more visible.  We hear more in conversations of what Jeffers predicted should be commonplace ---"He will explore the unexplored continent of himself and his people,  will seek out the hidden caves and springs of beauty and hell, will seek out the hell and the complexity within his bones and within the viscera of his people" (259). A small part of the hell that will not vanish is the zeal for radical correctness, e.g. condemnation of one's using a masculine pronoun.

 

Truth be told, defensive postures are not dead and buried.  They do, however, grow dimmer and dimmer.

 

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            July 28, 2021

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