A few posts ago, I encouraged writers to read their work. There is something so scrumptious about tasting the words of your characters in your mouth. You become the conduit through which they are heard and felt. I have always loved performance art. Perhaps, if I didn't have such difficulty memorizing dialogue/lines, I would have auditioned for the stage. Maybe the fact that memorization is a chore for me, I instead focus on getting the voices of my characters just right. I know I will never perform in a play (unless I am the character who enters stage left, nods at the people in the audience, and then walks off stage right). Therefore, I must allow my creative process to help me engage my characters orally. My ultimate goal is, after I've "written" and "talked" my characters into existence, someone who reads a story written by me will "hear" the voices of the characters as if I or the character herself were speaking them out loud. So, below, I share with you my reading of my short story, "Something in the Wash." This story is part of the thesis I wrote entitled Wade in the Water. Please feel free to leave comments below about your writing/reading experiences, or just talk about writing with me.
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I AM
When you look at me, you see not just an adopted baby of unknown pedigree but a baby shuffled from one Front Porch Monarch to the other, each trying to mark me, massaging their imprint into my skin with gnarled fingers in an effort to make me their own. a love child cradled by my daddy’s callused hands, hands that were rubbed soft with Jergens Lotion and Vaseline after long days of toiling for what seemed like at times only a few dimes and nickels. A country child begat by country folk who often got pecked by the beak of Jim Crow but who occasionally got the chance to peck him back. A blues child who jooked just as hard as the grown folks when J.W. Warren plucked blues harmonies in the guise of gospel tunes in order to satisfy both the tea drinkers and the shine sippers who all congregated under the Saturday night altar of stars and vast, Alabama skies. A sometimes fearful child who was warned about the Billy Bobs, Joe Nathans, and Cooter Lees who whooped it up on back country roads and side streets-- screaming racial epitaphs that burned crosses into the souls of the hearer, but in a pinch these men would do you right – whether you were white or black. But most of all I am a storyteller who is tied to generations of other proud storytellers whose stories I carry in my belly like unborn babies, waiting for the day when Emancipation comes, so I can be one of the first to set our stories free. © Angela Jackson-Brown, 2012 |
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